Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #31, Dell Publishing, April 1943

What a difference 3 short decades can make. Back in 1982 in the 11^th edition of the Overstreet Price Guide it was Donald Duck who ruled the roost.

Of the top 50 comics by value in 1982 a whoping 10 were Donald Duck features, easily the most dominant character on the list. Fast forward to this year’s Overstreet Price Guide #41 and you’ll see that only 1 Duck book makes the top 50 (WDC&S #1). Oh how the mighty have fallen!

Well they haven’t exactly fallen, Donald Duck books have continued to increase in value over the past 30 years, in fact the two prominent examples I’ve picked (our WDC&S #31 and Carl Bark’s first Duck book Four Color #9) have both increased in value about tenfold!

Four Color #9 Overstreet #11 value $1,800 vs Overstreet #41 value $20,000 = 11 fold increase.

WDC&S #31 Overstreet #11 value $750 vs Overstreet #41 value $7,000 = 9.3 fold increase.

These returns sound pretty good until you start comparing them to some of the superhero results!

Captain America #1 Overstreet #11 value $3,000 vs Overstreet #41 value $240,000 = 80 fold increase.

Batman #1 Overstreet #11 value $2,800 vs Overstreet #41 value $285,000 = 102 fold increase.

Now it’s easy to cook the numbers to have them point to where you want but I really did have a quick glance at many more examples and in each case the old hero books way outperformed the Duck books in this time span.

People were not dumb 30 years, the early wave of collectors and investors immediately recognized the quality, impact and importance Carl Barks had on the medium. He was a true American master and one that has influenced almost everybody that followed him. When the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame was launched in 1987 only 3 inductees were inaugurated, Carl Barks was one of them.

Carl Barks died in 2000 at the ripe old age of 99. He actually started his Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories (WDC&S) run at the age of 40.

Barks had been working for Disney for several years and worked on Donald Duck stuff for most of that time, he created concepts and storyboards for many Donald Duck cartoons and it was actually after Barks quit Disney in 1942 that he started drawing Donald for comic books. He drew half the story to the now legendary Four Color #9 (Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold published Aug/42) as he was transitioning away from Disney. He then approached Dell looking for more comic book work and was given a chance with this week’s spotlight, WDC&S #31. Dell sent him a script and gave him poetic licence to change things as he saw fit. The rest as they say is history.

‘The Victory Garden’, Barks’ 10 page Donald Duck story in WDC&S #31 was the first of close to 500 duck stories Barks would churn out for Dell over the coming years. In WDC&S #31 Carl Barks is credited with the script (as a rewrite), the penciling, inking and lettering, he was a one man show! By the mid 1950s the Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories title was selling over 3 million copies a month. Artists and writers did not get credits in these Disney comics back then but fans quickly began to identify his storytelling and art style and Barks became known anonymously as ‘the Good Duck Artist”.

Personally I’ve always thought WDC&S #31 played too distant a second fiddle to Four Color #9. Yes Four Color #9 contains the 1^st Donald story written for comics but Barks’ involvement was as artist only. It was with WDC&S #31 that the magic formula of Carl Barks doing everything was discovered.

Surely our books $7,000 guide value should be more relative to the $20,000 enjoyed by Four Color #9. Have a look at Four Color #29 (Donald Duck and the Mummy’s Ring published September 1943), Bark’s second Donald Duck long story for the Four Color series. FC#29 was published 5 months after WDC&S #31 and yet enjoys a $14,000 guide value, that’s double our Spotlight’s value! Even Barks’ 3^rd Donald Duck long story in Four Color #62 (Donald Duck in Frozen Gold published Jan/45) has a guide value or $5,700. By long story I mean the 24 -32 page stories Barks produced for the Four Color series. Barks’ Donald Duck stories for WDC&S were 10 pagers.

Collectors and investors are rediscovering the Golden Age, and as they mine the rich selection of titles and issues that have for so long been overlooked they will come across issues like WDC&S #31 and these issues will see large price adjustments, upwards.   

Walt Disney is front and centre when we talk about the American pop culture legacy of the 20^th century. What’s more, Walt Disney as a company is bigger than it’s ever been, a fact that will ensure that their original stable of characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck will stay at the forefront of pop culture.

Only 36 copies of WDC&S #31 have been graded by CGC as of this post, there are none graded better than 9.0. A CGC 9.0, the highest grade to date, sold for $4,481, what was then guide, back in 2009. A CGC 6.0 only got 60% of guide back in May 2011. Deals!!

The 41st edition of the Overstreet Price Guide shows $2,800/$4,900/$7,000 as the splits at the 8.0/9.0/9.2 grades.

Strengths that make this comic book a good long-term investment are:

• 1^st all Barks Donald Duck story, an important event in the history of comic books
• Golden Age comics are set for new growth in values
•  I love the Walt Kelly cover

This is a wonderful collection of golden age material from Bill Everett, all never before reprinted. Two things to deal with: the material themselves and the way the material is presented.

Content is made up of Everett’s work the first four years of his professional comic career. It’s an astoundingly broad collection of characters in a variety of scenarios, all of it screaming “golden age comic” as it’s read. We start with Skyrocket Steele, a Flash Gordon ripoff that shows a very green art style. Amazing-Man is a trained agent from Tibet that can turn into a green mist, while Bulls-eye Bill is your standard cowboy. Hydro-Man can turn himself into water, and has the most facetime in the book. Read the page below to see how his costume is put together. Sub-Zero can freeze things and The Conqueror is your nigh invulnerable costumed soldier taking on the Axis single-handed. My favourite is The Music Master, who can turn himself into sound and can also control it by way of an Egyptian pan flute; I see a new career for Zamfir. Also of educational note is the history of the Red Cross.

It’s a real smorgasbord of ideas, all trying to take advantage of the comics explosion at the end of the 1930s. A very nice selection of material to showcase Everett’s early career. I can’t say any of the material made me want to pursue it outside this volume. These were early attempts trying to capture a piece of the market; if it didn’t work they moved on to something else. Everett’s style and development shine through and allude to what we’d see in the future.

Blake Bell has done a wonderful job on this project; it’s a thorough fit and finish. Detailed table of contents and a well-developed introduction that doesn’t rehash Fire & Water but gives insight to the publishers and work presented. Chapters broken down by material with each leading with a one page summary headlined by the most bizarre or out of context quote; Hydro-Man leads with “Good grief, Bob! Harry just blew off his hand in an explosion!..Say Joyce, that’s bad!”. Bell knows his material and its early rough-hewn development, embracing it for what it is. It finishes off with some illustrated prose pieces and cover roughs.

The reprints themselves fall into covers and interiors. The covers are presented as is, direct scans with bent edges and spine wear. Interiors are cleaned up and crisp; a solid effort. I would have appreciated a paragraph or two about the restoration work required, but that’s my only complaint.

For fans of golden age material or Bill Everett Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives, Vol. 1 is a must have look at early comics from lesser known publishers and as such is a niche product. At $40 it’s an investment into rarely seen material.

Writer: Joshua Hale Fialkov

Artist: Andrea Sorrentino

Colourist: Marcelo Maiolo

Letterer: Pat Brosseau

Cover: Andrea Sorrentino and Marcelo Maiolo

Publisher: DC Comics

As one of the newer series to come out of the DC relaunch, I, Vampire has delivered a vampiric dose of horror into the DCU over its first five issues. With a crossover with Peter Milligan’s Justice League Dark looming, issue six of this series was released alongside the latter title last week to help kick-off one of DC’s first crossover stories within its new status quo. The question left to answer though is how well this book, and its first story arc for that matter, were able to stand on their own.

The Road So Far…

In 1591, shortly after becoming a vampire himself, Andrew Bennett turned his love, Mary Seward into one of the undead. Corrupted by her newly found dark powers, Mary christened herself, “Mary, Queen of Blood,” and led a legion of vampires called “The Blood Red Moon.” The cult was determined to take over the world, while Bennett struggled to undo his mistake and take down Mary and her followers. Now a new threat rises as Bennett’s war against Mary continues, with the likes of Batman and Constantine enlisted in his fight to prevent a vampiric armageddon

What’s The Story?

Outside a Gotham courthouse, Andrew Bennett, a 600-year-old elder vampire, fights alongside his allies against an onslaught of vampire foes led by Mary, Queen of Blood. With their numbers testing the limits of even Batman, Andrew spies a young boy he believes to have sired the entire army. Much to the dismay of Batman, Bennett declares they must kill him in order to set the army free, a point which Batman quickly disagrees on. As he swoops in, Batman hurls  batarangs at him which force him to land roughly on the ground. With his target still in his sights, he lunges at the boy, having shifted to wolf-form, and picks him up high above Mary’s minions as he reverts to human-bat form. Lopping off its head, some of Mary’s army regain their human qualities. With the full-blooded vampires remaining, Batman orders that they ensure the humans are evacuated safely. During their exit, the professor informs Tig Rafelson, a vampire hunter, about the sire-vampire connection, telling her if a sire is killed, their “children” are saved. Concurrently Batman and Mary succinctly discuss the matter of their oppression, before attacking her vainly and subsequently being physically manhandled by the vampire queen. Andrew joins his side, but while Batman pleads with him to find another to save the army, he is run through with a blade and beheaded by Tig, believing his death will be the salvation of the lost souls. Yet, his death brings something else entirely in the rising of Cain; the father of all vampires has risen.

Upon hearing good things about the title and the story Fialkov has written, with the Justice League Dark crossover looming this felt like a natural issue to jump onto to get the lay of the land concerning the title’s plot. Although I had to read up on the original House of Mystery stories to understand the premise of the comic, I found the sixth issue to be easy to follow as Andrew Bennett and his companions tore through Mary’s vampire army. It was a very easy read, but importantly a strong, very enjoyable read ripe with poetic turns resulting in unforeseeable, albeit completely expected twists with the benefit of hindsight. What’s very attention grabbing with Fialkov’s writing is how Andrew Bennett’s narrative is written; the benefit of 600 years of worldly experience springs from the pages as he coldly decides a young sire must die to the chagrin of Batman, who he previously comments on as his having the benefit of a clear ethic of right and wrong, black and white. The ending was fitting and seems to place the remaining principal characters in a precarious position leading into the next arc. With Constantine returning to the title with his “friends” in tow, I’m interested in how the remaining characters will interact with the mystic Justice Leaguers and how they will tackle the resurrection of Cain.

The Pretty, Pretty Pictures

I’ve not been exposed to much of Sorrentino’s art, but from what this issue contained it is horrificly delightful. The artwork feels gritty and well suited to the horror-based landscape, complementing it well while presenting some rather gruesomely violent panels. Joining Sorrentino’s efforts was colourist Marcelo Maiolo, who livened the undead by smearing blood across their mouths and fangs, or by defining the violently graphic splashes and spurts of blood as characters are dismembered one at a time. One thing Sorrentino does well in the issue is drawing metamorphoses of the characters as they shapeshift from human form to animal form, creating a sequential depiction of the change all in one panel. This technique is used numerous times in the issue and is executed well at every turn. Yet what I found disagreeable with the art was the consistently used horizontal arrangement of panels throughout most of the issue, giving way on a couple of occasions where Sorrentino changes up the layout of the page into vertical panels. Her best work though comes at the end of the issue when Andrew Bennett is impaled and killed by Tig. On this page a two-page spread is devised displaying Andrew and Tig in the background, while the majority of the page is doused in a reddish tone to emphasize the violence of the act. Several panels decorate the outskirts of the page with the reactions of the characters in the immediate vicinity, but the nicest inclusion on the page were the panels which were drawn around Tig’s face and the blade used to impale Andrew. Here the reddish tone is taken away to accentuate the important pieces of action and add emphasis to their weight by only showing the full colour artwork within the borders. This was easily the best page in the book, and I hope to see more of it in future issues.

Final Thoughts

I, Vampire was a nice change from some of the other new DC titles. It has a freshness about it that gels well with the editorial desire to emphasize part of the mystic or horror-based elements left unexplored in recent years with DC’s line of comics. Titles such as this and Justice League Dark are strong additions to the DC library, while this issue specifically set the stage for a very interesting crossover between the vampires and DC’s most powerful mystics. This was a fun, action packed read complemented by great artwork which fit Fialkov’s story perfectly. This book is a fresh injection of horror into the DCU and helps keep things a little darker in tone for readers who like a little extra weight added to their comics. I’m looking forward to reading more, as well as the JLD crossover starting in March. Now is a great time to jump into the series, as it feels like it’s hitting its stride and place among the New 52.

If, for some reason, you started buying up G1 Transformers in say 2003, stopped and tried to sell them today, you’d have to ask yourself, “What in the heck has happened to the G1 market?”

I don’t think any original 1980’s toy market has been as negatively affected price wise, as much as the loose, early G1 market, which I’ll classify as 1984 to 1986.  There is a push and pull effect on this market, which I’ll try to explain later.

In the early part of the last decade, early G1 became the rage for a lot of toy collectors and prices escalated rapidly, even for loose examples.  These were extremely cool little toys, but so was Star Wars, GI Joe and He-man.  Why did these go up so fast in loose, complete condition, but not the other lines?  Well, if we delve a little deeper, we see other reasons for this:

• They were by far the most fragile of the main toy lines from the same time period, and broke easily.
• They were very expensive originally when they were on the shelves, therefore, less kids had them.
• They were complex, and part of their play was to pull and twist on them in ways other lines were against.  This led to more breakage.
• Generally, they were larger, so finding safe places for them (like a carrying case—the G1 version of a carrying case was a joke), was difficult.

In a nut shell, the toys are a pain to find complete without busted tabs, loose joints or major paint ware.  Hence, they are rarer than the majority of the figures from the other major toy lines from the same time period.

Now, getting back to my reference of a push and pull market for these;

• Hasbro was ‘pushed’ very early on into re-issuing these because of the incredible demand.  They did it as a special, but those few that were re-issued early on created a buzz that sent the market spiralling backwards that it has yet to recover from!

Unfortunately, they didn’t change the moulds, and essentially re-released exact replicas of what they had released 15 years prior.  Thankfully they didn’t do a full-scale re-issue, but in my mind a lot of collectors demanded it.  This led to bootlegs in the mid-part of the last decade.

• Because of the bootlegs, Hasbro was ‘pulled’ back in to releasing, again, nearly exact replicas of what they had already produced in the 1980’s.  The attitude at Hasbro over the past 5 years is probably, ‘well, if we don’t do it, the bootleggers will.’  So there is sort of a rush to see who will do it first, and with what I’ve observed, collector’s don’t seem to care whether the toys are sanctioned by Hasbro or not, they just want the toys.

This has really opened up a can of worms as far as values of the original line.  If you can buy a new Transformer sealed in a box for half the price of what a loose example would cost you, why wouldn’t you?  I will be back next month to finish this article and give you a bird’s eye view from someone who got smoked (myself), when buying what I thought were originals.  It’s affect on me, and an  overview of where I see the market going (and it isn’t pretty)!

The Billy Wright collection has just been auctioned on Heritage Auctions and the A list lot of 300 plus books broke all expectations. Pre auctions estimates pointed towards the $2 million mark but the final tally of the February 22^nd session hit $3.5 million (this included the buyers premiums).

Original owner collections are always special and Mr. Wright’s seems even more so considering he never mentioned anything about his comics to his family. A relative who was cleaning up Mr. Wright’s basement found the books neatly stacked; apparently they were untouched down there for 17 years.

The story of the Billy Wright collection is big news all over the world, bbcnews.com ran the story on their front page as did most of the international news sites.

It’s not too often I get the chance to do an Auction Highlight on such an important and diverse group of books. Initially I thought of looking at some of the more unique issues like that Detective #32 that I bid to just below double guide on and didn’t get (I really like Detective Comics #32), or like that Funny Picture Stories #1 – wow, but then I changed my mind.

This many big keys in one auction is truly an event so I’m going for the jugular and will pass judgment on 8 very important comics! I figured these 8 can act as a pretty good barometer on the state of the high end market.

All results below are for the Billy Wright Collection auctioned off by Heritage Auctions on February 22^nd 2012. All references to number of graded copies refers to CGC Universal grade (blue label) meaning non-restored and excludes any Signature Series copies.

Will too many good books coming to market all at once be too much to bear? Let’s find out.

All-American Comics #16, DC Comics (July 1940) Graded by CGC at 8.0 with Off White to White pages sold for $203,150.00. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 8.0 is $130,000.00.

This is a very tough book! Only 17 have been graded and the lone 9.4 is the only copy better than this one. The selling price is over 1.5 times guide and to me it seems right. There really is no reliable sales data on this book but here’s the thing, 9.0copies list at $265k and for all intents and purposes this is a 9.0 to the 9.4s role as 9.2. What I mean is that this is the second best copy out there, it may well settle in as such for a long time since this book is truly scarce. We can’t split hairs on guide grades when we have no representation of books for those grades.

For me personally the character of Green Lantern is too much a niche comic book character, very hard to bust a character like that out into the mainstream. It’s scarcity and its lore as one of the toughest Golden Age keys should protect this books value though.

Advantage Buyer

Daredevil Comics #1, Lev Gleason, (June 1941) Graded by CGC at 9.4 with Off-White to White pages sold for $38,837.50. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 9.2 is $23,500.00.

This book is relatively plentiful in high grades. Of the 33 graded a healthy 14 are graded 8.0 or better including 6 at 9.4. Back in 2007 the 9.4 Mile High copy fetched over $41k while a mere 2 years ago another of the 9.4s fetched just below 17K. This copy selling for over double what the last 9.4 sold for seems problematic but I think the jump in price is more indicative of a macro shift back towards the Golden Age over the mast 2 years. Is that shift able to account for the whole increase?

The relative abundance of high grade copies and their recent auction performances points towards this book over achieving by just a bit, I also don’t like the fact that the character is no longer relevant. What a great iconic cover this book has though!

Advantage Seller

Batman #1, DC Comics (Spring 1940) Graded by CGC at 8.5 with White pages sold for $274,850.00. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 8.5 is $146,250.00.

There was an 8.5 that sold 6 years ago for just over $100k but that was a lifetime ago when it comes to back issue comics. A 9.0 copy sold on ComicLink for $315K not too long ago as well. Of the 69 graded 10 are above 8.0 while there are only 3 copies better than this one.

I’ve always thought this book to be undervalued anyway, the Batman title is the most collected of all the DC titles. Catwoman and Joker make their 1^st appearances in this comic. This book will remain one of the pillars of the collecting and investing hobby and while I think the price was a bit high I still like the long term prospects.

Advantage Buyer

Sub-Mariner Comics #1, Timely Comics (Spring 1941) Graded by the CGG Group at 8.5 with Off White pages sold for $44,812.50. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 8.5 is $33,500.00.

The Captain America run has always been the most collected of the 3 big Timely character books. The Sub-Mariner and Human Torch titles enjoy strong demand but just not at Cap’s level. I think the future demand for this book will to a large extent depend on the future viability of the character. Of all the Marvel characters Sub-Mariner is the oldest and yet he is the least developed. Human Torch’s second coming in Fantastic Four, Cap’s rebirth in the Avengers have both those characters firmly entrenched in today’s broader pop culture. Sub-Mariner remains somewhat confined the the world of comic books.

Time for me to make a bold prediction. Marvel will develop this character further and attempt to bring him into the larger pop culture light that Captain America and the Human Torch are already basking in.

Advantage Buyer

All-Star Comics #3, DC Comics (Winter 1940) Graded by CGC at 8.5 with Off White to White pages sold $49,293.75 The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 8.5 is $48,000.00.

Only 2 of the 34 graded copies of this comic are graded better, one at 9.4 and one at 9.6. Again this one here could be easily acting as the 9.2 or 9.0 since it is the 3^rd best out there. This is a very tough book to find in this grade.

All Star Comics #3 features the 1st appearance of the Justice Society and that fact alone will keep this book one of the most important keys of the Golden Age.

Honestly I think picking this book up for around guide is a good buy!

Advantage Buyer

Marvel Comics #1, Timely Comics (November 1939) Graded by CGC at 7.5 with Off White to White pages sold for $113,525.00. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 7.5 is $117,000.00.

This book has a lot of room for appreciation. I think Marvel Comics #1 has lost a lot of ground to the big DC keys over the past decade and I do see this books fortunes changing. This is the flagship Timely/Marvel book, this book represents the whole company, this one started it all. Sub-Mariner’s Motion Picture Funnies Weekly appearance shouldn’t detract from the fact that this was the first actual appearance to be circulated to the general public. And the book still boasts the intro of The Human Torch! Only 4 copies are better than this one and a mere 22 copies have been graded.

Picking up one of the nicest copies of a book this important for under guide is a good deal.

Advantage Buyer

Action Comics # 1, DC Comics (June 1938) Graded by CGC at 3.0 with Off White to White pages sold for $298,750.00. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 3.0 is $135,000.00.

Who the hell knows where and when this book will stop! For now its safe to assume that this book will continue to rise in price as it is deemed THE comic book to have. No other comic book is revered like this one is.

My first reaction was that this is too much for a 3.0 but honestly I’m not sure. The legend of this book just grows and grows. This books value will be fueled by non comic book money like no other. Interbational press on every record breaking sale of this book is extensive and I think every Tom, Dick and Henrieta with a few extra Euro/Yen/Peso/Pound/Dollar will want to have this book in their portfolio. There are only 34 graded and I’m positive there are more than 34 very affluent people with this book in their sights.

Weird to say but I think the book still have room!

Advantage Buyer

Detective Comics #27, DC Comics (May 1939) Graded by CGC at 6.5 with Off White to White pages sold for $522,812.50. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 6.5 is $330,000.00.

Copies of this book better than 8.0 do not exist graded as of yet. Of the 28 graded copies of this comic only 6 are better. There are actually only 3 grades higher than this one making this copy kind of making this copy an 8.0 to the existing 8.0s default role as 9.2.

This comic comes 2^nd to Action #1 as the high end collectible comic to own. All its fame rests on the broad shoulders of the Batman. Batman is perhaps the greatest superhero ever created and the character that has the brightest long term future.

The buyer may have to keep this one for a while buy the money is safe!

Advantage Buyer

Man what a wuss I am! I’ve gave the advantage to the buyer in 7 of the 8 books mentioned. Many of these prices seem high compared to the last comparable data but these things come up for auction so rarely that using data from one sale that may have occurred 2 years ago just doesn’t cut it. The important books of the Golden Age are being reconsidered and reevaluated and I believe most will see healthy increases in demand and price.

So? Where did I get it wrong?

Getting kids to read at an early age is important as well.  There are lots of great children’s books available, but I think comic books are a great reading tool as well.

When you go into your local comic book shop, do you ever notice how many kids are in there?  Sometimes not too many.

There are challenges for comic book shops to help attract the child customer.  One challenge is the parents.  If a parent is not interested in comic books, it is unlikely that they will make the venture into the comic book shop with their children.  The comic book shop then has to make the effort to make the parent feel comfortable to bring their children into the comic shop.  When I take my kids into my local comic shop (I have 3 kids), the people who work at the store treat my kids like they are regular customers.  They don’t talk to them like they are children.  They don’t ignore them when my kids are telling them a story.  They ask my kids what their interests are, and listen to their stories.

Treating a kid with respect is important.  Many times kids are often ignored at other retail stores, and a lot of times the parents are ignored as well.  There have been several times when I’ve walked out of a store with my wife, because the staff wouldn’t give us the time of day.  On a few of those occasions my wife has put her purchase back on the shelf because she didn’t like the way we were treated, and the store lost a $100 sale (I had the cash in my hand).  So treating the whole family with respect is a good way to help promote sales in your store.

Free Comic Book Day is another great event to promote comics to kids

Another thing I do to get my kids interested in comics is designate one day a month (usually) that we go to the comic book shop as a family.  We call it “Comic Book Sunday”.  I let the kids look around and pick out a couple of books that they’d like to buy.  Sometimes the books are trashed before we even get home, but they enjoy it.  My son especially likes Comic Book Sunday.  He has a short box in his room and he hides away all his comics and reads through them all the time.  As a parent you have to watch what your children want.  This past week my daughter grabbed a copy of Wolverine and I had to tell her to put it back because it wasn’t appropriate for her.  It was a very violent issue and I had to explain to her that if she wanted to read Wolverine, she’d best pick out an X-Men comic.  My son has learned that even though Deadpool is cool in movies and videogames, it isn’t appropriate for him to read Deadpool.  It is too mature for him, which got me thinking: there is Deadpool Max, why not Deadpool All Ages?

One promotion that Big B Comics (my local shop) is running that will get kids interested in comics is the “Free Comics For A’s” program.  At report card time, if a kid brings in a report card with A’s on it, they’ll get a free comic book for every A on their report card.  This is a great promotion.  And kids love anything that’s free.  I was proud of my kids this year because between my two kids that are in school they had 10 A’s.  They worked very hard this year on getting good grades.  They also worked very hard at school telling all their classmates about the free comic books they got.

I was told that the program may change.  Instead of A’s, the program will reward an improvement in your grades.  So for example if you got a C in math, and were able to improve your grade to a B, you would be rewarded with a free comic book.  I like this idea more.  It is a fact of life that some kids, no matter how hard they try, will not get an A on their report card.  At least this idea will reward their hard work, even though they just can’t seem to get that A.

Getting kids interested in comics is important for literacy of our youth and supporting your local comic book shop.  I know there are lots of ways to get kids interested, and I have only touched on a couple.  What does your local shop do, to help promote comics to young people?  Have your say in the comments below.

Justice League cover by Ivan Reis. Source.

Astonishing X-Men cover by David Aja. Source.

Untitled work by Cameron Stewart. Source.

Flash Gordon cover by Francesco Francavilla. Source.

Fantastic Four issue 604 panel by Barry Kitson, Paul Mounts, & Clayton Cowles. Source.

One of the variant covers to L'il Depressed Boy #1

Welcome back to “the couch.” Do grab your favourite beverage, perhaps some munchies and strap in for the latest edition of this very column. You’re clearly captivated at this point, so let’s close the opening introductions and get down to business.

Last week I took a week off from writing in large part due to the lack of anything worthwhile to remark upon. Low and behold the title of this week’s column. In the weeks leading up to the last, I found sufficient ammunition in Mark Waid’s sub-par Daredevil, the Watchmen prequels and more recently the decision to continue the Smallville storyline with a line of “season 11 comics.” Oddly enough, looking at those writings now, it’s ironic that this week I’ve chosen to look at the industry as a whole.

Let’s face a simple fact. If you look up and down Diamond’s top selling books, it’s made up of numerous DC titles, some choice Marvel titles, and from there, a selection of niche books which have their cemented places in fans’ comic shop pull lists.

Let’s examine the most recent list:

Diamond Top 100 comics: January 2012

Immediately you’ll notice the top 10 are as follows (in order): Justice League, Batman, Action Comics, Detective Comics, Green Lantern, Batman: The Dark Knight, Superman, Flash, Batman and Robin and Aquaman. Following those titles are two issues of Uncanny X-Men and two Wolverine centric titles. The rest of the list is much more varied, but the top 10 paints a vivid picture of where the industry is right now and what’s selling. Not to take anything away from some of the creators involved with those titles, as some are quite talented individuals, but I can’t help but feel like there’s a lack of substance in those books. This isn’t to say Snyder’s Batman isn’t good, but the argument can be made that the success of the DC line can mostly be attributed to the company wide relaunch; the success results from a gimmick more than the quality of the books themselves. It feels cheap, such that it’s hard to put much stock in the current top 10 as a long-term trend. Yet, that would seem to be the cyclical nature of a given year, with each new, purportedly bigger idea over-shadowing the previous “next big idea;” it then dominates the listings. Last year it was Fear Itself, then came Flashpoint, then came the New 52 and next we have the Watchmen prequels. The point is, at this stage the industry is relying more on big showy ideas than solid stories, and readers by and large, using Justice League as an example, soak it up. And let’s face it, it’s not a very good book, yet it tops Diamond’s best selling comics.

DC’s new books are just examples, although this isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy some of them. I love the Green Lantern books, I love Justice League Dark and Shade, and Batman is the best it’s been since the height of Morrison’s run. But I think if we look at what’s being offered we’ll find that the books that should be dominating the sales charts are dominating the sales charts, while the less popular books, some of which are critically acclaimed like Shade, don’t even crack the top 100. This is unfortunate, as Robinson’s Shade is one of the best books to come out of the “New 52,” and one of the best new series of 2011. It’s titles like it, and perhaps cancelled titles like Hawk and Dove, which fail to gain the support while the titles whose stories are arguably bordering on unimaginative continue on. Another solid example is The L’il Depressed Boy, another great series from Image Comics I’ve fallen in love with, but which doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. It would seem the good, original ideas, as should be expected I suppose fly under the radar to the point of staying there indefinitely, relegated to collecting dust on store shelves.

Most comic books offer much of the same, and in the end there’s only so much you can do with a character. There are rarer instances where you get a great addition to the Batman lore, or something similar with Green Lantern. But how many iterations of Superman’s origin can we stomach? How many times can Tony Stark fly around, shoot some bad guys, go home, and have a drink? How many times can we read comics about folks running around and shooting zombies, because realistically Walking Dead and books like it really aren’t that good or imaginative and their success hinges primarily on the zombie trend.

Perhaps this is what we face going forward in a medium which is undeniably conservative in how it tells its stories at least so far as Marvel and DC are concerned. A great example is Diggle’s Daredevil, or Remender’s Uncanny X-Force. In both cases edgier stories were told which took the principal characters to a place they hadn’t previously been, and that made them interesting. What’s lacking is the “testicular fortitude” to follow through on stories that upset the balance, that push the envelope of the medium. Perhaps that’s the limitation of mainstream work though; subsequently perhaps we can find that breeding ground for new ideas in independent works. While populism as it relates to comics will always be niche, popularity and quality of the material can’t really be confused as I think it’s rare that popularity and quality work actually meet. In that respect I think of Watchmen, Y:The Last Man, or a Kill Shakespeare are fantastic examples. Those books, in different ways, pushed the boundaries of the medium whether in respect to its concept, the writing, or the artwork.

While we all get caught up in our favourite books, perhaps we should all step back and really consider how good the books we read really are. And if we discover that maybe they aren’t, perhaps we should give some of the lesser known series a chance to surprise us. It can’t hurt to peek through the local indie books at your comic book store, as maybe you’ll discover that there is something new under the sun after all.

I have always loved monster movies. I enjoy the distillation of fear into a single malevolent being, I am constantly in awe of the pioneering special effects and makeup, and I will always have a place in my heart for hackneyed plot devices and ludicrous deus ex machina. Olde Skule horror is one of my favourite genres, especially Universal Monster and Ray Harryhausen flicks, so it should come as no surprise that I was a huge fan of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

FMOF was (as is again) the greatest fanzine for monster movies ever printed. Passionately edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, the black and white mag originally ran from 1958 to 1983. It offered fans an insider’s look at the movies they loved with interviews, pictures, and reviews on horror films old and new. You need to remember that this was before the internet so behind the scenes photos and interviews were pretty hard to come by, especially for genre specific tales like the Hammer horror pictures. Fans felt connected to the industry, and how-to articles allowed them to practice their love of the genre by making their own movies.

It was a dark day when the presses stopped printing this spooky tome, and there have been intermittent attempts at rejuvenation but all were unsuccessful for any length of time. Until about 2 years ago. FMOF came back in a big way, and, now in full colour, was ready to show the world that it would be the king of the monster mags again.

The latest issue has a series of excellent articles on the great Christopher Lee, looks ahead at the John Carter and Edgar Allan Poe movies, and has a masterclass on how to create your own Nosferatu-like vampire make-up. The magazine is not cheap at $13 CDN, but if you are a horror-fan the price is well worth it. Famous Monsters of Filmland has taken everything that made it great and updated it for present times. It is part love-letter, part devilish Cahiers Du Cinema, and part film-school gruesomely packaged into 80 pages every second month.

If your local comic shop doesn’t carry FMOF tell them to change their evil ways and if you are a horror movie fan it should be on your pull list now.

Wasn’t The Heroic Age supposed to return us to good ol’ fashioned fun in comic books? Wasn’t it supposed to be a shift away from the these dark, gut wrenching story-lines like House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Siege?

I only ask because since the Heroic Age came about almost 2 years ago we have seen Fear Itself (Thor dies again), are about to see the Avengers take on the X-Men, and eventually we will be treated to the dystopian future of the Ultron War.

Could it be that Marvel merely rebranded the same old same old as marketing scheme? Gasp! Say it ain’t so Joe! Pretty soon you might need to cancel all your titles and re-start them all at #1.