Evan's Comic Book Blog

WARNING FULL SPIOLERS AHEAD READ AT YOUR OWN RISK So I went to see Rouge One tonight and it was a good movie. Not great, not bad just good. For those of you who don't know this is a prequel to A New Hope, so we pretty much know how the story ends. I'm going to give a very brief synopsis of the movie because like I said I'm sure most of you know the plot. We get introduced to some new characters, the main one being Jyn Erso. At the beginning of the film we see her as a child with her mother and father Galen Erso, Galen was a scientist working on building the Death Star, which I guess he abondoned. We see Krennic come to bring him back to finish his work but he doesn't want too. Jyn's mother is killed and she runs away. Then we see her as an adult. She had been captured for something then is broken out by the Rebels and recruited on a team led by Captain Cassian to go find her father who had been working on the Death Star and had finished it. Her father sent ...

The Northeast Comic Con is held twice a year, once in June and once in December, both at the Shriners Auditorium in Wilmington Massachusetts. The location itself is good, it's a decent size, the parking is free. It has a real kitchen so the food is good, not the usual con food. It also has a full bar and the food and alcohol are reasonably priced. Now that being said the show itself isn't worth your time. It's not really a comic con. More of an indoor flea market. You had about 8 guys selling comics. The rest were vendors selling all types of things, not comic related. The guests were almost non existent. Dean Cain was there but that was about it. That's a big problem with the show. No relevant guests to draw a crowd. This was probably the 5th time I've gone to this show and the attendance was definitley the lowest it's ever been. There is a lot of cosplay and cosplay contests going on. The ticket prices are also way too high. It really shouldn't be more th...

Ok guys so now the good part of the show. I had a great time. I was there Friday and Saturday, set up with a friend of mine who's a dealer. We got a table last minute so we were in the ground floor of the Dunkin Donuts Center instead of the Cobvention Center with all the other comic dealers, which turned out to work well. Sales were great, surprisingky it was busy, very steady. Today was non stop all day long. Friday was less crowded, I got to walk around more and it was easier to get around. I walked the convention center pretty easily to look for books to buy. I didn't find much though. I only bought 2 books at this con, a Star Wars 2 CGC 9.4 and a Journey into Mystery 103 CGC 3.5. But I was happy with those books and I got them for a great price. I also picked up some slabs from CBCS that they shipped to the show for me and I was very happy with the grades I receieved.  Saturday was crazy busy. I only walked to the convention center once and didn't want to do it again b...

Man this show was a mess. First I'll talk about the show itself then I'll talk about how it was for me. So those of you who have been to this con know it's very disorganized and not run well and it was no different this year. This is the third straight year I've gone, and it gets worse every year, as the show grows, so do the problems. The floor plan was terribly designed. All the booths were facing the wrong direction, the flow of traffic was slow because of it. Artist alley was randomly in the middle of the show floor. They let a lot of vendors set up with random junk. They had a guy selling old fashioned soda, some weird haunted elevator green screen thing, even a rock wall, why? I have no clue. This show is held in two separate builds, the Dunkin Donuts Center and the Rhode Island Comvention Center. It's so poorly laid out its crazy. They would only let you walk in and out in certain ways. You'd have to leave one building and go outside to get to the other...

I went to a few comic shops today to buy books to flip. I had pretty good success. The third and final shop I went to was a shop I've only been to once before because it's over an hour away from my house. But I follow that shop on Twitter and they've posted a bunch of books that the added to their wall in the last few weeks and I was interested in some so I decided to take the drive. I won't mention the name of the shop but it's in New Hampshire. The shop itself is nice. Good location on Main Street. I wasn't able to find parking on the street but there was a free lot about 100 yards down the street so I was fine with that. The shop is a decent size. They have a nice selection of dollar books. Not a whole lot of priced back issues but I found some decent stuff. But they have a good amount of wall books. For those of you not familiar with the term "wall books", it means books that a shop will put on the wall for customer to see, usually more expensive k...

So I just watched the season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead and it was intense. Very intense.  I liked the episode. It definitely sets the stage for the rest of the season. And I can't wait to see how it plays out. Now I'm going to talk about what happened so, WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD, if you haven't watched the episode yet stop reading. So we start right where last season left off, we don't find out right away which character gets killed off. Negan takes Rick off somewhere and just toys with him. He drives off with him in the RV and throws his axe out the door and makes him go get it just to mess with him. This is all after the death but we haven't seen it yet. He then brings Rick back to the group and it all comes full circle and Negan kills Abraham.  But.... Then Daryl punches Negan and he didn't like that and then they stayed true to the comics and he kills Glenn as well. In the same brutal fashion. It was hard to watch, it was that brutal.  He ...

I went to the Super Megafest Convention in Marlborough MA this weekend. It's s 3 day show held at the Royal Plaza Convention Center. They do a spring and fall show. Here's what I thought, This is a show that really doesn't need to be 3 days. Saturday and Sunday will do just fine. The venue itself is ok, it's not too far off the highway. It's a small venue, I'd say similar to the Shriners for those of you who have been to that show. The set up was strange though, vendors didn't have much space. Tables were narrow and there was hardly any room behind the tables to move around. They didn't have separate rooms to have panels and Q&A's, the just used curtains to section off some areas which was weird. They wasted a lot of space with TV and movie cars, they could have brought in more vendors. Probably 8-10 dealers selling comics. As far as the guests went, I didn't think they were all that great, I would have liked to have met Richard Dean Anders...

So I finished the first season of Luke Cage on Netflix today. It was a 13 episode season. I watched it over 3 days. It was an ok show. Not the best but not the worst. In relation to the other Marvel Netflix shows, I thought it was much better than Jessica Jones, I liked it better than the first season of Dardevil but Daredevil season 2 was far superior. I liked Luke Cage, I thought the actor did a good job. I liked some of the comic references. And it was cool that they even payed tribute to his comic book costume. I wished they gave him some sort of costume though. I get that the costume from the comics wouldnt translate to today but they should have done better than just jeans and a hoodie. The villains for me werent that great. Cotton Mouth was ok but they killed him off about half way into the season. I didn't like Black Mariah or DiamondBack at all. I thought they were pretty lame characters. And the fight between Cage and Diamondback at the end was lack luster. Misty Knigh...

I pre ordered the Hot Toys Rey and BB-8 figures back in January I believe and finally received them. And let me tell you it was worth the wait. This is the first Hot Toys figure I've purchased and I already have a couple more on pre order and hope to get many more in the future. The box that the figures came in was great. Very well packed and some great art on the box. Then the figures, wow the quality is hard to put into words. The figures came with a lot of accessories. BB-8 actually lights up and the head is attached by magnets and you can move it around. It looks great. The Rey figure is just incredible. The face sculpt is amazing. The bases connect and the figures are very secure on the bases. The quality of everything these figures came with is just awesome. The clothing is well made, the staff looks like metal, Lightsaber looks great. The articulation is great as well. I like dealing with sideshow aslo. These figures are not cheap. I belive it was $279.00 for these but s...

This was my second year in a row attending this convention. I had decent expectations for the show because I did well there last year. But this year turned out to be pretty disappointing. There were probably half the amount of comic dealers compared to last year. I didn't walk away with much. A few variants that I was looking for but nothing overly exciting. The one silver lining was that they did manage to get some good artists as guests. And I always try to get some artwork commissioned when I go to conventions. I got two pieces done. I commissioned Elias Chatzoudis to do a Princess Leia for me that came out great. It is the second time I've met him. He's a nice guy and did a great Batgirl piece for me earlier this year in Worcester. I also had Chrissie Zullo do a Jaylah piece for me and she did an amazing job. I'm a big fan of her work. I got to meet her for the first time at Boston this year when she did an incredible Eleven commission for me. She's a wicked ta...

Granite Con was held at the Radison Hotel in Manchester New Hampshire. As far as the venue goes it isn't great. I think the set up is poor. The show has definitley outgrown the venue. I don't know the actual attendance numbers but I'd say the vast majority of people attending aren't there to buy comics, or buy anything for that matter. It's seems more like a social gathering than a convention. There were maybe 6-8 comic dealers. The books were largely overpriced and it was hard to find a deal. I walked away with about 20 books total, mostly dollar finds and only spent a total of $40. Probably the least I've spent at a con since I was a kid. It was disappointing. I got much better deals there last year. I only spent 2 hours there and that was probably an hour too long. If you're looking for a convention to attend to buy comics this is not the one for you. I'm not sure why so many of these shows continue to call themselves "comic cons" when ther...

This issue seems to come up more after big conventions. And seems to get talked about more as prices for signatures seem to increase yearly. So first off let me say I don't think there is anything wrong with charging for signatures, now should there be a limit on how much someone charges, I'd say yes. I've met plenty of artists that sign for free and there are plenty of big names in the industry that sign for free. Greg Capullo and Scott Synder come to mind right away. I've also had to pay for a lot of signatures. I've paid as much as $30 for a signature, and yes that was from Neal Adams in case you were wondering. Now they have the right to charge whatever they like but I thnik charging more than $10 is too much. How long does it take to sign your name? 10 seconds maybe. To charge more than $10 seems excessive to me even though I've paid more more than that many times. But I wanted the signatures and I paid for them. No one forced me to pay it I chose too. No...

I'm very new to collecting original art and when I say original art I'm talking about pages, published comic pages. I bought my first page last year from Alé Garza. It's a Fathom page and it's awesome. From then on I was hooked. Now original art is much harder and more expensive to collect than comics are for me. I prefer to buy the art directly from the artists. And from what I've experienced you get better prices that way because you cut out an art dealer as the middle man. Now when I said I was new to collecting art I wasn't kidding. Right now I only have three original pages in my collection, the Garza piece I mentioned before, I also bought a page from Ken Lashley and a page from Raphael Albuquerque, both at Boston Comic Con. When it comes to my art collecting I also only want published pages and when I say published I mean that they actually made it into a comic that you can buy and see your page in there. There is a lot of unpublished Art out there for sa...

Ok guys so it's Labor Day I'm bored and thought I'd right an article. So people tend to categorize others in sub sects of the collecting world. A friend of mine called me a flipper I said ok but I'm also a collector. He asked how can I be both? So let's first define each category. A collector is someone who collects comics, whether it be runs, keys, slabs, what have you, pretty self explanatory. A speculator, someone who buys a comic hoping the value will increase so they can sell it at a profit. A flipper, someone who buys a book for the sole purpose of selling it. Ok so now that's out of the way. I think we can be all three of those things. I don't know why "real collectors" look down on flippers and speculators. Now for me personally any money I make selling comics goes back into my collection. I don't do it as a business to support myself I do it to buy other things I won't for my collection. But there is nothing wrong with doing...

I know this movie came out a little while ago but I didn't review it when I first saw it. I did see it again today so now it's fresh in my mind. I thought it was a great film. A definite improvement over the last installment of the franchise. So let's get into the story. The normal crew is together as usual. They take a trip to the new Federation Base, Yorketown, when they encounter an alien who claims her ship was attacked and her crew was taken. And she needs their help to save them. Kirk and crew accept the mission and make way towards the coordinates. When they are attacked by a swam of ships. The ships disable the Enterpise by literally cutting it to pieces. They take out the engine and cut the throat of the ship. The crew is forced to evacuate. While clearing the ship Kirk encounter the leader of the attack, Krall. He is after an artifact that the Enterprise has on board. As the crew is evacuating in escape pods Krall's crew is taking the pods to the planet bel...

So right now in comics we live in the Speculation Age. As far as I'm concerned the Modern Age is over. Let's start by defining speculation. And I'll give a broad definition. At its core speculation is when you buy a book because you believe it will go up in value and you will be able to sell it later at a profit. Now that's a very broad explanation. By no means am I an expert. There are some very good sites out there that have very detailed articles and tons of great info. One of my favorites is CBSI, go check them out at  www.comicbookinvest.com They have some great people pumping out articles with tons of knowledge. And in this hobby knowledge is power. So I'm going to discus if speculation is worth the time and money. So there are different ways to speculate. Some people take the "Wednesday Warrior" approach where they will go out to comic shops on Wednesdays, which is new comic day and buy up lots of copies of a book. They do so hoping that the bo...

Ok if you guys don't have Netflix you need to get it now. And I mean right now, stop reading this and make an account then come back when you're done. Ok so Stranger Things blew my mind, if you are a fan of the 80's you will love the show. It's like a love letter to the 80's. An homage to 80's horror and mystery, with so many incredible references and a killer soundtrack. A true masterpiece. It takes a lot of influence from Stephen King and Steven Spielberg. With a great story from start to finish that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The cast is incredible. I'm going to give you a very and I mean very vague description of what this show is about because I don't want to spoil anything. You need to watch it for yourself. Ok so the story centers around a group of kids, Mike, Dustin, Lucas and Will. Will goes missing and the others try and find him. While looking for him they meet a new friend, her name is Eleven, yes like the number. And she has som...

CGC vs CBCS who's better? So I'm going to talk about my experience with both companies. I have submitted comic books to both companies. I've bought books that were already graded by them. And I have cracked open cases from both as well. I'm going to start with CGC. I was buying CGC slabs long before I ever submitted anything to them myself. For the longest time they have been considered the "Gold Standard" when it comes to grading. And that seemed to be true for years. I never owned any of the "original label" slabs when most people claim CGC was much more strict with their grades. I have quite a few of the, let's call it second series, which are by far the majority of the CGC slabs out there. The label looks good and the case itself is ok. I was never a fan of the blueish purple tint to the plastic but it was ok. And the case is very easy to crack open, maybe too easy. I never submitted anything to CGC until they switched to the new cases. ...

Terrificon was a great show this year. It's held at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connectucut, which is a great venue. This was my second year attending this con. I only went on Saturday. This show is small in comparison to Boston but has a great selection of comic dealers and artists. The main reason I went to the con this year was because they were having an event with Kevin Smith on Saturday night. I will talk about that later. So the show itself was great, like I said the selection of dealers was quite good for the size of the show. And many of them had great prices and seemed motivated to sell. I was able to get a lot of great deals and made a lot of sales as well. The books that I was the happiest to get were a Crow 1 second print, Miracleman 15, and a Daredevil 111 the David Aja variant. There were also a great selection of artists at this show but being that Boston was just the week prior I didn't have a huge budget. I did get to meet David Wenzel who drew the original 3 ...

So this was my third year in a row going to Boston Comic Con. And the show gets better each year. I'm sorry I didn't review this after each day when I went and it was more fresh in my mind but here goes. So first off was Thursday, which is just load in day. I do get a dealer pass into the show and helped a few dealers who are friends of mine. It took a few hours to set up and get ready for the Con. But I enjoy the set up. And the anticipation of what's to come. Like I said before I would have done a review for each day but Friday to Sunday kind of mesh together so I'll just talk about the show as a whole now. The guest list for the show was amazing, so many great artists and writers. There were some celebrities as well, but Boston is still a comic show at its core. My collecting always seems to be shifting and now I'm focused more on collecting Original Art than comics themselves. A show like this is also a great chance to commission pieces from the artists th...

Ok guys I know I sound like a broken record here but I'm finally dedicating some time to this blog again. I will make at least one post per week. I hope you guys have stuck around. My convention schedule is packed and in the last few weeks I went to Boston Comic Con and Terrificon. I know they were a few weeks ago but I'm going to write reviews for both so keep a look out for that later today. I'm going to try and get back on track with comic and TV reviews as well. I'm also going to give my thoughts on variants and speculation as well. So get ready for quite a few posts today. And many more to come. Please feel free to leave your feedback or ask any questions.