Evan's Comic Book Blog

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...