Evan's Comic Book Blog

I was at the Rhode Island Comic Con this past weekend as a vendor and I'll tell you about my experiences.  I'll start with the good experience I had because there wasn't many so this will be quick. The people I got to meet and fellow collectors were great.  Its always fun to meet like minded people and get to hang out with old friends.  I got to see some great creators and purchase some original art from them.  I got a Scarlet Witch piece from Jeff Dekal, he was a real nice guy.  I purchased a Harley Quinn piece from Chad Hardin, another great person.  I also got an original page from Xmen gold issue 8 from Ken Lashley, I've met him several times and hes a great dude so I try to pick up art from him every time I see him.   Last but certainly not least I met Joseph Michael Linsner and his Wife Kristina they were wicked awesome people.  I had never met them before but they were so nice and a pleasure to talk to.  I had Joe do a Zatanna p...

I've been collecting for about 15 years now and have been selling and speculating for the last 5 or so.  But I think its time to slow down.  I have spent a lot of time and even more money hunting for and buying books just to resell them.  I have pushed my personal collection to the side and looking back I really regret doing so.  I cant even imagine the books I could have picked up for myself 5 years ago and the prices I could have got them for if I wasn't so focused on speculating and buying multiple copies of books I didn't even want. I have spent way to long chasing variants and so called key issues and first appearances of characters who have no staying power.  Its time for me to end all that and refocus on actually collecting.  I need to finish off my JLA run that I've been putting off forever. I only need about 30 issues which I could probably find at just one convention if I tried. For those of you who are just getting into collection my recommenda...

I haven't had time to write any posts lately, work and life has been wicked busy.  I've been to several conventions since the the last time I wrote something, quite a few actually. I went to Garden State Comic fest in New Jersey back in July.  I had heard great things about New jersey conventions and this one didn't disappoint. It was a small show but had a lot of comics for sale and I walked away with a lot of great deals.  I will definitely be attending again next year.  I went to a very small show in Fitchburg Massachusetts called Plastic City Comic Con.  It was a fun time, maybe 10 guys selling books but books were priced to sell and i did very well there.  I attended Boston Comic Con for the 4th straight year and it was different.  New much larger location.  It was a good show, not as god as last year but still fun.  I met some great artists and walked away with some incredible commissions. The weekend right after Boston was Terrificon a...

So over the weekend I went to ComiConn, it was held at the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut. The venue is great, a much needed improvement over the last few years when the show was in Hartford. This show was amazingly good. It had a decent guest list and some celebrities. It wasn't the best buying show but people came with cash ready to buy books. I made some great money at this show. One of the best in a while. It was only 2 days, I have a feeling it will be 3 days next year. They actually controlled how many people were let in at once so it wasn't jam packed in there and you could actually walk around. Big shout out to CBCS, those guys are always great. I submitted a lot of books to them this weekend. I don't think I saw a single person at the CGC booth, it was a ghost town all weekend. So I wasn't really focused on buying books. I was trying to sell and also buy some original art. I saw Ken Lashely who I've met before. He's a great guy and a wicked awesome ar...

Batman and Bill is the story of Bill Finger, the Co-Creator of Batman, who was deprived of the credit he rightfully deserved.  This doc was very well done, I've known the Bill Finger story for quite some time but this doc provided a lot of great new info that I wasn't aware of. Marc Tyler Nobleman deserves a lot of credit for the work he put in to see that Bill Finger finally got his credit. There were a lot of great interviews with comic legends like Roy Thomas, Carmine Infantino and Jerry Robinson. It really sheds light on what a scumbag Bob Kane really was. And really makes you think what Kane really even contributed to Batman. Bill created the iconic look, the Joker, Robin, Catwoman, the Riddler, Alfred, Commisioner Gordon and so on and so forth. Bill wrote all those stories and created Batmans origin, the Bat Symbol, Batmobile, Batcave. It's also widely known that Kane used ghost artists like Jerry Robinson and Sheldon Modolff. So what did Kane really do? He screwed ...

The first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day.  It's a big day for the industry, giving them a chance to promote upcoming titles, and with them giving out free books it tends to attract new readers.  It's a big day for people like me because that means comic shops are having sales, usually great sales which gives us a chance to score some awesome deals. I went to 4 shops total, 3 of which were great and one was not so great. All the shops I went to were running sales from 25-50% off. I bought a lot of books, over 100 total. A couple of the shops also had some great artists doing signings. I got to see Ming Doyle again and bought a Constantine sketch from her, Her artwork is awesome. I didn't walk away with any major books, some nice Adam Hughes stuff like Wonder Woman 184 and Zatanna 16. I got a decent amount of variants. The 3 shops I want to shout out for being great and making FCBD a wonderful experience for fans are, Merrymac Comics and Games in Merrimack NH, Chr...

Ok so a lot of us get commissions done by our favorite artists when we go to conventions. For me it's the best part because I love original art. Now sometimes artists will advertise that they are taking commissions just as side work, and that's what happened here. Now I'm not going to mention the artists name in the article so if you were hoping I would call him out by name then you can stop reading because I'm not going to do that. Anyway this particular artist had advertised on Twitter back in November 2016 that he had some commission slots open if anyone was interested in getting something done. And I'm a big fan of his work and have actually met him several times and have had two previous pieces commissioned at conventions and they turned out great, so when I had the opportunity to get another I jumped on it. This was on November 2nd 2016. We exchanged a few emails, I let him know what I wanted, we agreed on a price and I sent $110 by PayPal that day. Now I h...

I was at the Super Megafest Convention in Marlborough Massachusettes for the last 3 days. This show kicked off con season for me this year. It was good to get back in the swing of things. I got to kick it with friends that I hadn't seen in a while. I also got to meet some fellow CBSI brethren, which is always cool. The show itself is never great sales wise. You'll make a little money and get rid of some stock that you accumulated over the winter. Which was what happened. Friday was slow, Saturday was good for this show and today was dead. The problem is the tables are too expensive for dealers and the ticket prices are to high for attendees with hardly any talent to attract a crowd. I would say there really weren't any celebrities of note. Mostly C and D listers. They did have Chris Claremont and Mike Grell who both have a fan base. Didn't really move many books because of them though. And for me personally, I've met both several times so no need to see them again. ...

First off I want to give a shout out to Trey K from CBSI for sharing my previous article. It garnered some decent attention and good discussion within the group. I also got some good questions from people so I thought I'd elaborate on a few things.  I just want to warn sellers of the risk of selling on eBay. And the huge pain it can be. The main question I got was how often does someone try to scam you? Honestly I would say about 1 in 10 sales. And the most common scam is people wanting a partial refund. They will say something like "hi the book arrived today but it's probably a 9.0 and not NM so can you refund me 25% and I'll just keep the book, I hope we can resolve this". All they are trying to do is get the book you sold them for a cheaper price. And how could they possibly know the grade if it's not slabbed. And that's another thing I wanted to touch on, when I list a book for sale I will list the condition, for example if it's near mint I wi...

Ok so I want to talk about buying and selling on eBay. If you're a collector, speculator or flipper I'm sure you've either bought or sold something on eBay. Personally I try to stay away from eBay because it's just a hassle but I figure I'll talk about my experience and maybe it can help someone decide if they want to buy or sell on eBay. First let me talk about buying because I have a lot less to say about it. As far as being a buyer you're really protected to the nines. And what I mean by that is if you make a purchase and you receive the item not as described you're basically guaranteed your money back. If the seller doesn't work with you then you just open a case with eBay and it will get resolved. Now you also have to hope that the seller posts accurate photos. Make sure you look carefully and decide a grade for yourself, don't just take their word for it. You also have the power when it comes to feedback. A sellers reputation is built on feed...