Bagged, Boarded + Buried

taking care of one's collection can be overwhelming. at the very least it is time consuming. even for folks like me who have less than zero interest in reselling their personal cache. cumulatively,making sure that the fragile and flimsy paper products i have spent most of my life hoarding are maintained for continuous enjoyment totals thousands of hours.
some of the more obsessive types may enjoy all of this tedium, even find it theraputic, but at this point it is simply an unconscionable task. fruitless, endless and soul crushing.

when i stop to thik how many hours of my life have been spent bagging and boarding comic books (keep in mind that on top of collecting comics for over 30yrs i have also spent a good portion of my working life being paid to do all of this in Comics Shops) it is fairly stupifying.

usually on sunday or monday i drag out a case of 1000 loose boards and a case of bags
(this is roughly enough for the week here in terms of new comics sales.) then set to work, absently sliding one into another until my pile is gone. i'm fairly proficient with this task at this point in my life. fortunatley my job in regards to these paired instruments of storage is largely done at that point. all that remains is to stuff them in with a customer's purchases, except for the few extra needy OCD folk that prefer i bag their booky wooks for transport.
of course any new acquisitions require bagging, some issues that have been waiting for their forever home too long might also need a spiffier presentation. and that's it  because no, i will not give you a free bag and board for anything out of the .50cent or Free bins!

about the time my first child emerged from inner space to the world at large i stopped keeping up with my diligent filing and sorting systems and for the last 8+ years i can not for the love of goat make myself get back on task. there's too many boxes to move, too many titles to shuffle and shift within, and so damned many to put into some semblance of order. the current count haas at least 8 long boxes of unsorted materials, just to give you an idea of the sisyphean task before me. presented with the daunting challenge of how to begin, when to do it and then actually resuming the proper storage and organisation of  my preciouses i came upon an idea to solve this logistic terror.

the plan is thus:
i propose to sell all my comics to the store for what i could hope to be about 40% of their retail value, tho if i catch sight of just how many Extreme and Homage Studios books i still retain, and lets not in anyway mention the preponderance of X-Force #1's lurk in the darkest corner, i will have to reduce the collection's value signifigantly.
once the transaction is complete i will then book myself in to fully evaluate, grade,
 bag + board, colate and price the books. this i figure should take a good 200 person hours.
now with a filled bank account from the sale of my collection and working double hours for a good 5 weeks.  i then sell them back to myself.
using a loose math on untaxed hours combined with the purchase in take and return sale with employee discount i will only roughly lose $50000. or perhaps i could go all out, move town, open a new comic book store franchise so i can pocket the profit i make from selling the books back and forth to myself, less tax deductions of course.

this all seems strangely equitable  compared to doing this on my own free time.
really i see no other way that i will ever get the motivation to do all of this.
only as part of a necessary paid task will i do it.
a year's lost wage is a pleasant happening compared to all the time wasted procrastinating, interupted by snacks or reading and lamentation that this act will surely be my existential hell to come, if i am not already there.

these books are not gonna bag themselves.
they won't even alphabetise themselves.
even just first letter organised would be great.

i occassionally think of getting a great big slide/garbage chute to rocket the boxes onto the back of a truck, destination unknown. sometimes i think about being buried with or by the books and only years after my unexplained disappearance, they find me under a stack of discolored and malodorous mags clutching my prized Weird War Tales to my mascicated breast.
mostly i think of arson as a solution. i don't even want the insurance money. just the satisfaction that i don't have to carry these things around anymore and that no one else will ever have them either.

think warms thoughts, friends.
it's cold out there.

Environmental Issues, Pressing the Press, Compostable Comics

 Comics being the product of the resource intensive newspaper and publishing industry is not often thought of as being a particularly environmentally conscious type of business.
Despite this there have been many varied and exceedingly well done comics with cautionary tales of environmental distress and misuse. Ironically printed on paper, when our ever dwindling resource is necessary not just to make fine books but to keep air in our lungs.
Within the industry there has also been initiatives over the years to offset and mitigate the deforesting and destruction of  Mama Earth. The foresight shown by some publishers is both thoughtful and promising. Dark Horse was the first to offer some books on wholly recycled papers and now virtually all the books you get have some measure of reused or recycled paper fibers being used.
Many comics, notably all DC publications carry a certification from
The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification  which oversees forestry worldwide to
maintain sustainability of our worldwide natural resources.


 To further explore the ecological aspect of the ecological world as viewed through the comic book prism take a look at the suggestions below. You'll find some of the best and brightest creators in the art form producing some of their finest works, because they believe in the message.



Neil Young has been a champion of planet earth for ages and never so apparent in Joshua Dysart and Cliff Chiang's adaptation of his theme album Greendale detailing the lives of the Green family , their history and the activism of some of their members.
The whole of the family and their community are inseperable from the land they live on, the water they work

" the graphic novel is officially titled, was released this week by Vertigo, a division of DC Comics, and was written by Joshua Dysart, illustrated by Cliff Chiang and colored by Dave Stewart. It focuses on Sun Green, the great-granddaughter of Jay Green, the man who founded Greendale. Through Sun, the artists tell a story about personal responsibility, war and the environment, all themes familiar to Mr. Young. “It’s still pretty current,” he said.

The Greendale townsfolk were originally given life in 2003 in Mr. Young’s 10-track concept album with the band Crazy Horse. That led to a concert tour, an original film and a companion book of lyrics, illustrations and more information about the characters, including the Green women’s special relationship with nature. The graphic novel draws on the various incarnations with a strong helping from the book and suggestions from Mr. Young. “The album is more of a rock-’n’-roll ‘Our Town,’ ” Mr. Dysart said in a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. “The graphic novel is an American fable with strong supernatural elements.” 

Paul Chadwick's tale of a man trapped in a rock body trying to reconnect with the world he previously ignored. His journey to feel alive and human again sees him cross the globe many times: he climbs Everest, scours the Ocean Depths, works on a farm, wanders the Pacific North West and even joins activist group Earth First! as a means to better the world.

DC's Swamp Thing, originally a simple Frankenstein type horror character transformed under the deft workings of Alan Moore. His re-imagining saw the series mature into a highly intelligent socially and environmentally conscious book.

Stories dealing with corporate negligence nuclear waste, chemical dumpings and poisoned land became central themes. A naturalistic approach to the art, featuring almost entirely organic shapes
as well as the general health of the biosphere.



Moebius' Edena Cycle is more about personal transformation but still focuses heavily on a return to nature and appreciation of the world around us....away from the poisoned destructive technocracies we've built our societies into.

The far spanning and long running series of Bande Designees finally saw a complete English collection just last year.














Michael Zulli's Puma Blues was a massive achievement in terms of both it's message and Zulli's unmatched rendering of natural environs and fantastic fauna.
Stephen Murphy's script and poetry create a cautionary and remorseful tale of our world being poisoned by industry and unfettered human expansion throughout the globe.

 Environmental awareness also creeps into comics in subtler forms.
Hiyao Miyazaki's Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind displays a wonder and love of the natural world.
While new books like ICHI-F , chronicling the Fukishima show the cost of our ecological errors.
Josh Neufeld's  AD:New Orleans After Deluge expressed a different kind of environmental destruction that also makes for good comics.

 Publishers Weekly have also put out a solid list of environmentally themed graphic novels and comics for your further enjoyment and information.
All of these and more are available to you at Worlds Collide Comics.
But you already knew that, didn't you?

And hey, it's our planet, take care of it!

#comicsarebooks

This would seem easy to grasp considering it is in the very description of the things.
But leave it to humankind to miss the point, and to ignore the purpose and benefits of a thing,
fixate on something arbitrary like collectability and to utterly suck the joy out of something.

Hello.

Today we talk about a problem that affects a major portion of comic book consumers.
Most of which can be summarized by these oft heard utterances:
"They're gonna' be worth something..."
"I don't let my kids read them"
"I'm saving them for...."
"they're still in the plastic"

I don't wish to discourage someone's joy or hobby it avoids the crucial points that:
comics being the descendant of both the comic strip and the pulp magazine, they were always intended to be read.

But somewhere along the line at the end of the 70's ..
then came the comics specialty stores,
and along with them came plastic bags, PVC, mylar, lucite...preserved for future generations.

COMICS ARE BOOKS!

the old ones are valued/valuable because everyone threw them away,
the new ones are all protected and will ensure that the appreciation of value doesn't happen

this comes the CGC company and their offspring...
offering "Premium Grading Services" and ironclad returns on your investments
and suddenly $3 books out this week are slabbed and restickered at $100 bucks.

it's a false market based on speculation
and with my own eyes i have seen flawed and suspect grading,
even some things that could be considered as dishonest.
as someone who has graded books and worked in comic shops for a good part of 20 years i find it offensive that these services are regarded as authoritative.

no one at Chapters/Indigo/Borders gets harangued daily with questions about prospective long term resale value or even fields questions about whether or not a book is 1st print.

COMICS ARE BOOKS!

the value is in the reading. literacy is still a concern in this world
and there are progressively less people who are properly literate.....
as the world shifts more and more to videos...Youtube and if they're lucky a TedTalk or two..
we need books in hands. it has to start with  kids... conditioning them to enjoy and desire the experience of reading, the mental discipline and experience of assembling the information within without it being diluted and spoonfed thru Newsfeeds, RSS, GIFs and vid clips.

READ COMICS!

books need to be in our hands, our backpacks and pockets.
they need to be on our shelves and nightstands.

COMICS ARE BOOKS!

American comics have come a long way to catch up with Europe and Japan in terms of quality and to effectively quarantine them, keep them out of readers hands

READ COMICS!

perhaps the tide is a turning....
just today we gave a talk at a local school about graphic novels and comics that coincides with their Graphic Novel Week and Book Sale. I was truly enthused by the excitement and energy these kids have for the stuff. they asked lotsa questions, took down shopping list notes, thumbed thru the books and beckoned each other back and forth to scope out one book or another,
And not one of them asked how much it would be worth in 5 Years,

Ah......satisfaction.

READ COMICS!

Off the ledge.

Karen Berger joins Image!

whoa! this should be the biggest news in comics, with the upstarts further eroding the foundation of the Pillars of Industry, DC.
But then....BAM!...

Shelly Bond fired?!?

 DC has turfed Vertigo's long time editor and current head of things, Shelly Bond has been let go in what is stated as a restructuring, the reasons being mainly that VERTIGO sales are poor.
The internet contingents lose their minds about this as is expected and many veer off into ugly territory centering around scumbag DC editor Eddie Berganza. This relates only in that it points out the disconnect from reality that DC's co-publishers and Super-Buddies, Jim Lee and Dan DiDio(t) operate under.

VERTIGO was the brainchild of Karen Berger, which was the front line of progressive comics in the American market since its inception. Shelly Bond was there from the beginning, side by side with Karen Berger building and crafting Vertigo into the industry leader it was, Always maintaining a solid core of ongoing titles (many creator owned,which is highly relevant) and publishing some of the most unique and beautifully crafted mini-series and OGNs in comics' history.



Vertigo has been going to pot since the New52 . Not suprisingly Berger left her post soon after DC did their big revamp, which in specific to this took the two central characters to the line and  dumped them back into the regular superhero line.
The loss of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer, along with the recent conclusion of Fables are devastating enough, removing from the shelves a constant presence. the back pages of each core book also carried invaluable house ads for all the various projects Vertigo produced. On The Ledge was the editorial page that also gave voice to the creators and the other folk making things happen for the imprint,
There has a visible and traumatic creativity drain from the company in these recent times because after years of producing and encouraging independent and creator owned titles the Publishers decided that they would no longer do so unless the creators ceded the rights to multimedia (read: movie making) productions to DC. Image Comics on the other hand gave creators free reign to do what they please with their creations and even gave fewer/no restrictions on content.

In previous years creators/titles that were accepted were given  a worry free 5yrs to tell their story without interference or fear of cancellation . Now titles get the axe if they haven't sold well in the first 5 issues! The publishers apparently think that the panic and reset tactics ( to less and less success)that they employ on the superhero line is a sound strategy for all it's line,
There never would have been a Sandman or Preacher or Transmetropolitan if  this "strategy" was wielded by Berger and Bond through out the previous 2 decades.

Ultimately Bond has been let go for reasons mostly out of her control and which don't address the massive amounts of TPB/GN sales tied to her Editorial stint. This move, never mind the optics is a bad one and it considerably weakens an already staggered line. Just this week DC announced the launch of another line ( headed by rocker and occasional comic writer,Gerard Way called Young Animal) apparently "in the spirit of old Vertigo"while disposing of a talent who has been there for it all.

Recently I have been critical of some of the direction from Vertigo, even wondering whether or not it would be around much longer.But I have been pleasantly surprised by many of the titles and each of the current books offers something unique and new even if it isn't to my tastes, They have continued to push forward and to challenge readers and while I believe the remaining talents at the imprint will continue to do the best that their considerable talents will afford but the repeated tampering and over-management from above will be the death of this thing.

So, say goodbye to Vertigo....it just fell off the ledge.

The MIGNOLAVERSE

For the uninitiated, this is the home, the place,the creative deposit for the characters and stories of MIKE MIGNOLA, artist/writer/creator of HELLBOY.
The big red guy with the stone hand and his pals in The B.P.R.D. are familiar the most, from either books or film but it certainly doesn't stop there.





The adventures of LOBSTER JOHNSON and the massive SLEDGEHAMMER '44 take you down dark corridors filled with Nazi Frog monsters, cyborg apes and otherworldly serpent gods.
It's a dark mistfilled world, forever in shadows, full of mythology, folklore, dark science, and the most menacing of arts and architecture.
BALTIMORE and SIR EDWARD GREY: WITCHFINDER also wander thru the murk and mire of this gloomy existence.
Sprinkle in a few Golems and Homunculi and even Dr. Frankenstein's own monster, who is starring in his own series, FRANKENSTEIN UNDERGROUND.

Occassional visits from Edgar Allan Poe, BATMAN,  Rasputin even Hitler stopped in for pancakes once or twice.

Mignola's own art has been genre defining, his take on the chiaroscuro art style and love of intricate buildings and arcane symbols draws you in, never fully explaining itself.
His knowledge of occultism and esoteric religions and history in general is seemingly a bottomless pit of weird, strange and phantasmal menaces. Unleashing horrors and half remembered folklore with enough left unshown to let your imagination roam into the most chilling possibilities.
Plenty of comics' finest artists have also lent their talents to the many series:
Guy Davis illustrated the B.P.R.D.'s title for the better part of a  hundred issues.

 Duncan Fregredo has skillfully adapted Mignola's aesthetic but added his own considerable figure drawing to the stew,

 Jason Latour, Ryan Sook, Troy Nixey have leant their pens and pencils to the books.

The legendary Richard Corben who has illustrated some of the most outright grotesque of all the offerings.

Hellboy has been to Europe, survived WWII, gone to Africa and Mexico, down to the bottom of the oceans and into hell itself. Countless fights with demons and 25 years into his publishing history HELLBOY is still going strong. Most recently in the current series HELLBOY and The B.P.R.D.: 1952 , which details Red's first forays into the field of paranormal investigating and monster fighting.
Each story adds a bit to the big picture, filling in bits of Hellboy's past and future and the surrounding stories paint a vivid world that keeps growing and getting better and odder with age.

So get your best flashlight or candleabra, a dark corner in an old house or underneath the covers and fall into one of the many books the Mignolaverse has to offer.
And if a cool slimy tentacle reaches over your shoulder and turns the page, leaving mucous across your cheek, don't say you weren't warned.

DARK CIRCLE COMICS

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY is coming upon May 2nd. just under two months.

Amongst the many great books you can sample from, one of the highlights for me will be the
 DARK CIRCLE COMICS issue that is being released.

DARK CIRCLE is ARCHIE COMICS superhero imprint. Known once upon a time as RED CIRCLE. Publishing a host of titles such as THE SHIELD, THE FOX, BLACK HOOD, JAGUAR and The FLY. the imprint also released a number of mystery and occult themed titles like FORBIDDEN WORLDS and CHILLING ADVENTURES IN SORCERY.(which was narrated by everyone`s favorite teenaged witch Sabrina.)

These titles and characters have seen various revisions and reimaginings but none more impressive that the current incarnations.
BLACK HOOD by Duane Swierczynski and Michael Gaydos is already out and it was top notch grimy pulp fare. The first issue was like a slug to the head and finds the titular character gunned down within the first few pages. Makes for a good start.

 THE FOX has been previously treated to a mini-series by MARK WAID and DEAN HASPIEL which was both action packed and full of fun. The new series which is out April 8th  figures to offer the same.

And on April 15th THE SHIELD returns in another wholly reinvisioned take that looks be able to take all the other Flag waving ans Star-Spangled do-gooders to task.  

Written by Adam Christopher and Chuck Wendig with art by David Williams, Gary Martin, Rachel Deering andKelly Fitzpatrick

Prepare to be amazed by these vibrant new series.

THE BLITZ! is coming.

i miss self contained stories.
and i believe as creators of serialized periodical literature
-comic book type persons, i mean you-
we owe it to the readers to at least make each chapter
-even if it's part of a larger story-
readable on its own.
i loved the back-up stories that NATIONAL used to run.
quite often they were better than the feature.
stories are our means of conveying knowledge and aspirations, history and dreams, past future and present can collide in whichever way we choose and often the best stories are a complete mess of appropriated truths mashed together to make a point or poignant drama.
i prefer a cinema vérité approach to writing, carefully choosing my angles but always being honest.
"i always tell the truth. even when i lie"- Tony Montana
if nothing else my fictions tell the actual feelings from my sternly subjective viewpoint.

sharpen your wits and sense of adventure.
and dress warm,
it's cold out there.