solarno

all messages by user

8/7/2018 Topic: New/Updated Publisher Icons. Well done! solarno	This is neither a question nor an answer. Just wanted to give a shout out to whomever is responsible for the recently updated publisher icons found when looking at "My Comic Collection" or when browsing the publisher lists. By and large they look much nicer now with correct aspect ratios and in some cases brand new or corrected images. Quite pro looking and definitely a nice step forward. Kudos to you. Cheers! Jim edited by solarno on 8/7/2018
8/7/2018 Topic: New/Updated Publisher Icons. Well done! solarno	I'm also seeing that publisher imprints are being more accurately reflected. This initially surprised me because it looked as if a chunk of my Marvel books disappeared. Turns out the CPG megacomputer is just separating them into their proper imprints (Marvel Knights, Max, Ultimate Marvel, etc.). A welcome update. The publisher list now shows a list of imprints for a given publisher. If you are looking at an imprint, the listing will now show you who the parent publisher is.
8/11/2018 Topic: Marketplace Transactions solarno	You're not alone Expander. I've not had anything in the way of nibbles on books I've listed for sale on CPG either. Of course I don't expect much as they are all modern books, but I do frequently check to see if particular books are listed in anyone's 'Want List' so I know there's an interest in some of them. Perhaps in the future CPG could bridge that gap and provide love connection e-mails between those listing books and those with them on their want lists? I know that automated e-mails can get annoying to receive and to manage, but it would certainly help with getting eyeballs on listings. And eyeballs on listings is why I think a lot of us end up using that "other" site which takes all of our money.
8/15/2018 Topic: Fantastic Four #1 Art Adams variant solarno	Rhudman, I believe this might be the one you are looking for: https://comicspriceguide.com/titles/ff/1D/xkuwcv edited by solarno on 8/15/2018
8/15/2018 Topic: Fantastic Four #1 Art Adams variant solarno	Ron, When did CPG start showing full wraparound covers?
8/15/2018 Topic: Prophecy Book 1 Dynamite Entertainment solarno	According to the file name for the image used on Dynamite's site, that is a third printing. https://www.dynamite.com/previews/C72513019211000111/Prophecy01Cov3rdPrint.jpg The UPC code (probably on the back?) may confirm this.
8/16/2018 Topic: Publishers marks on pages solarno	I'm totally going out on a limb here, but I think these were color quality test marks to make sure a particular process color (the ones Ron mentioned plus black) is correct. You also see this type of thing on a lot of consumer packaging where there will be a series of small boxes or circles somewhere on the packaging that represent all of the individual colors used for that packaging. This way during a quality check you can see which color might be causing a problem.
8/17/2018 Topic: Publishers marks on pages solarno	Biddle7819 wrote: Do these in any way affect values? Since these were a common part of the 4-color printing process they should not affect value in any way.
10/4/2018 Topic: Green Arrow #45b - incorrect date solarno	Green Arrow #45b (Kaare Andrews cover) has an incorrect publish date. Mega computer says December 2016. Should be December 2018. https://comicspriceguide.com/titles/green-arrow/45B/pkurjwq Cheers! Jim
10/5/2018 Topic: Poe Dameron #31 incorrect issue number solarno	Poe Dameron #31 is incorrectly listed in the mega computer as #39: https://comicspriceguide.com/titles/poe-dameron/39/pkuslqt Also of note this is the final issue of the series. Cheers! Jim
10/26/2018 Topic: how to recognize a variant solarno	BasementComics wrote: Hello, I have two different copies of Adventures of Superman 467. One is colored blue up at the top but the other is purple. I have found conflicting but interesting info on this issue. There were definitely two versions of this issue printed, a newsstand edition with a barcode and a direct edition with an ad for Action Comics in place of the barcode. The newsstand edition would have been sold at grocery stores, book stores, newsstands, etc., where as the direct edition would have been sold specifically through comic book shops. Both can be seen here: http://comicbookdb.com/issue.php?ID=365863 Based on other pics strewn about the internets it appears that the direct edition has two very different color qualities, either purple top with vibrant, redder colors, or a blue top with muted, more natural looking colors. I've only found images of newsstand editions with the blue top. I did happen across this cool listing for the original color guide print of this cover which shows a blue top: https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1327782. My theory is this: When they were printing the covers for this issue they ran the newsstand editions first. At some point after they switched plates to run the direct edition covers there was a 4-color mix issue and the magenta plate was printed too heavy resulting in later copies having a much redder tint to it. To answer your question regarding one being considered a variant, it depends on what your two covers are... If you have one with a barcode and one without then you could argue that you have a variant. Historically newsstand and direct editions have not been considered variants as they are the same artwork from the "same" print run. But collectors are more and more viewing them as variants as they are actually different print runs with different circulation numbers (though finding exact numbers is near impossible). The printing house would have had to stop the presses to change the printing plates for barcodes or no barcodes. It is by technical definition an intentional variant. I also noted that the newsstand edition carries a publication date (Jun 90) on the cover in the price box while the direct edition replaces that with a UK price of 50p and moves the pub date to below the issue number. Like the barcode box, this would also require different printing plates and therefore qualify it as technically a variant. If you have two without barcodes then that comes down to probably more of a printing error. I would not classify that as a variant as it is not an intentional change. I personally would say that a blue version of the direct edition should be more desired as it is closer to the colors intended by the artist but that probably does not affect the value. That is unless someone can determine the circulation ratio of the blue to purple direct editions. Cheers! Jim
10/26/2018 Topic: Variant covers: How many is too much? solarno	Didn't Dark Knight III #1 have upwards of 100 variants? I seem to remember reading that somewhere. I have a love/hate relationship with variants. The collector in me loves them, but the accountant in me hates them. I was first hooked by variants in the early 2000's and I spent way too much money hunting down "rare" variants. If I remember correctly that was the first time when variants were being pushed by speculators which coincided with the rise of eBay. I viewed this as really more a ploy to try and prop up sales after the crash in the 90's, and I sadly bought in for some titles (Dreamwave published Transformers cough cough). It felt like it had died down for quite some time, but variants seemed to really ramp up again a couple of years ago with some titles having dozens of variant choices and then virgin versions, sketch version, blank version, etc. Thankfully, for the most part, I've been able to avoid the variant bug the time around. I'm much pickier nowadays, choosing covers by specific artists, or that just happen to look really amazing. The recent run of Batman variants that Francesco Mattina has done are amazing. Nowadays if I like a variant I will not buy the regular cover unless it's equally amazing. And I ignore the so-called hot covers (unless it's by a very small number of artists). I do like how some publishers are treating variants, at least for some titles. I love how DC strips the branding off of their main variant covers, allowing the artwork to really shine. Marvel has done a fine job with having themed series of variants where one artist will do a long run of variants for a title or titles. John Christopher Tyler with his action figure variants come to mind. They do nothing for me, but I still appreciate the work and that Marvel is offering buyers an intriguing option. Which brings me to my close. I am totally behind publishers who want to offer variants as it provides consumer choice. I can choose my favorite version(s) and really personalize my comic book collection with artwork I truly appreciate. At times it feels like there are way too many for a title, but again, choice. Just because the majority of variants don't float my boat, doesn't mean they don't float someone else's. It's the incentives behind the variants that concern me. I'm all for supporting my favorite artists by buying additional books with their art because I want to support them, and in some cases I'll pay a bit extra. But at times it seems that some variants are printed with the intent to fill a resellers pockets with extra profit with little if any going to the artist. At least that's how it feels when there are 20, 30, 40, or more variants all being sold by different resellers at various surprisingly large mark-ups. I get supply and demand, small print runs, commissioned art fees, and all that, but it still feels off and artificial. If it is artificial then the consumer ultimately loses. /end rant
10/26/2018 Topic: What was your first comic? solarno	This is a cool question to think about, so here is the very long story about my first comic book. It was a dark, bitingly cold winter day in early 1980. The term day is being rather generous as days are almost non-existent in the frozen north that is Alaska during winter. I was a typical 7 year old at the time, probably playing with toys or reading books acquired during Christmas the previous December and longing to ride the shiny new black and yellow bike that was just waiting for the perfect day to emerge from hibernation. When the wind chill is frequently negative double digits and the days short, there is not much for a 7 year old to do in 1980 Alaska. Live TV was practically non-existent unless we went to the officers club on the Coast Guard base. A town of 2,000 people, mostly fisherman and military, doesn't offer much in the way of entertainment. And the internet was still nearly 20 years away. Thank god for our Atari 2600! I mentioned that live TV didn't really exist, but we still watched current-ish shows. It's just that since cable or satellite wasn't an option we had to wait weeks if not months for copies of shows to be literally shipped to the island to be broadcast on the local stations. At some point in 1979 one of the local stations finally received copies of a show that premiered on ABC in late 1978 for the lower 48 states and, as I had found out much later, had most likely already been cancelled by the time I fell in love with it. That show was Battlestar Galactica! I had seen a little known movie called Star Wars in theaters only two years before so was incredibly excited to see more adventures in space on our small (probably 13") TV. To my young mind this was just as amazing as Star Wars and seemingly more accessible as I could watch episode after episode, week after week. Colonial Vipers were just as cool as X-Wings. Cylons were even more intimidating than Stormtroopers (they actually hit their targets). And the Galactica itself... I was completely enthralled. Back to the cold winter day. Eventually my Mom needed to go into town so she loaded up my sister and I and off we went. The local store had a small newsstand filled with the usual periodicals of the time, mostly. Like TV shows, most consumer goods were shipped to the island so things like publication dates were basically irrelevant. You got it whenever it arrived. This particular newsstand also had a small collection of comic books. I was never really interested in them except that this time there was one with a Colonial Viper being chased by a Cylon Raider and they were both flying off the cover right at me. Battlestar Galactica, in print, in front of me. By this time the local TV station would have played all the episodes they had and I was dying for more. I had to have this. I'd like to think I asked my mom nicely to buy it for me, but being 7 I was probably a little pest. I wouldn't have understood the value of the book at the time, but we didn't have a lot of money and I know now that $ .40 at the time wasn't cheap for something that my mom probably thought would just get trashed within a few weeks if not days. Because of how expensive it was to ship products to Alaska at the time it's very likely that the store actually charged more than cover price for most of the comics and periodicals. My mom relented, or took it out of whatever allowance I might have earned at the time. Those details are insignificant bits of neural dust some 40 years later. It also didn't matter that it took over 6 months for this comic book to arrive in my little town in Alaska. A 7 year old doesn't care about things like publication dates. What matters is that I had Battlestar Galactica #4 in my hands and I could read it over and over. It was based on two episodes of the TV show and I could now relive the adventures I had watched on TV. Visit my fictional friends. Be enthralled with artwork that seemed to jump off the pages. This book that engaged my imagination did not get trashed. Like all of my books I took care of it because I wanted to be able to read it whenever I needed to revisit my friends. Shortly thereafter there was a divorce, and we moved, a lot. It was in and out of moving boxes at least five times over the next five years. I didn't know what bags and boards were and I probably wouldn't have cared. This was something to hold in my hands and interact with, not an object to collect. No, I would just pack in with my other books. Somehow it managed to survive all of the moves. The cold winter in Alaska. Warm summers and more frigid winters in Michigan. The tropical humidity and bugs of a year in Hawai'i. And finally, in August 1985, the sometimes oppressive heat of Southern California. By that time I was five years older and had been through a lot. I had had new homes, new friends, new interests. Battlestar Galactica had faded from being this amazing world I felt compelled to visit. (BSG 1980 didn't do much to help with that.) Star Wars had solidified itself in my psyche. I had discovered Tolkien, MTV, Dungeons and Dragons, cartography, and anime, especially Robotech. Two words for when I started watching Robotech in 1985: mind blown. It was possibly the coolest thing I'd ever seen on TV. It was BSG all over again, only I was older and wiser and could process more complex storytelling. My now 5 year old copy of Battlestar Galactica, which had been across the country and back with me now lived in a box in my closet, an afterthought lost to youth and growing older. With so much change over those past five years, and so many new creative interests, comic books never really took hold in my mind as something to read. I was 12 and living in a new town in Southern California. It was 1985 so wandering around at that age by myself or with friends was no big deal. I had finished seeing a movie at the local multiplex and saw there was a comic book store right next door. On a whim I decided to walk in and I saw a comic book that said Robotech on it... And here I am still in Southern California, 33 years and 5600+ comic books later. I'm happy to say that I still have that very first comic book I owned. It's in a bag and board now. It's in surprisingly good shape considering the number of times I would have read it. It lives with dozens of other BSG comic books. It's certainly not the most valuable comic book I own, but it means more to me than any other comic book I own. You can see a picture of it here: https://thejimfurey.com/2018/10/26/my-first-comic-book-battlestar-galactica-4-june-1979-marvel/ Cheers! Jim edited by solarno on 10/26/2018 edited by solarno on 10/26/2018
10/28/2018 Topic: Issues with this weeks new comic book listings solarno	Hello CPG data gurus, I've noticed quite a few issues with new comic book listing for this week (books released on 10/24). It's taken a considerably long time for new issues to appear. Image and IDW books just appeared late today (saturday). Most don't seem to have cover images yet. and the big one, I'm seeing lots of publication date errors. All of the new books I've looked at show a December 2018 publication date. This is correct for new DC and Marvel books as their indicia dates are two months ahead. Most other publishers still use the actual publication month in their indicia, so they should say October 2018. I know this is definitely the case with Image and IDW titles I picked up this week. Another odd thing I noticed: For the last few months when new books are listed the price has already been input, but the indicia date is blank. This week it has been the opposite. Has there been an issue with a data upload, some kind of data corruption, or do you have a new underwear gnome as an intern and they just mucked it all up? I have faith it will all be corrected, but I have not seen issues like this for a long time. Cheers! Jim
11/12/2018 Topic: Stan Lee Dead at 95 solarno	Nearly 40 years ago I received my very first comic book. It wasn't a Stan Lee scribed book, but it was a Marvel title and likely would never have existed if it wasn't for pioneering work that Mr. Lee did in making superheroes more human and accessible to everyone. In may ways his characters and stories showed that any of us and all of us can be superheroes. So today we mourn the loss of Stan Lee, but his legacy will last forever as we celebrate finding the superhero in each and every one of us.
11/14/2018 Topic: New Comics Not Appearing solarno	Hmm, that is weird as I know Farmhand #5 was showing under New Comics earlier in the week when I added it and I'm definitely not seeing it now. (It wasn't there right away on Wednesday the 7th as most Image titles seem to show up on Thursdays or Fridays.) I added The Green Lantern #1 on Wednesday night and I am still seeing it, along with Green Arrow #46. I was able to see all of the other titles mentioned by oneiros under New Comic EXCEPT Border Town #3. I wonder if the issue with Border Town is the imprint? The megacomputer lists it as a DC title, but it should be under the Vertigo imprint. Ron, is it possible there are some weird caching issues going on with the server? I'm running Safari 12.0 on macOS 10.14. Also checked on Chrome 70.0.3538.102 and seeing the same behavior as Safari.
12/4/2018 Topic: Middlewest #1 by Skottie Young solarno	As a big Skottie Young fan I had been anxiously awaiting the release of Middlewest. It was one of those titles that I had built up in my mind to be something that would turn into an incredible adventure. Most often in those cases the final product is something of letdown. Not because of any failing of the story, art, or presentation, but because one had imagined it to be something it was never actually intended to be. You also see this happen with stories that are marketed as one thing, but turn out to be something else. However, Middlewest #1 did not disappoint. It was not a let down. It delivered everything I had hoped for and more. It has beautiful art to go with Young's imaginative and rich storytelling. As Ron's blog post says, it hints at a much deeper story and world waiting to be discovered. Yet it also seems that unlike Young's fantastical world building in I Hate Fairyland, the magical world of Middlewest will be anchored by the practical world that is life in the Midwest. I'm very much looking forward to where this travels.
12/8/2018 Topic: Things that need approval solarno	Appreciate all the work Ron and crew!
12/13/2018 Topic: Murder Falcon #3B incorrect cover artist listed solarno	The listing for Murder Falcon #3B shows Daniel Warren Johnson as the artist for the heavy metal variant cover under the issue notes. The correct artist for the variant cover is Tyrell Cannon. I've added his name to the creator queue so it can be added to the issue credits. https://comicspriceguide.com/titles/murder-falcon/3B/pkuxiuy Cheers! Jim PS: This is post number 100 for me! Think I'll celebrate by eating some powdered donuts. PPS: Administrators, I initially submitted an incorrect spelling for Tyrell to the creator queue. Please delete the submission for Tyler Cannon. edited by solarno on 12/13/2018 edited by solarno on 12/13/2018
12/13/2018 Topic: Number of issues collected by members = brilliant! solarno	Saw that myself today. Very well done and easy to interpret.