ComicMix Radio: Why Is This Comic So Cool?

This is just one of the secrets we uncover as we talk to the people who move the coolest things on the planet, Heritage Auctions, plus:

• The latest on the Watchmen battle
• More Secret Invasion blow outs
• Stargate:Atlantis goodbye and hello

So dig in your closet, find some old comics you want to sell and then Press the Button to hear from the experts!
And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via or RSS!    

Transcript

Broadcast 250. CometMits.com Turning some of your stuff into the big green. CometMits.com Hi, it's Mike Raub. You know, we all have one or two things in our collection, or maybe even more, that we realize we could probably sell.

But how do we go about doing it, making sure we get the right amount for it, and quite frankly, not get ripped off? Well, there's one company that specializes in it to the tune of millions and millions of dollars every year. Let us make the introduction coming up on August 23rd. The controversy continues involving 20th Century Fox's war with Warner Bros. over the rights to the Watchmen movie. And now the controversy seems to spread as to actually what the facts are.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Fox is not interested in suppressing Zack Snyder's $100 million film. It is one affirmation of ownership and or restitution, and there are a number of ways that Fox and Warner Bros. lawyers could work that out. That could include a cash settlement or maybe even distribution rights to the film. And right now, Watchmen is scheduled to be released, as promised, on March 6th, 2009, no matter what you read elsewhere on the Internet. Meanwhile, speaking of the Internet, lots of fans have gotten together on various sites to form an alleged boycott of some upcoming Fox films.

That includes A Day the Earth Stood Still and Next Summer's X-Men Origins Wolverine. Hopefully, before any of that happens, cooler heads will prevail. Another round of Secret Invasion sellouts and variants on the way. This involves a Secret Invasion individual titles that came out just about a week ago. Look for second printing variants on Secret Invasion Inhumans No. 1, Secret Invasion Thor No. 1, and Secret Invasion X-Men No. 1. Again, all with brand new variant covers and all in stores on September 24th.

In 2004, he ran for president. Now he's taking a stand for a real-world candidate. In the a little late but coming soon Savage Dragon No. 137, look for an endorsement for Democratic candidate Barack Obama, including a huge cover advertisement for Obama and a 1 in 5 variant cover as well. And a big story in the New York Times that will more than likely make this a pretty hot issue. No real release date yet. I would look for it in stores sometime in early September.

When Battlestar Galactica makes its comeback next year, there will also be a series of webisodes to tie things together as we wrap up the entire series, early in 2009. No release yet on exactly what those webisodes will contain, but we should hear more by the end of the year. Meanwhile, confusion, confusion reigns about Stargate. Here's the latest. Stargate Atlantis has been cancelled, the sci-fi show. However, we'll get to finish on its fifth season and end in January.

But meanwhile, there's now been announced a Stargate Atlantis DVD movie. That'll come out sometime next year, right after the end of the Stargate series. It'll go direct to DVD after it appears, of course, on the sci-fi channel. Meanwhile, they've also greenlit a new Stargate Universe series, which will premiere as a two-hour movie early next year, and then fill in the time slot left, of course, by Stargate Atlantis.

The difference in this one, as opposed to SG-1 or Atlantis, is that Stargate Universe will take place more in space and hopefully be a sci-fi replacement for either Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. A few months back, we talked about the fact that the WB.com is going to be premiering some new original shows on the web, and that date is coming very quick. In fact, it takes place in just a few days, August the 27th, and here's some of the things you'll see on the site. Blue Water High is an ultra-competitive surf academy down under, sort of a 90210 underwater. A boy wearing makeup is the personal video diary of a boy who dispenses makeup advice and fashion tips.

Whatever Hollywood is a series that follows three kids who launch their own reality online show. And Sorority Fever is an ambitious mystery series crossing conspiracy with sorority, so think something like Dawson's Creek meets Nancy Drew. I think it's a safe bet to say that most of us are collectors in some way or the other, so what happens when at least part of that collection becomes something that you decide you want to turn into cold, hard cash. How do you go about it, a comic convention or maybe even eBay, or do you go to the guys at the top of the list for selling more collectibles than anybody worldwide? That would be Heritage Auctions, and the man behind their comic sales is Jerry Stefford.

Heritage Auctions, well in my department we auction vintage comic books, specializing in comic books from the 1930s to the 1960s. Company-wide, they started in the early 1980s as a coin auction house and do over a half a billion dollars in coins every year in auctions. In 2001, they decided to get into comic books, and now we're the largest comic auction house, and we auction about 15 to 20 million dollars with the comics and comic art a year. We asked Jerry to narrow it down a bit as to exactly what sort of comics Heritage handles. By all means, we specialize in books from 1960s and before. We do take some stuff after that, because sometimes collectors don't collect from all time periods.

So in that sense, if a guy only has books from the 80s or 90s or whatever, we will turn those down, so we do limit that, although sometimes you will see those in our auctions because they were part of a much larger collection. How about original art or cool vintage toys? Yes, we do have those available on our site as well. We do a lot of original art. The toys and animation cells and some of the peripheral things that collectors have, we do auction that. I think there might be sometimes maybe some other venues that do as well on that, since we're trying to specialize in comics and comic art. But we do all of that because of course everyone's collection has a little bit of that stuff.

You know, seeing as many cool things as Jerry does, I had to ask the question, what was the thing that pops into mind as being the coolest? Well, there was a shot on Batman fan and there was a Batman strip that I liked from about 1943 by an artist by the name of Dick Spring. That's the one that I liked the most, but probably the coolest one that got the most press was a really high-grade copy of Action 7, which was the second cover that Superman was on. And that's when DC realized they had a hit, you know, because he was on the first cover and not on the cover again until 7, and they wondered why 7's sales spiked so much more. And they found out from News Dealer, they weren't asking for Action Comics, they were asking for the comic with Superman, and that's when the light went off at DC.

Remember, something in the back of the closet you'd like to move? Well, Harry just might be a good choice for you, and they're real easy to find on the web. A really difficult website, it's ha.com. So that's pretty easy to remember, and we have, depending on which area, I say we auction off antique timepieces, rare manuscripts, coins. They've really branched out since they added comics in 2001. They're a full-service auction house, and at ha.com you can go to the area there, and there's how to submit your consignment, and all the information would be there, and all the people that you would need to talk to would be on the site. ComicMix Radio! ComicMix Timeline August 23rd 1987

Now at the comic shops, we all had a chance to stand around and talk about how the luster was beginning to fade just a little bit with John Burns' revamp of Superman. In the meantime, we picked up Infinity Egg No. 44, Young All-Stars No. 6, Booster Gold No. 22, and the first issue of something called Slice Maraud. We got Swamp Thing No. 66 and Action Comics No. 544. Handful of goods for Marvel this week that include Daredevil No. 248, X Factor No. 22, New Mutants No. 57, and Punisher was up to issue No. 4 in the second run of that series. Over on the indie rack, we got from Eclipse Tales of the Beam World No. 7, and First Comics gave us Badger No. 29.

1987 In the news, President Reagan sent three US doctors to Hanoi on a humanitarian mission. Stephanie Kramer, star of TV's Hunter series, said she would walk off that show if her character had to endure another storyline rape. And Rescue Treasure from the Sunken Titanic was set on a worldwide tour and set to appear in a nationwide TV special. In the movies, there was an interesting mix of action and nostalgia with the James Bond entry The Living Daylights, the remake of Dragnet, the remake of Masters of the Universe,

a lot of retro music and Peggy Sue got married, and one film that gave us the number one song of the week from Madonna. TV Tonight, there was an episode of Family Ties and then two hours dedicated to Suzanne Summers with an elephant on the 11th annual Circus of the Stars, and ABC dedicated their own two hours to their original production of David Bowie's The Man Who Felt Her. 1987 On the radio, a girl group formed by some very close childhood friends in the late 1970s, and they stuck together for a string of hits and a bunch of success all through the coming decade,

including being one of the few female groups on the band-aid single Do They Know It's Christmas. Here's I Heard a Rumor and Banana Rama. All right, back at the beginning of the week with our usual rundown of new comics and DVDs and our three big best bets for the week. You might be surprised at what we uncovered there. And we'll sadly wrap up the season with our final installment of summer reading and talk to the guy who won't be Freddy Krueger anymore,

but still has a lot of scare left in him, Robert Englund. All that can be yours. You won't miss a second of it if you subscribe to us right now on iTunes. And in the meantime, catch the very latest updates, news and commentary too. We'll let you know what's going on easily. You can subscribe to ComicMix quickly and free on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.

So great free comics for your weekend reading too, including new installments this week of Black Eyes, White Viper, and of course, Hammer Of The Gods by Mark Wheatley and Mike Oeming. And dig in the archives for lots of great treats like GrimJack by Tim Truman, Sable by Mike Grell and of course, the Harvey nominated Easy Street by Bob Tinnell and Mark Wheatley. And of course, they're all free at ComicMix.

Talk to you in a few days. Bye.