n2wdw's comic book room

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Patsy Walker and More Tales of the Comic Book Room

I'm a big fan of the Jessica Jones TV series. So when a boardie offered a Miss America 2, I had to have it. This comic has the first appearance of Patsy Walker who is a major character in the story.

I was hoping for a higher grade (to me it looks better than 1.8). And, unfortunately, the amount of my offer was based on getting a higher grade. Oh well ... that's how the CGC game goes.

Here are a few additional pictures of my comic book room. The first 2 show how I'm displaying the original art for Cerebus #6. I have each page in Mylar with a thick acid free backing boad, and they're standing up in a strong plastic holder.

This is the pride and joy of my collection, the original art of the entire issue where Jaka first appears. I won it a few years back on C-Link (the most I've ever spent on a comic anything). It's a charming, touching story.

I periodically rotate which page is on display. Currently, it's the page where Cerebus offers to kill a yak for Jaka's supper.

Here's a better view of the page:

I've mentioned before my comic room is pretty small, so I have to use every inch of space. Here's how I'm storing my "New Mutants"-size graphic novels. I store them in a stack. Probably not the best way to preserve condition, but most of my collection is mid-grade and for reading anyway.

I've got the Hulk sitting on top of the graphic novels, and next to them I've got my small Star Wars Lego collection. Thanks for reading.

Update on My (Collecting) Life

Some good news and bad news to report.

First, the good news. My wife and I have paid off our little beach cottage where we plan to retire (in about 10 years). We sent in the last payment earlier this month. It's a great feeling to own your house free and clear. I've still got kids to put through college, but even if mess hits the fan (with the economy or my job) at least we've got somewhere to sleep for our retirement years. Hopefully we'll all keep our health; that's the most important thing (and it would be nice if social security is still around when it's our turn in line). But again, after having mortgage payments for literally decades, it's nice to finally own our little spot in the world.

Now the bad news. I've decided to pare down my CGC collection. My new comic room in the beach cottage is small and I'm coming to the realization I can't keep everything. In addition to the CGC books I display on shelves, I'm got 10 boxes full of these slabs.

So, last week I went through the boxes and pulled out about 60-75 slabs that don't really fit my collecting interests anymore. I've decided to sell them. I'm starting here first, and last night I sold 9 Zenescope books at blowout prices (picture below). My goal is to get back the money I spent and so far (with these 9) I'm pretty close.

I call it bad news but it's really not. As I'm going through these books, I'm thinking "why did I ever buy this?" So I don't mind letting them go, and maybe using the money for a few books that better fit my collecting interests. If I had the books raw I might keep them; but CGC cases are big and I don't have the room for CGC books I don't really want.

I'm still continuing to collect, but I'm trying to be more disciplined, focusing on things I really want as opposed to what might catch my eye. When I see something and I'm tempted, I ask myself where I'm going to store it. Especially CGC books that take a lot of room. But I still collect what I really enjoy. Recently I picked up 3 Matt Baker covers (below).

Thanks for reading. I hope you someday own your own home, and may we all keep our health into our golden years.

Tales of the Comic Room - Where Do I Store Supplies?

This one has stressed me out. Where do I store my mylars and acid free boards?

In my old comic room, I have a table in the basement where I have bags and boards neatly stacked organized by size. But in the small cottage we plan to retire to (where I've converted a bedroom for my new comic room), there's no space outside the comic room to store comic stuff. And the comic room is packed; where can I store bags and boards in a neat organized way, so I can make the space a real working comic room (with my collection still growing) rather than a static museum?

So, after much thought I finally decided to convert this corner of the new comic room. Here's the before picture, where I've got DC Directs and Tomb Raider action figures stacked about 6 feet high.

I relocated those action figures to other places and slid in this vertical shelf. Each shelf is big enough to hold about 2 packs of mylars and 2 packs of matching full backs.

In this vertical shelf I'm storing (from small to large): Paperback, Current, Standard, Silver/Gold, Gold, Super Gold, Standard Magazine, Large Mag/Sheet Music mylars and full backs. There's also a shelf for my 3-ring binder mylars (both comic and mag size). And I've got bigger mylars (all the way up to poster size) stored other places. I buy them direct from E. Gerber.

Here's a close up of the shelves. Thanks for reading.

Displaying CGC Books

I have (at the moment) 10 boxes of CGC books. I'm actually trying to sell a big stack to get down to 8 boxes. But that story's for another post.

It's more fun to display books than keep them hidden in boxes. So I'm always looking for ways to do that. Recently I found these Comic Mounts on Amazon. Essentially, it's a plastic support that holds the top and bottom of the comic from the back. You can adjust it up and down for different size collectibles. Then you hang it on a nail and, presto, you've got your comic (or other collectible) displayed.

Below I've got some of my comics displayed. You can barely see the support at the top and bottom. These things are cheap and they work. Can't beat that combination! Thanks for reading.

Very nice, think I'll pick up a few. Makes for really nice photos too.

Tales of the Comic Room - Making Space to Display CGC Books

I haven't bought any new comics lately (at least nothing major and worth posting about). Since it's summer I'm spending alot of time at our beach cottage, so I'm able to tinker around my new comic book room. This weekend I worked on making more space to display CGC books.

Something I've done in the past is to pull out the comic boxes on the bottom to make a shelf to display books. So, for example, if I've got long boxes stacked 4 high, I'll pull out the bottom 3 by a few inches, to make a shelf. Here's an example:

Problem with this, you only can make a shelf of 2-3 inches. And it's not too stable -- I'm always worried about the books falling over. So I decided to fix that this weekend. First step was to go to Home Depot for supplies. Here's what I got. A thin but strong panel of white birch, and 2 long pieces of wood about 1/2" thick. Total cost was about $30 (I could have saved money by going with common plywood rather than birch, but I really liked the look and feel of the birch).

One of the long pieces goes under the birch for support. The other is used as the side. Here's how it looks after a few screws:

Now I put this underneath the top row of long boxes. The weight of the boxes keeps the shelf from tipping over. Here's how it looks before I put the comics back:

And here's the finished product. It's more stable and I can store 2-3 times the number of comics. Here's the breakdown:

• Materials cost: about $30
  
• Construction time, including rearranging comics: Less than 2 hours
  
• Time I got to play with my power tools: Alas, only about 5 minutes
  

Thanks for reading.

My Little Beach Cottage

So, I'm about 10 years from retirement. Between now and then, I've got to put 4 kids through college. Here's the scorecard (as of Labor day): my oldest a college junior, my 2nd a college freshman, a high school senior and a HS sophomore. After my youngest graduates from college, I might work a couple years or 3 more, then I'm DONE! Not sure what I'll do -- hopefully travel alot with my wife -- but maybe I'll work part time at something. Honestly I'm not sure.

Good news though, my wife and I have our retirement home all set. It's a little beach cottage. It's bordered by canals that lead to inland bays for fishing, crabbing and clamming (yeah, we always keep a good stock of Old Bay in our panty). Yet, it's also just a couple blocks to the beach (the Atlantic).

Here's a few pictures of our beach cottage. These 2 are our backyard and my XL Big Green Egg. I LOVE smoking meats. There's something about low and slow that really appeals to me. You wake up as the sun rises, get the fire going, pick out your wood, and then smoke the pork butt all day long. When you come off the beach -- and there's nothing better than a shower after coming off the ocean and sand -- you have a tender and juicy meal to look forward to. Tomatoes and pesto pasta from the garden top it off. This is our little nook of paradise!

Speaking of pesto and basil, here's our little herb garden. We have 4 planters of basil. Next year I'm going for more, as my kids love pesto yet with 4 I can only harvest once a week.

Something I'm into is birds. Yeah okay it's weird. But, it's cool having fountains and bird feeders and seeing how the little winged guys respond. As a lawyer, I think there should be a contract -- if I feed you, you don't poop on my garden furniture. Unfortunately, Purple Marlins aren't cooperative. But, nothing a good hosing down can't solve. Here are some of my bird sanctuaries.

Around this time the duckings are out. I feed them with cracked corn. Here's a family. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're enjoying your summer.

ComicLink Wins - July/August 2016

Lately I've scaled back on my purchases. Part of it is, it's summer and I've been organizing my new comic book room -- and I'm more interest in how my heirloom tomatoes in the raised beds are doing and what I'm smoking tonight. Another part is, I'm still adjusting to the limited space in the new comic room so that's been a deterrent to buying more CGC books.

But, I dipped my foot into the water a little bit with this month's CGC auction. First up is Adventure 275, the "story" of the Superman/Batman team ups. Only 3.0 but I won it at the bargain price of $25.

Next up is a photo cover of Lois and Clark. Someday maybe I'll get Dean and Teri's autographs. Won this for $45.

Here's an important win for me, Love Romances 82 with a cover by Matt Baker. My major collecting emphasis right now is Matt Baker covers so this lets me check one off the list. Haven't decided whether to submit this to CGC (probably not). I won it for $45.

As I'm writing this, I won another one, Thor 135 with the 1st appearance of the adult Sif. As a big fan of Sif, I'm happy to win this for $45.

Thanks for reading.

My Art Gallery

Recently I was reading Doc Joes journal about where he stores all his art (http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=4656281&fpart=657).

I don't have as much art as Doc but it's still a challenge to store. Most of my art is stored in mylar with acid free full-backs for support, on a 12" deep shelf, standing upright. This picture gives you an idea (although the shelf is about 12 feet long). I try to "layer" the art to see more of it, but there's still a lot of pieces underneath you can't see. So every now and then I'll move things around to bring the back stuff to the front.

I have some framed art that's a major challenge to display. So I display art on both sides of the door to my comic room. I screw the frames to the door so there's no swing, and use heavy duty door stoppers so the glass doesn't hit anything solid. Here's the inside of the door (limited and signed prints by Dave Stevens and Jennifer Janesko):

And the outside of the door (Marilyn Monroe original by Olivia):

My wife also lets me display art in the hallway just outside my CBR. Here I store my other Olivia and Janesko original art (as you can tell, they are 2 of my favorite contemporary artists).

This is an artist proof by Jack Vettriano, a Scottish painter, of his painting Beautiful Losers. My copy is 29 of 30.

Tales of the Comic Book Room -- Making Room to Work

In my new comic room I've made a small desk that I use as a home office. It's also space I use when I'm organizing my collection, like bagging and boarding, labeling and entering into my database program (I use ComicBase). It's about bar height and I use it with a swivel black chair.

This is the "before" picture of my desk. I made it from Ikea shelving so the surface is a series of boards. Made it difficult to use a mouse.

So, my first improvement was to put on a solid wood panel I got from Lowes. It took just a little sawing and sanding to make it fit the space.

Problem was, sometimes I need more space. For example, often I like my computer in front of me as I'm organizing comics. So I need space for my computer in front of me and stacks of comics and mylars to the side, along with some space in front of the computer to write labels and other curating stuff like that.

What I did was add a flip top to the desk. I open it up when I need more room. I trimmed down the sides so I don't have to move stuff around to open it. On the other side, the flip top is supported by the black chair. Thanks for reading.

All I can say is...how do ever leave that room?

Amazing!

It's hard. With summer's end approaching I'm already feeling pangs of not being able to hang out in the room.

My Little Beach Cottage

 

Thanks for sharing all those wonderful photos - it looks like you've got all you ever wished for! (then again, guess there're always more books and art pieces to dream about )

Actually my son and I just finished picking up a lot of fruit from our apple and cherry plum trees - of course we only did that to get my wife to bake some pies

Rune - Isn't food harvested from your garden better tasting than anything else?

I tell my wife I need to practice in our garden to prepare for the impeding Zombie apocalypse. She rolls her eyes of course. But, I've got the full support of the WD fans in my family.

Update on My Dave Stevens Covers Registry Set

I made major progress with my Dave Stevens cover set last year. I nudged out Doc Joe into the 2nd spot, and I'm only 100 points to the lead. Here's how things stand:

As the registry deadline approached I picked up a Comics Journal #117 signed by Stevens. I considered submitting it because that slot's empty for me, but ultimately decided against it. The condition is not the best so it wouldn't get too many points.

And I didn't want to get dinged for the signature. After all, it's Dave's autograph. I didn't want it to be sullied by a purple label. I guess if I had 1 CGC wish, I'd ask them to partner with an autograph authentication service (like PSA or somebody else, or start their own service) so we can get yellow labels in cases like this (i.e., deceased writers and artists). Personally I'd pay a lot for that, at least as much as pressing. Thanks for reading.

Rune - Isn't food harvested from your garden better tasting than anything else?

 

I tell my wife I need to practice in our garden to prepare for the impeding Zombie apocalypse. She rolls her eyes of course. But, I've got the full support of the WD fans in my family.

I'll let you know when the wife has finished making the pies, hopefully this weekend (The apples are nice though, and maybe the 4-year-old now can remember that apples don't always come from grocery stores )

Great work regarding your Dave Stevens Covers Registry Set I just got the throne back in Savage Tales vol. 1, did consider buying art instead, but I think it's great fun to build such sets - and then I can tell other people that I do participate in sport

Gwen Stacy Commissions

Over the years I've gotten commissions of Gwen Stacy by a variety of artists. Here are a few.

Ramona Fradon:

George Perez:

Frank Cho (He didn't want to do a sketch, because he thought I was going to sell it on ebay. It took a while but I was finally able to convince him it was for my collection.):

Nick Cardy:

Joe Staton:

And the Spider-Man masters, John Romita and his son JR JR:

Just catching up - Sorry to hear / read that you'll have to sell some of your books, but I absolutely love those original Gwen sketches!

I actually don't mind selling the books (about 22,000 comics). I've been through the boxes multiple times and pulled all the stuff I want to keep and the rest I'm happy with finding a new home. I have a few feelers to some of the national comic dealers, and once summer's over I'll post on Craig's List.

I also have about 100 CGC books I'm separately selling -- mostly modern but some silver and even a few gold. I'm looking to break even and that's about where I am after selling 20 books. Now though I'm thinking about keeping them and selling later. Right now I don't need the money and I have alot of storage space. When I retire in 8-10 years, it might be nice to have 100 CGC books to sell -- that could easily fund a nice vacation. It would be cool if my wife and I are walking through Venice, and I can remind her we're here because of my comics!

Latest CGC Shipment

I got a few books back from CGC a couple weeks ago. Here are a couple of Matt Bakers. There have been a bunch of nice Bakers on eBay lately. I didn't win any of them. It's amazing how much Baker has heated up lately. Prices were much more reasonable even a year ago.

I also got this FF #3 back. I love this cover of the first Fantasti-Car.

As for new purchases, I won this on eBay the other day: "She was ugly, she was laughed at -- what seeming miracle made her so gloriously beautiful that she was chosen Miss America."