Radiant Comics

I’ve been asked to come up with a list of my favorite comics. That’s a tough list to make since I’ve read a lot of great comics over the decades. I broke it down categories. This week is single volume stuff. Some of it has more than one volume but it’s mostly finished stuff or graphic novels. Next week will be long running series.

Single Volume Stuff (Almost)

“It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken” by Seth

One of my all-time favorites by the one names cartoonist Seth. It’s an semi-autobiographical comic about him living live as a cartoonist, contemplating what that means, and trying to track down an obscure old “New Yorker” cartoonist who’s work reminds him of himself. The “semi” is in autobiographical because the cartoonist his is tracking down is fictional so who knows how much of the rest of it is fictional too? But that doesn’t matter. It still resonates with me.

I also love his other works: “Clyde Fans,” “Wimbledon Green,” “George Sprott,” and anything else you might find by him.

“Hate”by Peter Bagge

The first volume of “Hate” is “Buddy Does Seattle” and this is considered “The Funny One” and at the time it come out in the early 1990’s it became considered the unofficial comic of Grunge Music and that young generation.

I love all three volumes and to me they add up to the Great American Novel. They are the story of Buddy Bradley’s life from a teen to a man pushing fifty. I find them funny and insightful.

There are three volumes. “Buddy Does Seattle,” “Buddy Does New Jersey,” and “Buddy Buys a Dump.” Plus you can find the earliest Buddy Bradley stories in a volume called “The Bradleys” which is about Buddy and his family when he was a teenager. Plus there was just a new volume called “Hate: Revisited” that is also really good.

“Peepshow” Joe Matt

Another late 1980s to early 1990s favorite. It’s a warts and all autobiography comic about Joe Matt and how he lives his life. Weirdly I must say. The volume just named “Peepshow” is a collection of his earliest strips and is quite good. Then he did 15 issues of a comic named “Peepshow” and those stories were collected into volumes with names. “Spent” and “The Playboys” were two of them.

“Finder” by Carla Speed McNeil

One of my all time favorite series “Finder” is collected in various volumes with various titles. There are two huge collections called “Finder: Library Edition (One and Two) from Dark Horse that collect most of the material.

It’s hard to describe “Finder” except to say that McNeil creates whole cultures to set her stories in. Lots of different families and clans that act within lots of different traditions. I find it all really interesting.

One favorite volume is named “Talisman” and is all about a young girl’s love for books. Anyone with a love for books will probably like this one.

“Berlin” by Jason Lutes

Though it came out in individual issues over 20 years you can find this one in a single volume called “Berlin.” Make sure it’s the 580 page volume if you want all of it because it’s also available in three 200 page volumes. I actually have and prefer the three volumes because the pages are a little larger and they are easier to handle.

“Berlin” is the story of a bunch of people living in Berlin in about 1930 during the fall of the Weimar republic. It’s historical fiction and I find it fascinating stuff. Jason Lutes is an excellent cartoonist. He’s also done “Jar of Fools.”

“The Death-Ray” by Daniel Clowes

Picking out a Daniel Clowes book to put on this list is tough. I tried to pick one that I thought would be the best for a first time reader of Clowes. I could have also picked “Ghost World.”

“The Death Ray” is the story of a guy who fins a death ray and how that impacts his life. He just points it at someone, pulls the trigger, and that someone disappears forever. As with all Clowes stuff it’s a weird story but relatable. A superhero reader might want to start here with Clowes.

I think “David Boring” might be my favorite of his but I also love “Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron.” I also really liked his latest that’s called “Monica.” Anything by Clowes is good comics!

“Asterios Polyp” by David Mazzucchelli

Most of the comic world loves Mazzucchelli for his art on “Batman: Year One” and “Daredevil: Born Again” and both of those deserve all the praise they’ve gotten but I’m an Asterios guy. This is the story of a middle aged “Paper Architect” (he’s never had any of his buildings actually built) who has spent his career teaching and now has lost his way.

The art in this one is terrific and inventive and the story has really grown on me over the years. The main character is fifty years old. I was younger than him when the book first came out but when I reread the book a few years ago I was then older than him. I think I related to him more when I was older. That was a little odd but good.

“Mister X: The Archives (Volume One)” by Dean Motter and a lot of people.

This is the most up and down book on this list because a lot of different people had their hands on trying Mister X stories. This first volume is a collection of stories from the 1980s.

Mister X is the architect of the city called Somnopolis and he was a practitioner of “Psychotecture” which tried to use architecture to make people’s minds more healthy. Except he was kicked off the project and his ideas were subverted. Now it’s years later and he’s back trying to fix things.

Though the comic is often uneven what I love about it was that the creators were always trying to make something different and stylish. That can’t be said about almost all comics.

Volume Two which is called “The Brides of Mister X” is also good. Volume two has really grown on me over the years. There are even more Mister X volumes that are smaller and from the 21st Century. Give any of them a try.

“Bone” by Jeff Smith

This can be found all in big 1360 page volume or broken up into a nine volume series. Either way it’s great comics.

“Bone” is a classic adventure story done in an all ages style. Maybe a PG13 style. It’s drawn in a classic Pogo Possum or Disney cartoon style and the characters are drawn simply but with a lot of expression. It’s top shelf cartooning.

“Phone Bone” is the name of the lead character and he has two traveling companions that are also “Bones.” The name goes with their cartoon racial/ethnic identity. Sort of like a Hobbit, elf, or dwarf.

The three of them having had to flee their home town end up on a grand adventure and in the middle of a war between good people and the forces of evil. It’s a beloved classic and well deserved.

“The Original’s” by Dave Gibbons

You’ll find “Watchmen” by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore on most people’s “Best Of” lists but I’ve never been a hug fan of that one. For good Gibbons work I much prefer “The Originals” especially the oversized version that came out a few years ago.

The story of “The Originals” is a “Mods versus Rockers” story taken from the 1960s and placed in the future. It’s a coming of age story and you’ve probably read something like it before but not with such great art.

I really like the storytelling and visualizations in this one. The drawing and design is terrific and I revisit this one every so often even if to just look at it for a while.

“The Fade Out” by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Here is another creative team I had trouble picking out just one comic from. Brubaker and Phillips have been collaborating for about 20 years and they have put out a lot of books. The “Reckless” series, “Criminal” the series, “Incognito,” “Fatale,” and a few more that I’m forgetting.

These two do a lot of crime stories. They are all good. This one was a 1940s noir story set in Hollywood. I’d start here but you can really start anywhere with any one of Brubaker and Phillips’ books.

One thing that really stood out for me about the art in this one was Phillips’ ability to differentiate between drawing a normal pretty woman and a Hollywood beauty. That’s hard to pull off and something I never really thought about before reading this but Phillips pulled it off and made me think about it.

“Sin City – Volume One” by Frank Miller

Frank Miller is an all time great in the comic book world and there is a lot to choose from. Other people would probably pick his “Daredevil” issues or “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” but I would rather read the first volume of “Sin City.” I could read this volume over and over.

“Sin City – Volume One” is a simple story. A beautiful woman in danger shacks up with the biggest, meanest, tough guy she can find. It doesn’t help. She still gets killed with the tough guy, Marv, sleeping beside her. Now Marv wants revenge and doesn’t care if he has to die to get it. From then on in it’s noir action drawn in a high contrast style with visuals and storyteller that are pure Frank Miller. I want to read it right now!

“Grendel: Devil by the Deed – Master Edition” by Matt Wagner

There is a lot of “Grendel” to choose from but I would start here. I’ve always been a huge fan of the original “Grendel: Devil by The Deed.” It came out in the 1980s but this version is all new.

Matt Wagner decided to revisit, rewrite, and redraw this original Grendel story and now it’s about 120 pages long instead of the original 40. It’s really well done. I had my doubts since I love the original so much but this is a much better version to introduce Grendel to new readers.

Grendel is a crime lord. Yes, the main character is the villain of the piece and that’s not the only convention Wagner turns on its head. This is the story of Grendel’s rise and fall. Or does he really fall? That’s a question for many other Grendel series.

The story is mostly told in captions and illustrations with is a style I’m not always fond of. But it works well here. I 100% love it.

“Planetary” by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

This one is a favorite from the late 1990s. Planetary is the name of an organization that investigates strange phenomenon. The comic is filled with geek culture references as it attempts to unite them all. It’s also got a lot of superhero stuff but different from the usual stories. It’s fun and mysterious.

My one criticism of “Planetary” is that I wasn’t overly fond of how the story concluded. But I love it anyway.

The original seres ran 27 issues but they can all be found in “The Planetary Omnibus.” Or there are a series of smaller volumes of it.

“Velvet” By Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting

Here is one that you won’t find on a lot of favorite lists but anyone who has read it loves it.

“Velvet” takes place in the late 1960s and is about a female spy who was once a top agent but now has retired to a spy office job. Then things go wrong and she’s on the run and has to avoid capture and clear her name. It’s sort of like if Miss Moneypenny from a James Bond novel was an agent.

This one is fast paced and exciting. Epting does a terrific job on the art and it has a level of realism that makes me believe everything. A fun spy action comic that is a great read.

“Jupiter’s Legacy” by Mark Millar and Frank Quietly

Here is another that you won’t find on a lot of lists but to read it is to have a lot of fun. It’s a story of a long time super hero group and family and how they are betrayed. Lots of classic super hero action.

I often call Mark Millar: “The Master of the Expected” because he rarely puts twists in his plots and he likes to telegraph his moves. Most of the time you can see everything coming but then he and Quietly pull it off and it’s a rush. I’m a big fan of Quietly’s art and storytelling and he’s got it going on in this one. It’s a fast paced and easy to read series.

There are two five issue volumes of “Jupiter’s Legacy” collected into two paperbacks. There was also a boring Netflix series made from this but don’t bother with that.

“Negation” by Tony Bedard and Paul Pelltier

You’ll probably not find this one on anyone’s list but mine. To me it’s a classic. It was published by Crossgen in the early 2000s and ran 27 issues but the story was not finished before Crossgen went out of business. Most of it can be found in old paperback collections.

Negation starts as the story of a jailbreak and then the people have to find their way off planet and try to find safe haven in a universe ruled by an all powerful dude named Charon.

The rest of it is a super hero sci-fi type story as our band of escapees travel from planet to planet in their space ship and try to figure out what to do. It’s faced paced and full of action. One of my favorites.

As an aside Marvel Comics now owns the rights to Negation and all of Crossgen’s comics so maybe one day they can collect this all in a nice volume and even finish the story. I can dream.

“Karmen” by Guilliem March

Here is a recent graphic novel that I really liked. It’s not even a type of story I’m interested in. It’s the story of a recently deceased woman and the angel (maybe) who has to guide her to the afterlife. Of course that involves lots of contemplation about the recently deceased woman’s life (is her name Karmen or is that the angel? I can’t remember).

What I love most about this comic is the art. March takes us on a visual journey that’s rich and satisfying. The people and the city he draws are spectacular and I was glad I was along for the ride. It’s really good stuff.

That’s the stuff I thought off as I sat here. I’m sure I left things out plus next week I’ll have a list of long running series that I like.

“On the Beach”11×17 Inches

A couple moths ago as I was meandering around the internet and social media and I ran into some short videos of an artist making art. Or it may have been more than one artist but the technique was the same.

The artist was working on small piece, let’s say around 6×9 inches, and it was on paper. The artist would make a drawing and then tape over part of the drawing and make a new drawing on that taped over part. The artist would do this a bunch of times until there were a lot of layers of tape with lots of paint, ink, and pencil. It was a cool video. Watching the drawing change as the layers were added was fun. Plus it looked fun to do.

After about a month of seeing a handful of these videos I decided it was something that I wanted to try myself. I didn’t want to make a video of it but I wanted to try drawing with a bunch of layers. So I grabbed a few pieces of 5×7 inch paper and a whole bunch of different pens, markers, paint, and pencils. Plus some tape.

In gas you don’t know, it’s tough trying to learn any kind of new technique. I already know a lot of good techniques and can make some good pieces using them. So the spend time learning a new technique where there is no guarantee that I could make something good is a tough sell to myself. But eventually I was buying.

After I had all the paper and tools out I faced I problem. I had no idea what I wanted to draw and no idea how to make a drawing this way. Finally I decided to just dig in and start putting marks on paper. I had three or four drawings going at once so that I could let the paint dry on one piece and move on to another. It was a bit of a disaster. I gave it up after about three hours of trying to make something. I tucked all the pieces away and moved on.

Then a couple of weeks later I looked at the pieces again. They weren’t quite as bad as I remembered. They weren’t very good either but I didn’t write the whole idea off. I put it on the back burner.

Now we come to this week when I had an epiphany. It was the tape that I didn’t like but I don’t need to use tape to make layers. I have this stuff called “Positional Mounting Adhesive” (we called it 3M paper back in the day) that I’ve been using for other things since the early 1990s. It’s for dry mounting photos and such to various boards. It comes in a big roll, you place a photo on top of the sticky side, cut out the photo, burnish the back of it, and then peel off the backing paper. The burnishing (rubbing) transfers the sticky stuff off the paper it came on and onto the photo. It works real well.

Cartoon Art Card 5×7 Inches

Knowing that I could use the 3M paper on stuff to make layers made me realize that I had a ton of different papers that I could use. I like to try out new paper all the time but I almost always end up using the same Bristol board. But in the closet I had calligraphy paper, canvas paper, black paper, plastic paper, and a whole ten color set of super bright color paper. I could finally use it all.

I also have a lot of different pens that I could use to draw on that paper. I have a set of paint pens. For the black paper I have a white charcoal pencil and white paint pens. I have a nice silver ink marker. I have lots of different pencils. The choices I have to work on these different papers are plentiful.

On the upper left of my drawing table I have a pile of about twenty 5×7 inch drawings. These are all works in progress. It’s my go to pile when I want to make some art but have no idea what I want to do. There is a lot of half finished stuff in there.

Some of the drawings that were half finished were these 5×7 inch cartoon art cards that I made for my Great Gatsby project. My cartoon art cards are made up of a character’s face looking at us as there is a word balloon over the characters head that says something. In this case it was a quote from the Gatsby book. The problem was that they were really boring.

Most of the time when I make a cartoon art card, whether 2.5×3.5 inches or 5×7 inches, I draw weird faces. That’s what I like. Weird faces make whatever I write for the balloon more interesting. The problem with the Gatsby ones were that the faces were regular. They were just the faces I came up with for the characters in the books. Normal stuff. It was boring. That’s why I abandoned those drawings months ago. But now it was time to pick them up again.

I grabbed about six different papers and put the 3M paper on the back of them. Then I cut off small pieces of paper the size I thought looked good and pasted them on top of the drawing. Then I drew on top of that new piece of paper with whatever drawing tool would work. I’d even write words of some of them. The first one took me three hours to do but in the end I liked it. It breathed new life into a stale drawing. I have plans to do a few more and add them to my Gatsby project.

Cartoon Art Card 5×7 Inches

After completing a few new 5×7 inch ones I decided to go bigger. Back when I was putting a bunch of drawings into the InDesign document for the Gatsby book there was one that I had in there but then cut out. I just didn’t like the drawing. There was something missing from it. I found it bland and it was my least favorite of all the ones I did. That drawing jumped into my head as one I could improve with this new layering/collage technique.

This technique takes a fairly long time. The first 5×7 inch one I did took me three hours but it speed up after that. I probably got the next one done in two hours and the one after that in an hour and a half. But this 11×17 inch one took me a good six hours. I think I started it around 11AM and didn’t finish until about 7PM.

I didn’t like the original face that I drew on the male character so I just pasted a new piece of paper over the old face and drew it again. I think I count twenty seven pieces of paper pasted on the color marker drawing. Some have small drawings on them, some have writing, and some have decoration paint and ink marks. It almost looks simple when it’s all done but it took a long time getting there.

In the end I have to say that I really like this new technique. I plan to make some more 5×7 inch Gatsby cartoon art cards with it. I also want to see what abandoned drawings that I can receive with it. It really is hard to learn a new technique but when it works out it’s a good feeling.

Earlier this morning I was out on the riding mower mulching up the leaves that have fallen in my back yard. Chopping up the leaves where they fell so they can quickly break down and feed the lawn. After that physical work I decided I wanted to write something so here I am. I’m going to take a look at one of the “Dreams of Things” covers that I’ve made recently and break it down for you and me to feed on.

This is “Dreams of Things” number 252. That’s a big number. I can hardly believe that I’ve been making these for so long that I’ve got over 250 of them done in the series. I made this one on September 16, 2024. I’ve been getting one of these a week finished for most of this year. Over the summer I was finishing them on a Thursday but starting in September I switched over to finishing them on Mondays. I have no idea why that switch happened but the change was made.

This piece, along with all of them in the series, is done on an 11×17 inch piece of paper. The logo, trade dress, and cover printer markings are all done digitally and then printed out onto Bristol board. Just like a real cover that stuff is all done mechanically and then copied onto the board but the artwork is all done by hand.

When I first started doing these years ago I used to first do a 6×9 inch sketch and then transfer that sketch to an 11×17 inch piece of Bristol board and draw the full pencils at that larger size. Somewhere along the way I stopped doing that. Now I do all the pencils at the smaller 6×9 inch size, blow that up to 11×17 inches and then ink over the blue line pencils. Somewhere along the way I stopped gaining anything by doing the full pencils at 11×17 so I just stopped doing them that way.

This cover has two figures on it. A woman and a thing. I’m not quite sure what that thing is but it’s floating upside down as the woman is floating right side up. When I pulled this one out of the pile a scene from “Goodfellas” popped into my head. It’s the scene where they are having dinner at Joe Pesci’s mother’s house and they are looking at one of her paintings. There are two dogs facing opposite directions in the painting. As they are discussing the painting Pesci says something like, “Look at that! One dog is looking one way and the other is looking the other!” That’s the thought that came into my head as I looked at this cover. One figure is going one way and the other is going the other. That thought amused me.

There is a lot of background in this piece. The environment is what makes it. The top part is filled with rectangles of color and is all about graphic design. That’s the space of it. There is a hint of real space with the yellow behind her head that acts, sort of, like a piece of the sky but the rest is mostly solid color. It’s also a little flag like.

The one piece that is not like the others is the orange bar that goes across the piece. That is made up of three transparent colors. The lightest orange is in the back and then there are two different oranges that are made with horizontal and vertical strokes of the marker. I like the texture of this part and the background color becomes a positive shape. This area seems to catch my eye the most.

The rest of the background is all about creating a landscape space. The top is a design space and the bottom is a work space. It almost looks like the top is a colorful curtain that’s behind the two characters.

We have one of my pyramids in the background. That’s a shape and object that I like to use in these drawings. The front of the pyramid has ink lines adding a horizontal texture to the piece. The side next to it has some spirals in the color. So we’ve got textures in the color going on plus some texture in the ink part of the drawing. I like the mix of those two things.

The purple smoke down the bottom grounds the whole piece. It gives everything in the drawing a place to stand even if not literally. I put the purple color down with a scumbling effect. I pushed at the paper with a marker to get a fuzzy edge. That gives the smoke/clouds their fuzzy feel. It took nine different purple/violet marker to make and I like the way it turned out.

We have some green texture for the grass plus some green triangle trees in the background. That’s the first time I can remember that I’ve made triangle trees. They reenforce the shape of the pyramid. I draw pyramids all the time so you think I’d use more triangle trees too but I don’t think I have very often. I like them here.

The blue and slightly green sky in the background has some big texture marks going through it. They’re sort of like clouds but not really. I think the diagonal nature of the marks make them look more misty than cloudy. Maybe it’s just me but that is what I was going for.

Finally we get to the figures. The one of the left is clearly female but the one on the right is genderless. Maybe even some kind of robot or alien. Either way it’s a magical creature. It being upside down adds to its oddness. Both figures share some purple colors with her having a little more magenta and it having a bit more red. They match but are not the same.

I like the stripes on the woman and I like the way the yellow stripes pull down the background color into her. That blends her in a little more with the design element of the top. They also both have some white gel pen highlights one them. I don’t always do that but sometimes it hits the spot.

Overall I’m happy with this piece. I like the imagery of it. I like that it gets me wondering and asking questions to myself. I also like that her hair appears to be blowing in the wind. It gives an overall static image just a hint of movement. On to the next one!

Nine New Art Cards

I was making some more art cards this week. Lately I’ve been working steady on my cartoon art cards for my “Drifting and Dreaming” Sunday strip. I have 80 out of 104 of them done and I’m happy with that number. I’ve been getting ten a week of those done so it’ll only be a couple of more weeks until I have a year’s worth of them finished.

Yesterday I turned my attention to getting some of the regular art cards done rather than the cartoon art cards. What’s the difference you ask? The cartoon ones have writing on them. They’re the ones that have drawing of a person on them with a word balloon above their heads with some writing in the balloon. A regular art card can be any piece of art as long as it’s done on a 2.5×3.5 inch piece of paper. Hopefully some paper with some stiffness to it and not just a piece of plain letter paper.

I usually use Bristol board for my art cards. It’s the same two-ply Bristol that I use for most of my drawing. A lot of my drawing is done on 11×17 inch Bristol but I buy that paper in 14×17 inch pads. That means that I cut a strip of paper off the side that’s 3×17 inches.

For most of the 1990s I generally threw that strip of paper away. It always annoyed me a little bit to do that but I could think of no use for it. I occasionally drew a long thin drawing on that paper but it mostly went into the recycle bin.

Then in the early 2000s I heard about art cards. A woman, whose name I don’t know, started making baseball card size pieces of art and trading them or selling them online. The idea went viral among artists. That’s when I decided to make my own.

After that I always took the 3×17 inch strip of Bristol, cut a half an inch off the length of it, and then cut it into four art cards plus an extra short piece. Now it’s a nice little bonus to get that 3×17 inch strip of paper. I’ve made around 3000 art cards since I started.

A funny thing happened earlier this year when I bought some new pads of Bristol board. For most of my Bristol board buying life you could not buy 11×17 inch Bristol. 14×17 inches was the standard size. That’s what I always bought it. But then sometime a couple of decades ago some paper companies started making 11×17 inch Bristol board aimed at comic book artists. Often it had blue line comic book production markings on it and it was little more expensive.

Back to earlier in the year when I was buying paper. I saw some pads of Bristol online and they had a good piece on them. I ordered a few pads to stock up. It turns out the paper I ordered was 11×17. I thought I ordered 14×17 but I didn’t. My usual paper doesn’t even come in 11×17 so I somehow didn’t even notice the size discrepancy online.

So I’ve been using that 11×17 inch paper all year. It’s convenient since I don’t have to get my paper cutter out and cut it to size but at 20 sheets per pad I’ve lost out on 240 sheets of art card paper! I just ran out of that 11×17 inch paper and now am back to cutting 14×17 inch paper to size. As a matter of fact I have to order more. I only have about 30 sheets of p[aper left. I’ll make sure I order 14×17 inch paper.

These days they ever sell tiny pads of art card paper. I have two small pads of it to try out. One is hot press watercolor paper and the other is cold press. The strange thing is that the paper is actually 2.5×3.75 inches. There is an extra quarter inch of height. That’s actually no good since it makes the paper harder to fit into cards sleeves. I’m going to have to trim that quarter inch off.

It was yesterday that I made some art cards. I usually make them in batches of ten and it takes me most of the day to get ten of them done. I always think I can get them done faster than that but it never seems to work out that way.

The first thing I have to do when making an art card is to figure out what to make them with. Do I want to use pencils, pen, paint, or markers? Can I think of anything else to make them with? I’m always looking for new methods.

I came to rest on a way that I have made some cards in the past but not a ton of them. One of my favorite color markers is a Tahitian Blue marker from Copic. It’s actually the first Copic Marker I ever bought and it’s over a decade old. I just checked and I bought it in 2010 so it’s 14 years old. So old that its plastic cap and barrell are starting to disintegrate.

The technique is that first I draw with the blue marker using it as an underdrawing and then I draw on top of that with a black marker. I like how the combo of colors looks in the final drawing. I also decided to use a could have other colors but with different brands of markers.

The second marker that I used was an orange click marker from Sharpie. I bought this one when Sharpie first came out with them (Five years ago? Seven? I don’t know.) and I’ve always liked it. It’s a Sharpie that doesn’t have a normal Sharpie cap but the tip retracts into the barrel. I’ve always meant to get more of these but never have. The orange and black make a good color combination.

The third marker I used came in an art supply sample pack. It’s a yellow marker from a company called Lyra. It’s a brush marker but it also has a bullet tip on the other size. Usually I like brush tips but for these art cards I used the bullet tip.

So I spent my day working with those markers and a couple of black ones. I got the ten art cards done and I think they came out well. I have twenty five more of those ones to go. I’ll get ‘em done.

I buy almost all of my comics from my local comic book store. I go there every week and pick up my pull list comics and I also order things like those big and expensive Artist Editions from them. But I also buy cheap collected editions off of eBay and Amazon every now and again and also have an Amazon wish list for my family to buy things from for birthdays and Christmas. I mention this because I want to note a few things that I just ordered.

Artist Editions are big books that go from around 11×17 inches up to 16×20 inches. They are printed from high resolution color scans of comic book original art and are then printed to look exactly like the original art. If you like comic book original art then they are very cool. And I like comic book original art.

But as I said they are also expensive. Most of the ones I’ve purchase from my LCS were from about $100 to $125. I keep my eyes open for online bargains but I don’t find them too often. A couple of years ago there was one that I wanted but didn’t have the money for so I kept my eyes opera for a bargain. It was called the “EC Comics Covers Edition” and it was one of the more expensive ones.

One day, months after it came out, I saw a used copy on Amazon from a seller for about $80 total. I decided to take a chance on it and bought it. It arrived damaged. It was so damaged that it looked like all four corners were smashed with sledgehammers. It was crazy. So I returned it just a few hours after I bought it. Since it was a used book it couldn’t even be exchanged. So I had a copy for only a few hours.

Over the two years since that happened I’ve kept my eyes open for that book but had never again seen it at that price. It usually goes for at least $125. Then just last week I was scrolling through Facebook and up popped a picture of someone holding that book. It was from an EC fan group that I wasn’t in but I read the post. He had just bought that book from a seller on eBay for $60.

I read some more of the posts in that thread and other had bought from the same eBay seller too. Some even said that they offered the seller $50 and she took the offer. I clicked on the link for the seller and saw the eBay page. It looked legit so I decided to get one myself. I clicked on the “Make an Offer” link because I was also thinking about making a $50 offer but the link said that there were already 23 offers on the book. The page also said that there were over ten in stock with 50 already sold. I decided to not take a chance on missing out and just paid the whole $60 so mine would be bought before the 23 offers.

The total came out to $73 with tax and shipping but that was still a good deal. I see now that the shipping price has been raised to $28 so I’m glad I got mine in at the low shipping price. I haven’t received my book yet so there is no end to this story but I look forward to getting it. (Update: I got the book and everything is cool.)

The second thing that I ordered was another expensive book that I’ve been waiting for the price to drop on. It’s a Marvel Omnibus. They usually are priced at $125 to $150 but you can often find them for at least a 20% discount.

I used to have a bunch of these Marvel Omnibuses but I sold off all but two of them over the years. The last one I bought was in 2017 (it’s October 2024 as I write this) so I really haven’t been as into them as I once was.

This one that I was interested in is a Crossgen comic book. Crossgen is a comic book publisher from the early 2000s that I liked. They went out of business after a few years of making good comics and their stuff was bought up by Disney. A few years after that Disney bought Marvel Comics so now Marvel has the rights to all the Crossgen stuff. Last year they started putting some of the Crossgen stuff into Omnibuses.

I bought a lot of the Crossgen series off the shelf, back in the day, but not all of them. Since they went out of business I’ve always meant to buy some of the series that I never bought. Each series is about 40 to 45 issues and to get a complete series on eBay would probably run me from about $60 to $75. So I never pulled the trigger.

It was back in December of 2023 that Marvel put out the “Sigil” omnibus. That was one of the Crossgen series that I wanted the read, since I never had, but the new collection was priced at $125 full retail. I didn’t want it for that much. The original issues were cheaper! I kept my eye on it but it was never priced where I would buy it. Then I kind of forgot about it. Until this week.

Marvel Omnibuses have a weird price trajectory. Full retail price is usually high but then the price on the book drops down a little. If it’s a desirable book the price doesn’t drop very much until the book is out of print. Then the price of it rises. Of course popular books come back into print fairly quickly and then the price drops again.

For less desirable Marvel Omnibuses the price starts the same but then drops more precipitously. It might take a while but sometimes the price can be cut in half. But then after it goes out of print the price rises. It sometimes rises to way above the original retail.

Back in 2014 I bought the Marvel John Carter Omnibus from Amazon for the crazy price of $35 (with a random promotional credit that cut the price to $15). I don’t know why it was that low but I’m glad it was. Now the only one you can get on Amazon has it priced at an insane $1500. No one is going to buy it for that since you can find it on eBay for between $120 and $200. But even those prices are high considering.

As I was looking around on Amazon last week I decided to check on the “Sigil” Omnibus. To my surprise the price was down to $65. That seemed like the sweet spot to me. I also like the reviews I read of it as there was a lot of good extra material in the book. (Update: it’s back up to $90 now.)

I had been saving up credit card points so I could get the box set of Peter Bagge’s “Hate” but I already had the original issues and softcover collected editions of that series so I decided to put it on hold (for around the third time) and use those point to get the “Sigil” Omnibus.

Neither physically big and expensive book has arrived as of this writing but I’m looking forward to getting them. Keep an eye on my YouTube channel because I’ll probably be making videos about them.