Author: Ron Cloer
The Other Spider-man Titles – Key Issues
In the comic book community, there are certain titles that rank higher than others. Maybe they rank higher because of popularity or tradition or more key issues or the creative teams. With Spider-man books, Amazing Spider-man has always been the top web-slinging title. Amazing Spider-man (vol. 1) was the first, the longest-running and has the […]
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Why is Venom so Popular?
With the comic book revival of the 90s, few characters are in the same league as Venom. To quote one of the smoothest poets of the 1990s, “U can’t touch this.” Those late 80s and early 90s kids who came into comic shops and first saw Venom were like “Booyah”. If you tried to tell […]
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Harley Quinn Appearances
There is a lot of confusion about the first appearances of Harley Quinn. Most of the time, first appearance problems center around references or cameos of a character. The most contentious example being Wolverine’s first appearance in Hulk 180 versus issue 181. But with Dr. Harleen Quinzel people discuss continuity and out of continuity because […]
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Interview with Emerging New Artist, Kael Ngu
Have you heard of Kael Ngu yet? I’m relatively sure that you’ve seen his work and not recognized it. He is fairly new to the field but rapidly gaining a following. His recent Dark Nights Death Metal #1 featuring a ridiculously gorgeous Wonder Woman has been getting tons of attention. It’s amazing. On the other […]
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Top Batman and Detective Comic Searches
We have been playing with all sorts of search data lately to see what interesting things we can share with the community. The following list is the top Batman and Detective searches for the first 5 months of 2020. Some things to consider before checking out this list. Things that are newer are more likely […]
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What Drives the Value of Comic Books?
Your first response to this question might be upcoming movies drive the value of comics. You would be partially correct with that answer. That seems to be increasingly the case. A collector more interested in obscure books might say rarity. We’ve all seen marketing like “limited to 100 issues” or “1 of 250 produced”. Some […]
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The Rise of Miles Morales
Currently, there is no comic book character hotter than Miles Morales. (Sorry, Punchline) To truly understand Miles Morales you need to start in the late ’90s. During that time Marvel was dying, the Wizard Magazine artificial value bubble had burst. Marvel filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy and their stories were bankrupt as well. In that struggling […]
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Marvel Anniversary Border Checklist
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about DC’s variant theme covers. However, theme covers aren’t unique to DC, in fact, Marvel did it first. In a different sort of way but they were the first to think of it. Back in November 1986, Marvel released 29 covers with the same superhero border […]
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DC Comics Bombshell Variant Checklist
As I discussed in a recent Movie Variant blog post, DC was testing theme-based variant cover from March 2014 through April 2016. Arguably the most successful thematic variant was the bombshell variants, that were originally released in August 2014. Ant Lucia was the cover artist on all issues except for the Batman variant, featuring Joker’s […]
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Comic Book Collecting Goals
How many of you have walked into a comic book shop, searched eBay or Comics Price Guide, and bought a comic that you didn’t know you wanted? You were visually drawn to a book or the story sounded interesting or the cover was amazing and you bought it. I’m sure we’ve all done that at […]
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