Comics Value Annual

An Earthman on Venus (Public Domain)

I went to my local library and dropped off a few books. Then I picked up the 2007 copy of Comics Values Annual. I generally am not looking to find super expensive books. In fact, I try to find the quality stories that are still affordable. Books like Love and Rockets (The Brothers Hernandez) , Groo the Wanderer (Sergio Aragones) , Usagi Yojimbo (Stan Sakai), Ms. Tree (written by Max Allan Collins author of Road to Perdition), and The Official Modesty Blaise are still very modestly priced compared to comics in the same time period. They are also good quality stories.

What will happen with me is I will buy comics for the stories until they become way too expensive. For a while, I was buying the old Fantagor (Richard Corben), and Junkwaffel (Vaughn Bode) comics at reasonable prices. Now they are too expensive to buy at reasonable prices. This usually happens with a lot of the comics I buy.

I also like to buy comics for their writers. I am probably going to buy the Dark Horse comic, Dead In The West by Joe Lansdale because it is an excellent western horror story. I'll also be looking for the Eclipse comic, Seduction of the Innocent, and Eclipse comics version of Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. Even the reprints of the older comics like Cosmic Heros Buck Rogers are getting hard to find because they are affordable versions of very expensive quality comics.

I buy comics and I read them. Then I put them in storage boxes. I would have much rather read them than not. I am not going to wrap them in plastic and assume they are going to be worth a fortune later on. There aren't a huge amount of comics that I like.

I like Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore because of the writing. I want stories that are both well written and well illustrated. I like P. Craig Russell, Frank Frazetta, Berni Wrightson and many other artists who draw well. I don't want to spend a fortune on them either. I also like Frank Miller's superhero comics, especially his version of batman. I also like Osamu Tezuka's manga. I can be very picky.

I use Comics Values Annual or the Overstreet Price Guide to create a list before I go to a comics shop. There are so many books right now, that it is very easy to get distracted, and very hard to find what you want if you just wander around.

Thoughts for The Day.

Stan Lee's Soapbox. This is from playcole. The voice is Stan Lee's. It is kind of interesting to listen to.


I spent a little bit of time looking through the Comic Values Annual 2007. I like to look through the price guides before I visit a comic book stores. The prices are often not what I am looking for. The titles are what I am looking for. I make a list of titles I have not read or seen so I can look at them when I visit the shop.

For example, when I next visit a comic book shop, I will probably take a look at Aliens, Earth War, Usagi Yojimbo (one of my favorite comics), Cosmic Heros, Prince Valiant Monthly, and Spirit The Origin Years.

There are so many different comics which the Comics Value Annual reminded me about. Some of my favorite comic artists are Richard Corben, who created Den from Heavy Metal, Vaughn Bode creator of Junkwaffel, Alan Moore creator of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Stan Sakai creator of Usagi Yojimbo, The Brothers Hernandez creators of Love and Rockets, and Larry Gonick creator of the Cartoon History of the Universe. All of them had comics listed in the Comics Values Annual.

Also, I found some of the newer science fiction titles that are still affordable, Alien Worlds from 1982, Alien Encoutners printed between 1985-1987.

It was fun looking at the Comics Value Annual to see if there was anything which I might be interested in looking at. They even had a few humorous titles which I like Milk and Cheese, and Reid Fleming World's Toughest Milkman.

It was a nice day out so I didn't spend my whole day inside. I took a walk earlier for several blocks to stretch out my legs and also went to the produce market to buy some watermelon.

I went for another walk. It was a very nice day out. There was a parade through the neighborhood by the Catholic Church, today is Corpus Christi a day celebrated by the Italians in the neighborhood. It was a bit surprising to see a police car slowly wending through the neighborhood in front of the procession to clear the streets. I also saw one of the tiny little smart cars zipping through the neighborhood with a bald guy driving behind the wheel.

Tomorrow we will have the big parade on the main thoroughfare. The mayor was here on the last Memorial Day parade. It is kind of interesting watching the marching bands.

I spent a little bit of time fooling around with social networking. I am playing around with Twitter today. I am currently following six people on my twitter account. This is my account: http://www.twitter.com/bookcalendar . Apparently there is a search engine which searches members on twitter and adds a bunch of functionality to twitter, http://www.twhirl.org/ . I don't like having to download programs to my desktop so I am taking a pass. Sometimes, people go overboard with these things. A few minutes ago, I looked at a website called The Wall Tweet Journal, a blog about twitter. Apparently someone is turning on and off their lights using twitter... http://www.walltweetjournal.com/