We all have that special comic book in our collection, the one which means a little more to us than the rest. For me, it is my Avengers #1. It has been in my collection since 1979 and with your permission, I'd like to tell its story here. But first, I need to give you a little background. In a lot of ways, I'm going to sound like an old-timer now -- mainly because I am -- so I apologize in advance for that, But I can't convey what the book means to me without explaining the context in which I first obtained it.
You young folks should know that before eBay, before e-mail and before the Internet, we collectors bought comics mainly in ways that would be foreign to most collectors today.
When I first started collecting, in the 1970's, it would not be unusual to find some pretty decent comics at yard sales, flea markets or advertised in local newspapers for sale as a collection -- cheap. My mother owned an antique store in the late 70's and would sometimes hear that one of her customers was selling off a son's old and discarded comic book collection. I remember my mom putting me touch with one woman in particular, whose son had amassed a pretty big collection of DC's from the '60's and early '70's, including a really nice copy of Green Lantern 76. A buddy and I pooled our money -- $75.00, which was lot to us in those days -- and we bought the lot of them. Once we got them home to sort through and count them, we realized we had paid 3 cents per comic. With such a large (for us) inventory, we decided to start our own comic-book business, renting tables at monthly conventions in Boston to sell books -- which also allowed us to work on adding to our own collections. It was a blast for a couple of teenagers and made us feel like big shots.
The smaller comic book shows in those days -- like the ones we attended every month in Boston -- were all about back issues. Once in a while, they would have a guest artist show up to sign autographs and/or sketch head shots of superheroes for fans on a piece of note paper, using a black sharpie. Mostly, however, everyone was there to leaf through long boxes of bagged comics, trying to fill holes in our runs of Spider-Mans or Fantastic Fours . . . and looking longingly at the high-priced older books, bagged and boarded, taped to the wall behind the dealers. Those were always out of reach, both literally and figuratively.
Of course, the major comic book dealers took out classified ads in the comics themselves. You would write to them and request their for-sale lists -- which generally featured a price for every Marvel comic book ever published to that point. I remember being 12 years old, receiving a list in the mail from Robert Bell or Howard Rogofsky and being amazed that someone out there actually had all of these back issues. Again, the early Marvels were always out of my price range, but I always thought, "Some day!" Imagine me, owning a Daredevil 1? Or a Fantastic Four 3? Or even my holy grail, an Avengers 1?
In the 1970's and early 1980's, "The Buyer's Guide for Comics Fandom" ruled the day. TBG, as it was called, was in newspaper format and came out weekly. I remember receiving my copy in the mail every Wednesday. There were articles and news items, of course -- Don and Maggie Thompson's "Beautiful Balloons," Cat Yronwode's "Fit to Print," columns by Terry Beatty, Mark Evanier and others. Great stuff. But the bulk of the content was comprised of ads. Display ads, classified ads, almost all of it "compose your own." Any collector or dealer would type out -- on a typewriter! -- a list of comics for sale, with prices, on an 8 ½" x 11" sheet of paper, and TBG would feature the list as a display ad, "as is." Each Wednesday, I'd scour the ads, looking for the comics I needed in nice condition.
As I got a little older -- 16, 17 years old -- I was working part-time after school and I had a little more money to spend on comics (and other things). Around that time, the Overstreet Price Guide listed Avengers 1 being worth somewhere north of $100.00 in near mint condition. Of course, that was only if you could find someone willing to sell. In those days, I was checking every ad, believe me, week after week, for months and years, I had no success . . . until a certain Wednesday in 1979.
I won't forget it. I came home after school -- or more likely, after cross-country practice after school -- and saw a quarter-page display ad in TBG advertising an Avengers 1 "in near mint condition, except for a ½" tear in the front cover," for $105.00. Hmmm. I had no experience with comic-book restoration at that point, but I did know that Bill Sarill was one of the leading experts -- if not the leading expert -- on comic book restoration. He was the owner and founder of "The Restoration Lab," and was based in Massachusetts. Maybe I'll buy the book and have the tear repaired locally at some point in the future? I decided not to wait any longer. If the small tear was truly the only thing wrong with the book, I'd finally have a near-mint looking Avengers 1 in my collection, after it had been out of my reach for so long. By that time, I could afford the $105.00. I mailed a check to the person placing the ad.
Please realize, there was no FedEx, no UPS, no overnight or priority mail in those days. We had more patience then, because we had no other choice! So a couple of weeks passed and my Avengers 1 arrived in the mail. The advertiser was truthful, in my opinion. The book looked beautiful, except on the right side of the front cover, near Thor's belt, there was about a ½" tear, where someone reading the book had obviously (and mistakenly) torn the cover in their haste to open to the first page. How could I blame them? This was an Avengers 1, after all! To top it off, when you opened to the first page, there was a Jack Kirby autograph right at the top! This is not something that the owner had mentioned in the TBG ad, but I was delighted to discover it. This was a special book indeed.
Flash forward over a decade. I went off to college. I spent a summer in California. I taught high school for a year in Pittsburgh, and then came back to Boston for law school. After graduating in 1989, I began my legal career. All the while, my comics -- including that old Avengers 1, with the slight tear in the cover -- remained at my parent's house. I made sure they were safely stored in a closet, bagged in mylar and acid-free boards. But like many of us, I had moved on to other interests, including girls, in my 20's. There was not a lot of room in my life for comics. It was probably a good idea not to have them around my apartment in those days, anyway.
Around 1992 or 1993, Frank Miller's Sin City brought me back to comics. I started checking out comics stores semi-regularly and following a few books regularly. I began to think again about my Avengers #1, with the slight tear.
I did a little research and learned that Susan Cicconi, who had been Bill Sarill's longtime apprentice, had bought The Restoration Lab from him. By all accounts, she was now one of the leading experts on comic book preservation and restoration. And she was still local. So I called her, arranged for an appointment, and took my Avengers 1 to her apartment, which contained her "lab," in which she did all her work. She checked out my Avengers 1 and told me that it was an excellent
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