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mwotka

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  • Comic Collecting Interests
    Golden Age
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    Original Comic Art
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  1. Wanted to share my most recent Timely pickup, from Planetcon in KC last weekend. One of my favorite MMC covers. Hole punching aside, has amazing colors and gloss. And don't sleep on those interiors! Here are some killer splash pages. Severed heads, gator fights, werewolves... Timelys are rad.
  2. Beautiful NA 24! Can't remember if I posted this, but here is my one piece of Flessel art. One of my favorite things and really complements my Sandman Adventures.
  3. I think you should look at things again. Other than a capital D, they look the same. E and L are identical to many block signatures. Hard to tell a large vs small "o" but looks small to me and he uses a variety of sizes, and that is a backwards "N", which occurs on some block Eldon signatures. And then the rest of the coupon has a mix of capital, lowercase, and cursive letters, underscoring he changed up writing styles. The last name even has two uppercase letters and then the rest lowercase. Multiple block letter Eldon books are in similar conditions and sequential order as cursive ones (see USA Comics and Superman). As for the last comment on handwriting, how would you have any idea this is true. Kids do lots of unusual things, and some learned cursive much later than others, some never develop great writing skills (like some people with dyslexia, as one example), and younger kids/teens mess around with different writing styles all the time. He used the block script as a young teen, along with the cursive. And he even signed with larger cursive, as on the Whiz just posted. Seems pretty clear to me they are all from the same collection. A bigger issue is why CGC has not corrected their info on the pedigree. It is pretty obvious it is not Eldon Hamman on anything labeled an Eldon pedigree.
  4. And then here are the rest of them, 7, 10, v2#1, v2#5, and v2#10. A nice grouping, and I've never come across a run like this before.
  5. I'm happy to share a major acquisition and development on the Eldon front. I was fortunate to come across a nice grouping of Eldon books from the estate of a long time collector. He loved Air Boy and had about a full run. I quickly noticed he had at some point purchased a nice run of Eldon books for a good chunk of the Air Fighters run. The books are all quite nice. But the most exciting thing is one particular book, Vol2#6, has writing on the front and back. The front has the usual cursive Eldon script. But the back is very interesting. He filled in the coupon in the block script! This is the definitive proof that the cursive and block signatures are the same. This has generally been agreed on for a while now by a number of you, but I don't believe there has been a book featuring both types of script. It also shows his home address in Morton, IL outside Peoria, but it appears the home is no longer standing. So to start with, here is the Vol2#6.
  6. This was better than your first answer, lol. I never said it wasn't him, just wondered how it was established, and didn't see any prior comments on the subject on here. It is obvious looking at the strip art that Gray was not the cover artist. I didn't think to pull out my copy of Chroma but there it is. Why not attribute the other Brick covers to Alex, it looks pretty obvious they are the same artist (at least 5 and 7). I guess there is a little less certainty than the 6 due to it being in Chroma.
  7. Question for all you Schomburg experts. I have been looking at Brick Bradford 6, and I am wondering if it is really a Schomburg cover? It does not appear signed, GCD does not attribute it to him (they attribute regular artist Clarence Gray), and the earliest CGC slabs don't list his name. What evidence is there he did it, besides having a Schomburg-esque look to the art, which a lot of late 40s books had by that time. And if he did, why not the other issues, which all have a similar look and style? I own one and it is a great cover, but still think we should accurately represent what is out there. Seems more like a wish it is Schomburg than reality. Welcome anyone's thoughts. Image attached is not my copy, did not have a pic handy.
  8. Nice win, was underbidder and was thinking right after I should've gone higher as the orange and purple on that one is wild. My two wins, to upgrade a few of my rougher issues. There were some nice books in this auction.
  9. Did anyone watch/bid on the MCS Oxford Collection of GA #1s auction? They had some incredible books including Star 1 raw vg+ for $6K, Star Ranger 1 in 4.0 for $1800, AMF 1 in 7.0 for $9K, Detective Eye 1 in 8.0 at almost $5K, Little Giant Movie Funnies 1 in 8.0 for $3300, Uncle Joe's Funnies in 3.0 for $975, and a Comics Magazine 1 in 6.5 that did around $23K(!). The graded books were all CBCS but seemed like that didn't hurt things too much given the scarcity (although a few seemed over-graded). Frankly it was the most impressive offering of extremely rare books in one auction that I've seen in a long time. Sadly got shut out on my bid attempts...
  10. Tough comparison and I certainly get the appeal of the Denver #1s. Glad to read the true history behind the find. But for my money, the camp copy Okajima's with the writing are where it is at. The combination of strong intersection of tragic history and a true triumph of collecting. Imagine your family is at home in California and one day the authorities show up and demand that you immediately pack a suitcase each and leave everything else behind. Then get moved to a camp that is basically being housed in old stables with curtains between them for several years. And these kids still went to the general store at the camp and bought a lot of comics, some of which were anti-Japanese propaganda, and read them faithfully (just serving to underscore they were true Americans). And then this whole time they kept those comics in nice condition, and then carefully took them with them when the camp was vacated and carefully packed and stored them until they were found decades later. And then you have the main collecting family member being a female collector, and sharing with her siblings, so a true female and family pedigree, which is rare. I just think this is the most fascinating story imaginable for a pedigree, and I hope one day to own a camp copy. I've got a post camp copy of Indians and it was graded 7.5 ow/w.
  11. You might think that. But check out vintage Ferrari results. The model made famous in Ferris Bueller just keeps climbing, one sold last year for $18 million, after another did $11 million in 2008. They could be had in the early 70s for a few grand. Less than 50 exist. Pretty good corollary to Action 1, except you can't drive it.
  12. Low grade but nicely presenting copy of this fun bondage cover.
  13. Had a pretty big score to start the year. Will be hard to top this one... Detached cover but presents very nicely.
  14. There was a follow up article on Bleeding Cool that showed some images from Fu Manchu and talked about the over-reliance on yellow peril type stories as having something to do with it. Also a concern that it might reflect badly on the legacy of Siegel and Shuster, since some of their stories had that angle. But then they still permitted Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson to reproduce a fair amount of early stuff with similar stories in her book so who knows. Maybe there weren't enough pre-orders to justify the expense. No idea on the "shocking revelation" part.