Hschwartz

I remember Roger and his stores very well. For decades he had a store on 14th street between 7th and 8th avenue and you had to walk upstairs to get into it. As soon as you walked in there was an old beat up couch inside the store. I asked him one day why he had the couch in the store. He said that when he first opened adults could rest on the couch while their kids browsed through the boxes of comics. Now twenty years later with the demographic changes in who bought old comics the reversed happened. Now he said the kids rest on the couch while their parents look through the boxes and buy old comics. He moved the store to 6th Avenue near 9th street but I'm pretty sure that store closed years ago. He was an old time comics guy who had a cool personality and his type of store is definitely missed.

That's a great anecdote Book Guy. Bob was never cheap when selling comics. You could say he was somewhere between reasonable and Rogofsky. He would get a sale out of me if he was closer to reasonable.

Very sad news. Many Bay Area fans went to all of his stores and bought comics from him at many conventions throughout the Seventies and Eighties. I particularly remember when he opened a store at Pier 39 in the late Seventies. I was shocked that a comic store could afford the rent at all. Bob pulled out all of the stops and had an amazing selection of vintage Golden Age comics, original art and memorabilia. I remember he had five uncirculated copies of the first Overstreet Price Guide in white for about $75 each. I wish I had bought one but I passed. The store didn't last long probably because of the high rents but it was amazing while it was open. He definitely was one of the more controversial people from fandom's golden age but now we should just focus on the good things he did and remember him as someone who loved comics and helped many people improve their collections over the years.

This is an apples to oranges comparison. Alex Ross is a fine fine artist worthy of respect for his great drawings. Jack Kirby on the other hand has co created more iconic comic book characters than anybody else times twenty. There have been many great artists in the comics field but truly only one Jack Kirby.

I'll go with the first one Green Lantern 16.

If they wholesale out their whole inventory this would be the end of an era. On the other hand if they just close the warehouse and keep selling comics it would be like the old days seeing their ads in the Buyers Guide and doing mail order from them.

Thanks for writing this Unca Ben. I agree with virtually all of the points you made. The biggest problem in these debates is people taking their opinions and saying they are facts. I love Stan's writing and think that he is the main reason Marvel was this successful in the sixties. He could get you into the characters heads in ways that neither Kirby or Ditko could in their dialogue without Stan. They could never really get inside the character and create the sense that you were Matt Murdoch, Peter Parker or Tony Stark. Now having said that let me reiterate it is my opinion not fact. Many people love Kirby's dialogue in New Gods etc. and prefer it to Stan's. That's fine it's their opinion and they should express it. However the problem develops when they try to say their opinion is right and everybody else is wrong. Stan created the whole feeling of Marvel as a place that really cared about the reader and treated him/her as adults when they wrote letters. The letters page and bulletin page were just as important to creating the Marvel family feeling as the great comics were. You truly got the sense that Stan was directly talking to you and not at you in these pages. I love Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. Spider-man and Fantastic Four could not have been nearly as successful with anybody else doing the plotting and artwork. This was truly an amazing collaboration and should be seen as such but in my opinion Stan's ability to make you feel for the characters is what made Marvel special. Now having praised Stan I will criticize his willingness to take all of the credit when obviously all of these great characters were co created with the artists. Both Ditko and Kirby deserved extra money for plotting out these stories. They were both comic geniuses and should be given plotting credit for all of their stories. The "Marvel Method" was a total rip off to these artists who had to plot out the stories as well as draw them. Just as an example compare the Al Feldstein EC stories that were given to the artist fully written and all the artist had to do was draw what was in Feldstein's descriptive captions. For Daredevil Wally Wood had to create a whole story as well as draw it. He resented it and quit fairly soon. He was right that he wasn't properly compensated for the plotting as well as the drawing. However this method was the only way that Stan could dialogue so many stories each month and stay sane. Now having said this I disagree with people who say that this plotting meant that they wrote most of the story. It's the words that Stan wrote that brought these characters to life and he was the most important reason they were such great comics. That's my take on it and once again I will add that this is my opinion and not represented as fact.

I never went to any of 's stores but I had a few comics that had his date stamp on the splash page during the Seventies.

Congrats Robot Man for finding these premiums you've been searching decades for. A great day of collecting for you.

Thanks for sharing all of this hard earned good advice. I hope your shows continue to do well in the future. The hobby needs more of these kind of small shows run by people who care about comics.

Thanks for the Bay Con picture Aardvark88. My brother and I are in the center with our table next to the artists Al Gordon and Ken Macklin. I was 17 and he was 20 and we were selling off the collection we had accumulated in New York from the late 60's to the mid Seventies. At that show we sold our FF1 for $500 our Spider-Man 1 for $300 and our Amazing fantasy 15 for $200. As was the custom in those days all three had tape on the spine as we felt that they would last longer with tape and nobody considered that a deal breaker in those days. Shows were a lot more fun then because at least a third of the people would be guys selling off their collections as opposed to now where nearly everybody is a professional dealer.

Two great copies of Spider-Man 8. I would go with copy B with the great colors. However you can't go wrong with either book.

What a sad and ironic state of affairs that you can't find back issue comics in New York City. When my friends and I were searching for comics in the late sixties early seventies in New York you had to find used bookstores antiques stores and an occasional old record store to find comics. By the late seventies there were multiple places to find old comics as comic stores multiplied in most Manhattan neighborhoods. Now 50 years later you can once again only find new comics even at comic book stores without a back issue in sight. Not to get political but we've definitely lost part of our soul lately. Who wants to live in a society where mom and pop stores can't survive and every new store opening seems to be a bank or a restaurant? Tough times indeed!

I never went to either place you mentioned. I left Santa Cruz for San Francisco in 1978. The only comic shop for years was Cymbaline Records and Comics. In 1976 Atlantis opened and there still going 47 years later.

I remember walking around the corner from Sidebottom's to get to Comics and Comix. They were definitely open before 1979 because I remember them having stacks and stacks of Peter Parker #1 which I think came out in 1976 or so. In my mind it was less than a two block walk but it could have been longer since it was so long ago. I lived in Santa Cruz so I never went to the De Anza college flea market. We had a good one in Santa Cruz during the seventies and occasionally you'd find something worthwhile there.