And let us remind the world -- the only way you will ever make money "investing" in comics is if you can find buyers dumber than you are.*



*Just the other day I was chatting with a friend who related this sad tale: He was visiting relatives, and one woman told him, knowing his interest in comics, that he son had a huge collection, all carefully stored away. She proudly announced that he had many copies of the "Death of Superman" still in the bags in which they were released. She asked my friend what he thought these collector's items would be worth today. "Slightly less than what your son paid for them," was his reply.

Give em away.  Thats what I do.  A cpl of years ago my "local" (if you can call 60 miles away local) comic shop went out of business.  I bought the owners private stash, which equated to about 30 longboxes of comics.  LOTS of the 4 different Superman issues.  And by lots, I mean unopened Diamond boxes full of multiple issues.  My wife teaches reading, so we give the comic books to reluctant readers.  i know they are 10 years old, but the kids enjoy them anyway.

The Will it be worth anything mentality is progressed on the internet by sites that list values of comicbooks.  You no longer have to wait until the big Overstreet guide comes out, its right there at your fingertips.

Kevin Brown wrote: That's just not right.  [sarcasm]Of course he was totally justified in doing it, too.[/sarcasm]

My searching abilities on newsgroups are virtually zero, so this second hand telling is all I could find:

http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/archives/004062.html wrote: There's a post from a couple of years ago about this on the alt.fan.peterdavid newsgroup. Short short version is this: Back when the PADguy was just a Marvel sales rep (instead of a writer like he is now), he was asked by a Marvel editor to drum up support for Byrne's Alpha Flight (back when it was numbered in single digits) among some comic retailers at a convention. The pages he was given to show the retailers were of the death of Guardian, though minus the word ballons the scene was interpreted as 'Heather having a bad dream after eating too many burritos before bedtime' rather than 'Guardian just bit the Big One'. Byrne comes into the room, and realized what was being passed around was a major spoiler from his run. Instead of quietly asking PAD to gather the pages from the retailers, he raised a big stink about how PAD had just spoiled the death of Guardian for him, and angrily grabs the pages from the retailers and leaves the room, leaving a bunch of retailers to discuss the spoiler that Byrne just dropped on them. Apparently Byrne's been mad about it ever since.

Well, that version is much more believable.

Here's the thing - if you read JB's postings for any length of time, you'll notice that his stories / replies for this sort of thing are always the same. So JB is either a) a pathological liar or b) telling the ''true' story (as true as any story that involves more than two people can be). Twain said something along the lines of "the truth is great because it means you don't have to remember anything", right?

Plus, JB's version makes more sense because it doesn't sound like made-up bandwagon bullshit.

Post Script -- I notice David leaves out of this version of his tale the bit of embroidery where he and Tom DeFalco had to come up to my room to "calm (me) down." It's a tangled web. Hard to keep track of all the strands.

Unbelievable how some people behave, here meaning Peter David's behaviour!

JB's reaction I can understand.