Man, That's a Lot of Snow! And a Selling Update from Doug

Doug: Happy Sunday, friends! And what a snowy one it is in the Chicago area. I went out at 7:00 this morning to do some clearing in case we were going to try to go to church -- that notion was quickly dispelled once I ascertained what had happened overnight. On the ground was around 5" of wet, heavy snow and our street had yet to be plowed. I was outside for around 90 minutes and myself and three neighbors used our snowblowers and shovels to return our part of the subdivision to a semblance of normalcy. But the snow has continued, and closer to the city there is a blizzard warning as I write this. Not sure about school tomorrow, as the white stuff continues to pile up and is not supposed to end until the overnight hours, with temperatures dropping and winds increasing. But I love winter -- Karen can have the desert. I like to have seasons (of course, where I live sometimes we'll get three seasons in one day!).

Last night I decided to add original art to my auctions in my now-neverending effort to purge my collection in exchange for monies that will be used for a new car and various loans that we have (home equity and parent loans for our sons' educations). A time or three before I've mentioned that I hold the original art by John Buscema and Tom Palmer for Avengers #76, page 3. It's a great page featuring four key Avengers from 1970 -- Cap, the Vision, T'Challa, and Pietro. I have two other pages (a Buscema FF and a Heck Avengers) that have been custom framed and hang on the wall in my comic room, and this page was one I always wanted to give that same treatment. But I put it off and put it off, and so when I looked at it about a week ago I just decided that it would be silly to spend $100+ on the framing at a time when I'm trying to raise money. Yesterday I took my portfolio of original art, roughs, and sketches to school and used the big copier to scan images of it all. And last night I took the plunge, posting three pieces to auction on eBay.

No lie... that page was not live for 10 minutes when I got a question. I had decided to list it at a starting bid of $135, which is what I'd paid for it around 20 years ago. No reserve, no Buy It Now -- just let 'er rip. So this guy wants to know if I'll end the auction and do a "buy it now" for him of $350. I politely explained that I'd just listed it and really felt like I was going to ride it out -- but thanks. About 30 minutes later I received another question, same idea. This fellow seemed to respect me a bit more while also sounding like he knew what he was doing. I asked him to check the completed auctions for Big John pages and to find two Fantastic Four pages that had sold in December. Both were from FF #175 and were the pages where the High Evolutionary defeats Galactus and the Big G begins to shrink until he blinks out. One page had sold for around $1100 and the other for a bit over $2900. While I slept last night he'd come back with an offer... of $1600. Uhhhh... Now I'm not much of a gambler, but something was just telling me that with the new Avengers movie coming out in a few months and featuring the debut of the Vision, Quicksilver (in this franchise) and possibly the Black Panther (fingers crossed there!) that this page should go for close to $2000. I again thanked him for his generous offer but told him I'd like to wait.

So mid-morning my wife and I were having some quality time sitting at the kitchen table watching it snow and working a crossword puzzle (which we never do -- but it was really fun to just take the time to do that) when my iPhone made the alert sound which is associated with eBay action. Overnight the page had gone up to around $350; even though I had my glasses on I looked and did not a double-take but a triple-take at the screen. Surely I was seeing the decimal was in the wrong place. I don't recall what I exclaimed, but my wife was like "What's wrong?!?" I just picked up the phone and showed her the lock screen that featured the alert: a bidder had come along and made a commitment of $3,650.00!! She said "no way", thinking that the poor guy had keyed it in wrong. So we went to check the bid history. Sure enough -- the previous high bidder had left a max bid of $3600 overnight and had just been surpassed. Wowza.

This page doesn't go off until Thursday around 9:30 pm my time. I have no idea what's going to happen, but to say that I had to pick my jaw up off the floor would be an understatement! And rest assured that I will be shipping this overnight via UPS or FedEx, as I want this page to be in as few hands as possible to ensure its safe transit.

 

 

The other two pages I listed are also here for you to peruse. Above is a rough to a four-page Silver Surfer/Thor story that I do not believe has ever been published. The story is reprinted completely in the Marvel Visionaries: John Buscema hardcover. Lastly, I bought the page below many years ago just because it's so cool -- what is not to like about Fred and Barney dressed as Batman and Robin, and drawn by the same artist who illustrated the Cocoa- and Fruity Pebbles cereal boxes? Awesome illustration!

So I am still selling comics -- still working on finishing up my Avengers collection and have a pretty good start on Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. I'll keep plugging away, but thought you might find the stories of the past 18 hours interesting.

Be sure to stop in tomorrow for a conversation on the Bucky revival that took place at the hands of Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting in the umpteenth volume of Captain America. You might be surprised at my (and Karen's) take on the whole thing!

Winter Wonderland? What's That??

Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois.  The Blizzard of January 30, 2011

Doug:  Karen and I were corresponding the other day about winters and Christmases.  I've always lived in the northern part of the United States -- almost all of my life in a town about 50 miles south of the heart of Chicago, and a brief three year stint in Milwaukee, Wisconsin when I was in elementary school.  So when you talk "Christmas" to me, there had better be snow.  Which is funny, because I learned just last week that my wife's family from Texas never sees Christmas marketing that involves snow.  Whereas everything peddled from beer to automobiles has a peaceful, snowy motif in the television ads viewed in Chicagoland, they said they see none of that.  And to show that we are indeed hearty individuals here in the Great White North (cue Geddy Lee...), the blurry cellphone photo below was taken on a cold windy night, with the breeze cutting in off Lake Michigan.  But it was a blast!

Last Christmas, Lincoln Park "Zoo Lights"

Doug:  So in the evolution of thought, I wondered -- wow, how many of our readers have never experienced a snow day from school or work? Those are treasured memories -- whether I was a child or even now as an adult.  There is simply nothing better than laying next to the radio at 5:45 am and hearing the name of my school on the "closed" list.  Yeeee-eeeesssss!  As a kid, those days would then be filled with building snowmen or snow forts, playing football in knee deep snow (talk about a work-out!) and of course sledding.  We have a river that runs through our town, and about the only hills around are the small bluffs that form the upper banks.  There have been some parks built near the water, as I'm sure is the case in many communities with such a resource.  Anyway, the best place in town for sledding is "Poop Hill", aptly named since the park is adjacent to the local water treatment facility.  Yep -- in the summers there is a distinctive odor in that neighborhood, if you know what I mean.  On a great winter day, after the snow had packed down a bit, one could pick up some tremendous speed on the run; I'd estimate from top to bottom the hill is close to 100 yards.  A wooden snow fence guarded the bottom of the hill, but I can recall many times when it would come apart and folks would end up in the river.  The best part of the hill was a spot over to the left where a large rock was partially exposed -- hitting that baby on a toboggan would get some big air, which was always a blast!

Christmas tree outside Karen's work in Phoenix

Karen: I told Doug when we were chatting about this that I was afraid my experiences would be somewhat lame in comparison. Having grown up in the central coast region of California, I never had a white Christmas -in fact, I didn't see snow until I was 15! At most, our Christmases might be rainy. But there were many a Christmas from my childhood that were dry and sunny, with temps around 65F! This meant that we frequently got "outside" toys for Christmas; bikes, footballs -I fondly recall getting a blue skateboard when I was 12! Luckily the weather was good and I was able to go outside and ride that thing up and down the street -and fall not a few times as I attempted some tricks.  One year my brother got a remote controlled car and we had a blast taking it out and crashing it -I mean, racing it. I sometimes wondered about snow -I mean, all the Christmas movies and TV specials had snow -but even without it, as long as there were Christmas lights and decorations, trees, and cookies, it felt like Christmas to me.  Here's a  tradition from the west coast that I bet my partner hasn't heard of: Christmas tamales. It just doesn't feel like the holidays if I can't get my hands on some tamales. Preferably home-made, but I'll take the store or restaurant variety too.

Doug:  Nope -- those would definitely clash with warm spiced apple cider or hot chocolate!