The Corner Box

Comic Collecting 101 with Rob Worst and The Corner Box - S3Ep10

• David & John • Season 3 • Episode 10

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0:00 | 42:44

Rob Worst cheats death once again and joins John and David to talk about the art of collecting comics, the value of original art, the rise of AI and digital comics, and the importance of artists supporting other artists.

SUPPORT THE SHOW! DO FUN THINGS!

John has a Kickstarter | Behind the Panels of Marvel’s Secret Wars

Rob Worst has a podcast | Not Near Mint

Timestamp Segments

  • [00:00] Check out This Secret Wars Kickstarter!
  • [02:03] The show gains a new listener!
  • [02:39] Rob’s origin story.
  • [03:33] Rob cheats death.
  • [05:59] To slab or not to slab?
  • [13:34] Signed comics.
  • [16:45] The rise of digital comics.
  • [21:01] The Mark Spears phenomenon.
  • [23:26] AI comics.
  • [24:46] David’s Dan Mora story.
  • [27:34] 3D comics.
  • [31:37] Collecting CG comics.
  • [32:48] The true value of original art.
  • [35:58] Artists supporting artists.
  • [41:07] Not Near Mint.

Notable Quotes

  • “Rule #1: don’t die.”
  • “You can’t smell digital.”
  • “One day, today will have been 20 years ago.”

Books Mentioned

[AD] This is John from the Corner Box. In my daytime hours, I work at a company called Pan Universal Galactic Worldwide, and we've teamed up with a place I used to work, Marvel Comics, to put together an exciting new book that we're launching on Kickstarter. It's called Behind the Panels of Marvel's Secret Wars, an in-depth look at the art and process of making Marvel's 2015 Secret Wars series--the one by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic--the one that's inspiring the upcoming Avengers film.

This is the first in our Behind the Panel series, and fellow ex-Marvel editor and all-around talented writer, Ellie Pyle, has talked to the minds who concocted that story, which is the big capstone to Hickman's Fantastic Four/Ultimate Universe/Avengers epic, the comic that ended the Ultimate Universe. It will take you from the Marvel summit planning sessions, through the spin-offs, and into the lasting legacy of the series.

Exclusive to this Kickstarter, we've got art prints, a red-blue 3D puzzle. The most exciting bonus--they're called bite-sized covers. These are miniature reproductions of the comic book covers. They're all the size of bridge cards, but super thick cardboard, and they come in a miniature short box with Secret Wars art. You can collect them, store them, or display them.

Check out Secret Wars Kickstarter, and it'll get you there in your web browser, and you can see what I mean.

Now, on to the show.


Welcome to The Corner Box with David Hedgecock and John Barber. With decades of experience in all aspects of comic book production, David, John, and their guests will give you an in-depth and insightful look at the past, present, and future of the most exciting medium on the planet—comics—and everything related to it.


[01:40] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, David Hedgecock, and with me, as always, is the inimitable, the one, the only, my good friend, and yours--


[01:53] John Barber: John Barber.


[01:54] David: John Barber. We have a guest on. We have to mind our P's and Q's. Welcome back to the show, Rob Worst.


[02:01] Rob Worst: Thank you so much for having me back.


[02:03] David: For those who don't know--because Rob, this is Season 3, we're in a whole brand-new season--Last season, our regular listenership increased all the way up to 4 people, and this year, we have 5. So, we have one whole new listener this year.


[02:19] John: Only 3 of them carried over. We've got 2 new listeners, and we just lost 1.


[02:25] David: I like that, John.


[02:27] John: Is that more positive?


[02:28] David: I don't like that we lost a listener, but let's assume that it was—


[02:31] John: A car accident.


[02:32] David: Reasons--Well, I wasn't going to say that, but okay.


[02:35] Rob: Rule #1, don't die.


[02:37] David: Let's not waste a car accident on anybody, and please, let's remember Rob's origin story. We’ve got to be careful about--This man has escaped--


[02:46] Rob: It's been a long time.


[02:48] David: --More than anybody I've ever met. So, for our new listener, tell us a little bit about yourself, and what you do, but more importantly, what your connection is to comic books.


[02:58] Rob: So, I've been collecting and reading comic books ever since 1987, when my uncle accidentally shot me, and my dad started bringing me comic books in the hospital. First thing that I ever read was Daredevil: Born Again, and just been reading ever since. My job, I'm a court reporter. So, I get to lift the veil on society, to find out what's really going on behind the scenes, to realize that nobody in the history of existence knows what they're doing. Everything they've ever learned, they've learned from either trial and error or somebody else taught them, and the most confident person in the room is, sadly, usually the dumbest.


[03:33] David: I don't know if we should go down this rabbit hole, John, but he was shot, John. His uncle shot him. Oh, guys, I've got a shipment coming in. We're getting all our Kickstarter stuff up.


[03:44] Rob: So, as he runs and gets all that shipment out there, yes, the last time that I appeared on the show, I went through the long statistical list of all the injuries I've had. Been shot by my uncle, been shot by Miami police, been shot just a couple too many times, been struck by a lightning. It goes down the list. So, if something bad could happen, if you were around me, you are probably the safest person in the room, but let's face it, it'll be a hell of a thing to watch.


[04:08] John: Well, I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you've stayed safe, I hope, since the last time we talked to you.


[04:13] Rob: In fact, I have one comic for every child I never had. So, we're now at 29,512.


[04:20] John: Wow.


[04:21] Rob: And from the last time that I was on, when I was talking about trying to get that first appearance of Sergeant Rock, it finally happened. It was under $1,000 to show you that when a movie is announced, “hey, speculators, let's get in the game. The movie's been canceled. Ew, I don't want this.” When the movie announced a sh!t-tier grade copy--we're talking a 1.8 or less--was about $1,500 to $3,300. I got mine for $941, bidding against 19 other people.


[04:52] David: What grade was it?


[04:53] Rob: I'd probably put it at maybe a 3.5.


[04:56] David: Oh, it wasn't graded yet?


[04:57] Rob: No. I can figure out grades. I will never get anything slabbed, even though I do have a couple slabs here, because a buddy of mine, Jig's Kingdom, he likes to have a couple drinks sometimes on a Saturday night, and go, “hey guys, if you do a super chat for $10, I'll send out a slab.” So, I gave him $40, and he sent me 5 slabs, and I'm going, “what am I going to do with this?” I don't collect slabs, but all the people that are on my show, they don't mind it so much. So, now they know what they're getting for Christmas.


[05:24] David: I'm going to cross off the 13 questions I had about CGC slabs.


[05:29] Rob: I will not disparage slabs or people that get it. I just figure that when you have a room with this much stuff in it here, it takes up a lot of space, and for people like me that are run collectors, been collecting for 40-plus years, real estate is a big problem when you start running out of it. Just taking up a lot of room.


[05:48] David: Tell me about it. Half my questions were, how are you storing your slabs? Because I am running into some trouble.


[05:54] Rob: Well, there are storage facilities, but I remember a story, about maybe 8/9 years ago, or so, you had this guy down here in South Florida, up around West Palm Beach. He had almost the entire run of Detective Comics, #27 up till about the #90s. Same thing with Batman, and then one day somebody broke into a storage facility. Luckily, most of his early stuff was all slabbed. So, if you're a thief, and you go, “hey, slabs. I can sell that,” it's like trying to steal crypto. People are going to know automatically where it came from, who sold it, and you're going to get caught, and guess what? That guy was caught.


[06:29] David: That's actually one of the reasons why I started doing the slabs. Well, A, I'm too lazy to go out to backyard sales, and stuff like that, to try to find diamonds in the rough. A lot of my collecting is done from eBay, which I think lots of people do that, but the slab, putting things in the CGC grade, it offers a certain level of quality control, which I certainly appreciate, and I don't mind paying a little extra for the certainty, but the other reason that I've been getting slabs for certain things is just what you said, I can store that number, and if it ever did get stolen, if that number comes up, that's mine. There's no question, and if you take it out of the slab, it's not going to be worth as much. So, I don't know that thieves even know what to do to take it out.


[07:16] Rob: They might not know how to break open a slab, and even if they do, they might wind up ruining the book that's inside. Funny enough, slabs in the last year, unless it's something that's a 9.8 of something that's highly in demand, you're finding out real fast that if you personally send something in for grading, get it back, you'll have put out all this money to get it pressed, cleaned, slabbed, sent back to you, only to discover you could have sold it for the exact same amount than you would have, had you not gotten that grade.


[07:45] David: If it doesn't come back as a 9.8?


[07:47] Rob: Yeah. I mean, there's some 9.6s that will still sell for a near-mint […].


[07:55] David: The big thing that I've been doing CGC on is, I randomly will pick up one or two things here and there, mostly Spider-Boy. I have an obsession with Spider-Boy still. Oh, did I tell you, John, that I talked to Dan Slott online?


[08:08] John: No.


[08:09] David: He didn't talk to me, but I talked to him. He posted that there's going to be a new Spider-Boy comic book, and I was super excited. I'm like, “oh, my God, when's it coming out? Are you writing it?” And he's like, “no, I'm not writing it,” and he doesn't know when, and that was very disappointing, because the Dan Slott-ish-ness of it, I think, was part of what I enjoyed about that book.


[08:29] Rob: Spider-Boy really blew up, but then after Dan Slott finished his run on Spider-Boy, Spider-Girl, which is the protege of Bullseye, she started getting her game upped, but meanwhile, Dan Slott fell off that book. Now it's, I believe, Torunn Grønbekk that's writing it, and maybe that'll go a few more issues. Marvel doesn't seem to be capable of going past 10 issues for anything that's not X title.


[08:55] David: I'm picking up Spider-Girl, but for Spider-Boy, I have it in my head that I want to own every single version of all 20 issues that were published, but Spider-Girl, I'm just picking up a copy of each issue, and reading it, and it's been okay. I was also into New Champions, which is another youth initiative Marvel title that came out. I gave that one a shot, and I did not like that one either. So, I think it's just Spider-Boy, man. It's just that particular jam for me. Anyway, my big CGC run though, and John could probably tell you what it is before I say it, is I'm getting the entire run of New Mutants from Rob Liefeld. So, #86 through #100, 9.8, every single issue, including all the reprints. So, Issue #94 or #95 went into a second print. They had a gold cover print. Issue #100 had two reprints on top of the first print, and I've got everything now except for #98. I'm not making a distinction between direct market versus newsstand edition. It's too much. So, if I find the newsstand, then I get the newsstand, but honestly, some of them are just impossible to find. They just don't exist. They exist at such a small number that nobody's selling their copies. That copy of, I think it's Issue #94 or #95 of New Mutants, the reprint where Warlock dies, the second printing of that, there's not a lot of 9.8s that even exist. I think there's less than 20 of those. So, it's just impossible to even find.

They popped up twice, and they popped up at such a price that I'm like, “I’m not ready to go that big on a second print of New Mutants #94.” I've got all these slabs. I'm like, “oh, my God, what do I do with these?” So, my solution, so far, has been Sterilite 27-quart-sized bins with the seal […]. Water resistant. The water level has to raise pretty high before I have to worry about anything getting into those. So, that’s my solution so far.


[11:02] Rob: As long as you keep it on a table or some boards with a piece of plastic in between the box, if the pipe bursts in your room or somewhere down the hall, or the AC leaks, you'll be protected. Now, if it's like Hurricane Melissa that just rolled through, no, we're done. We're goners.


[11:21] John: David lives--I don't know if you can tell from the background--on a stolen Russian submarine. He's constantly underwater. I mean, a lot can go wrong there, as I understand.


[11:32] Rob: […] comics on a submarine? That's living on the edge, man. I was just going to say, about New Mutants #98, if you wanted to go for some really challenging stuff, yeah, you can get the direct market. Direct market, I think, went for about $1,495 just the other week. The newsprint is going to be a little bit harder, but if you wanted to go really difficult, get a Mark Jewelers.


[11:52] David: Yeah, I know.


[11:53] Rob: But then if it's slabbed as a Mark Jewelers, you'll never know it's a Mark Jewelers, unless you tilt it at a certain angle to see that little blue strip.


[12:00] David: Yeah. By the way, Rob, the last two episodes of the podcast have just come out, as we're speaking, and they were both co-hosted by my good friend and editor-in-chief of FunTimeGo, Chase Marotz. So, John and Chase, for the last two episodes that are out right now, were on the show, and I was actually away. I wasn't on the show, and I have never heard John more engaged or more excited, or having a better time, than he had on the two podcasts that I didn't show up on. So, John, I feel like I'm doing something wrong, and I don't want to get in the way of any questions that you might want to ask our guest here. So, please, feel free to step in at any time.


[12:46] John: Were you talking? I'm sorry. What did you say? I'm told a funny anecdote that, at the time, New Mutants #98 was the most money I ever spent on a comic book, and it was $28, or something. It was after X-Force launched, probably pre-Image, somewhere around there.


[13:05] David: Oh, yeah. I've got multiple copies of Issue #98 that I've had for quite some time, and in fact, I've probably got some that are very high quality. They might be 9.8. I don't even know. I've got some really great copies that I've had for 20-plus years, because I've been a hardcore Rob Liefeld fan from the beginning. I just want to buy the 9.8 and not have to try to figure out whether or not the ones I already have are worth that. This goes into the question that I want to ask you. Where are you on signed books? What is your spin on signed comic books?


[13:40] Rob: Well, that's actually a great question, because I just, from a buddy of mine that's on BlueSky, I picked up a good run of G.I. Joe, and he went, “I can throw this in for about an extra $20,” and I go, “what is it?” He sends me a picture. It's Batman #500, signed by Bill Sienkiewicz, Mike Grell, and about two or three others, and $30? I mean, the signatures alone would be worth that, and I don't have any of Sienkiewicz, even though he's still doing work today. I'm probably never going to get a chance to meet him in person. So, $30? Yes, please. Shut up and take my money.


[14:14] David: How do you reconcile that with whether or not it's real? Where are you on the COAs, and things like that?


[14:20] Rob: So, with some signatures, you can know right away if it's real or not. Stan Lee has a very distinct signature. Plus, I met him countless times. Same with Todd McFarlane. Then you get others, like Neal Adams. That is a little bit more iffy, because his signatures varied over the years a bit, and others, you would just have to compare and contrast against Google searches of other images with similar signatures. For COAs, I worked at a watch company for the better part of a decade, where my boss was having me basically forge certificates, and I know that that is something that can easily be done. I mean, unless it's some raised, embossed seal on it, they're basically just put out from a printer. “Oh, here's a COA. Oh, thanks.” It's like going out to South Beach, and somebody hands me a flyer, and I go, “thanks. I'll throw this away for you.”


[15:11] David: In my head cannon of collecting, I have decided that I have to have a COA of some sort, even though I'm like, “that's definitely Norm Breyfogel's signature. I know it's his signature,” but there's not a COA with it. So, I'm just not going to pick it up. So, that's where I've landed on things, lately, in the last, I would say, 12 months. Anytime I want to get something that's got a signature on it, I just look for that extra bit of verification, even though I agree with you that it's probably easy to forge those kinds of things. You have to go to a lot of trouble for $30, to create a COA, and all that stuff, and get it signed, and make it look old, as in the case of something like Norm Breyfogle.


[15:53] Rob: There's always sending it to PGX, where they get a verification for a signature, and somebody does do that testing for it. I don't know if that's something that CGC is planning on doing, but they'd be missing out.


[16:05] David: They've got to get into that, at some point. I suspect they haven't gotten into it just because they don't have the manpower or the capabilities to really, truly be certain about things, yet.


[16:16] Rob: I work in the court systems, where they have people that do forensic accounting. They have forensic handwriting analysis. You can absolutely hire one of those people for CGC, and say, “please, send us your books,” and that person will probably get paid more than if they show up in court at $500 an hour to do so.


[16:34] David: All right. There you go.


[16:36] Rob: It's like “hey, CGC, if you want to know how much it costs, that's how much it costs.”


[16:45] David: I’ve got another question for you. Have you seen, or do you think there's any damper on the market because of the rise of digital comic books, over the course of the last several years--but specifically, it seems in the last two years, where DC in particular has gotten really aggressive about almost day and day publishing of their digital comic books--Have you seen any dampening of the market of older material or that 80s-90s material, which seems to be really getting aggressively collected in both the Marvel and DC apps these days? Do you see any changes in any of that?


[17:25] Rob: When it comes to digital, you can't smell digital, and us older collectors, we like to have that tangible property. We're okay with driving however long we're going to take to go pick up the new comics for the week, and if you have a decent enough shop, you get to rifle through the older stuff too. Me, as I'm getting older, I will still physically buy the copies themselves, and then I will probably read it digitally. Whether it's legal or not, I don't care, because copyright code does state that as long as you have the physical copy, whether it's a VHS from the 80s or a DVD, or whatever it is, if you have the original piece, and you're watching something that's extra-legal, that's fine. Although, as long as I'm buying the physical, tangible books, my eyesight isn't the best, as it used to be.

I'm 46 years old, and certain books, especially the ones that--let's put it back in maybe a decade ago, when they were putting out Batman: the Man Who Laughs--All the type was red with a black background whenever the Batman Who Laughed spoke. I couldn't read that, at all. Fast forward to today, if I wanted to read it, “okay, I can just zoom in,” and “hey, now I can read it.” I might have to test my eyes, but the older I get, the more I might need to widen up that screen, but hey, I can't do that with a physical comic, but at the same time, I'd rather have that physical comic, because we watch things on Netflix, on HBO Max, whatever it is, and “hey, I'm getting into this series,” and then all of a sudden, “hey, it's not here anymore. What happened? Well, they pulled that off the stream. What?” That's why physical will always supersede digital, because digital can always be erased, or “whoops, I lost it on a hard drive that got dunked in water,” or they just decided to remove it from the platform.


[19:10] John: I mean, anything with digital is requiring that the company that you bought it from stays in business, or PDF remains a system that's always used, none of which lasts as long as any physical things. There's plenty of historical background that says that. What do you make of, or do you know anything about, the Neon Ichiban collectible digital comics? Do you know what I'm talking about?


[19:31] Rob: If I'm getting this right, I'm guessing this would be something like an NFT deal, where it's manufactured just for that one person, there's a tracking code on it, just like Bitcoin. I mean, everything has its moment. I mean, right now in comics, you have the blind bags, which are pretty much akin to the Labubus over in Japan, where you're seeing that people are spending, if it came out $10, a week, two weeks, a month later, it's now $100. Why? The mystery of what's inside, but when you're doing it with an NFT, yeah, it's yours, it’s fine, but it's hard to show that off to others on a platform like BlueSky, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, whatever it is. Otherwise, people go, “that's nice,” but when everybody else has the potential of going, “I have no idea what I might open inside,” and now you get the blind bag rally, which is going on right now in comics, like with the Mark Spears Monster and the Wolf, that just a couple of weeks ago when it was released, $6. Everyone online, within about a day, is charging about $12. Some of those books that, the day of release, it's a $5/6 book. Wait till the end of the week.

That one looks like that Chamber of Chills. They did an alternate version of this exact cover. It was the Chamber of Chills from the Golden Age #19. Mark Spears did that book. It's now a $70 book. If you would have paid about $6, hell, even $12 online, maybe a little bit inflated. It's what people want, and if people want that, they'll just keep making it until we go, “hey, we're a little tapped out there.”


[21:01] David: There has never been a phenomenon that I've understood less than the Mark Spears phenomenon. I don't get it. I don't get it even a little bit. I think he's a fine artist. I'm not convinced he's not triple-dipping into AI with some of the stuff he's doing, but that's an unfounded, probably false accusation, but I don't get the Mark Spears thing. Do you have any background on the Mark Spears thing, as a collector yourself? That seemingly came out of the blue a little bit, and for the last 12 months, man, his stuff's on fire.


[21:30] Rob: So, he's actually been around for a really long time. Back in 2001, he worked on Image. It was an interior. It was called Ultiman or Ultiman Special #1, and it's nothing to write home about. It's just some pencil and inks, but his work, as it started progressing over with Image, when he was working on some of the Spawn covers, they were alternate variants, and little by little, they started creeping up, like the Dan Mora covers of 2022. All those variants go for about $100 a piece now, out of the blue, and no one saw that coming, but here we have this guy that started out doing Kickstarters for this Monsters project, and it hit, and it hit so well that Keen Spot--I mean, who's Keen Spot? Not many people know who that is--It's like Ben Dunn, when he was putting out stuff from AP back in the day, but all of a sudden, his early Gold Digger stuff starts going through the roof, because he just kept doing it. Mark Spears is not an overnight success. It just seems that way, similar to Brian Michael Bendis, when he started doing stuff for Marvel. He was doing stuff for independent crime books for about a decade, even before he started writing Ultimate Spider-Man.

So, here you have Mark Spears--he's a little bit older than us by maybe a decade. He's in his 50s or so, and he's been observing what's been happening in comics over the last decade. When we watched Peter David pass away just, I think it was this year, where he was basically in debt. He stayed with Marvel. He didn't go to Image with everybody else, and he's watched, “you stay loyal to a company, good for you. Are we paying for your healthcare? No, we are not.” So, right now, anybody that's trying to put out blind bags or various covers, even to a point where it just seems like a glut, a lot of people are upset with that. Me, I'm not, because I see what they see. They don't want to die in debt. If they can make a good dollar right now, they're going to do it.

As far as AI is concerned, I can tell what's AI, and what's not. With the Mattina problem that we had about a year ago with Batman, and they took him off the book because it was AI, because you could clearly tell there's more fingers than should be there. “Oh, Superman's S? Why is there a double top to the top of the S there?” I don't see any of that with Mark Spears. Instead, all they really do is maybe trade dress. No trade dress. It's just basic Photoshop stuff. So, if Photoshop's the biggest problem, I mean, we have a lot of digital artists right now, but when I'm looking at the stuff that's selling in back issues, going back to 2022, and I was bringing up Dan Mora a second ago--Dan Mora books are very distinct. He's been around since at least about 2014, maybe ’16. He started with a book called Hexed, and then they started giving him some variant covers, and those variant covers, little by little, $10, $15, $30, $120 for some of those Nightwing covers, from the late 90s to the 100s in the series. People are going to buy what they're going to buy, but people also were getting a little tired of the digital slick effect, like Derek Chua, that artwork. It looks good, it presents well, but people still want that pen and ink.


[24:45] David: Yeah, for sure. John, did I tell the story about Dan Mora on the podcast?


[24:49] John: I don't think so.


[24:50] David: As an editor, I like to think that I have a really good eye for identifying art talent. I think it's definitely my strength. I've been doing it a long time. So, at IDW, I was running the Dungeons & Dragons book for a little bit, and--I could probably talk about this--Dark Horse came to us, and they wanted to do, I think it was Stranger Things/Dungeons & Dragons crossover--Stranger Things was super hot, and Dungeon & Dragons was on its way up as well, actually--So, everyone's like, “yeah, that's a great idea. We should definitely do that,” and I think they eventually did do that. So, we were like, “yeah, okay. Who's the artist?” And it must have been a Boom! Studios project. I can't remember who the crossover was with--


[25:29] Rob: We've done a lot of Power Rangers.


[25:31] David: So, it was Boom! Studios. I can't remember what the crossover was, but they're like, “we've got this really great artist. His name's Dan Mora. Check his stuff out,” and I looked at it. I was like, “absolutely not. We are not using this guy. He is not ready.” In my mind, I was like, “and he's never going to be ready.” I didn't say that part, but I was like, “he's not ready. He's not ready to take on a project like this. There's no way we could get him approved,” and might have been wrong on his particular trajectory within the industry. He's definitely a different artist from when he was proposed to me, but I did not see Dan Mora coming, at all. I did not see that he was going to be who he is, and nor did I even ever appreciate that he would be able to be as prolific as he is. Wow, is that guy prolific. That guy can really pump out a lot of books, and of great quality. I just read Justice League Unlimited, might be one of his last issues, Issue #10 or #11. Man, guy's good. Hats off. The guy knows what he's doing, but maybe not all the time do I know what I'm doing.


[26:32] Rob: None of us know what we're doing. We're just evolving, and then going with whatever feels right to us.


[26:38] David: Right. Like you said earlier, it's just a bunch of monkeys in a room. We're literally the million monkeys with typewriters, and every once in a while, one of us produces Shakespeare. That's literally what's happening.


[26:49] Rob: If you stick a bunch of monkeys in a room for about 10,000 years, they will eventually crank out the entire works of Edgar Allan Poe.


[26:56] David: Yeah.


[26:57] Rob: It's like what Kevin Smith said, “what is the very definition of success? Repeatedly failing, because eventually, you'll learn from it.” Art Adams started out trying to ape other people's styles, until somewhere along the way, when he's working on Godzilla in the late 80s, he really starts developing his style to what we know it as today. I mean, everybody starts out one way. Tim Vigil, when he's working on Grips, all the way to, I guess, Faust #15, which I won't get into that very much detail.


[27:25] David: They Kickstarted a hardcover of that Faust, the full Faust collection, which I got. It was gorgeous. John and I have been talking a lot about 3D comics. I desperately need to know what my Batman 3D comic book is going to be worth in a few years. For the listeners, John and Rob both looked at me like I was nuts. John, because we've been talking so much about 3D comic books, I picked up Batman 3D, the graphic novel. Do you remember that?


[27:52] John: The John Byrne one?


[27:53] David: Yes.


[27:53] John: Oh, yeah, no, 100%. I remember. I talked about that on a panel with you one time.


[27:57] David: Oh, that's right.


[27:58] John: You wonder why that isn't in print, and then you get to the part where Batman isn't able to solve the mystery, because the Riddler's joke is racist, and Batman is so not racist, he's not able to figure out what the riddle is for half the comic.


[28:12] David: Fantastic, and I just ordered a copy. It just came in the mail. I'm super excited to read it. I can't wait.


[28:17] Rob: Now, I'm curious.


[28:18] John: That is what it is, but it's not like it's okay with the joke being made. I can see why they didn't reprint it in the last few years.


[28:24] Rob: I mean, my problem with 3D is that I'm colorblind. So, for me to put on the glasses, I'm like, “this looks flat and blurry.”


[28:31] David: Yeah, that's not going to work for you.


[28:33] Rob: But on the other hand, comic books that came with 3D glasses, if they're not with it, it's worthless, but if it's with the 3D glasses, you might be one of those people that “hey, I kept everything together.”


[28:44] David: Oh, really?


[28:45] Rob: Way back in the day, you had Dave Stevens. He did a lot of 3D books, way back in the day, for Blackthorne. I mean, Seduction of the Innocent books. If it doesn't have the glasses inside the book, it's not complete.


[28:58] David: Yeah, of course.


[28:59] John: If you look at the values of those comics from Blackthorne--we do 3D comics at the company I work at. So, I've dug into the stuff, and you're like, “okay, #1 is $5, #2 is $3. #3 where Dave Stevens did a story is $675.” I never thought about trying to track them down. Specifically, looking for not the glasses if I just want to get those comics.


[29:22] Rob: Yeah, it's very similar to when Marvel was putting out books with the Marvel value stamp, or even my copy of the first appearance of Zatanna, where I got it a lot cheaper because somebody decided to go, “I'm going to clip that coupon,” and then thought better of it, and went, “no, I'm just going to stick it back in the book.” No tape, no nothing, just a loose coupon, but if it was something that was attached to the book--they even did Amazing Spider-Man #300, the supposed first full Venom, and there was a 3D comic with the 3D glasses that was attached inside the book. So, I open up every single poly bag, doesn't matter what it is, because if you send something off to CGC anyway, they're going to remove it from the bag, and unless you get it pressed, that line that goes down the back of the book is going to imprint on the book. So, those people that opened up the bag, they were smart enough to do that. Maybe they went, “I’ve got to see what this ASM #300 looks like in 3D.” Well, now you just destroyed the book, because you removed the glasses.


[30:21] David: There you go. Have we all decided that the poly bag doesn't need to stay on? Is that where we're at now?


[30:26] Rob: My hand’s raised with that.


[30:28] David: Yeah, okay. I still don't know. I got a magazine. I think it's Inside Image from 1995. Great Savage Dragon headshot cover, but I don't think it was drawn by Erik Larsen. Might’ve been Mike Miller. Anyway, I don't know who it was, but I just got that, and it's still in the bag, and I'm like, “oh, man, am I going to ruin the collectability of this?”


[30:46] Rob: The only thing I've ever kept inside the poly bag is the Superman #75, not the regular one. That's pointless. The Platinum Edition. That one, I'm keeping inside the bag. No particular reason. I know that everything that's in the back of the comic book is not going to have it imprinted on the back, but if you put it in a bag and board, or a Mylar, if that bag is wrinkled, it's going to imprint on the book, especially if it's been put inside a box that's very tight, but that's going to apply to just about anything that's in a poly bag. Once you put that poly bag into a bag, it's like putting a condom on with another condom. What are you doing? “I'm keeping it safe.” No, you're ruining your d!ck, you d!ck.


[31:28] David: The things we learn on the podcast, John. All right, I've got more questions, John. My next question is--I'm going to do another stupid one, John--Is there any collectability around these original computer generated comic books from back in the day, like Iron Man: Crash? Is there a market for any of that stuff?


[31:50] Rob: I mean, more as a curiosity than anything else. I mean, it’s like being in 2025. Try going back to watch that movie with the Rock, the Scorpion King. You watch that CG, and you go, “why does this look like a cut-rate scene from a PlayStation 2 game?” People are going to look back, and look at those, and go, “this is the original stuff before they really started progressing.” Progressing? We're still in 2025, and some of these movies using computer-generated effects still look like MODOK from Ant-Man 3. What is wrong with his head?


[32:24] David: Marvel, in particular, seems to be having some issues with budget.


[32:28] Rob: They needed to give their effects team more time to finish these things, instead of trying to just send something out to market before it's ready.


[32:37] David: Definitely paying a price for it. The thing about something like Iron Man: Crash is that there's no original art behind it, either. Maybe there's a floppy disk that exists somewhere that's got some of the original files. I don't know. There's no original art, and original art is such an important thing, especially, and seemingly more and more important every day. Do you dip into original art collecting, at all?


[32:57] Rob: I mean, I have that original piece by Scott Koblish that was used on an interior on one of the X-Men issues. It's Kitty Pride. It was given to me as a gift. I have a couple pages, here and there, but I don't know. Maybe it was because, way back in the day, I was a hardcore alcoholic, and I felt that I could not take care of this stuff well enough. Well, now, almost seven years sober, I'm like, “yeah, I think I could take care of this stuff.” Problem is that everything that was original art has quadrupled, gone up 10 times, 50 times. I mean, how much did that cover for Batman #423 by Todd McFarlane just go for? What, $748,000?


[33:34] David: It was an insane amount of money.


[33:36] Rob: I am not Phil Hester. I cannot collect artwork like how he does.


[33:41] David: That dude collects art. You know who else collects art? Nick Pitera. I think he only collects Frank Quitely art, but he's got a lot of Frank Quitely art, man. He's on Twitter or X, or whatever, all the time, talking about how great the latest piece of Frank Quitely artwork that he's showing off is, and he's got an impressive bunch of art, man. Some of the stuff he's showing is like, “whoa, that is a really important piece that you're just got a camera on right now. You're rubbing your finger all over it. Stop that.”


[34:11] Rob: And some of these people that are collectors, they almost put us in our place, where we realize that there's different stratigraphy for the various collectors out there, because occasionally, I'm posting stuff on BlueSky, and one of the books I posted today was Secrets of Haunted House #5. This year, that book really blew up. I post that, and goes, “hey, I saw the original piece of that.” I went, “I wouldn't be very surprised if you owned it.” “Oh, no. I got to see that at a friend's place, and he makes me look like an amateur.” What does that make me? If there's a rung, I'm down here at the bottom. I might have a lot of stuff, and there's various people that just get that better and better stuff.


[34:56] John: Friend of the show, and future guests at this point, Mason Rabinowitz, who I work with, when he's out at New York ComiCon, he went with Chris Ryall to John Byrne’s house. Who, evidently, has a lot of original art is John Byrne. So, he's got a Kirby wall. He's got Charles Schulz.


[35:13] Rob: Oh, wow.


[35:14] John: He's got a Rembrandt. Apparently, he's got all kinds of this stuff. There's a great video that was showing some of the rooms, and there were just all these action figures with Dick Sprang Batman art on the walls, all these pieces. It's not that he collects, like, “that's a pretty cool one.” He's got 4 pages from Superman/Spider-Man, the crossover.


[35:35] David: The original?


[35:35] John: The two-page spread. Those are the pieces. It's key pieces.


[35:41] David: And you know what? He probably got those a long time ago. I'm sure he paid a pretty penny for it, at the time he bought it.


[35:48] John: Yeah.


[35:49] David: Oh, my gosh.


[35:50] John: He does continue to add to this stuff. Mason was looking at that video from a couple years ago, and he's like, “okay, yeah. Imagine those shelves. They're twice as full now.”


[35:58] David: I like the idea that the working professionals in the industries covet the work of others that work in the industry. I really appreciate that. Nick Pitera fawning over Frank Quitely’s work, I love that, and I have no problem with that, whatsoever, that Nick Pitera studies it so much that it clearly shows up in his own work, obviously and clearly. I think that's great. Wear your love on your sleeve, and I don't know--it's a way that you're supporting and just loving the medium. I really like that. That's amazing about John Byrne. I actually have a little more appreciation for him hearing that than I think I would have.


[36:34] Rob: I always appreciate artists and writers that appreciate other artists and writers within the medium, because if comics really blew up in the 1930s, anybody that works in the industry, they're fans of fans of fans of fans. I mean, look at Roy Thomas when he started working in the industry. He was just a fan, and “hey, do you want to come work for us? Sure. Jump on board.” Some guy witnesses a page in, I think it was Marvel Presents, where he goes, “that's a little bit racist. Oh, yeah? Well, why don't you come in here and edit for us?” And that guy's name was Christopher Priest. It's fans of fans of fans of fans of fans, and I love it. So, whenever I hear somebody go, “yeah, I work on comics today, and I own all this artwork, or I have all these great comic books,” that's going to be the type of person I want to read their books, or look at their art. Back in the day, this is before on our show, when we took our break, we were doing a Kickstarter for people interviews to promote their books, and I'd ask some of the same questions. “So, who are the people that inspired you? I don't read comics. Well, I don't want to read your book.”


[37:38] David: Yeah. I appreciate when people have influences that come from outside of comic books. I think that's important, but I do like that people working in the medium are able to maintain a love for it, because sometimes, that's not easy.


[37:51] Rob: “Comics will break your heart, kid.” That's Jack Kirby. “Art should be in a museum.”


[37:55] John: Years ago, I had a table in a small press area at ComiCon. It's probably late 90s before I was at Marvel. Back in those days, I think they only had one FedEx Kinkos. Barrow was still Kinkos then. So, I'm in line there, and there's this dude ahead of me, and he's got a piece of original art, and he's going to make a copy of it, and he's showing it to me. I'm like, “oh, that's really cool. That's really cool.” I look down, and it's Roy Thomas. He was just that excited about the piece of original art he was going to Xerox, he was talking to some 20-year-old in line about it, and the other one is Gil Kane. I love Gil Kane. He's an amazing artist. He was well known for, back before Marvel did art returns, going in and stealing original art from other artists.


[38:33] David: I've heard that before. I love that.


[38:36] Rob: A lot of the stuff from the 60s and before, a lot of that was stolen, because Marvel threw most of that stuff away.


[38:42] John: It was like you pulled it out of Kirby's hands. You pulled it out of the closet.


[38:45] David: Yeah.


[38:46] Rob: Way back in the day, I went out there, and I'm trying to sell my book, and this guy comes to the table, and goes, “hey, I have all this original art,” and a lot of it was Jack Kirby, and the cheapest stuff that was in there were pages from, I don't know, Forever People. They didn't have any major characters on it. It's like, “for this one here, $100,” and my dad goes, “hey, Rob, do you want one of these? I'll buy one for you.” What 15-year-old kid is going to take really good care of artwork, even if you are an artist? So, I passed. One of the dumbest mistakes ever made.


[39:15] David: We all have one of those. We all have many of those. The amount of times that I had the opportunity to buy stuff, but at the time, it was hundreds of dollars, which at the time, I didn't have it. I didn't have hundreds of dollars, and now it's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what are you going to do? Keep moving forward.


[39:34] Rob: We just keep moving forward, because today in 2025, there are things that are all around us right now. I remember when I was living in New York for a short period of time, and it was 9/11, and I was saying, “this is the worst day of our lives,” and somebody right behind me went, “yeah, well, this is today. One day, today will have been 20 years ago,” and that thought stays with me forever, because, I mean, we talk about 1990s comics, “Oh, that stuff is garbage,” but now today, some of those 90s books, they're starting to rise a bit. Why? “That was almost 30 years ago.” Today, there's plenty of stuff. There's plenty of great creators, plenty of great writers. You'll be offered stuff that'll be pretty cheap, and one day, today will have been 20 years ago. This podcast that we're recording right now, one day, will have been 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago. Things that you think are worthless now, like that reprint of New Mutants #95--Once upon a time in the 90s, we all said, “reprints? That's garbage,” and people treated them as such, and now you're realizing that the CGC census count, when you're seeing total amount of things submitted, if it's under 100, it's rare. Well, guess what? Some of those things that were second prints, they're rare now. We didn't realize they were rare. We just went “second print? It's garbage.” All it takes is time.


[40:57] David: Yeah. Well, Rob, thank you so much for being on the show, once again. It's a pleasure having you here.


[41:04] Rob: Thank you so very much for having me back on the show again. For those that want to pay attention, to find out what happens after this show, well, tonight we are putting on Episode 212 of Not Near Mint. We're going to be talking about Halloween, because it is Halloween, and if you're listening to this when it comes out, Halloween is all the time of year, if it's in your heart.


[41:26] David: You have Kevin Freeman on your show, occasionally, right?


[41:29] Rob: Yes, we just added him to the show. He's a doctor. He does shorts every day. He's doing videos almost every day. When I saw the amount of stuff that he was putting out and doing, I went, “hey, do you want to be on our show just once?” He's like, “yeah, I'd like to join,” and I asked him again, and now he's a regular.


[41:47] David: Little known fact, Kevin Freeman was my Editor-in-Chief at Ape Entertainment, for a time. Tell Kevin I said hey. Love that guy. He's got a really good collection, too. That guy's got some eye-popping stuff. So, anyway, thanks, Rob. Thanks again for joining us. Everybody, go check out Not Near Mint. If you're on BlueSky, he's got a great Sunday Top 10 List that I love checking out. Hopefully, we'll be able to have you on again, sometime.


[42:12] Rob: Absolutely. Thank you so much.


[42:14] John: Great to see you again.


[42:15] Rob: You, too, John. Thank you so much.


[42:16] David: All right. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Like and subscribe, and all that jazz, and we'll see you next week on The Corner Box. Bye.


This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. Join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.