Comics & Cinema: Where Ink Meets the Screen - Episode 25

Comic books are more than entertainment—they are modern mythology, capturing the hopes, fears and imaginations of generations.

In this episode of Spink Insider, Nik Von Uexkull, Head of Auctions, is joined by Tom Dumas, Comic Book Specialist at Ewbank's Auctions to discuss the evolution of comics from a niche hobby into one of the defining storytelling mediums of our time.

From Batman and the psychology of heroes and villains to comic book grading, collecting and the growing auction market, this conversation explores why these remarkable works on paper continue to inspire readers, collectors and filmmakers alike.

Whether you're passionate about comics, cinema or collecting, there's something here for every enthusiast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Spink Insider, the podcast where history is valued. My name is Nick von Uxgall. I'm the global auction manager at Spink Auctions. And today I'm joined by Tom Dumas, the head of comic books at UBanks. So, uh let's get cracking. Um so Tom, would you like to give a little bit more of a brief overview of your bio and how you got into comics and what your to job role really is at at UBanks?

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Absolutely. Um I've been into comics for as long as I can possibly remember. Um I either luckily or unluckily, I'm not sure which yet. I grew up without a TV. So from almost from the cradle, I was thrust into libraries and you know books and graphic novels. Found them really before I could even read, and it's not gone away. I've been working in comics for twenty two years and counting. That's gone quick.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Um in different capacities, there's been various shops involved, there's been different like, you know, st uh levels to it. And in a high level in the auctioneering world, it's just been the most amazing evolution and the next step along the whole chain, really. So if I look back from where it all first started years ago, my very first ever shop in Bromley to where it is now, it's just been a complete journey.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Fascinating. And I in terms of the twenty-two years, how would you say it's the market's sort of developed from when you first started?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Pretty drastically. Yeah. Um You know, in those last twenty-two years we've seen a pretty huge evolution of the internet, which is allowed to, you know, online any form of commerce has just exploded and evolved. Trends can come and go very, very quickly now, whereas opposed to perhaps a couple of decades ago, they're a lot more glacial in pace. So a trend can come and go, particularly in comics, within a couple of months in a new market. Yeah. And we're seeing now an absolutely rabid increase in 30s, 40s, 50s comic books, which at the time in the like 80s, early 90s, were heroically uncool. You know, you were wildly unpopular if you're digging back that early. Whereas now that the complete opposite is true. It's certainly allowed things to speed up. So in the world of auctioneering, it's yeah, it's been very much to the benefit and the awareness of it all, it's just seems to increase almost every single quarter. It's it's been a wild ride.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Is that like slabbing is I guess is a major part of that? Didn't you say is that sort of that sort of kick started it a little bit as well in terms of the the uptake curves of 30s, 40s, 50s, I guess you can a lot of them would have been ungraded, I imagine.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

No, it's a great one actually, because what that did do was allow a level of comfort in buying those older material. And with that level of increased comfort and knowledge, so did come the prices as well. You know, and the uh a lot of the level of the realized prices in 30s material, 40s mature absolutely exploded with the rise of grading. Now, comic grading has been around for as long as comics have been around, but in terms of certifying, you know, by um third-party services who have got no skin in the game, that changed everything. And there's a bunch of grading companies who are doing what they do to, you know, great professionalism. They really have changed and added a lot to it. But what that did allow was a brand new buyer who had never who d there's always going to be a buyer who's perhaps a little bit more reticent, a little bit shy about who do I go to, who do I ask, you know, do I I don't want to appear uncool in front of my mates who know a bit more than me and I don't know quite what, you know, who to trust, even websites, books and so on. It can be a mind filled for an uninitiated buyer who desperately wants to get into it. That was hard. And what grading did, it allowed people to go, I desperately want to get involved in this, but I'm not quite sure how to. They were in. And that changed everything.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

And do people collect like a specific, let's say, comic book character, or do you say they sort of they con they they select a certain era of the comic books or action comics, or do they go to a DC, or do they stick with Marvel? Do they I'm also sure there's some completists, or you find that certain people just collect one specific character?

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Everything. So I'd say the early origins of comic books era, 1938 through to the modern day, have largely been character-driven. Prior to 1938, you had comics and you had funnies and your political funnies and proto-superhero comics, for example. And people still collected them. But with a character, with a hero, that allowed you to latch on to someone that you went like, you, you're my guy. I want everything to do with you. And then there's the pantheon of characters in c you know, you evolves, you get the villains, you get the subsidiary characters, and you can just if you take Spider-Man, for example, if you get a Spider-Man collector, uh, you're a Spider-Man collector. But I've met collectors who identify with just some of his villains. I was speaking to a gentleman literally just this last week. All he wants to collect is hobgoblin appearances. One of not even the Green Goblin, you know, he picked the third most popular goblin and went, you. I'm in. That's his shank. And that's that's great fun. That's of a niche within a niche within a niche. You tend to find collectors who only collect DC or Marvel. Yeah. You tend to find collectors who really appreciate just one era because the style of art was very highly concentrated towards perhaps a certain House style. If you look at the early House style of Marvel comics, or Atlas as they were known in the 50s, very different from the house style they would then have in the 70s and the 80s. You know, and then a lot a lot of the times if you s if you show it like a 50s purist, what was popular in the 70s, they'll look at you like that as anathemo and go, What have you done to me? I feel betrayed. But it's it's so personal. Comic book, it's you largely the because there's so much to love, you tend to find it is highly personal. There's a lot of composition in a comic that's minimum, normally about 32 pages. There's a start, there's a middle, and an end, there's a rogue. There's a lot to love. So but if you don't come out of it loving something, you know, we've got to find you another comic. There's a lot of love. So you tend to find they latch onto something and then follow that rabbit hole as hard as they can. I do.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah. I don't think we're talking up there, obviously, about Blade. Is there do you think as a certain movie comes out? Is there a certain that character suddenly becomes like right? Like just his initial take up is huge. You know, because I know Spider-Man in O2 were like rhymey and like that seemed to take that took off. That was like the movie that everyone wanted to see and everything.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Very much so. So Blade Wesley Snipes quite recently I think he I think he reprised his role in the most recent Deadpool movie. He did, yeah, yeah. Um and fans love that. Wesley Snipes has had various um public perceptions over the years. He's had quite a few headlines. I think it's fair to say obviously both good and bad. Um if you if he had done that perhaps ten years ago, maybe a different reception. But the fact he did it now, nostalgia often operates in 25 to 35 year old cycles. When he came back for Deadpool, fans went, Yes, mate, I'm in. Suddenly, Tumba Dracula issue number 10, the very first ever appearance of Blade, that was doing twice the value of what it was a couple of years ago. Yeah. That was an immediate increase. And if you've got high grade copies of a tumor dracular number 10, you were a happy boy. Thank you, Wesley Snipes.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Good day.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

And I know from your you're a big Batman fan of. Who told you? Oh yeah, there's a few sources online. Um is that your is that the first one you really when you started collecting as a kid, was that not the character, or do you were there others sort of that preceded it?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Um the very first one to get me was Judge Dread, given to me by my uncle, and he happened to give me one of the most violent Judge Dread issues of all time. So my mother and my uncle had a different conversation shortly thereafter I found Batman. Yeah. Um and I was only young, I was like maybe like about five. Yeah. Um, something really hit me about that early artwork. I mean, it there was so there was re there was a real kind of grit and a heft to the artwork that was coming out in the early 80s and the middle eighties. I mean, you like you've got Titans of the industry coming into their work at that point. You've got the Frank Millers, you've got the Alan Moores, you've got the Grant Morrisons, guys who literally changed the industry. Now I'm not talking in a way that they kind of gave a bit of a curveball. The word graphic novel wasn't really really being thrown around before the 80s. That was a change in the medium. And Grant Morrison and Alan Moores, their work meant that the whole medium had to change with it. Now, with that, so did come the artwork. Suddenly you had boys like Dave McKean and Bill Sinkovich going, you know what would really be cool? What if we threw layers of almost like pre-Raphaelite level darkness on this and suddenly go, you know what? Let's just really show what this colour palette can be. Let's take away the colour for colour stock and just go bang. Like so at that point the 60s is gone, and suddenly you've got genuine art hitting the page, issue after issue, month after month, year after year. The whole thing changed. And I just I fell down that rabbit hole really hard. And I've not come out.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

No, I mean, I mean, for me, what like Sin City, I think is one of the greatest applications. It's absolutely amazing. And I was actually a big fan of The Watchman. Obviously, I loved the graphic novel actually for Zach Snyder did a pretty good job.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Um they did, they did. Yeah. I mean, I particularly loved the early origin story of that Sin City movie where he just took the graphic novel into the studio and was like, I want to make this, and they were like, Okay, so okay, so how do we script it? It was like, no, no, no, no, no, I want to make this. I was like, okay, do we need a story? Oh no, no, I want to make this. It's we're good to go. Yeah. We're good to shoot.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

I think, you know, obviously the second one didn't do so well, even though I actually I quite liked it actually. Um but I thought that was that was the artistry and actually coming into movies, it kind of it was almost graphic novels and was cool to like, you know, this sort of idea of mean because comic books always had a little bit of a I think before the Marvel movies came out it was a little bit of an association with being a little niche and a little nerdy, etc. But I think graphic novels and suddenly, oh I actually I can admit to really loving comic books and graphic novels, and I think that's changed in the last 20 years for sure. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Um Yes, it's um that was a huge part. I mean, when Frank Miller dropped the Good Sin City graphic novels and the issues in Dark Wars, everything changed for them as a company. Uh he was one of the gentlemen who said, you know what, a comic can it can be 24 pages. I actually did this one might be 72. Actually, my storyline this time it might just be one issue. This this storyline's gonna be nine. The rules were just exploding year in, year out. And what you had was a brand new medium where you weren't locked into something that had been around since the 30s. You could kind of do whatever you wanted, and it was it felt like that. It felt like in the movie adaptations of the comics that were coming out at the time as well. People like, wow, this was almost like a wild west. When movie makers started tapping into those comics, like we've got 60 years of this stuff to go through. Yeah. Jeepers. And you felt that.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And in your personal opinion, do you like many of the movies that have been made from the comics? Or do you feel like a lot of them have been a bit of a letdown? Or do you think in general? Um because I I personally feel like Marvel have dropped the ball a little bit, and I think that's why they're returning to the beloved like Spider-Man, Avengers, trying to get them back on even keel again, because it was that end of Avengers endgame, and after that it felt quite uncertain. And I feel like now they're trying to resuscitate it, going back onto it. But I never felt they had the real bravery to make like a Hulk standalone movie. It was like, where do you go down? Do you just make it comic, or do you really go into the true darkness of the character?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

To m many parts of that I would agree. I think one of the main pitfalls of the comic movies that we've seen perhaps over the last ten years was that he suddenly thought, okay, more is more. And not necessarily. I mean, a lot of the these big Titanic heroes we think of in superhero comic publishing. They've had one issue a month, you know, month in, year in, year out, forever. So that schedule's been pretty regular. We can grow with that. And the movie, a lot of the movie producers, no one in particular, but rather than having, you know, a couple of comic book movies a year from where they have they started out in the early origins and the early echelons, if you look at how Marvel started their movie studios, they were like, okay, we'll give you like, you know, three, four a year. Suddenly that became twelve. And that that's a lot. You know, if you if I if I tried to sell you an issue of Spider-Man a month, you'd be like, I'm cool with that. So if I tried to sell you ten, you'd be like, oh, hang on a minute. Hang on a minute, the deal has changed. And you might tell me to go away in in a slightly different tone of voice. And that's that would be fine with that. And that's what audiences did. You know, there was some great stuff in there, there was gold in there, but at the same time, the saturation of anything is never going to be great. So the good ideas are still there. The good movies are very much, they're still there. I mean, you've got a recent delivery, like you know, I know it's it's not even yesterday anymore. It's Deadpool's been Deadpool 3 has been around for a few, I want to say off the top of my head, 18 months. Yeah. Don't quote me on that, I might look wrong. But uh it's I think it's 18 months. Um audiences responded to that in a way we haven't seen for a while. They love that movie. I love that movie. I thought it did its job really well. You know, it handled its storyline content, of which it did some there was some deep cuts in there. Did good, did really good. There were and I think fans at this point, they've got so many resources, they've got so much history to draw upon, they're so intelligent. They don't want to be fobbed off for lack of better better, you know, lack of a better word. They just want to see their stuff, which they love, treated with a little bit of respect. You do that, you'll win every time.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah. I mean, I think that's no sport. I think that has been a that obviously they brought in Wolverine, which really kicked kicked obviously deadline. The promotion was great. Everything was fantastic, you know, like it was very colourful and vibrant, all the promotion on the on the underground, etc. etc. I thought it was very strong. Yeah. Um, it's just interesting because I didn't really like the Superman movie last year that James Gunn did, so I was sort of intrigued where DC are now going with the Batman 2, and then they've also got some new projects, I think, uh new characters as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

They really do. I mean, the the Bat uh the Batman movie I I particularly loved as a Batman fan. That did a couple of fan favourite storylines of which I generally I love with all my heart and soul, and are considered just general fan favourite storylines. Real justice. I mean, that took a it riffed heavily off the Long Halloween, which in itself is just a cr classic, almost 40s crime noir. You know, it's it's good versus evil 101, good boy versus you know, good guy versus bad guy in the street, job done. And it did that. It didn't need, you know, it didn't need anything massive, but it did that really well. So quite where the the delay in the second movie, I'm I'm not in the the movie industry, I don't know where that delay is coming from, but I do know that a lot of my audiences that they are all over that. They want that tremendously. That's what they want to see, as opposed to a slightly mislanding gun Superman movie. Yeah. And I think it's it's hard to really put directly into words what that made that movie such a hit because it was so simple. What made it work was so simple. There was no big juicy magic formula, they just did the basics and did it right.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

And I think where the Superman movies are a little bit more misguided is that they they just missed that mark.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

You know I always feel like the Superman movies are trying to do a greatest hits compilation. It's like the audience knows Lois, the audience knows that he's Superman, you know, he's Clark. And I feel that th they they've never really got back to Christopher Reeves, is that there was a difference between Kent and Superman, which made the comic element into it. Yeah. And I think Singer did quite well with Superman Returns, where he still had that going through. But since then I felt it's just he's always just Clark Kent wearing a Superman suit.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Very true.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Which and it's great it's very true. Lots of act they always seem to focus very much on the action side of it and not really the heart and soul of what makes Clark Kent. Yeah. Um, and I think that's obviously what goes into the comic books as well, and obviously when Smallville and things like that have really always gone into very much so. Um and I think that's that I was just interested where James Gunn is gonna take whether he's gonna merge those two because they seem so opposed. They really are from what Matt Reeves is doing with the Batman and James Gunn is doing with Superman.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Personally, there this is um some DC execs are probably gonna want to stick a few things in the mail on me about this. I think there's nothing wrong with them being so separate. Now, Marvel got lucky because then their their comic universe is very intermingled, it's very woven. So there's nothing really wrong with doing your movies like that. It's in fact it's quite easy to weave them as a result of that. Whereas if you look at the DC comics and what makes them work on the page, they are so separate. Like Batman has teamed up with Superman from early days and like you know, the world's finest comics and and so on. But if you look at their singular titles, they are operating in completely different spheres. And you don't have to merge them. I think people got very excited in the aftermath of the Avengers movie, going, Oh, we can combine everything.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Yeah, with the Justice League and everything. It was um But again, that was fan power that got the cut released, at least Snyder's Cut, because this film was hacked to pieces. Yes. What was released was a pr it was a pretty shoddy, yeah, shoddy example of what a studio can do when they want to get a movie out there.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Unlimited power, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Which still made about six hundred million dollars, so it shows that the studio in the end they got their money back. But as a movie, it was just felt like it had been cut to pieces and no one had actually checked the final cut.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Yeah, I think that was also some it was such an unfortunate situation behind the making of the movie, and it was yeah, that was not an easy situation. Yeah, the fact they still got that out of it is truly remarkable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

And there were some ballsy ideas, I thought, in that movie, in the sense that they had they really went for it in the actual Snyder cut, in things in which I hadn't actually seen before in a comic book movie, particularly the the hellish universe of what what happens if you know at the end and these sort of dreams, nightmare scapes that he came up with. Yeah, yeah. Um, which would be really cool, actually expanded upon, but I'm not sure James Gunn's going to go into that territory. But maybe.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I mean, they've been expanding upon it quite recently in the Batman comics in the last ten years. Um, there's been some truly awesome examples of that done. Um I'd love to see it. I I don't think I don't think that would work quite well in Batman 2, but you know, maybe in times to come.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

And he almost feels like a character Batman where you can take a lot of risks and the audience will still come. Like when the Batman, I felt it was quite a risky film in terms of the way he went, but it seems audiences will always flock to see Batman.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Million percent, million percent. So if you if you stick out um a Spider-Man movie where it's gone too far, you know, to either side, audiences are gonna sniff a rogue and be like, nah, that's not for me, quite quickly. But Batman has been drawing upon what we could like in the comics, they're just called Elsewells, just alternate takes on Batman for as as long uh basically since the Silver Age now, there's been different takes and very much almost like anthology-like, what this'll be cool, this would be cool. And Marvel have got that too, they've got the entire what if storyline and all like that. But Batman is the one character you go, you know, what if he wore a suit of armour? What if he was fighting dragons? What if he was evil? What if you know, whatever you want to name? There's probably been an iteration where they've kind of tried it. The fans would like if anything, you've probably hit the nail on the head and go, you know, fans would probably love that more in some ways, than just another straight down the app. Like we've seen that a bunch of times. People like the playfulness of that. The most recent Batman movie was straight pure Crime in the Wild Batman, which made it work very well. But if you really played around um, I mean the DC fans are clamoring for that, which is just uh zombies and Batman basically right now, it that would work. People would go.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Well, people still had the they wanted trying to get the Nick Cage, Tim Burton Superman, weren't they? Superman Liz trying to push for that to uh to come into fruition.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

I think Nick Cage was pushing pretty hard for it.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Yeah, I think he was. I mean I obviously he had the Superman comic book, didn't he, stolen back in 2000 from his LA home.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

So I know he's very Wells is a s there's a story behind that particular comic, yeah. That's he he bought that a few times in the end.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Well he has a habit of seeming to do that, he buys something, he sells it, changes his mind. So uh yeah. But I know that was one movie where they made the documentary about it and it was like, can it get made? And it was one of those lost kind of projects, which on paper sounds really cool and actually very out there. Uh but whether it would ever be made, I I it seems they always seem to default to Lex Luther and it's like let's move on with that kind of thing, which is a little bit of a shame.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

For sure. For sure. Um but for many fans in the last I'd say 20, maybe a little bit longer, the animated verses of the both DC Mobile have become so important with Canon storylines and material because they've adapted things really, really eloquently. Like these have done justice to the source material in ways that perhaps it's arguable wouldn't be done on the big, big screen.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah, you've got pretty more flexibility in terms of there's not the budget pressures and all that sort of thing. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

You know, we've seen that in both Marvel and DC, where they've adapted some pretty wacky storylines and they've just been absolute stormers. I mean, the ultimate verse, Miles has been done particular justice with animated and CGI movies, and you know, when he does land a big screen, that's gonna go off like an atom bomb. But up until now, a lot of what people deem to be quite almost too far out there has been done brilliantly. So I'd say the animated material for me is almost as important. I mean, you can look at a movie like Batman Under the Red Hood, for example, which really, really Really goes into the Jason Top mythos in a way that fans have been clamoring to see for a while. Now that's not hit the big screen. No way, yeah. But that animated movie smashed that. And that we saw huge repeat interest in those characters on every level of commerce, from the graded, from the Grails, from the first appearances, just if you look at uh if you ask some of the big retailers for their graphic novel stats. That movie was instrumental in turning something around that hadn't even been put in front of a camera. So the animated stuff for me, I think, is needs to be constantly reiterated as being very powerful, powerful product as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yeah, and I think that's as we said, the got the flexibility. There's a freedom with that to actually be able to say, you know what, we don't have the pressures of the budget, we don't have the pressures of a cost. Yeah, we can really go all out.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

For sure. They're probably the luckier ones if if I'm honest. They probably get away. They do it good.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

And is the is the Matt Reeves Batman? Is that your favourite iteration on screen of the Batman?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Or I didn't realise we were asking such personal questions today, boy.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Um I'm a big Christopher Nodal fan personally. Yeah. But so it's it's yeah, yeah. But I equally I do like Tim Burton's versions back in the 90s as well.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

What makes he knows it's so hard. I mean, you ask me three different days, you'll get three different answers. The Burton, the Burton the Burton Batman is wonderful. Um arguably, I think, because Nicholson did his thing and cemented that movie for many people. Um now, did Keaton make it work? Of course he did. Keaton did wonders with that role where nothing, you know, you look at his immediate precess predecessor and you go back to uh the the 60s wham bam thank you man bop and pal. Yeah, very different. I loved it, I loved it. And then when I saw the Nolan take, that just I I at that point when I watched the Nolan, I was like, nothing will beat this forever. And then when I watched the Reeve, I was like, nothing will beat this forever. So they're still finding new levels. Now I I think yeah, the Reeve, um, that is currently my favourite take on the Batman that I've seen so far, just because of what they were managed to do with such simple material. Because the Long Halloween Batman by Frank Miller year one, these are cornerstones on what fans now not maybe necessarily expect, because even if fans haven't read those particular storylines, the product they happen to read now has been shaped by these stories that they might not even know. But those storylines have absolutely shaped the direction of character for the last three decades. Now that Reeves portrayal and directorial piece for me it was like watching poetry in motion. I was just like, that's incredible. I was what I just want more. I just want more of that. The Nolan very much felt like um I'm not sure I'm not entirely sure how to describe that perfectly. It was all at the time I thought, crikey, this is quite an experiment, you know. Like how serious can you make a comic book movie? Or we're doing a superhero stuff now. Now this is just felt like, you know, action movie. It was almost like um Heat, for example. I was like, wow, okay. And I I almost forgot I was watching comic book movies, if that makes sense. I knew I was watching Excellence and I loved it, but when I was watching the most recent edition, I was like, I am I am in that I'm in Gotham, I'm in that comic book world.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

I mean Begins is quite comic book, not too much. It's quite different to Dark where he takes it, isn't it? I think it was like three years later, Dark Knight takes a lot of Michael Mann shootouts and it becomes like a crime for and it doesn't it it's so different in many ways to Begins, even the sense I think a lot of people hadn't seen Begins and then they came to see the Dark Knight and then they spot on. They don't realise how good Begins is, but it's like it's quite a different movie to to um to Dark Knight Rise well, Dark Knight and then Dark Knight Rises.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, the sequel was I think on I can't remember when the but I remember just thinking, what's it made at this point? And when I checked it, then it was on 1.3 billion. I was like, right, okay, a lot more people have seen this movie than Begins. You know, so that uh good crazy numbers. It's probably it was probably something three three times as many went to see that at the cinema than they did Begins.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Because I think after Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, the character had been left alone for maybe seven, eight years. Delicately put. And I do remember at the time there was a little bit of uncertainty about because I think even the budget for Begins was maybe 110 million or well, it was not sort of they weren't throwing money at it as much as you would have expected. They were not, no. Um which minus things to do with, you know, Val Kilma Blabert, God bless his office, uh suit, and then of course St. Clooney with his classic uh Classic. You know, use the Bat credit card and things like that. So um yeah, it's uh and are those two films I imagine that most real Batman fans are they just try to remove those, or is there still some sort of Well, I'll give you a deep cut from my personal history here.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

My three favourite Batman villains of all time are one Miss Pamela Risley, uh Victor Strange. Sorry, not Victor Strange, Victor Freeze even, and Bain. So I really struggle with Batman and Robin because they're all in there. Uh my three favourite villains are in that movie. And I'm the movie cannot well, I assume you've seen the movie or I've had the joy.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

You've had the pleasure. It is an enjoyable film, if you watch it in the right way.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

So I have gone through various iterations with that movie. I remember watching it as a kid, thinking, I actually I will rephrase that, when I watched it as a kid, it actually didn't make that much of an impact. I don't really remember it seeing I don't remember seeing it. I know I did a couple of times, but it didn't resonate. It's kind of like uh youngsters when they watch some of the Star Wars prequels, for example, it doesn't really hit for them. They still love the originals the most. Time, like you know, stats will show that that those are the ones they gravitate through towards the most. The the excess, the CGI for whatever, it just didn't hit. So too was the same the same for me with Batman and Robin. It didn't didn't grab me. Watched it again as a teenager, loathed it. Uh watched it again, I'd say, last year. I found an odd charm, which I did not expect to find. And there is a growing there is a growing adoration for that movie, which I never ever expected to see, to the point now where the the merchandising around that movie now is higher than what it was almost at the time. That's remarkable. You can look at uh, you know, huge, huge companies like Sideshow and Hot Toys are now like having great success with that movie. Um and partly it might be because the portrayals are done by people that are still fan favourites. I mean, you know, Arnie and Clooney are still beloved by people worldwide. But people are now producing very expensive bits of ephemera, statues, thousand-pound pieces here, there, and everywhere. About that movie now, which did not happen at the time, some were made, but that movie is now earning more today than when it did at the time.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

That's when nostalgia truly kicks in.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

That is the nostalgia vibes. And I was watching it going, you know what? And I think the best way to describe it is I'll and I watched it and that was my reaction. It's like you tried. There was an attempt, but there was no loathing, there was no hatred. I was alright with it. And I didn't expect that. If you'd have asked me a couple of years ago, you know, it would have been like pain, famine, you've wounded me. No, no, it's all right.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

So I kind of almost prefer it to Batman Forever. I kind of I I think it's almost just it's kind of entertaining in its own way. With Batman Forever, I I really didn't like for so many reasons.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

But uh I can I totally I can totally understand. I it's it's almost like you know, being in a bit of a hallucinogen. It's just so far that, you know, you Gotham is out there in those two movies.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I mean, it is like no town you could ever imagine existing in. I mean Wayne lives out in this country manner and he goes into this circus of a of a city which just seems to be full of crazy people.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

So it's like very much the comics of the 90s. If you look at what one Mr. Kelly Jones was doing, um wonderful comic artist, um, very extreme, you know, really real it was comics. It was he was going above and beyond. He was a gentleman who took Batman's ears and said, Okay, I know they're that long, but what if they were that long? He was that guy. And I think that's that's kind of what uh Mr. Um sorry, Mr. Joel Schumacher saw.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

And if you can look you can look at a lot of the storyboarding, and Kelly Jones's artwork was all over studios at that particular point, and that like the extra um the extremity of what they were working with, they tried to channel, and to some experience they did. I mean, you look and look at Poison Ivy's origin point in that movie where she explodes through her labor uh laboratory, and there's the vines and there's the creeping and the crawling, the gl the glowing lights in the corner, and there's a you know, there's a door saying exit with like with hammered on bolts and studs, and it's like it's just pure comic book theatre. It took a while for people to like it. Yeah. 30 or 40 years, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

We're we're getting we're slowly maybe catching up.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

A little bit.

SPEAKER_00 30:59

Maybe we're a bit head of the time.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Exactly. You know, in 2050 it'll be a classic.

SPEAKER_00 31:03

Yeah. Well, nothing to be honest, nothing would surprise me. You know, it's uh things just little seem to kick up, or nostalgia, always those funny ways of bringing up things we didn't expect that we suddenly take off.

SPEAKER_02 31:14

For sure. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

No, it's it's just it's a fascinating character though, just the fact that you have that many iterations of it, and we can and you can sort of appreciate e each one all the way back to the 60s of Adam West and then was so different, and then coming back, and then it's like 30 years later, you've got this Jack Nicholson Joker, and it's so just even now everyone just you know, no one talked about the Joker without mentioning obviously his name. Yeah. Um the fact that he took star billing in that film as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Um, which is very unusual.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

I believe he took star billing with a record Hollywood payout at that point as well. I think he he did alright.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Yeah, he did I think he's he did good. Yeah. And in terms of like going back to coin books, is would you say that also collecting just in general is is really strong, as well as the people are also I can imagine there's quite a few just like what we do here, coins and banknotes. A lot of people buy just a grade and try and get the highest slab number, whereas some people like to keep them outside of the slabs and to enjoy them as the historical items they are and hold them in, etc. Imagine is it sort of a similar you say it's like 50-50, or is it sort of more people are they immediately buy it and they're like, I might get an eight or a seven point five or something with the slabbing?

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Um It's definitely an evolving stat, I'd say. It's uh so when it comes to modern material, slabbing is is huge because you your chances of achieving you know those really desirable high numbers. I mean, anything north of a nine point two is generally considered near mint. And if you were to look at a nine point two comic, you'd go, golly, that's pr that's pretty gorgeous. However, what the clientele and fans really want on moderns is those nine sixes, nine eights, they'll say the nine nines and tens, which also exist as well. That is now more prevalent than ever. So if you were to rewind 10 years, people were hunting maybe just for you know a nine-six, but now people are just almost purely hunting the nine eight, nine nine, a ten if you can get it on a modern. So the demand for perfection is increasing. But also awareness on golden age material, anything up until 1955, generally where the cutoff for golden is is considered to be, uh, is greater than ever before. And of course, if you take a golden age example, you can take a six in a golden age example, and that thing's looking good. You know, so like you know, audience perceptions is very, very different. Everything is growing. And we're seeing record numbers of people slabbing everything. And I think it's genuinely part of preservation, genuinely also part of investment as well. The investment side of the industry has never ever been higher. That just comes with a knowledge and the awareness of the product that with every year it gets a year older. We're nearly on a century of comic books now. We're over a century of comic books, but since with superhero comics came in in 1938 with the Action Comics One, we're we're getting pretty close. You know, in our lifetimes we're gonna be on a century of comic books before we know it. That's very cool. Everything is, I'd say, rising at the right. Now, what Covid did, it absolutely inflated the bubble, like it almost did across you can take any example of commerce you want and COVID basically through you know, through a wrench in there. And there was some pretty wild stats coming out of that. Where comics are now they're back on the curve, and that curve is gently rising each passing year. Moderns this last year, uh modern age releases of like brand new comics hitting the stores around the world every single week, are currently enjoying greater significance than what they were a couple of years ago. That's incredible. You know, and if you look across what I call debt-based commerce around the world, AK, I'm giving you a fiver for that thing right there. Many things have suffered, many things, and we're seeing various industries suffer and make cuts here. Their comics and they just seem to keep on growing. Nice and gently, they keep on growing. Now that is due to them being more available around the world in many different languages, more available from movies. Everyone's got a phone in their pocket that they can read or look at a comic on the screen in a heartbeat. That wasn't always the case. You go back 40 years, no chance. You know, you've now got people with an awareness of this and they're loving it, and you go to them, okay, well now you love it, you know there's a century to find of it, right? And that just goes up. And every year that goes on, as the collectors come and go, the investors only ever seem to grow. Because what it's you know, it's like land, they don't make it no more. You can't remake the 30 stuff anymore. Exactly, yeah, yeah. People find this stuff every year and they're like, okay, now I've got when did Batman begin? Oh cripe, okay. That's a collection to do. Yeah. Only ever grows.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

Well, you think about it, is it's so many years. I mean, you it's not like a new collectible, really. I mean, it's it goes back, like you say, a century. Long term.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So grading uh the purpose of grading is is changing, I'd say, in the modern if you were to shine a gaze on on the modern side of the industry, the the point and the purpose of grading is evolving. Rewind 10 years, people would just grab a new modern comic and perhaps they wanted to grade it for display. That was a big thing we saw. And now the purpose, I think, the pendulum that is swung slightly more towards the investment side and moderns. And when it comes to historical I say historical comics, but comics with a slightly more historical side, silver age, golden age, you know, the early origins of Marvel, the early origins of DC. It's quite rare for collections to to not be slapped because people now realise to a greater extent than ever that preservation is so important. And that's that is really uh a huge part of the joy of comic book collecting. We love seeing these things in high grade condition. Now, my personal comic collection looks like it's been set on fire. I've read them so many times, and I love those things. That's right. So there's absolutely a different facet of it. My favourite Batman's my favourite Judge Dreads. You'd struggle to find pages that aren't folded and increased that I've used for art reference in your college or uni or something like that. But I also tend to have a kind of like a nice copy as well. So even though I say that, I've still often ended up buying a version of that particular piece in high grade that I really love. And I just I cannot seem to help that from happening. That that's the instinctive drive in the collector is the condition is key. And that's where grading kicks in so so important.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

So maybe the trick for you is to grade it so you can't actually open it up and start reading it.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Well, one of my big uh I won't say his name on camera today, but one of my biggest ever clients, you know, he buys high a lot of what he wants is so specialized he can only find copies that are graded.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

And he doesn't want graded comics in his collection. So he for him it serves two purposes. He'll buy a comic knowing the grade, but when he takes that particular piece home or into his collection, he'll crack that and just r maintain it and retain it within his collection, being able to read it because that's what he loves. Comics are so personal, yeah. They're personal to everyone, you know. Everyone in this room right now could probably give you a different example about how they first encountered the characters. It's not gonna be the same for everyone. Yeah. He loves his stuff raw, so to speak. You know, he just wants to know that if he wants to turn to page 14, it's there for him. He's doing that. But he's had to buy it in a graded state. So for him, even great even a raw collector grading his served to purpose, you know, because he knows he knows full well the condition of his book.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah. That's kind of great though, even actually enjoying reading them and interacting with them.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Because that's for me always a little bit of a shame where it just sort of becomes a plasti a piece of plastic and it just agree, you know, I'd very much agree.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

I mean, it's it's kind of one of those double-edged sword moments where you're like, yeah, it serves so many purposes, and it is in some way a shame that thinking will I be able to get to see that? And then, of course, that's where things like omnibuses and online digital copies and reprints and facsimiles can serve such wonderful purposes as well, because you do get to read the original storyline content. But with that piece there, the preservation of it is so important. On some of this gentleman's books in question, the preservation is now so important because some of the books, even random issues in his collection, are now north of a hundred thousand. Now, preservation there is is pretty important when we start talking to those numbers because that's life-changing finances for a lot of people. Yeah. Um so there you've really got to look at it from an artistic sense and go, well, this is now transcending comics almost well, it's not it's blowing the boundaries of comics, collecting stock, um, and assets as well. You know, when you've when you've got comics that are worth more than cars, you know, pr preservation is incredibly important. I'm not saying every comic's that amount of money, nor should they be, but it's really, really nice to see it when they are that value and then they can be so well protected as well. That's where it definitely serves a purpose.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Uh so Tom, I see that you brought some examples on the table here. Uh would you like to sort of give us a little overview on I see there's one slap?

SPEAKER_01 40:10

There is, there is indeed one slap. So I'd love to actually. So if we work our way around the table, the one nearest you here, we've got criminals on the run, number one. Now, this is from an incredible collection that um we arranged to have shipped from South Africa, which then made its way up to nearly Scotland and then down to me here at Eubanks. Now, that's got a cover by one gentleman called LB Cole, who at the time of his release, and at the time of that comic release, wasn't tremendously popular. LB Cole then went on to create an enormous amount of horror covers and he was working and producing some fairly even by today's standards, some fairly ghastly stuff in the 50s. Huge horror companies came and and went. One like EC Comics, for example. Now they got so notorious, they went through the Senate, they weren't they they they were nearly banned. You know, the seduction of the innocent court case rumbled for America to gr to great outrage. And creators like LB Cole were somewhat decried and almost languished in his obscurity, very much having a bit of a modern resurgence. When people now talk about LB Cole covers, they're getting pretty hard to find because a lot of them were destroyed back in the day. Now he was also a fan of massive cats, tigers, lions, humors, like the early days of circus comics, it was great. That particular one represents one of the finer examples of an early LB Cole cover. The reason that one has come along today is because when we were checking it with page by page check size, you can imagine thrilling. The joy of the industry, but it's got to be done. Now he's signed that particular one. He's signed that to an early fan called Jeffrey. And an LB Cole signed comic is uh about as rare as you're gonna get. I mean, even titans of the industry like Jack Kirby, Stanley, Steve Ditko, they are hard to find with signatures intact. But they LB Cole makes them look like the most overproduced, rapid signees on planet Earth. So an LB Cole sign, he's signed on the interior page towards the bottom, and it's his dedicated as well. Just an absolute gem. You never ever know what you're gonna find when you're going through a collection. I mean, this gentleman's collection, his father had built it up over time. There was a lot of stuff in there that wasn't valuable, but all of a sudden, just out of nowhere, you turn a page and the book can change on a dime.

SPEAKER_02 42:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:41

And the story of a creator can be everything. When LB Cole produced that book, he was almost seen as a house artist. You know, he wasn't of particular note or renown at that time. He obviously had a fan base for sure. But LB Cole covers now are so much more popular than they were at the time. Moving around. I've got um Mr. Max Dylan sometimes goes a little bit unforgotten. Um unforgotten? That's not even the word, sometimes a little bit more forgotten than some of the big uh uh Spider-Man, you know, villains like um the rhino and Venom and Carnage and so on. For me, Max Max to his mother, Electro to everyone else. Of course. Um that is pure comic book villainry at its best. Outlandish cost. I mean, he's wearing green and yellow. If I ever pull off green and yellow, I'll let you know. It's not gonna be anytime soon. Like it's that's how comics work. You look at that on the page and you just go, yeah, the suspension of disbelief just goes away. And you're like, absolutely, I'm running with this. And this is where comics really started to transition from being quite uh serious things. Because if you look at immediate post war productions, you know, the world was a different place post-World War II. People needed a lot of Americana, a lot of we feel good about ourselves, and war comics were like, yeah. Early days of Marvel 60s superhero comics was when everyone said, How about we start feeling happy? Have you heard of colour? And that's where you get some really outlandish stuff going on. Electro is a wonderful example of that. Also, people love villains. And you said earlier, when do people collect a certain character? Absolutely. People have seem to have two things in common when it comes to superheroes. They have a favourite superhero and then often have a set favourite uh a villain for that superhero as well. And you tend to find Spider-Man fans can be particularly devout, and they nearly always pick one. You know, Rhino's a huge one, Venom's a huge one. Actually, Venom is probably the most notable modern example. You tend to find Venom fans are pretty devout. And I've spoken to some collectors who've got entire not even rooms anymore, entire houses dedicated to this stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

You can't get away from that. It's huge.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

So yeah, a wonderful, wonderful example of a nice of a nice, amazing uh Spider-Man villain. So too is this one right here. We've got Amazing Spider-Man issue number 14 now. Um Steve Ditko, who was the pre uh predecessor to one, Mr. Jack Kirby, along with Stan Lee, they in 30 or less issues, they literally created the pantheon of villains of which we know today. They are still around and the that we are still telling new stories about these guys. So together they create some absolute wonders. Green Goblin. Well, Mr. Raimi used them to greater plum in that first Spider-Man movie and opened a whole new world of fans to go, who what the hell? This works. Yeah. If you if you'd have been told a couple of months before that movie's drop, it's like you'd be loving the Green Goblin. You might have looked at me with a slightly different expression. Post that movie, everyone was like, This is fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

That's amazing what a movie can do in that sense as well. Exactly that.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

And yet it all started in Amazing Spider-Man issue number 14. Yeah. The green um a lot when that was released. Perhaps people were thinking the Incredible Hulk appearance might really help it. His shown here to some considerable extent, actually undercover taking over from it, but it wasn't. It was all about the Green Goblin. Um and of course, you get your boy as well. You get your Amazing Spider-Man number one. He first appears, of course, in Amazing Fantasy issue number 15. But um that's a Spider-Man one is is always a wonderful thing to see. A lot of people will generally try and collect key issues, key appearances. Now, a key issue doesn't always have to be a first issue, um, but in that case it absolutely is. That's that's a really lovely number one right there. You'll you won't find many comic collectors out there who don't, if they're Marvel, at least they don't want an a Spider-Man one in the collection. Um now I I like slightly more um uh unique stories about the comic origins, I suppose. I tend to try and ferret out some some small details. So the one in the middle here, uh that is cool. Tells us you can see just there, tells us has been 16. I think we've slightly hidden the number behind uh criminals on the wrong number one. But we're gonna go back quickly to Iron Man. So Iron Man obviously has his first issue, which would be the equivalent of this, like a Spider-Man one, an Iron Man one. And as Spider-Man first appeared in uh Amazing Amazing Fantasy, excuse me, uh Iron Man first appeared in Tales of Suspense 39, which is for many Iron Man collectors their grail. But if you go back a little bit further than that, you have the days where these col uh the creators were still hashing out of their ideas and you get what you call prototype issues. So that one right there is where Jack Kirby was experimenting with ideas that could go on to become uh um Iron Man. It's kind of like the Incredible Hulk. If the Incredible Hulk number one, yeah, that depicts our boy Bruce Banner in grey, and then of course he moves over to green from issue two through six. But before that, they trolled him in a prototype issue where he was orange and fluffy. So if you really want to go down into Google and start looking into Incredible Hulk prototypes issue, you'll see a very different kind of looking Incredible Hulk. That one there, for whatever reason, Jack Kirby has drawn him as a huge brown, kind of still-looking monster wearing pants. Yeah. Because in the early days of the giant panty monster issues as so-called, uh, the I think the censors were a little bit more fond if the if the artists covered up their giant monsters and allowed them to stroll down streets destroying stuff with dignity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Because they impair it short.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

Absolutely. It's what the monsters would have been concerned about, you know. Fashion. That's what they did.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

So gotta look good doing it.

SPEAKER_01 48:41

Absolutely gotta look good. So you can treat you can trace these lineages. You can go from Tales uh you can look at Tales of Suspense 16. The origin, like the nugget of the idea appears, and then Tells of Suspense 39, you bring out the character proper. He's on the front, he's named as Iron Man, he's there in his armour, he's a hit, you get Iron Man one following then on later. So a lot of the times people go, Oh, do I just need the number one? And the answer is yeah, for sure. It's a great issue to have. But you can always dial it back and find these wonderful examples of how that comic came to be. Um, and that for me just sets my brain going and going, How far can this, you know?

SPEAKER_00 49:17

And that's the great fun of the collector because they got that you can dive in and really, you know, you think, oh, I might have found something which maybe other people have not spotted, or it's that that's what's so cool about it.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

That will make you feel that's that's gonna make anyone feel great. There's so many facets to it. It's not just the condition. Um it's not just if it's a UK uh pence variant or for you if it's a US sense variant. It's there's so many uh I guess facets to the early origins of these that fans are now waking up to, which you go back 15, 20 years, people wouldn't they wouldn't have looked at um, you know, like an early origin issue in the same way they would now. Now with social media, a lot of fans are making other collectors and fans aware of the joys of the industry and don't I mean the the the shared role of education is now being spread by fans, enthusiasts, collectors, and people helping each other on an hourly basis on platforms, whatever social media platform you want to pick. There'll be a forum, a thread, a post about hey, you might want to know about this. And you'll all almost always see someone going, Go, wow, I want that, I need that, a fire emoji, something. That you know, they they didn't know about that an hour before, and then they're off on one. Yeah this wasn't there 20 years ago. Like collecting is now spreading like wildfire. You can look at coins, comics, cards. People they're loving it in ways I've never seen. It's wild.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

Well, that's a great thing, really, because that's what's bringing new people into it as well. Every day.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Every day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

Yeah. I think so. It's such a wonderful array here as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

Um the one in the middle I'll just touch on super briefly because almost it's a there's an almost no story. That's one where there's no story, that's an unknown cover artist. So you and I can sit here talking blue in the face about Stanley and these champs that we know. But sometimes that has become a classic cover, that's Dime Mystery from 1948. We still don't know the cover artists. It was one of the house artists of Dire Mystery, but we can't say for sure because some of this stuff's been lost to antiquity. Yet the fans have decided over time that is one of the all-time classic pulp covers. Generally, what you want is a G G I D good girl in distress, you know, you need some sort of peril, you need a skeleton rolling up on the cover, some sort of implement of death, normally a nice big, bold, red and yellow logo will do the part as well. Classic pulp cover. Yeah, who made it? We don't know. We know the art we know the creators of the stories inside, they've named themselves, but a lot of those they use pseudonyms as well. You know, we are coming deep. That's a deep cut from 1948. Now, in those days, in many ways it would have been more you would have had better luck and more respect saying you're a pornographer than where you were if you were writing dime novels.

SPEAKER_00 51:55

I've read that before. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

The industry has changed. That was designed to be thrown away. Yeah. And if you'd have told someone that was your job, they may have given you a different look. Yeah. You move forward to the current era, and perception has changed so massively with the rise of the internet, and you know, TikTok is now playing a huge part. TikTok wasn't around ten years ago in the way we know now.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

No, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

You know, before that was a different platform. In five years there'll be another platform to mention. But the evolution of the internet and collecting and basically just knowledge has made some of these things on this table popular in a way now that they would never have been deemed to be that popular 30 years ago. And who knows what we'll be talking about in 30 years' time.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Well, we and who knows what will they'll bring up, as we just said earlier, about Batman and Robin and things like that. Things you do not expect.

SPEAKER_01 52:41

If if Batman and Robin becomes uh huge cut in 30 years, I want you and I both to get a lot of yeah. I want our names on record on that one. Just a f a few little examples. Each uh we all know the one uh I say I don't want to be facetious at all. Like, you know, a lot most people would know the big icons of the industry. The Batman one, the uh you know, a Spider-Man one. They're wonderful. But a lot of the time when you look into some of the slightly adjacent issues which were coming at the same time, you look into the stories how they came to be, you can just keep going and going and going because some of the stories about how this stuff came to be absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

Yeah, and also you've got all the stories actually behind it as well. Oh, yeah. And actually, um, and obviously all the topics they were doing in during the war, post-war sixties mirrored the political landscape of the time or the social landscape of the time as well. And I think that's why over the years comics have sort of started to be taken a little bit more seriously than maybe they were when they Stan or whoever was writing them back in the 40s, 50s, etc.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Yeah, that was Stan, you know, Stan struggled to get superhero comics off the ground.

SPEAKER_00 53:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

You know, he he largely made his early days uh a success by writing Westerns and Crime. And there's a very famous story out there that many gentlemen have told better than me about him fighting his editor to get Spider-Man off the ground. You know, like Amazing Fantasy Issues 1 to 14 came and went. The editor was about to cancel it. And Stan was like, I've got an idea, we can do this. And the editor's like, nah, bro, just cancel the damn thing. May have used different words, I'm not sure. Um, gave it a go. Amazing Spider-Man 15 comes out, it's a bit of success. The editor turned around and go, you know that great idea we both had, and Stan's like, huh. We have to shortly thereafter, you get a Spider-Man One appear on the show. So a lot of comics came and went using anthology style formats to trial characters. You know, Batman was, believe it or not, Batman. Batman was a trial. You know, you can see those, you can see those really, really early incarnations of the character out there, B-winged but wearing red. You know, that went through a few different incarnations, and suddenly you trial him in Detective Comics Issue 27, and fans like, who's this guy? That works shortly thereafter, Batman number one.

SPEAKER_02 54:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

You know, it's it's fascinating to see those early, early incarnations and how they came to be because many of them are almost stories. Many of them almost didn't make it. You it's wild to see the stuff now that fans are latching on to that wasn't a hit back in the day. And 70, 80 years removed from their original incarnations fans. We we are, you know, we're finding newer and newer content all the time about stuff which has been languishing for the better part of a century, which for me that's where the magic can happen because you're like, this is incredible stuff.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

Well, I guess also because they're so ubiquitous in your head, so you always think of you know, Batman and his black or very dark grey, as they say in a Lego movie, uh, or like Superman and his blue, like it's and even I think when Snyder darkened the suit, I mean in Man of Steel, it was like there was controversy about it. So it's but yeah, you like you say, you go all the way back, yeah. You're trying out things, see what would sort of stick.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Yeah, I mean the the the guy, uh the two who made Superman in Action Comics number one. If you look at the very, very first troll they had of action comics, um it was lit the story was just called the Superman in 1932. You'll see that blue print on white paper of a bald man, and you're like, Well, that looks a little bit different from the Clark and I know where the glasses. Um, so the comics undergo constant change all the time. You can change a character, you know, you evolve a character, like you can evolve Batman, you can present different versions of Batman over time that fans would just go, I'm in on that.

SPEAKER_00 56:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

Yeah, it's not it's not always as cut and dry as we might think, but that's where if you start rooting around and ferreting around in comics history, it will definitely shine a different lens on how you perceive modern stuff as well, which for me is one of just one of the joys of it, really.

SPEAKER_00 56:31

Well, and audiences tend to adapt to it as well, you know, into the Spider-Verse and things like that, it's totally different sort of vision of Spider-Man and people just caught. Yeah, so I think it it shows that I think sometimes people are like, oh, audiences won't adapt to it. But it's funneling enough, audiences do find a way of you know, that it you're surprising what people jump to or really really connect to.

SPEAKER_01 56:51

Yeah, I find that audiences genuinely just appreciate quality. Um, and they uh audiences are a lot smarter than producers genuinely, I'm not saying producers of films or comics, but producers of content generally give them examples, uh give them credit for. Fans will I mean they almost make it their job to love this stuff. They're gonna sniff out a rogue pretty quickly. So if it's good, like the uh the Spider-Verse material was fantastic. I mean, I I remember a lot of people saying before the release of that they were slightly dubious about how, you know, a character like Spot could go down, for example. That was tremendous. That worked. You know, in instant, instant values were rising overnight, and whole new leagues of fans are going, What how do I read this guy? First and foremost, you know, it was hitting them in the heart. How do I read this? I want more of that. And uh that was a big character for a lot of people where they kind of went, I am not sure if this is gonna work, but it was handled with such a plum and delivered with such creative heft. People went, Yeah, I'm in.

SPEAKER_00 57:52

Yeah, not exactly. But yeah, that shows him out we've got so much so many avenues to go in. Like you say, we've got so much to actually go back to, etc.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

So yeah, no, I think it's uh Yeah, and they're still finding new stuff. There's still like LB Cole, uh the gentleman there, like his people are now looking for his car his covers which have gone undiscovered for so so long. I mean, he was EC comics were notorious for their covers back in the day, like the artists like Wally Wood, and you know, these were huge, scary covers for a lot of people. So even they were famous back then, even more so now. But they're people are now looking forward for uh sorry, looking for adjacent artists in the in in the in the industry which were working around it, which were haven't really had any the right amount of fame, let's put it, for the last few decades. That's slowly changing every single day. I'll give you another example, Charlton Comics, a long, long un undersung producer of comics, certainly um have never really had the appreciation in the States that they should have done. In my perception. And my perspe uh perspective, a lot of people may disagree, but you can clearly see just even from values accrued at auction and sales that not that many people have been paying attention to. All of a sudden, literally now in 2026, people are like Tom Sutton, wow, who are you? Famous and now quite a famous Charlton horror artist, cover artist, and that people were collecting now in a way that they have never done before. That has not been the case for the last 50 years. And that changed literally in the last few years.

SPEAKER_00 59:27

Was that just one person just jumped on it? You felt like sudden a small audience and it built up. Was that again, would you say, socials, or was that sort of just organic people finding it and then sort of feeling like this is undervalued and underappreciated?

SPEAKER_01 59:39

It tends to happen in two ways. Um perhaps there'll be a creator who's got a slight amount of internet clout, tends to make a post, and that can often start a ball rolling. But it's that's we've seen as been pretty organic growth in the last ten years, I'd say. Tom Sunny, it certainly started smaller. I mean, it's a lot more now than it was what it was ten years ago. But his uh prices, his books are fetching in high grade are like nothing we've ever seen for the last well, n in Coton's history since its inception. So that's a very, very new, very fresh thing. And maybe in five years that uh there'll be something else that takes fans by surprise. Dave Stevens has been a really quite wonderful example of risque pin up cover art for the last I'd say few years now in the in the in the buying sphere. It's had had its ebbs and flows, and right now a lot of collectors are uh are kind of shying away from that into a slightly different creator. You do always have um peaks and drafts for sure, but I do love it when people seem to latch on to an artist and go, This is incredible, how much other 40 years of content to collect? Damn. And then they're then they're off.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

Well, it's been absolutely fascinating. I'm thoroughly enjoying our our conversation. Absolutely pleasant and thank you for bringing these wonderful, uh really great array as well. Just uh yeah, it's been it's fantastic. So yeah, thank you so much for coming. Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much. Awesome stuff. Uh thanks to Tom and thanks for joining us on the Spink Insider podcast. And hope you've enjoyed the discussion today. Uh, if you'd like to leave comments below, uh please do, and please give us your thoughts on what we've discussed today and whether there are any more fans of of Batman and Robin out there that we're we're not aware of. Uh many thanks for joining us, by the way.