I had to make a decision on my last DCH John Howard post. Because there were two rabbit holes presented, and I knew I could only tumble down one that day. So we fell down the Skip Townes hole and got to read some ancient Funky Winkerbean strips that were actually funny.
Today, instead of continuing the story of Mooch Myers Swindles an Old Lady, I’d like to take the second option, and tumble down another hole. The one presented to me by this strip.
Moochy boy compares Lillian McKenzie’s boxes of a couple thousand yellowed Timely issues flopping around in her hot Ohio attic to The Edward Church Collection.
Which….doesn’t exist.
I mean…The EDGAR Church/ Mile High collection is a thing.
It’s a HECK of a thing, and not at all comparable to the Lucy’s collection, (as valuable as that collection may be. )
The Edgar Church/Mile High collection is over 18,000 issues of Golden Age comics, in nearly pristine condition. Nearly every key and rare book from that time period is represented. Everything Lucy McKenzie had, and more, as fresh as if it had just come off the newsstand.
I can’t really fault Batiuk too much for choosing this as his reference, though. (Getting the name wrong, that I can fault.) If you only know a single famous comics collection, it’s this one.
The legend goes like this. The year is 1977. The place, Colorado, and 21-year-old owner of Mile High Comics, Chuck Rozanski, gets a tip from a friend that a Realtor was calling around local bookstores and comic shops looking for someone willing to haul away old comics from a house. He calls the Realtor and arranges a meeting with the heirs of the estate.
The day finally came for me to view the comics. I drove to the address I was given, and was ushered into the basement. From the top of the stairs I could see stacks of comics covering the floor. Each stack was approximately 75-100 comics deep, and the further I walked down the stairs, the more stacks I could see! The titles I could see on top were predominately Dell westerns, but I also saw an occasional EC issue, and a few older DC superhero titles. Suffice it to say, by the time I reached the bottom of the stairs, I was very, very excited.
Chuck Rozanski
When Mr. Rozanski asks the owners about price, it becomes clear to him that they are more interested in if he is willing to take all the comics, and haul them away himself, than getting the true value of the books he’s seeing. They aren’t interested in selling them on consignment, they aren’t interested in Mr. Rozanski paying for them in installments. They want the comics gone as quickly as possible, paid for immediately, and he should just ‘make an offer’. He offers a price, so much per box he plans to haul and store them in, and they accept without haggling, on the condition he also cleans out ‘the closet’.
It was at that point that they walked me to a walk-in closet that separated a back office from the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. When they opened the door to the closet, I was astounded to see that it was completely filled with ceiling-high stacks of even more old comics. There were even comics stuffed all the way up into the floor joists!… Throughout the initial negotiations I had been excited, but had managed to keep my euphoria in check. It wasn’t hard, really, as the comics that were piled on the basement floor were mostly under $10 [CBH: $50 adj for inflation.] each in the 1976 Guide, and many were even under $5. Good stuff, but nothing to get crazy about. It wasn’t until the negotiations were over, and the surprise closet full of Golden Age was opened, that I was finally overwhelmed with emotion. My mouth became so dry that I asked for a glass of water. When it arrived, I was staring at the closet, while leaning against the basement wall for support.
Chuck Rozanski
The Certified Guaranty Company, CGC, responsible for most comic book grading and slabbing, gushes about the collection on the webpage with their list of ‘pedigreed’ collections.
The most remarkable collection of vintage comic books ever discovered. The Mile High’s immense size and extraordinary condition caused a major shift in both price structures and grading standards, and was the genesis of the pedigree concept in the comic book industry. It is the benchmark against which all other collections are compared.
Who collected all this stuff? Who was Edgar Church?
Born in 1888, Edgar Church was a freelance commercial illustrator, who primarily created telephone book advertisements for the Mountain Bell phone company. It’s believed he initially got into comic books as a source of reference material, though most of the comics in the collection were as pristine as if they had never been read. At one time, he had dreams of creating comics himself, flying out to New York in 1940 to pitch his super heroine strip, The Green Cobra. To no avail.
Mr. Church’s house was packed with comics, magazines, posters, and old advertising. A lifetime not only of collecting, but of work.
After loading my old van full to capacity with old comics, I had to make a difficult decision. All through the time I had been loading my van I had been walking past the huge pile of artwork and magazine clippings that the heirs had put to be hauled away by the trash men. I didn’t know the heirs very well at that point, so I was loath to broach the subject of whether I could take any of the material from the trash. In the end, I saved a few items (including some of Edgar Church’s original artwork), and left the rest for the trash men. That decision haunts me to this day.
Chuck Rozanski
Eventually Mr. Rozanski arranged to buy the remainder of Mr. Church’s paperwork, including all his references, advertising materials, and the entire contents of his office save the furniture. That Chuck offered to pay for these items was the only reason the heirs agreed to hold on the material for the extra time it would take him to collect it.
His heirs, for reasons I was never able to clearly understand, had an extreme antipathy toward anything paper that Mr. Church had accumulated during his lifetime. One theory I have about their dislike of his files is that the cost of all the comics and magazines that Mr. Church purchased during the 1920-1955 period put a severe drain on the family finances. Mr. Church collected every super-hero and adventure/horror comic printed, quite a few non-super-hero comics, vast numbers of pulp magazines, and even a large quantity of magazines with line-art covers. The cost of all those purchases, plus the fact that his files ended up filling darn near the entire basement, must have been quite an annoyance to the rest of his family…
His comics (at least all the ones he purchased from 1938-1947), on the other hand, were in a room that had been padlocked for years. I think I eventually found one comic (out of 18,000) that had some notes in the margins. Other than that single book, he kept his comics in perfect condition. It was clear to me from the fact that the heirs had to break the padlock off of the closet that his children were never allowed to touch his comics. That, too, may have led to some antagonism on their part toward his comics collection. I think it’s safe to surmise that Mr. Church viewed his comics as his own private passion, and wanted to share them with no one. Is it any wonder that his heirs didn’t show any fondness for them?
Chuck Rozanski
Edgar’s children hated his stuff. They wanted it out of the house as soon as possible so they could sell it. It’s hypothesized they may have already thrown out a portion of his comics collection before Chuck even saw it. And Edgar Church wasn’t even dead yet.
I can’t remember any more exactly during which visit that I was told the story, but his heirs told me that Mr. Church was suffering from a very debilitating illness (I think it was either Alzheimer’s or a stroke…) that had left him unable to care for himself. His wife had been his primary caregiver, but she was by that time also in her mid-eighties. When she fell in the house and broke her hip, their worst fears were realized. I gathered that she was alone at the time of her accident, and that it took quite some time for her to get assistance after her fall. To keep this from happening again, the family made the decision to find a nursing home for the two of them.
I’ve purchased items from hundreds, if not thousands, of estates during my career, but finding out that Mr. Church was still alive made me feel very different about this deal. Especially since his heirs were exhibiting such indifference as to the dispensation of his effects. I don’t know about anyone else, but when my mother passed away nearly two years ago, I felt a very strong responsibility to preserve a tangible part of her life. I’m still slowly going through her personal effects and paperwork, saving everything which might have an interest to future generations of our family. The Church heirs seemed to have no such thoughts, as I was forced to rescue even some family photographs from being thrown away.
What motivated this bizarre behavior on the part of the Church heirs? I have no idea. However, the thought of Edgar Church lying in his deathbed (he passed away about two months later), while much of what he had accumulated during his lifetime was being thrown away, upset me very much. As a consequence, I went out of my way to gather every scrap of his life that I could salvage, with the thought that I could possibly someday tell his tale.
Chuck Rozanski
Why? Why didn’t Ed’s kids want even his artwork? The comics, the magazines, the folders of references, the indifference makes sense. I can understand how to someone they could just be an overwhelming mass of paper. But how could someone be indifferent to the unique work of their father’s hand? Was the relationship that bad? Did Ed’s daughters look at the hoard of padlocked comics, the life’s work of references and advertisements, and feel like they weren’t as treasured. That they should have been Edgar Church’s life’s work, not some pork sausage advertising.
Maybe not. Maybe they were just overwhelmed with the entire process, and grieving. But whatever the relationship between Edgar and his heirs, the finest collection of comic books in the entire world was an obstacle and a burden. If they loved each other and connected emotionally, it wasn’t over a padlocked closet of comics they didn’t even have a key for.
40 years after Chuck Rozanski was snatching original art from trash piles in the snow, another Golden Age hoard hit the market. Not as large, by a long shot, only 5000 books. But in similar amazing condition. Heritage Auctions, in charge of consigning the collection, put out glowing press releases crowing about how some of the issues were the highest graded ever seen. The first round of the collection, 181 comics, sold for over $7 million.
The owners of the collection wanted to remain mostly anonymous, but did provide the following origin story.
In the early 1950s, a young man called Robert was drafted by the Army to fight in Korea. His younger brother, known as Junie, enlisted in the hopes of keeping watch over Robert. Junie had but one request of his big brother – that Robert take care of his collection of funny books should anything happen to him in battle.
Junie had been a collector since he was a little boy, not because of the value but because of the stories. Throughout the 1940s, he amassed a collection of more than 5,000 Golden Age books, and treated each with kid gloves.
Robert knew how dear those books were to his brother. So he promised him: Yes, of course. He would take care of those funny books. If something happened. God forbid.
Then Junie was killed in action. He was 21 years old.
When Robert returned home from war, he made good on that promise. With great care and caution, he boxed up his brother’s comic books and placed them in an attic for safe storage. And there they sat, undisturbed, for half a century.
In time, Robert and his family returned to those boxes to revisit what Junie had left behind. There they discovered what proved to be one of the world’s greatest collections of Golden Age comics in extraordinary condition. They went a step further in protecting them, bagging and boarding each one, then cataloging them on an ever-growing spreadsheet that now reads now like a collector’s dream come true.
Robert Wilonsky, “A Promise Kept” Intelligent Collector
A different collection, a different family, and here it’s comics serving as a connection. Carefully preserving the books, to hold on to someone who died far too young. Maybe when Robert and his family sorted those books, bagged and boarded them for safe-keeping, it was a chance for Robert to pass on stories to younger family members who never had a chance to meet Junie. The collection isn’t an obstacle in that relationship, it’s a part of the bond.
My precious grandma who passed in 2021 was an avid collector. She collected cut glass, Prussian china, newspapers, souvenir spoons, and sundry antiques. She had shelves of books with titles like Fostoria Glassware: 1882-1987 Identification and Values. She was a member of The Questers, and would prepare little presentations on her collections. Leaving little notecards of research tucked into a vase or under plate.
When she passed, it was all appraised. Her children and grandchildren took what they liked and left behind the rest. And then I moved in, bringing with me my jars of wheat pennies, my tubs of action figures, my books, and comics, and just, like, rocks, literally 40 pounds of neat rocks. And I’m not gonna lie, it’s weird, the very gradual metamorphosis going on, where what was her space is infected with mine. Where I move aside what is left of her collection to make room for my own. Where I decide to get rid of some of what has been left, because there’s just too much to keep it all. Have you ever agonized about moving a book? A book! Because it’s been in the same spot since before living memory.
Stuff is stuff. It is people who give it value. Stuff can get between people. Stuff can be paralyzing, suffocating, or overwhelming. Stuff can hurt. Even if the stuff is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Or stuff can bring people together. It can be a shared experience. It can be the trigger for a memory you had almost forgotten. It can be the fingerprint of a person you will never see again on this side. It can turn popsicle stick garbage into a priceless heirloom. Stuff can be love, but only if you love people more than stuff.
Next time, sarcasm is back on the menu bois!
Son of Stuck Funky 
All new knowledge for me. Thank you.
In another 20-40 years time there’s going to be an unfathomable wall of stuff that will be coming out of estates and the like. There’s already been writing about china dinnerware passed down from several generations that is ultimately finding home in a landfill because nobody wants it now. Beyond that, what’s coming is everything that’s been marketed as “collectible”, and we’re going to find out just how little of it actually meets that definition.
20-40 years from now, even collectibles that do still have public interest will be of little value, because they were so mass-produced. (Sigh.) These clowns that are grading and saving their 2021 Batman variant cover #12s are in for a nasty surprise.
Circa 1996 I had a coworker in his late 30s who was absolutely convinced he would retire on his collection of POGs.
Nothing’s collectible if everyone’s collecting it.
Once in an antique store, I said “Antique POG!” My 18-years-younger compatriot just said “…POGs?” I then failed to explain POGs, because…Well CAN YOU? Beanie Babies are easy to explain. I said to her “Remember the McDonald’s fistfights over those?”
POGs were such a dopey and short-lived phenomenon that even recent large waves of 90s nostalgia haven’t brought them back as anything more than a punchline (one with a limited audience of 35-40 somethings, no less). Man, no one is interested in them.
I was of the right age to get caught up in the POG craze, though I had one of the smaller collections among my friends (mostly made up of ones that I either got with Burger King kid’s meals or at the Christian book store). I’m sure my parents thought it was one of the dumbest things they ever spent money on. I had a slammer that said “Toucan Slam” on it, which was cool, well, cool as POGs go anyways.
Remember ALF? He’s back. In POG form.
They tried to make a cartoon TV series about POGs.
The Legend of the Hawaiian Slammers:
Yep, mass produced crap. I remember cleaning out my in law’s house, they had bags of McDonalds happy meal toys in their original wrappers. They would be worth something someday.
They sat for 3 days at the estate sale and I ended up giving them away to a little girl who saw them and liked them.
Honestly, it was kind of a relief to finally accept that none of these things had any real value. I found a use for my worthless trading cards, though. I dumped a bunch of them into a bag; whenever I need a new password I pull one out. Name + number + a common word + a punctuation mark is sufficiently long and complex, but easy to remember.
When I was a kid in the 50s and early 60s I collected sports cards because I was sports fan. Against the cliche my mother didn’t throw them out. In the 70s and 80s I returned to collecting with a nice base. My cards are still in my study in a 7 foot high library card catalog. Never intended to make money from the collection. I have a job to earn money—there aren’t any get rich quick schemes
I loved baseball cards when I was a kid, but I got sucked into the “protect their value” mentality. Ironically, I ended up with books and books of pristine worthless wax junk, and didn’t properly protect the things that were valuable, or had sentimental value to me for some reason.
11-year-old me managed to get this card autographed by both players pictured, but on the back using a bad felt-tip pen (I had to improvise). And then I stored it for years in a picture frame that was poorly suited for preservation. I still have it, but it makes me sad to look at now.
Aww, CBH, that’s such a sweet story. And such in-depth research on the fascinating story behind the “Edward” Church collection. (Grandpa Google is your friend, Tom.)
I’ve been an executor twice, so I know the struggle over what to keep and what to part with. I was told by an older friend when I embarked on the first estate, “Once you’ve dealt with an estate, you’ll never look at your own possessions the same way again.” That certainly proved to be true. I don’t want to leave a chaotic mess behind for someone who cared about me to fret over.
I love your personal stories. They enhance the site immeasurably. And I love knowing that someone else collects neat rocks. 🙂
1. I had the pleasure to meet Chuck Rozanski at a Kansas City Con. He is exuberant. He is very easy to talk with. There are many good comic dealers, but Mile High Comics is the only one I choose to work with. They could not fill one of my first orders. They sent me $12 coupon plus my money back. I subscribed to Chuck’s newsletter, and took advantage of his specials. Sometimes 60% off. All of my Classics Illustrated were bought at that fantastic discount. His staff is so pleasant, loyal and hardworking. A fellow named Byron was the main person I dealt with. Of course, they are located in Denver, and I was in the KC area. We kidded on email about the Broncos and Chief’s rivalry. Many of you have seen Chuck in Morgan Spurlock’s “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope”. Chuck also posts on YouTube.
2. CBH and DOD, I also love rock and fossil collecting. Just this weekend, my wife heard about a new rock shop in Holt Missouri. So Saturday morning we checked it out and bought rocks.
3. We have several rock displays in our living room. One of them is on the China Cabinet and has a 6 inch plastic lizard with a curved tail. He was supposed to be left in the Yuma desert, as proof that my wife had been there. Yet when she placed it on its rock, she looked at it. It looked so sad and lonely, she could not leave it there, and brought it back to our home.
4. Love you, CBH ♥️💖❤️🫂🌺💐🌹
❤
All the videos I saw of Chuck Rozanski, he seemed like a great guy. Enthusiastic and gregarious. Lots of great YouTube content surrounding him and the Mile High Comics shop that still exists.
I read the entire blog post series he did on finding the Edgar Church collection and it was a really interesting read.
His website is HILAROUSLY decrepit though. It's like a time capsule to 1998. Made Tom Batiuk's OLD website look downright modern.
Yes, I yield to your knowledge of websites. But he is succeeding on being the place to find any comic you need. Generally, if MHC doesn’t have it, Lone Star Comics will usually have them. I do have a goal to go to Chuck’s store in Colorado.
At the risk of giving TB too much credit… Maybe “Edward” Church is simply the Batiukverse’s version of Edgar Church. Like “Fleabay”… or how they have a Joe “Schuster”.
I’m afraid you’re giving him WAY too much credit. I don’t know why you would use an image of Superman and refer to “Jerry and Joe,” while slightly misspelling Shuster’s name. Wouldn’t you use “Superbman” and refer to Jerry Spiegel and Joe Schumann, or something?
Ditto “Edward Church.” Why mention it at all if you’re gonna get it wrong? You just know that not more than 2% of his readers — likely far fewer — had any idea what he was referring to. “Holy grail” would have been a sufficient descriptor.
If he did, for some reason, want to disguise Edgar Church’s name, he would have probably cited the collection as being sold by “Sky High” comics or something. But he got the name of the store right.
I’m all for giving the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t see any doubt here. It’s just more of the lack of quality control/first thought, best thought/”I don’t have to check spelling or grammar or facts because it’s called writing” we’ve come to expect from our ol’ pal Bats.
Batiuk is just never consistent about these things. It’s impossible to know if something’s supposed to an ersatz version, or if he just couldn’t be bothered to get the real name right. I ranted about this once:
Some characters are real people (Hal Foster, Conan O’Brien); some are ersatz versions of real people (Phil Holt, Flash Freeman, Batton Thomas); some are purely fictional (Ruby Lith, Pete Roberts-Reynolds); some are unclear because they’re real names that are spelled wrong (Gary Morrow, Joe Schuster); some are fantastic entities that can’t exist in a realistic world (Holtron, Lord of the Late). Some fictional characters are real people in this world (Dick Tracy); some fictional comic worlds are still fictional in this one (Prince Valiant, Batman); and this world has its own in-universe fictional properties (Starbuck Jones, the entire Atomik Komix oeuvre).
So who knows what the intent of anything is?
Don’t forget Mopey and Darwin’s pilgrimage to the (apparently real-life) Flash Museum, where they picked up Batton’s favorite piece of workout equipment. I guess DC was too flattered to send Batiuk a cease-and-desist order.
Don’t forget the ever-shifting names of his characters. Pete Roberts — or is it Reynolds? Flash Freeman, or Flash Fairfield? Mason Jarr or Jarre? Etc.
But you seem to be suggesting that these aren’t necessarily errors, that he may have misspelled Shuster’s name and gotten Edgar Church’s wrong on purpose. Do you think he’s seeing some kind of joke or pun there? Is he trying to evade legal responsibility? (Weird if so, since he uses the image of Superman and the name of the existing business Mile High Comics.) I’m curious about what you think could drive him to make these apparent errors intentionally.
If these “alternate” names and spellings are indeed intentional, I have to confess I can’t tell them from actual mistakes.
But you seem to be suggesting that these aren’t necessarily errors
I’m saying they’re so inconsistent I can’t even tell what they’re supposed to be. There isn’t even anything consistent in terms of how ersatz names are used. Batiuk avoids using trademarks and real people when he doesn’t have to, then blatantly appropriates Mark Evanier and the Batman logo for himself, and reprints the Flash #123 cover 8 times in a week.
There are hints as to why. Amazon sells his books. The Eisner Awards etc are things he might, in some “What If?” world, win. They get their names spelled exactly right. But McArnolds is not going to give FW action figures with its Happy Meals. SprawlMart is not going to offer his books in their tiny book section. And FleaBay? Cursed be its name, it is where the gibbering. slavering ghouls sell their precious autographed “Lisa’s Story” paperbacks for a few dim pennies! I mean, for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A curse, especially, upon them!
Hey, the great Stan Lee once had Dr. Octopus refer to Spider-Man as “Super-Man” in an early Spidey comic and IDed the Hulk’s alter ego as “Bob” Banner instead of “Bruce” (later retconned to Robert Bruce Banner). Things happen.
Sure, I get it. But there are two key differences. First, Marvel was cranking out comic books at breakneck speed. Full comic books, many of them every month. No one-year lead times there. Second, I’m pretty sure that if someone had written in to comment on an obvious error, their letter would have been printed and a humorous/self-deprecating note from Lee would have followed it. It’s hard to imagine Lee bristling with, “It’s called writing!”
All humans make stupid mistakes. I’ve made approximately 17 million of them myself, and counting. It’s not that he sometimes makes mistakes that galls me. It’s that 1) he is getting paid handsomely for this work and there are few enough words daily that he should be able to get ALL of them right; 2) he has about a year of lead time in which to put his work aside and revisit/check it, fresh, long before it’s due, and 3) the mistakes don’t feel like the result of being rushed (which he isn’t); they feel like a total lack of quality control, laziness, and a chronic deficit of self-respect, respect for his audience, and curiosity.
I can say with confidence that I’m not the only one that fact-checks and proofreads my comments here more thoroughly than TB fact-checks and proofreads his own paid work.
For God’s sake, Tom, have you no pride? Aren’t you embarrassed to get the names of your own gods, like Joe Shuster and Edwin Church, wrong?
(Spoiler: Nope!)
Some of you beady-eyed nitpickers and Twitter tots may think I got Mr. Church’s name wrong in that last comment. Here’s some news for you trolls: IT’S CALLED WRITING.
All I can say is, “good a call”.
What’s really baffling is that he apparently believes his readers are equally proud of their ignorance and will just accept anything he says as accurate. Owen’s critique of “King Kong,” in which he got everything wrong except the title, still bugs me to this day.
I remember that and since King Kong is one of my favorite films felt compelled to comment on it on his blog. No reply of course but the critique was so stupid it made my hair hurt
The worst thing about that was John essentially telling Owen, “Wow, you’re pretty clever to figure that out.” Which I suppose is another back pat from Batiuk to himself. Wow, I’m smarter than everyone else. Better put that in my comic strip.
I had to look this up via the super ultra helpful search function on this blog. There it was, Feb 18, 2015. I recommend everyone read the strip and BeckoningChasm’s point-by-point refutation of it.
It simply bends my brain to think that the very person who was galvanized by “The Phantom Empire,” and still holds it up as brilliant to this very day, would trash “King Kong.” Any flaws it has (old-fashionedness, imperfect special effects, silly plot, etc etc) are flaws that afflict “The Phantom Empire” exponentially more.
There’s a certain mentality that believes that just being contrarian makes you look smart, like you know some secrets that the unwashed masses don’t get. I sometimes wonder if TB subscribes to this belief.
I sometimes wonder if TB subscribes to this belief.
Oh, I think everything he does revolves around it. His middlebrow-ness and how proud he is of himself for it. His weird, obscure tastes. His condescending “how to do things correctly” attitude about everything. His inexplicable dislike of things widely regarded as good. The randomness of it all – there’s just no pattern to any of it. And his complete inability to explain any of this.
It’s like he’s trying to be a hipster, but he misunderstands it like he misunderstands every other form of human behavior.
That sort of behavior has been around for decades. “If it’s popular, naturally I must spurn it as being too common for my refined tastes. Similarly, if it’s obscure or hated, my championing of it will show my sophistication.”
EG, “You may like Star Trek, with its ‘intelligence’ and ‘ideas’ and ‘well constructed stories’ because I suppose you’re only capable of appreciating such stuff. The real deal is Far Out Space Nuts, which touches the heart of our inner child and allows laughter to be born on the backs of our troubles.”
A very interesting post — I had no idea about these stories.
In one post, CBH, you’ve given me more interesting perspectives and stories on comic books than Tom Batiuk has managed in 30+ years! (Even though that’s all he ever wants to write about….)
If I may briefly enter into the world of philately, I had a friend who was born in 1940. In and around his teen years, he bought a fairly large number of sheets of US postage stamps, with the assumption that they’d go up in collectible value. By the ’90s and ’00s, they hadn’t, and he was selling them to friends at face value. So if you received snail mail from me around this time, it might have had proof that its postage was paid with affixed decades old 3-cent stamps.
People that collect just for value are so silly.
You should collect stuff because you like it. It can be really fun to get into the nitty gritty of relative values, rarity of certain pieces, haggling over quality. I know this from experience, wandering the Botcon dealers room with a list and a dream. Playing the value and variant game is fun, but it should be a GAME.
Of grandma’s small town, country-club-aristocracy collections of RS Prussia, cut glass, fine silver, etc there were a handful of the very nicest pieces that were still relatively valuable, but for the most part the market has completely collapsed for that sort of stuff. Bowls she bought for $100 dollars in the 70’s were appraised at 30 dollars in 2022.
And things Grandma saw no value in at all? Suddenly prized. The old cigar boxes her own mother had kept buttons in, the empty medicine tins with bits of string inside, the barristers bookshelves shoved in the basement for storage, hot stuff.
Collecting made my Grandma happy. She never went full hoarder. She never spent more than she could afford. And she and I connected over it. We used to go antiquing together.
Now all of her grandkids have at least piece or two of those collections to remember her by. I don’t care that the RS Prussia market has crashed, I care that when I sit down at the kitchen table to eat a bowl of Cheerios there are giant flowery bowls looming over me from the tops of the cupboards.
I have to admit I don’t find Wallace interesting or particularly amusing. My local paper has been carrying it for 1-2 years. I must be missing something
This obviously is a response to BWEOH’s note about the Reuben. Sorry
I would delete these, Gabby, but for two reasons.
1.) They artificially inflate the number of comments, which makes me happy.
2.) Lol.
I hope you understand. Thank you for your valuable contribution.
I’ll throw a random “collectibles” story into the ring. I’ve been a coin collector since I was a little kid. My father’s aunt was a world-class-type coin collector, and when I first started out she gifted me a bunch of old coin books and price guides and etc. Many years later, I was sorting through those old coin books, and I discovered that one of them was quite rare and highly-sought after by coin collecting book collectors. Coin collecting book collectors do exist, and there are around seven or them or so.
So I did some research on my book, and listed it on Ebay, with a fixed price of $800. Other copies in poorer condition had fetched $600, so I felt the price of my “like new” copy was reasonable. So I list it, and within an hour I get a message from one of those seven coin collecting book collectors I previously mentioned. He insists that my listing must be fraudulent, and he is reporting me to Ebay. Then I get another message, accusing me of being one of the other seven weirdos, who was merely trying to pump up the market for this particular book. Then another one send me a message, demanding to know where I obtained the book, then insisted that I was lying. Then ANOTHER guy accused me of being a different coin book nerd, sending me messages like “LOL nice try, Ned” and so forth. Then another one, demanding that I explain exactly how I obtained a copy of this book, as there was simply no way I could own a copy.
And it was annoying, yet fascinating too. Here’s a truly niche hobby if there ever was one, coin collecting book collecting, and it was populated by weirdly competitive, paranoid nerd weirdos who all seemed to genuinely dislike one another. You’d think that it’d be more of a tightly-knit subculture, like a brotherhood of sorts, but nope. Angry, cutthroat nerds.
So one of the guys was in New Jersey and reasonably local, and he asked if I’d deliver the book to him personally in exchange for $750 cash, but then he got all paranoid and started waffling. Then, out of nowhere, the seventh coin collecting book collector swooped in and bought the damn thing. Anyone can collect coins or baseball cards or comic books, but those weirdo niche collectors, man, they’re the real deal. Coin collecting books, power line insulators, “Happy Days” memorabilia, THOSE are the nerds you have to watch out for.
Oh man, you should see the model railroad community. They are like Batty in many ways: you have to do the hobby the way they did it back in the day.
My boss asked me to appraise a model train collection. His cousins were selling his uncle’s old trains and my boss wanted to buy them for sentimental reasons. His cousins priced them ridiculously high and I told to offer less than half of what they were asking. They were totally offended by his offer.
A month later they were still for sale and the cousins were insisting they were worth more money. I took my boss to the local hobby shop and he saw many of the same items for sale but cheaper and in better condition.
My boss went back and lowered his offer, they still refused. Months later they finally sold to them to him and at even reduced price as they just wanted them gone!
I never realized coin collectors had their quirks too. It’s a funny but amusing world!
A lot of people can’t accept, even at the end, that their (or their forebears’) “collectibles” just aren’t worth that much. They built these things up in their minds as a mini-retirement plan, destined to be cashed in for thousands of dollars at any time of their choosing. But like I said before, it’s all sellers and no buyers, which drives prices into the floor.
As I also said before, a lot of these things just don’t retain collector interest over the years. Yeah, people still want Mickey Mantle and Nolan Ryan and Cal Ripken Jr. But there’s not much interest in even top-shelf stars from the 1970s, like Johnny Bench or George Brett. (Forgive me for the baseball card examples, but it’s what I know.)
There is no better baseball card than the 1989 Bill Ripken Fleer card.
I have a story about that one too. We happened to be in Greensboro, North Carolina at the time, and asked about it in a local card shop. This was during 1989. At the time, my dad and I weren’t even sure this card actually existed.
I think the man at the store was super-Christian, because he took it out of this little envelope under the display, as if it was too shameful for human eyes. We bought it, but the whole transaction was awkward and unwelcoming. It felt like trying to buy pornography in Saudi Arabia.
For those who don’t know why a baseball card would ever be this upsetting:
1989 Fleer – [Base] #616.1 – Billy Ripken (FF on Bat Knob)
https://www.comc.com/Cards/Baseball/1989/Fleer_-_Base/6161/Billy_Ripken_(FF_on_Bat_Knob)/1951041
A great essay about the F*ck Face card, by my favorite sports writer.
https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2019/1/25/18174412/bill-ripken-card-1989-fleer-frick-face-look-google-wont-index-this-if-the-url-has-the-actual-swear
Epicus, that story was something else, I feel like there’s a really good Wes Anderson movie in there.
The book itself was about coinage of various Middle Eastern kingdoms of the Middle Ages, which is a pretty freaking niche subject in and of itself. The amazing thing was how fast it all happened. I assumed it’d probably be a tough sell, and the listing would need to be up for a while, but I was getting messages within an hour. Apparently, word that some mysterious outsider was selling this book traveled through the coin collecting book collector’s fraternity like wildfire, and everyone who cared knew within a day. Yet they all seemed to hate one another, which made it even stranger. I’ve dealt with coin collectors, comic books, cards, records, and even wrestling magazine collectors, but the coin book weirdos were a special breed.
I fall nicely in the ‘stuff divides’ category. My dad might as well have been a magpie because of the “getting attracted to shiny trash only to get bored with it when he actually got it so he moved onto a new thing to fill a hole in his soul” nonsense which defined him. One of my siblings is convinced that his trash is holy relics because they were there when he died twenty years ago and I’m a bad, ungrateful person for just handing it to her because she’s the only person who wanted his cacaraca.
My dad has saved a small hoard of Apple II computers in the basement because he is convinced that they are worth money. Thirty seconds on eBay would show him that this is not the case. He also has thousands of books and board games, the books mostly pulp fiction and the games mostly strategy, which nobody wants. My parents are starting to talk about downsizing to a condo and I’m dreading having to be involved in hacking through that stuff.
although Apple II computers aren’t worth extravagant money, there are still people around who’d appreciate them. There’s still an annual conference, Kansasfest, that each year has a give-away that these days I think is mostly full of estate sale finds.
There was actually a huge drama recently when a famous Apple II collector with a huge collection died unexpectedly. Well-meaning (and probably some not as much) people swarmed the heirs within hours of the death offering to help, which seriously turned them against the community. Then weird things happened, like random famous artifacts appearing on eBay before the estate sale, apparently accidentally or intentionally snuck out by people not authorized to do so. Then there were other issues like items the person didn’t own but was either loaning or repairing not being returned but being sold. Complications you wouldn’t think of.
I’ve recently accumulated a bunch of unexpected old computer stuff, at least in part from a co-worker retiring after 40 years and clearing out his lab. I’m doing my best to whittle it down a bit so someone doesn’t get stuck having to wade through the whole mess some day in the future.
@vince Thanks for the info! Very interesting. If there were a cheap way to get this stuff over to Kansasfest to do with what they will, it might be fun to do that.
Don’t let him watch “LGR” on YouTube. He has a series where he goes to this old computer store in Dallas, and there’s an insane collection of vintage gear. Which was sold by the pound. It wasn’t valuable, but collectors did want it.
Me too. Getting rid of things is freeing. It’s like a burden has been lifted.
Now the only thing I collect is experiences. Last fall I spent two weeks wandering around Romania and Hungary. This fall I will spend two weeks wandering around southern Italy and Sicily.
The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) has announced the finalists for the divisional awards at the 77th annual Reubens in September. This is for work produced in 2022.
The three finalists in the category of ‘Newspaper Comic Strips’ are:
Darrin Bell (Candorville)
Dana Simpson (Phoebe and her Unicorn)
*Will Henry (Wallace the Brave)
Sorry, Mr. Batiuk, the ultimate year of Funky Winkerbean did not make the cut.
Does TB care about awards other than the Pulitzer? Especially the one that “got away”? He mentioned the Eisner Awards in one of his FW story arcs. If I remember correctly, Darin Fairgood was up for illustrating one of Les’s Dead St. Lisa books. They did not win.😲
* If Will Henry doesn’t win, I’ll lead a riot.
Henry probably ought to win, but that’s a great group of finalists.
And yes, Lisa’s Story the sometime graphic novel or something was up for an Eisner in the strip back in July of 2018 and did not win. That story was from two-time Eisner winner Rick Burchett’s brief tenure penciling the strip. Guy wasn’t great at staying on model but darned if he didn’t bring FW to life now and then with some genuine shots at being cartoony.
Les isn’t even looking at Cayla, isn’t he? It’s like he sees Lisa in the distance, and he’s making eye contact with her instead. Then he immediately breaks off his touch with Cayla so he can facepalm about how embarrassed he is.
Christ, what an asshole.
Once again, I’m stunned by your photographic memory.
There is a fair bit of whimsy in panel #1. Darin is still getting frisky with Jessica, carried over from the previous strip (if I remember correctly). Crazy Harry is bracing himself to jump into action is somewhat funny.
Panel #2: Way to keep it classy, Harry. 🙄
My bad. Here’s the announcement in case anyone is interested in the other divisions.
Thanks, BWoEH. Can’t wait to see YouTube clips of Leroy and Loretta bickering at the podium when the “Lockhorns” artist wins for Best Panel Cartoon.
Oddly, IMO the writing for “The Lockhorns,” one of the most sclerotic of the single-panel warhorses, has really sharpened up in the last couple years. It’s the last thing I would have expected, but it’s certainly welcome. I’m guessing a new, younger team came in.
Bunny Hoest still writes it. At age 91. She outlived her husband/strip creator Bill, and two other husbands she was married to for 12+ years. None of which were significantly older than her.
This is why Loretta will ultimately win the argument with Leroy. She’s a lot tougher than him, and will easily outlive him. I look forward to the final strip, where Loretta says something hilariously vicious to Leroy’s corpse during the final viewing.
Funky Winkerbean could have learned some things from The Lockhorns. It’s also a slice of interpersonal hell set in an outdated version of an overly-specific suburb… but The Lockhorns OWNS it. It doesn’t have the tone problems, the constant waffling about what it wants to be, the pathetic fishing for recognition, or the goddam comic book stories.
Yes, it sticks to its extremely basic premise and characters, and within that, anything goes. The only thing that is important is the gag. It’s actually a well-crafted, workmanlike example of its (ancient) type. (It’s also endless fodder for vicious “Super Fun-Pak Comics” takeoffs.)
Contrast today’s Crankshaft, where Crank is apparently happily all-in with the idea of ordering oatmeal at Dale Evans, because it’s healthful. That totally goes against his established character. What’s more, what’s really unforgivable, is that the same (unfunny) gag could easily have been made in a way that reinforced Crankshaft’s established character traits instead of refuting them. I guess TB just can’t be bothered to spend the extra effort.
Right. Crankshaft should be ordering a double grand slam breakfast with extra bacon. That would be true to his character.
Apparently Batiuk once got nominated for a Reuben, in 2004….
Can anyone confirm this? And if so, do we know what some of the other work was from that year that would have been put forward for nomination?
And were there any other Reuben nominations for Batiuk? (And if so …. why?)
According to TB himself, he did:
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/match-to-flame-149/
Typically, Batiuk calls himself a “Reuben Awards Division nominee” without saying which division(s) it was. Clearly, it wasn’t for writing.
Also, Batiuk hasn’t gotten his Golden T-Square yet. He was a cartoonist for 50 years, so he qualifies. (Quality is not a requirement.)
All the evidence I can find regarding TB and the Reuben Awards is that he was a speaker at the 2008 awards in New Orleans, which earned him a spot in this lovely piece of artwork from caricaturist and MAD artist Tom Richmond.
https://i0.wp.com/www.tomrichmond.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2008_reubens_big.jpg?resize=794%2C1024&ssl=1
TB is on the far right, with him are the other speakers for that year: Mike Peters (Mother Goose and Grimm), Sandra Boynton (so many great children’s books), Mark Tatulli (Heart of the City at the time, Lio), and Mort Gerberg (The New Yorker).
I find it amusing that even in May 2008 when the strip was hyping up Lisa’s forthcoming death, the caricature artist chose to depict Batiuk alongside Funky himself, one of the instances of his promotion going “He’s the title character, we’re featuring him!” regardless of how much Les gets flaunted in-strip.
I have to admit I don’t find Wallace interesting or particularly amusing. My local paper has been carrying it for 1-2 years. I must be missing something
When I was in rehab (for bone fractures, not the cool kind where Amy Winehouse says “Bill, I’m going to bed. Want the rest of my cocaine, or should I just throw it out?” “Oh, Amy, you know me so well!”), the local newspaper would drop off unsold copies for us to read. It had Wallace in it, replacing Dil…bert, right, I wanted to say “…do.” I can’t say I was impressed the few times I read it.
This paper was the Journal Inquirer, the region’s sleazy tabloid. They basically insulted my father in their obituary. They once implied in an article that a sweet coworker with a just as sweet sister confined to a wheelchair’s family didn’t care for her. They became known as “the Urinal Inspirer.”
The Akron newspaper is named ‘The Akron Beacon Journal’. My Dad used to call it ‘The Akron Leaking Urinal’.
We called it the Freakin Beacon.
Oh well, there’s no accounting for taste.
Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about Calvin and Hobbes?
I’ve enjoyed C&H since its original run. Bearthed’s recent FB update of Calvin’s whereabouts was very poignant. I’ll try reading Wallace within a C&H context
You know who’s never brought up in a “next Calvin & Hobbes” context no matter how obviously he wishes?
Frazz.
I am currently reading C&H for the second time through on GoComics and still enjoying it. I previously shared Breathed’s Bloom County/Calvin crossover with the readers here, which I had discovered on Twitter. It’s hard to believe that was two years ago!
I believe that Calvin & Hobbes is the greatest comic strip of all time. However, not everyone shares this sentiment. I was curious to know your thoughts on it.
I didn’t mean to imply Wallace the Brave is in Calvin & Hobbes class. C&H was mentioned because Will Henry lists Bill Watterson among his influences. Charles Schulz and Richard Thompson as well. Calvin & Hobbes, Peanuts, and Cul de Sac are three of my favorite comic strips of all time. Like Wallace the Brave, children are the featured characters in all three titles.
Will Henry includes a lot of detail in his comic strip. There are quite a few callbacks from previous comic strips, and Will always keeps his facts straight. WtB is obviously a labor of love.
There are just some Wallace the Brave comic strips I absolutely love. For example:
This ump doesn’t realize how lucky he was. Never turn your back on Amelia. She is frozen in deliberation. Should she hit the ump? “I’ll take that.”😂 (It clearly was a strike)
There is so much going on in this Sunday comic. I had to consult the comment section to make sure I caught all the detail. The boy loves the girl. The girl loves the dog. The dog wants a bone. Seagull wants the fisherman’s fish. The fisherman wants a hook. The mouse fears the fake owl on the shelf. One plant wants water, the other sunlight. Etc.
This one cracked me up. Featuring Wallace’s feral younger brother Sterling.
The axe was funny, but Sterling’s reply was hilarious. For now. Be afraid. Be very afraid. 😂
My favorite WtB story arc is probably the one about Amelia and the pumpkin. The story arc starts with this comic strip.
I suppose if you wanted to draw correlations to Calvin, you could say Wallace for his imagination and Amelia for her tendency to “spice things up”.
Comparing Wallace the Brave to the other finalists:
I’ve been reading Candorville since it swapped syndicates late last year. I’ve just never been impressed with the comic strip, or Rudy Park, the one that merged with it several years ago. The judging panel must have wanted a representative from the Comics Kingdom, but I can think of better titles than this one from that syndicate. Rhymes With Orange for example.
I’ve read a handful of strips from Phoebe and Her Unicorn. Usually when GoComics periodically sends an email featuring various comic strips covering a certain theme, (Spring, baseball, etc.) Phoebe and Her Unicorn has always seemed to be a children’s comic strip to me. If it’s good enough to be a finalist for a Reuben, perhaps I should give the comic strip a chance and add it to the list of comic strips I follow.
Cheers
@Bad Wolf
I quit reading Frazz when he became a guest in his own comic strip. Also, Jef Mallett seems to be a bit full of himself sometimes.
I love it when Stephan Pastis features Bicycle Jef in Pearls Before Swine.
How do you feel about Zippy th’ Pinhead?
I read Zippy the Pinhead for a while, but I found it to be too wordy, and too weird. Felt too much like reading an “underground” comic.
Sorry, Mr. Splut. As I said to Gabby, there’s no accounting for taste. Different strokes for different folks.
I like that Wallace commits to its characters’ traits and personalities and mines its humor out of those things rather than placing the gags on top of them. That’s not an easy balance to pull off in a comic strip and it doesn’t always work (it can be confusing even if you follow the strip closely), but when done well it is pretty funny and very satisfying to read.
The Calvin & Hobbes comparisons it sometimes draws are understandable because that is also what Bill Watterson did in that legendary strip (see also, Peanuts of course). Now, Wallace isn’t quite C&H, but it is quite well-received at least partially because this C&H-style approach is not something commonly seen or seen done well in the few new comic strips making it to papers these days. Frankly, I would argue that Wallace is closer to the late Richard Thompson’s beloved Cul-de-sac (a gentler version of it, I think) than C&H. Even so, I get the praise it receives and have largely enjoyed the strip myself, even if it has not quite reached the heights of Calvin & Hobbes or the Cul-de-sac summer plot where Alice is obsessed with seeing a “fish-slapping bear” on a suburban nature hike.
I wish I had seen your reply to Gabby before I posted mine. I started my reply this morning, but had to pause because of work. Wasn’t able to finish until lunchtime. The webpage didn’t refresh until after I hit send.
Well said. You’re right. Cul de Sac is the better comparison. Interesting how we both referred to Bill Watterson and Richard Thompson. Is Amelia an older version of Alice Otterloop?
Thanks everyone for the insights. I do like Cul-de-Sac, and it does make more sense as a comparison than C&H.
A few years ago our paper ran a series of test comics. Phoebe was actually pulled before the test ended because of complaints about the quality. I’ve been reading it online for the last few years, and find it usually somewhat amusing—mostly the characters other than Phoebe and Marigold.
I’m afraid after many years of holding on to my salad days of comic book collecting i can only assume that no one will be interested in my collection. The books were treated well but jammed into the handful of longboxes i’ve dragged around with me through several locations, few bagged or boarded.
I didn’t expect to get much out of them when i was buying them but looking back i had a real talent for missing things that went up in value. Like i had gotten tired of flashy young Art Adams wannabees (as i thought at the time) and avoided a bunch of Marvel comics by the future Image founders.
I only wish i had time to go through and pull out ones i’d really like to keep, i keep saying i’ll do that before the next move but we’ll see. But between the comics and the books and how much free time i have, i have to really think about how much time to read i’ve really got ‘left’.
And in Komix Thoughts news, Tom Batiuk has leveled up his self-delusion.
Lisa’s Story is now Tom Batiuk’s ticket to heaven.
Sometimes I imagine that I’m standing at the Pearly Gates before St. Peter, who’s sitting at a high judges’ bench. I’ve brought a duffle bag full of comic books and a copy of Lisa’s Story. Pete asks me how I might justify my existence
No, he doesn’t. Bringing a bag of comic books to your eternal judgment says everything about how you spent your existence.
so I hand him the book. He actually sits there and takes his time reading the whole thing very slowly
Batiuk just can’t resist the irrelevant, confusing detail. Why “actually”? Why is he indicating surprise that a judge is reading material he presented in his defense, in response to a question the judge asked? It defeats the entire scenario.
Batiuk does this all the time in his writing. He sets up a situation that implies a set of rules, and then disregards it all. He doesn’t subvert the rules or explore them; he just completely ignores the scene he wrote. “I found myself in a courtroom. To my complete surprise, courtroom procedures were followed.”
(again, it’s eternity.)
Another irrelevant, confusing detail. Why does it matter that it’s eternity? It’s a compilation of comic strips, Tom. It doesn’t take more than an hour to read in its entirety. It’s not War and Peace, you loony.
Then he hands it back and says: “This is good. You can go in.”
“Always remember, Tom: it’s an honor just to be nominated.” (trap door to hell opens)
As I pass by his judges’ bench, Pete looks back down at me and says, “But I really like the early funny ones!”
This is a rare bit of self-deprecation that hits the mark. He acknowledges that even people who liked Lisa’s Story preferred Act I. But if he actually believed that, he’d be celebrating Act I. Instead, he spends so much effort bashing it and denying it ever happened, and trying to convince the world Lisa’s Story was something it wasn’t.
And I haven’t even mentioned his awards (which go to anyone who pays for them), his nationwide book-signing tour (at Luigi’s) and his coverage from major media outlets (the Akron Beacon Journal), and his millions of website hits.
And the “early, funny ones” line was stolen from Woody Allen.
Beat me to it, BC! A complete lift from Woody Allen.
And as for those awards:
In 2008, Lisa’s Story was awarded a silver medal from the Nautilus Book Awards in the “Aging/Death & Dying”category. While the Nautilus site doesn’t have the 2008 winners posted, it’s instructive to look at the number of winners from some recent years:
2022: 78 books won gold medals, 187 books won silver medals.
2021: no awards listed
2020: 63 books won gold medals, 170 books won silver medals.
2019: 75 books won gold medals, 168 books won silver medals.
A few of the authors who wrote Nautilus-award winning books (Barbara Kingsolver, Rachel Maddow) are well known. But it’s not exactly a super-exclusive club.
Lisa’s Story also won a bronze medal in the “Most Life Changing” category (yes, that’s an actual category) of the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY’s).
The IPPY winners for 2008 included 108 gold medal books, 111 silver medalists, and 235 bronze medalists. Again, a few names in the mix of authors might be familiar (Ravi Shankar, Peter S. Beagle), but it’s not quite the Booker Prize….
I rather like how this very real thing sounds like a joke we would make here on SOSF.
“whoever pays for them” might have been a bit harsh of me. But they’re clearly not very prestigious. Especially when the body hands out hundreds of them every year. And they’re on a list of writing contests to avoid.
I also question how “independent” Batiuk is when he’s been with a mainstream syndicate for decades. And he’s had plenty of books (if not this particular book) published by mainstream publishers.
Reminds me of the “Who’s Who Of American School Students” scam*. Did anyone else get this bullshit when they were in high school? They mail you this pitch you’ve been “selected” to be in their Very Exclusive Book for this award that college admissions people take oh-so-seriously. And they have a booth at every college fair.
It seemed legit enough the first time, so we paid for it. Then the solicitations started coming in more and more – and my high school career became less and less worthy of recognition. I eventually saw through it and started just throwing them away. But one day my parents found out and got on me about it. I wonder if including it on my application announced how empty my career was, just as Batiuk’s precious IPPY and Nautilus awards do.
* – I think it’s a little unfair to call it a scam. But there’s no short way to say “people who sell you a useless service if you’re dumb enough to buy it.” Caveat emptor.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but all the FW/Classic FW/Crankshaft archives have now been expunged from the Comics Kingdom servers. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they were reading here and were horrified to find out that someone, somewhere was getting something somehow for free. God forbid.
I’m actually still a CK subscriber. I renewed a couple months ago because I liked having access to those archives. Yes, I am a schmuck.
This also unfortunately means that inevitably many older SoSF entries have lost their “link to today’s strip.” C’est la vie.
dammit
sic transit gloria mundane
*incomprehensible sobbing*
[mumbling comforting platitudes into CBH’s shoulder as I hug her to comfort her] gonna be all right… things will get better… darkest before dawn… Lord works in mysterious ways… we’re here for you…
I reiterate my offer to set up a GoFundMe for FW volumes Sheesh through Ecch if you lack a resource for deep dives. I remember you said you didn’t need it. Just leaving it out there.
Yet another reason to hate the Comics Kingdom, as if I needed one. DEEP HATRED! BOO! COMICS KINGDOM. BOO!
What do you think would happen if you decided to cancel your subscription mid-year? Would you get any money back? Doubt it.
As I wrote the other day, I cancelled my Comics Kingdom subscription on the final day of the annual subscription period, 04/30/2023. I cancelled it at about 9:30 AM, on a Sunday. I returned home from church a few hours later. Even though I was still logged into my account, my premium subscription perks were gone. Access to archives was limited to only seven days and the premium subscribers notice popped up every time I tried to view a comic from the archive. When I tried to view my “Favorites” page or my “Saved” comics, it said “You must be logged in or have an active subscription to do that.”
I figured the Comics Kingdom would behave that way, so I downloaded all my Saved comics and read all my Favorites for that day before cancelling the subscription.
If I had cancelled a few weeks before on 04/07/2023, when I received the renewal notice, I bet access would been terminated
that day. Even though I had paid for 23 more days.
——————————
The foolish optimist in me hopes the Funky Winkerbean archives will find their way over to GoComics. ‘Funky Winkerbean Classics’, anyone?
I mean, GoComics has two versions of Stone Soup in reruns, for crying out loud.
I’m not an subscriber
but I was shocked to find out that CK got rid of the archives of Funky Winkerbean/Crankshaft/FW Classics
Of course they’re gonna do that. Not only do people not deserve to get things for free if they can make money, they might be punishing him for fence jumping.
TB must be aghast. Today’s Mother Goose and Grimm.
Tom Batiuk: Somebody stole my Sam ‘n’ Ellas frozen turkey joke. Get my lawyer on the phone!
Au contraire — TB is delighted!
Tom Batiuk: Wow, somebody actually read my comic strip! And clearly created a tribute to my work! Because there’s no way anyone else could have come up with a joke that brilliant! Ooooh, AND I’ll bet I can sue for some sort of copyright infringement! Get my lawyer on the phone!
Maybe it’s just me, but from what I’ve observed of TB’s behavior in videos, I can’t imagine him getting delighted about much of anything.
Well, other than when the weekly shipment of new comic books comes in. He can’t wait to down go to the comic shop to shoot the breeze with the boys.
Today’s (Saturday’s) Crankshaft: Batty breaks out the ol’ thesaurus and has his formerly illiterate character blurt out a big new word.
Too bad Ohio has been in a drought for a month now but rain is expected tomorrow.