The Comic Book Collector's Blog

The Comic Book Collector's Blog: page illustration

Practical guides, expert advice and resources to manage, value and grow your comic book collection.

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Collector's Guide

A screenwriter doesn't write the same depending on who draws

Three boxes per page on one side, eight on the other, same author. What requires these adjustments, and how to check it in six numbers.

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Collector's Guide

Writing a group means managing a page budget

Six characters, one and a half pages each: the wall of the group story. The alternation solution and the three symptoms of its absence.

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Collector's Guide

Create characters you don't own

The market pays for the moment of creation and ignores the work of construction. What the order regime produces, forty years later.

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Collector's Guide

The cartridges did a job that nothing does anymore

Locate, compensate, reveal, maintain: four functions eliminated with the tool. What we gained, what we never replaced.

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Collector's Guide

A threat is only credible if a precedent exists

What a character death produces, what it costs, and why its cancellation retroactively damages already published issues.

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Collector's Guide

Six reviews on the same author: everything is cheap except two issues

Series between $6.99 and $15.99 median, including most cited work. The value is not distributed, it is punctual.

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Collector's Guide

Monthly horror: a story that destroys its raw material while functioning

Each appearance informs, therefore reassures. How a horror series can last, and why its best numbers seem sedate.

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Collector's Guide

Writing while knowing the device: the screenwriter who also supervised

Arbitrate schedules, match teams, absorb incidents. What this post teaches, and why it leaves no signed trail.

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Collector's Guide

An editorial event is an engineering problem disguised as a story

Four contradictory demands to satisfy at once. Why the recurring flaws in these stories are structural and not clumsiness.

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Collector's Guide

What happens, stays there: the signing of Marv Wolfman

Factual continuity versus consequential continuity. What the second costs, what it makes free, and why the industry discourages it.

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Collector's Guide

Browse an entire catalog for a hundred dollars

Entries between $0.99 and $2.99, two exceptions to keep aside. Why a flat market is the material condition for an orderly reading.

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Collector's Guide

Winter Soldier: when a single seller occupies the entire bottom of the statement

Five ads, one price, identical wording: counting ads is not counting sellers.

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