Introducing the Bottorff Comic Backs Price Guide & Checklist 2025 Edition

 Years ago, Ray Bottorff, Jr and I were members of the Grand Comics Database, and wrote a paper on the origins of the group. Years have gone by since we've worked on anything together, even though he lives about 10 miles from me. Recently I reached out to him with a question about his longtime bibliography which he's been working on for a long time. We chatted on the phone for almost an hour and put together a version for distribution on the Internet Archive. Here's the link, and an excerpt from Ray's introduction.

 The Bottorff Comic Backs Price Guide & Checklist 2025 Edition
Ray Bottorff, Jr.
Greenbelt, MD: Ray Bottorff, Jr.
https://archive.org/details/the-bottorff-comic-backs-price-guide-checklist-2025-edition

What Exactly Is a ComicBack?

Basically, it is a neologism meaning a cartoon or comic related mass-market-sized paperback. In 2001, I was going through my two boxes of comic paperbacks and discovered that no one had done anything cataloging them. A little bit of brainstorming later, I came up with the term for them, ComicBacks. 

I decided to record all printings and editions that I could. I began with the obvious choices, comic strip and comic book reprint paperbacks, which are still the vast bulk of my listings. Then it became clear I needed to add new and reprint cartoon paperbacks. Then prose novels of comic characters which had been in vogue then. With a bit of mission creep, that was followed by prose novels of those proto-superheroes, pulp hero reprint paperbacks, which expanded to include new paperback stories of those characters, and then new prose novels about non-comic originating superheroes or superhero themed paperbacks. Then I added movie and TV show novelizations based on comic characters. Dime Novel hero reprints joined the list. I was adding joke books with cartoon or cartoon-like illustrations and paperback books about the history of all of the above and animation. That led to adding animated-related paperbacks and paperback comic book price guides. As I write this, there are over 9400 entries in my ComicBacks listings, with probably hundreds, if not thousands of titles and printings, to still identify and add to this list.

 

Comics at Lost City Books in Adams Morgan

 Lost City Books is an excellent bookstore run by Politics and Prose graphic novel programmer alumni Adam Waterreus and a really pleasant staff. I was there this weekend dropping off a large part of my Dad's paperback collection (mysteries, suspense, Mickey Spillane, and signed Dick Francis hardcovers) to see if they're interested in it. While my wife browsed the books, I checked out the comics offerings which are pictured below.

 

 

 

A Kim Deitch collection at $100. Is it rare?

 

In Adam's picks we can see David Small's recent graphic novel. Adam brought him to the store to speak.

Mattie Lubachansky's Boys Weekend is a staff pick (pro tip - Fantom might have signed copies still)

The Bubbles fanzine out of Richmond - a surprise to find.

An engaged customer

Bumper stickers!

Burn's Big Baby, Caza's Arkadi for $100, Chaykin's Black Kiss collection.

Society is Nix old strip reprints from Pete Maresca.

A Ghibli book I didn't know about

Windsor-Smith's Weapon X and Clowes' Monica were shelved up high

X of Swords in a display case. I don't know why it was.

P. Craig Russell in a display case I understand.

14 volumes of gay comic Meatmen for $500

Not comics, but she writes them as Ursula Vernon.

The rest of the photos are of the actual graphic novel section

 

The entire graphic novel section in one photo.

And there's a lot of interesting-looking restaurants in the same block.

Uncorrected Proofs in comics libraries? Keep or toss?

This question came up in the librarian section of the Comics Studies Society.

I argued in favor of keeping them as the art is frequently in an unfinished state, and can be thumbnails, pencils, or uncolored.

Here is an example of a proof, or Advance Reader Copy, of Trashed by Derf with an added editor's note and marketing information that may not be available anywhere else. It's from my own collection that I happen to run across recently, so I decided to take a few pictures to bolster my argument, and then thought I'd share them here as well.

I'd call this part of the Secret History of Comics.

My apologies for the so-so photos.

 

 

 

Corporations vs Collectors: The Excesses of Hallmark Christmas ornaments (UPDATED)

An editorial by Mike Rhode
(updates in italics 12/26/2019)

I used to collect Hallmark's Christmas ornaments. I slowed down last year and completely stopped this year. (Hypocrisy update: Well, I had stopped until I went to a Hallmark store looking for Scooby-Doo ornaments and cartoon cards. Then I slipped off the wagon again. A habit since 1993 is hard to break it turns out, at least at half-price.)

Here's roughly what's on offer for 2019:

(not pictured - Spider-Man, Lego Robin)

In 1993 Hallmark started producing superhero ornaments for their Keepsake line, but only one a year: 1993 - Superman; 1994 - Batman; 1995 - Batmobile; 1995 - Superman.  In 1996, Marvel was included and Wonder Woman and Spider-Man appeared. 1997 was Marvel's Hulk with no DC one. The situation reversed in 1998 with DC's Superman miniature and no Marvel one.  1999 saw three DC ones - The Flash, Batman and Robin miniature, and a Celebrate the Century postage stamp of Superman. 2000 was back to two from DC - a Catwoman miniature and a Super Friends lunchbox.

By 2006, 13 years after Hallmark started licensing them, they had four ornaments - two from DC (Superman The Man of Steel and Batman The Bat-Signal) and two from Marvel (Spider-Man and New Breed of Superheroes).

Christopher Reeve as Superman is this year's Superman, and a bit strange, since there's no anniversary associated with the 1978 movie and 2019.

This year, they have 13. Or 14 if you count the two "mystery" versions of Captain Marvel. The second version shows her uniform in the Kree colors.

 

Or 15, if you count the non-Keepsake series Flash.

For some reason, the 1960s Batman tv show continues to be popular, with two ornaments this year. The second of which is a Bat-guitar, for some odd reason.

 

As does the Lego Batman movie, with a Robin figure this year.

Wonder Woman in her invisible jet is at least a classic icon from the comic books.

Batman's pose is taken from the classic Frank Miller story, The Dark Knight Returns, which has seen several sequels in recent years.

And the Iron Man ornament wears his classic armor from the 1960s and 1970s, drawn most often then by Gene Colan.

Spider-Man in a Santa hat is a perennial.

(photo from Hallmark's website)

For a few years, they've done these mini-ornaments.

One wonders who wants to hang Thanos, a genocidal space alien villain on the tree though. That's two ornaments by the way - the Infinity Gauntlet has broken from it's hanger above.

Let alone a villain from The Walking Dead...

But the main reason I stopped collecting these is cost.

 

Aquaman	$8.99
Green Lantern	$8.99
Here Comes Spidey Claus	$15.99 $16.99
Lego Robin Captain Marvel	$17.99
Marvel Studios Avengers: Endgame Thanos	$18.99
Infinity Gauntlet	$19.99
Christopher Reeve as Superman	$19.99
Batman Rocks!	$19.99
Batman	$22.99
Wonder Woman Invisible Jet	$24.99
Iron Man	$29.99
Batboat	$29.99

At an average cost of $20, the whole superhero collection (not counting Walking Dead or the non-Keepsake Flash at $8.99) will cost you $256 before tax. And there's so many of them, that within a couple of years, the only ornaments on a tree would be superheroes. I've already got at couple of storage tubs full, because I foolishly never expected these to be produced for so many years when I started collecting them at the beginning. It's in the nature of corporations to maximize their intellectual property, and I shouldn't be surprised about this. I also know that nobody is forcing me to buy all of these, or any of these, and that superheroes are big business now. I'm just bemoaning the ever-increasing tendency of  fandom to be run into the ground by the ever larger companies that control the IP behind it. A very similar blog post could have been written about Hallmark's Star Wars or Star Trek ornaments. And this isn't even looking at animation characters from Disney or Warner Bros... At some point, the golden goose is going to die from overuse, I think. But I might be wrong about that too.

Should you be interested in any of these, you can get most of them through Hallmark's website.  There's even more there that I didn't see at my local Hallmark shop, and it's also hard to tell what's new for this year and what they still have in stock from last year. And Hyperallergic just ran an article on the Henry Ford Museum collection of them.

Cartoons and pencil sharpeners

I met Bob Cantor at a party yesterday. Bob collects toy pencil sharpeners and then paints them as subjects of oil paintings. Of relevance to us here is his subcollection of cartoon pencil sharpeners.

'ComicBacks' Yahoo group is local now

A couple of years ago, Ray Bottorff Jr moved here from Detroit, and brought his project to produce a bibliography / price guide to paperback books related to comics with him. Ray's got a ComicBacks Yahoo group which he describes as:

"...a list designed to appeal to both fans of Comic Books and Paperbacks. ComicBacks is a term copyrighted by Ray Bottorff Jr to refer to mostly mass-market sized paperbacks that are comic-related. Comic-related means that the paperback has its origins in Comic Books, Comic Strips, Animation, Hero Pulps or other related Sister Arts. I have no problem including paperbacks in this list which may not have originated in comics, but are of a Super-Hero theme. The list can cover both comic reprinted work and prose material from comics or comic characters.
And if you wish to talk about Big Little Books, Oversize Paperbacks, Oblong Paperbacks or Trade Paperbacks of this "genre" feel free to do so.
Also feel free to post your buy/sell/trade lists!"

He's recently posted a link to a 700-page illustrated e-version of his list of ComicBacks. You can join the group through the above link.