One only has to glance through the pages of the Eisner-Award winning “The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye”, by Sonny Liew, to see the development of comic book art in Asia over the last several decades. True, the titular character created by Sonny is fictional – but Chan Hock Chye’s journey illustrates the myriad influences that have flowed into the region over the years, and some ways in which they were adapted and transformed by local culture.
Comic books are basically fully illustrated story books. To tell the story well in this media, comic book writers not only have to decide on the prose, but also on the way their stories are told graphically. To do this well, the writers at the major comic publishers would typically have to collaborate closely with their co-creators (pencilers, inkers and colourists) much in the same way that movies are the result of a team of scriptwriters, directors, cameramen and actors. While some may think that grown-ups have no need of pictures to get into stories they read, many adults still marvel at visual interpretations of written prose, such as those adapted to movies and television. One other characteristic of comic books is that they tend to have quicker turnaround times compared to some other modes of modern story telling such as movies and television series. They could be published on a...
I've been collecting comics for twenty years now. I love the hobby and would go to the local comics store regularly picking up weekly/monthly issues from my pull list. As I progressed further in the hobby, I started to make more friends that started collecting “key” comic issues.
What we mean by the term “key” is that the issue is significantly important in that it might contain an event that can shock a storyline prompting collectors to collect those comics. Events such as Secret Wars, Civil War, The Infinity Gauntlet, Death of Superman and more recently the death of Wolverine are some examples. These are key events and collectors will scramble to get the best copies, variants and also aim for the best possible “condition” of the book available.
The concept of slabbing collectibles (coins, trading cards, comics, toys, video games) has had its share of (common) problems and controversies over the years. If you are starting or have pondered starting to collect slabbed / third-party graded comics, do be aware of the three concerns below and make a considered decision before slabbing your comics or purchasing slabbed ones.1) You Can't Read the Book Anymore!This is the one thing that amuses me the most when I discuss slabbed comics. Let’s first be clear on what I mean—I really mean that if you remove the book from the (not-unbreakable) slab, you are essentially undoing the grade given by the grading company. That is why people do not remove the book from the slab. Of course, the flipside of this is that you lose one very key reason why the book was to enjoyed and owned in the first place—to be able...
Rarity - a foremost quality to hobbyists. A comic book with a print run of 100,000 is spawned from a single canvas - an original piece that was inked, coloured and then mass-produced. In the quest for exclusivity, novelty and investment value, original comic art is becoming more attractive to collectors. This article seeks to briefly address a few basic aspects of the hobby.
