Yep, the final Spain (Canary Islands) item that the person bought from another account got a claim in today. I'm glad I nipped that in the bud before I got took for another couple hundred dollars. We went into a negative because of that jerk as we only make a dollar or two per sale and it would have taken about 400 sales to over come his/her actions. Oh well!
Still there isn't anything realistic that one can do to prevent this from happening. Am I to put $4 tracking on packages where I'm not making a two dollar profit? We would be $2 in the red on each package.
Luckily this scam rarely happens. I'm just wondering when the hell ebay is going to step in to put a stop to this person's actions. Probably...NEVER?
Anyway, the comic show was the same old thing, which is a little disappointing. Same sellers that I've seen before selling the same stuff. Then again what can I expect from a small dead city comic con?
I had noticed that the guy that runs the thing padded the show with a ton of artists to make it seem bigger than it really is. Without them, they probably would have had maybe 10 comic dealers, which would make for a very small show. The crowd seemed a bit dead too. I think people are getting wise to this and stopped coming, so I'll be very surprised if it lasts another three years. It died out before due to a lack of interest and we had no shows for about 15 years.
Then again, Syracuse has the same trouble and their cons too died out for a while.
Collectors want good stuff cheap but the sellers who attend are the same local sellers with the same inventory that you can find in their stores. Customers don't exactly seem interested in comics either, most of them seem to be teens who go there, wander around for 30 minutes and leave. I don't understand that at all. I'm thinking they go for a reason, find out it sucks there and leave. Which means less and less people return every year.
Oh, there was one new guy who I didn't know, but he was charging about twice the price for everything. So he had a lot of good selection but the prices were really out there. A lot of times you can get entire runs of stuff for cheap on ebay, but he was charging like $5 an issue for stuff that is sorta hard to get these days, but not impossible to get cheaper online.
So I ended up with a bunch of random stuff. A load of cheap 50 cent books which were mostly from the 70s. Stuff like 70s Spider-Woman which I've been meaning to get but they are sort of rare to find. Then I filled in a few holes in my collection with modern $1 books, but the guy who has those is a huge annoying big mouthed jerk and it's very random what he'll actually bring over for those cheap books. In the end, I don't think I had spent over $40 on comics and I got about 10 inch stack of them.
With so little to buy, I ended up spending money on artists. Amazingly they had one from a comic whick I was very interested in called "Henchgirl". I found two of her comics last Black Friday at the $1 back inventory clearance sale but of course they were the last two, so I never got to read them. I only thumbed though them but I really liked what I saw. Her graphic novel is on my Amazon wish list even.
Anyway, it took me about an hour to work up the courage to meet the artist as I'm terribly shy. It went well, she was very perky and happy and easy to talk to. By the end there I spent about $40 for two GNs and some post cards. She was all red in the face and super happy. I think she is probably pretty shy herself and I made her all happy and stuff. LOL I guess it's nice to be appreciated for your efforts, as these artists probably don't get much of that. I think most of them sit bored to death at these events. I feel bad for the artists, but most of them are really awful or D-level artists that is just learning to draw. I try, but the majority of them are just unreadable or the tripe that I have absolutely no interest in. Henchgirl is more of a modern take on indy comics, very much like the DC and Marvel superhero comics which I enjoy the most. Anyway I hope to get to read the book before too long.
Honestly this week (more like a month) I've not been in a comic reading mood. I tend to let stuff build and then binge. With comics though, I tend to want complete runs which means I could go years before reading them. I tried reading Silk this past Monday or Tuesday as I'm short only 2 or so issues from the complete set but I petered out about half way though her run. It was something like 16 Spider-Man issues where she shares the comic with Peter, then she went onto her own book for 7 issues and then they rebooted her in another series which lasted to 19 or so. I got tired out around issue 2 of the new series.
With that book it seems that the writers has never really read the prior series at all as she gets personality transplants with each series. In Spider-Man she's a bit of a hot slut. I'm assuming she's in her 20s as does very mature and sexual things. Silk volume one she gets toned down by 50% but we really don't get to know her too much as those issues are mostly action and her seeking her family. She becomes more serious and un-slutty. Silk volume two we get to know a lot more about her, but she somehow regresses to a teen like mentality woman. It's almost as if they had a mandate to emulate the teen Ms Marvel with Silk. It's a shock really, but it was this version that made me interested in her. She develops a personality suck in time as she was trapped in a bunker for 10 years and suddenly use old slang and is into old stuff that is now cool retro (90s things oddly enough when she should be into mid 2000 stuff).
Anyway her character personality is all over the place and it can be frustrating for readers. It's why I really hate reading superhero comics as they cannot seem to keep the same writers and artists for very long. Sometimes the art changes so much that it becomes a chore to read.
But switching teams can have such a huge change that it makes a series really good! Two series that I know of which changed in the middle of a fairly long run which actually made the series better is Sabrina and Batgirl (new 52).
Sabrina jumps around a lot and I don't exactly know how the early issues goes as they are really unbearable. I think they emulated the TV show, then the TV cartoon, then they done their own hybrid art based somewhat on the cartoon. After those franchises died out, they then switched to Manga Sabrina, which is right up my alley.
Basically instead of short stories that rarely has any connection to any prior story (which Archie is known for), you pretty much get a superlong art and reasons to care for the characters. A lot like most manga and indy comics really. The art is really a drastic change and sort of ugly, but ugly art is sort of a "thing" for indy art. Artists are often going for the radical punk look and they try hard to buck against popular comic art trends. Basically you need to be really used to it and so I find this version of Sabrina charming. Either way it made an unreadable comic into something for an older crowd and more enjoyable.
The second half of Batgirl from 52 series is way different from the first half. Honestly I couldn't stand the early 52 Batgirls as it's a typical dull superhero comic. Fight fight, angst, angst. I'm assuming all Batman comics are like that but it's not my cup of tea. The second half Batgirl became more of a realistic girl doing very modern things approach.
She's doing things like texting, having cool gay friends, having relationships and going out to parties, being insecure about her socialness, and being quite an egghead nerd at the same time. Basically the comic became a very indy type comic and far less a superhero one. I think it actually done rather well in sales, but then Rebirth happened where they changed up nearly all the teams on all of the books and Batgirl went back to her old ways of fight fight, angst, angst. The artist though, she went off to do her own indy comic and I find it to be basically the same thing as her Batgirls.
Anyway, the trouble I have with a lot of series is that they constantly change teams. Supergirl right now is unreadable but she has had several interesting runs. So I'm glad that series like Harley Quinn and Squirrel Girl can stay consistent. Harley Quinn is twice a month now, so it's hard to keep the same team for that, but they manage to find teams that are pretty consistently like each other. I think Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti has a really stong control over that book where the substitute artists are almost doing the same output as themselves. Squirrel Girl (which is amazingly independent like and so unlike any stereotypical Superhero comic) luckily keeps the same team for each issue.
It's basically why I never got into Superhero comics in the past. The 80s books were pretty awful and hard to read for the most part. Characters were stiff and stories duller than dull. The 90s was mostly about hot art but the stories were complete non-sense and even harder to read than the 80s crap. There are some exceptions of course. I did get into a lot of DC stuff in the mid-90s like Supergirl, Impulse and Young Justice as well as later issues of Legion. The writing got a lot better and the characters more sappy and cheesy, which is right up my alley. Then DC comics changed staff and comics got awful again for around 12 years. It's only been the last 5 years or so where the indy scene has caught up to both Marvel and DC and comics more akin to what I like.
I've heard that these comics are not doing all that well but then again nothing is truely doing well with comics. Basically they can put anything out and get the same numbers. I've heard that they are using indy type writers and artists because they are so young and hungry that they'll work for the pennies that Marvel and DC has to offer. The so called better ones cannot afford to live on those wages. The best ones work on the top selling issues of course and I heard they get paid accordingly.
Anyway, I ranted on there. The other thing I got at the comic con was some art prints from an artist who draws in a really good chibi style. He as a great way with color too. He done a Raven that is to die for, so much so that I plan to get a frame for it and hang it up. I also bought an Ivy and Harley as well, but they are like an 8 out of 10, while that Raven is a 11 out of 10. LOL!
Yesterday was the church sale that I sometimes go on and on about here on the blog. Turns out that I'm seeing the same faces over and over at these sales that people are recognizing me. LOL I'm making some "friends" in that aspect but it's more like business acquaintances.
The stuff this time around was meh. I've seen better, but I didn't do so badly either. Perhaps a $300 profit day? I say that because I got a large box of 60s-70s board games and some of them I think are rather expensive, like I checked and I saw that the "Dark Shadows" one can fetch $50 on a good day. I'm not really up on by board games and I don't exactly care for them, so I'm rather "meh" about them although I'll probably make a killer profit off of them.
OH, I got yet ANOTHER GPS system from that sale. It's about a 50% chance rate of getting one of those LOL! I find that really amazing. But I was disappointed that there wasn't really any other cool electronics. I did pick up yet ANOTHER video camera. I remember picking up one two years ago from there and being entertained by the recordings on the tapes. Those were about 10 years old and featured a kid and his friends doing stuff locally in town. They were in a rock band and played at their school talent show, ETC. It's sort of heart breaking to see people just toss away memories like those.
But really I think the sale this time was meh because as I didn't find anything I really care about. I try to buy stuff I like to resell, but it gets horribly dull if I have no interest in the stuff. I got 4 boxes of salable goods but nothing I am personally interested in. I did get a small handful of DVDs to watch. Paranormal Activity 4 turned out to be a huge turd and offered nothing new. It actually pissed me off! It's almost like if Blair Witch 2 was made where they redone the first film completely and done the same exact things without furthering the franchise mystery and mythology. That's basically what PA4 was like. With horror films, you have to tease and progress the baddies to keep people interested.
So that was a big waste of time. Insidious 1 was actually really good and I'm looking to get the other DVDs to watch of that. It's actually what PA4 should have been really. I know the gimmick is to be scared due to still cameras in your sleep, but dammit you can only go to the well so many times with that. Show us more of these witches and demons and let us know their motives and intentions. But nooo. The characters we suffered to watch gets killed so suddenly and randomly, it's like a big WTF! Like the film decided enough of this bullshit, lets kill everyone off now and end this. Insidious 1 had a ton of cool interesting stuff but kept enough away to make me want more. PA4 (aside from the girl actress) make me want to chuck the DVD out the window for wasting my time.
Something that confuses me is how can anyone be scared of horror films? I watch them like I do the Twilight Zone. I know it's not real and I know the stuff is totally impossible. I find them interesting fantasies and that's it. Yet some people are really scared to death of things like ghosts in games and the stuff. I'm looking at it technically, like how they done the effects, make up, etc. Horror video games too. LOL I guess I don't really have a mind for that stuff to be scared of them.
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