By Charles Morgan for Coinweek …..
Hi Everybody,
CoinWeek Editor Charles Morgan here. If you haven’t heard, CoinWeek has published a new sister site dedicated to the world of comic books! Covering recent issues, classic stories, certified comics, and online comic auctions, ComicWeek brings the same level of fiercely independent and honest writing that coin collectors have enjoyed at CoinWeek for years. We’re very proud of the site and know that more than a few coin collectors also enjoy a great comic book every now and then.
Here’s a quick rundown of what ComicWeek covered this week.
Current Events
Heritage Comics May 5 Auction Prices: ’50s Horror Comics Lead the Way
On Sunday, May 5, Heritage Auctions offered a selection of over 820 comic books, illustrations, and related memorabilia, including hundreds of popular comic book titles graded and encapsulated by Certified Guaranty Corporation (CGC).
Here is a quick rundown of the Top 5 Auction Results from the sale and what these prices say about the current state of the certified comic market.
Comic Book Issue Reviews
1.) Ascender #1 (Image Comics)
Ascender is the spiritual follow up to Lemire and Nguyen’s sci-fi odyssey Descender, which told the story of a robotic boy struggling for survival in a world where robots are outlawed and hunted down.
Recommended
2.) American Carnage #6 – Faith (DC / Vertigo)
One of the interesting things that Leandro Fernandez and Dean White do in this issue is to color certain characters at certain moments almost entirely black, often leaving only teeth and hair visible in the face, along with particular items of clothing.
They do this to Wynn Morgan in a handful of panels during the speech, and they do this to Jennifer during the big reveal at the end. It reminds me of similar effects in Frank Miller’s Sin City, though I can’t help but appreciate the irony of its use in a comic like American Carnage.
Recommended
3.) Black Hammer: Age of Doom #10 (Dark Horse Comics)
It’s probably unfair to say that Black Hammer offers readers something off the beaten path. Jeff Lemire enjoys telling an unconventional story, but reading his scripts is like reading a love letter to 80 years of comic book history. There’s nothing pat or retread about it either. Black Hammer is at times poignant verging on heartbreaking, but it can, in the turn of a page or two, proffer up hilarious moments as well.
Highly Recommended
TV / Film
Something Numismatic
What’s this? A giant penny in the Batcave? This “large” cent has a long backstory in the Batman universe. Originally, it was a weapon used by Penny Plunderer, a Golden Age Batman villain that has since been retconned out of the story. It has carried numerous dates over the years: 1945, 1947… In this image, we could not make out the date with 100% certainty, but it appears to be dated 1936.
Just goes to show, there’s numismatics in virtually everything!
