The following is the complete list of comics I read every goddamn day… or… whenever they happened to be updated which, for some, is grievously occasional.

For each series featured, I am simply pulling whatever comic is up today, warts and all, on this – Thursday, March 11, in the year 2010 of our Lord, Rahm Emanuel.

OK, let’s get it on here.

American Elf: The Sketchbook Diaries of James Kochalka

By James Kochalka

Yep.  Potty training his son.  This sort of material is pretty common for American Elf.  Boy, why DO I read this comic anyway?  Well, Kochalka is, of course, a living legend of the indy comics (and rock & roll) world having created such madness as Monkey Vs. Robot and The Horrible Truth About Comics.  I think, perhaps, I respect that Kochalka is RELIGIOUS about getting a comic a day up.  These days it’s mostly something funny one of this two sons have said that day, but he’s also got a lot of self-loathing and remorse about being a jerk.  I can get down with that.

Bob the Angry Flower

By Stephen Notley

I have been reading this weekly comic since Yakra XIII turned me on to it over a decade ago.  Since then I’ve had the distinct pleasure of meeting the then Canadian, now ex-pat Mr. Notley and I gotta tell you two things about Stephen Notley:

A) he loves sushi and

B) he is turbo polite.

Proof: we invited him out for sushi and he accepted but realized he couldn’t make it and called us to tell us so. See?  Brian Bendis would just blow a guy off.  Not Notley.

Bob the Angry Flower is about a flower who is, generally, angry.  Tthe comic employs comedy staples like quantum physics, dog killing, former U.N. Secretary Kofi Annan, and/or Godzilla. A classy comic from a classy Canadian.

Gunshow

By KC Green

The newest of my daily reads, Gunshow is an absurd comic of epic proportions.  Usually random in topic and scope, the series also occasionally returns to an ongoing storyline “The Anime Club” about four teens who just want to watch anime that doesn’t suck.  It’s hilarity is only matched by its spotty updating schedule.  Green’s previous series, the psuedo-autobiographical Horribleville is also worth a look. But be warned: once you look… you may never UNlook.

Hark! A Vargrant

By Kate Beaton

Written by the recipient of one of my most savage and unruly Geek Crushes, Kate Beaton’s H!aV is rapidly becoming one of the most respected online comics.  A cavalcade of sassy literary and historical figures that you learned about in school, had you been paying attention.  A rising star, comics news and For Real news sources alike seek Beaton for just a few precious moments with the reigning queen of online comics.  Read and discover why. Holla.

Penny Arcade

By Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik

Oh, really? A 30-something video game player on the internet and he likes Penny Arcade? No, really? That is a shock. Shocking is what that is.  If you don’t know what Penny Arcade is, then you don’t know what the internet is, my friend.  As important for its game industry insider news as its scathing comics, increasingly, so goes Penny Arcade, so goes the video game industry. Cower.

Scary Go Round presents Bad Machinery

By John Allison

Not going to lie to you – probably getting towards the end of my tenure reading this series. I know KahrlZero gave up on this Englishman’s previous comic, Scary Go Round, years ago out of boredom and I may abandon ship for this comic not actually being a new comic at all but just a continuation of THAT comic which, itself, was a continuation of Allison’s first comic, Bobbins.  What keeps me coming back is the art.  Allison has a visual vernacular that is unparalleled, evolving, and unique.  Now he just needs to hire a writer.[cough]loveto[cough]

Three Panel Soul

By Matthew Boyd & Ian Mcconville

The next project by the men who brought you the comic Mac Hall, Thee Panel Soul is as equally artful and, sadly, as equally infrequent in its updating.  Tragic. Painful.  Three Panel Soul is certainly popular and successful, but in my most humblest of opinions, if its predecessor had set and kept a publish schedule, it could have buried Penny Arcade – hands down.  Well written and well drawn (sometimes UNBELIEVABLY DRAWN), Three Panel Soul can be deep and existential and light and airy.

XKCD

Are you a nerd? Here is some smart math / science / life humor. With stick men.  ENJOY!

Oh, and it is written and “drawn” by Randall Munroe, a former contractor for NASA.

Scans Daily

OK, to be fair, Scans Daily isn’t a comic but a blog with snips from classic comic books and newer comic books.  Originally designed as a slash community, you can expect a lot of gaiety *snigger* but it’s all in good fun and more importantly, it’s a great place to discover new comic serieses and older comics serieses to purchase out there in the real world.

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But one man is still trying to find the answers to life’s persistent questions…

Guy No- wait, no. Cash Money!

I love me a good mystery and I love it even more when it’s 90% shadows and fedoras.  A femme fatale, a dangling cigarette, and some chopper-wielding gunsels hanging off the running-boards and I’m raring to go.

Let’s take any of your classic flat-foot sleuths, replace his trench-coat with a black cape and change his Stetson into a cowl and you get this week’s feature:

BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN

Written by Jeff “The Guy Who Writes Heroes” Loeb

Illustrated by Tim “Cash’s Favorite Comics Guy” Sale

Within the DC Universe, Batman is known as The World’s Greatest Detective (sorry, Sherlock).  However, most times he is too busy brooding on a rain-soaked precipice to be doing any real detective work.  That is not the case in The Long Halloween, a work that solidified - once and for  all-  Loeb & Sale as one of the indomitable comicbook teams of all time thanks to Loeb’s punchy Bat-interior-monologue and Sale’s stylized art.

Collecting the original 13 issue run of the 1996 series, Long Halloween is a Raymond Candleresque tale that takes place a year or two into Batman’s career.  The Batman is still an urban myth, his Rogues’ Gallery is still putting the finishing touches on their garish costumes, and the mob still has Gotham in its steely grip.  To this end, Long Halloween borrows steals wholesale from The Godfather series as the Falcone’s and Maroni’s grapple for power.  Without warning, key mobsters  begin turning up dead on major holidays.  At the same time, Jim “As Yet To Be Commissioner” Gordon and crusading D.A. Harvey Dent make an uneasy alliance with The Batman to begin taking down the two crime families once and for all.

Sound familiar?

It’s probably because Batman Begins and The Dark Knight borrowed stole wholesale from Long Halloween.  As the plot progresses and more mobsters on both sides of family feud die, Batman collects clues, puzzles over evidence and begins to realize the antics of The Holiday Killer and his alliance with Gordon and Dent may be connected in more ways than he originally suspected.  Friendship and trust are called into question and we begin to see that Harvey Dent’s descent into being the classic Batman baddie, Two-Face, was a much more gradual a progression than a simple dash of acid in the face.

Batman runs along side the plot, trying desperately to put together the pieces, assuming the role of hardboiled gumshoe.  I prefer this stubbly thinking-man Batman more than the guy who routinely punches Superman or, say, goes mano-a-batto with Darkseid, dies, and them comes back. And then dies. And then… wait… maybe not dies. [eyeroll]

Whodunnit? Who’s next? And at what cost?  Long Halloween bites down and won’t let go until the very last.

Long Halloween was originally inspired when Loeb & Sale teamed to create three moody Halloween specials for Batman, which are collected in the aptly named, ”Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Specials.”  These stories don’t act so much as prequel (that job would probably be better served by Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One) more as introductions to the dark atmospheric ambiance that is Sale’s vision of Gotham after dark.  Long Halloween has an equally fine  sequel series collected in “Batman: Dark Victory” which depicts how the Rogues’ Gallery came to supplant Gotham’s native mafia population and how Batman came to have a brightly-dressed sidekick.  It also has a not-so-fine sequel series called ”Catwoman: When in Rome,” a rather airy romp and excellent excuse for Sale to draw Selina Kyle’s rump.

RRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrump rump rump rump RUMP!

[ahem]

If you like Batman: The Long Halloween, you might also like these comics (but don’t take my word for it):

TUNE IN NEXT TIME WHEN YOU HEAR YOU SAY: “Yes, yes, yes, Cash. Very good. These are all very important and very deep and very literary.  But I want fun.  I want a comic that starts with a man wrestling a space squid.” “I’ll see your space squid and raise you a guy with his head sewn onto a green gorilla, Armageddon, and Zombie Robot Gustave Eiffel.” “Damn. I call.” “Read ‘em and weep, sister.  I win. And I believe that means you lose the brassiere, yes?” “::grumble::”

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Done and done.

Everyone goes home with an Warner Brother’s animated series with Mickey Rourke in a villain role for your sequel.

[lights cigar with $100]

[puts feet on desk]

[gloats]

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Written & Illustrated by Scott McCloud

The first of McCloud’s Comics trilogy (Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, Making Comics); this volume is devoted to giving folks an under-the-hood look at how comics are created and how they (in theory) work.  It is presented in the form of -wait for it- a comic.  I know! “The mechanics of comics in comic form? Oh, that is simply RICH.  That is the epitome of irony.  The acme of droll.”

Understanding Comics holds to the very best rule: “show, don’t tell.”  It conveys a strong set of comics fundamentals while always noting the fact that, basically, there are no “rules” in comics, but Here’s What Actually Works.

McCloud is now far more famous for this work than for his actual comic, Zot!, and Understanding Comics is lauded my many greats and legends of the comics industry.  Sadly, all of the warm reviews and high-falutin’ talk created our own literary Frankenstein Monster when McCloud released his follow-up piece, 2000’s Reinventing Comics, the whackaloon rantings of a man drunk with POWER and an apparent total ignorance of the very basics of the then budding Internet economy.

THE MADNESS, a crazed second work.  Proving what fickle bitches we are, comics readers (most notably the recently weird-turned-pro world of web comics) turned on him en masse.  A POX ON HOUSE McCLOUD!

But, then in 2006,  McCloud released Making Comics and, in a landmark ruling from Geneva, all of Comicdom agreed to pretend Reinventing Comics was never created and we went back to hailing McCloud as God’s Gift because all comics readers really, secretly want to be comics writers, he had us dead to rights, creating a piece of work that I have “grudgingly deemed very apt” and was “dismayed at how informative” and on the whole found it to be “the most tooth-gnashingly useful tool anyone interested in comickering on any level could possibly get their hands on.”

In all seriousness, Understanding Comics and its final sequel are more useful than any art class I’ve ever taken, and I’ve taken a few.  Certainly it is way better than any of those “Draw the Boom Anime Babes” books.

They leave the mechanics of comics laid bare in a fashion where you will be able to easily recognize How They Work next time you flip open a comic – whether it be a sharp layout, a clever use of timing within a frame, or spotting a poseur without grasp of the basics!

If you like Understanding Comics, you might also like these comics (but don’t take my word for it):

TUNE IN NEXT TIME WHEN YOU HEAR YOU ME SAY: “But Cash, I only like to read detective novels where the mysteries are solved by a cat.” “What about a graphic novel where mystery is solved by a bat… man?”

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Like this.

But it’s not all like that. Yes, sadly, much of comicbookery is very smart and very interesting and very, very well illustrated.  Many comics have won prestigious literary awards and run the gamut of subject matter including social commentary, political commentary, and sexual commentary (and the boobs implied therein) – yes, comics have it all.  It’s not all about men in tights and improbably proportioned women.

That said, comics featuring these men and women can be used to express the same high-falutin’, literary, socio-political drama.  And, apparently, they can be made in using gouache.  This is perhaps most true in my second recommendation:

Kingdom Come

Written by Mark Waid, Esq.

Illustrated by the Rt. Hon. Alex Ross

I didn’t know what gouache was before this book.  It’s paint sort of like water-colors but generally more viscous and more heavily pigmented.

Thanks to a timely hand-off of a Kingdom Come hardcover courtesy of Mr. Dave Olsher, I gained some much-needed points with my college watercolor teacher and was able to half-ass it the rest of the semester until 9-11 and then I was able to use that to half-ass it the rest of the way.  Apparently, he showed it all around the art department and they were all aghast that such competant art was being wasted on such frivolity.  Fruitcakes.

Wait… where was I? Oh! Kingdom Come, right!

Originally a 4 issue mini-series launched in 1996, Kingdom Come can now be found in handsome trade paperback editions where ever Glenn Beck books are marked down 30% and a bagel is marked up 30%.  It is also a fine entrance to the world of DC Superheroes if you are of the “headfirst into the deep end” school of education as EVERY DC HERO EVER CREATED IS IN IT including a few that Ross came up with when he was but a boy with a pack of dried-out K-Mart markers.  That, to me, screams class.

“CLASS!”

A more hackneyed writer would have begun Kingdom Come with a big “30 years later…” sign but it wasn’t so they didn’t.  Superman has hung up his reds and blues.  The children of today’s superheroes are running amuck in the streets with no real purpose or credo other than “kick the crap out of other teams of super-powered people,” each one sitting on a presipace in the rain grimly staring at their fist harder and more angst-ridden than the next.

One band of these yahoos hunts down a reformed supervillian in rural Kansas and, in a terrible accident, causes a thermonuclear explosion that chars and irradiates most of the state.  The gray-templed heroes of yore -Wonderwoman, Green Lantern, and others- decide that it’s time to give this new breed of super persons a choice: shape up or ship out.  Factions are drawn up, ideologies are challenged.  Old (no, really) friends turn into new enemies, and some old enemies seem to be on the side of Right and Superman – a creature whose world has always been parsed through a clear, “Real America” Kansas horse-sense Black & White – is forced Back Into The Saddle (perhaps my favorite literary motif) to contend with a world that now contains many more shades of gray than he cares to remember.

Kingdom Come is probably the first “Elseworlds” story I ever read.

Elseworlds is “publication imprint for a group of comic books produced by DC Comics that take place outside the company’s canon.” That is, many of the characters you’ve come to know and love in different settings.  Lovecraftian Batman.  Soviet Superman.  Marvel Comics has similar titles as well, most notably 1602, which features an Elizabethan version of the Marvel Universe’s biggest heroes and villains arriving in the New World.

Comic or no, Kingdom Come was probably the most pessimistic, cynical, and truthful thing I’d read in a while — it was just about what I was looking for at the Right Time.  Oh, and the art is to die for, if I haven’t made that clear yet.

I heartily recommend this piece to anyone feeling a little let down by society and whose ideals simply can’t be met.  If you’re not that into superheroes, you might be a little overwhelmed but most of the collected editions have special sections in the back with big lists of who is in which shots and it can be fun spotting Zan of the Superfriends’ Wonder Twins in the same bar with Lobo and Rorschach.   But it’s no lie: them’s a lot of capes.  The important characters are, of course, identified in the course of the story, but there are countless other heroes and villians running around who occasionally get name-dropped.

This is where I unviel my Getting Into Comics Tip #2:

Wikipedia.

Duh.

I sometimes find the authenticity and reliability of its articles suspect, but I know I can always count on Wikipedia 100% for two things: complex physics equations and an extensive detailing of Deadpool’s back story.

For some reason, the most articulately composed and meticulously collected articles on Wikipedia are about comics and, most notably, superheroes.

The Large Hadron Collider, the device “expected [to] address the most fundamental questions of physics, hopefully allowing progress in understanding the deepest laws of nature?” Its entry, with bibliography, is 13 pages long.  Spiderman’s entry? 15 pages.  Welcome to Wikipedia!

If you like Kingdom Come, you might also like these comics (but don’t take my word for it):

TUNE IN NEXT TIME WHEN YOU HEAR YOU SAY: “But, Cash, there’s no real science or craft to making comics, is there?” “…were you dropped on your head as an infant?”

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Ho ho.  Good times in the Money Manse.

But not everyone loves comics the way I love comics.  And that is terrible.

No worries, though, I -as ever- am here to help.

Over the next five (5) weeks I’ll bring you a few general tips and some specific recommendations to get you and keep you into comics once and for all.

Comics is (are?) a vast sea of ink and, increasingly, pixels.  Jumping in can prove daunting when done alone and, in my opinion, never moreso than when jumping into The Big Name ongoing series from The Big Houses (DC & Marvel).

Seriously.  If you asked me what is going on in Spiderman right now, I’d have no real idea but here’s what I’ve managed to catch-as-catch-can:

-Through a deal with the devil, for some reason Peter Parker and Mary Jane are no longer married, oh, and…

-Peter Parker and Mary Jane were married

-During the big Civil War event, Spiderman revealed his secret identity to the world on national TV but…

-Now, apparently, he didn’t.

Fun fact: changing something that blatantly happened in a comic is called retcon, short for “retroactive continuity.”  Sometimes this is a great idea especially when the something in question happened back in a copy of Amazing Comic Tales of Splendor and Amazement in 1953.  When it happened less than a year ago as part of one of Marvel Comic’s biggest company-wide events to date… slightly lame.

Need more examples?

-Batman is dead. Yep. Dead.  Nope, I’m not going to bother explaining the who what why but he’s dead, but, oh, wait…

-Maybe he’s not.

And THAT’S why you don’t jump into the big titles like Batman right off the bat, man.

That said, I might recommend starting out picking up some trade paperbacks (collected editions of comics, usually encapsulating one major story or “arc”).  And while we’re on the subject of things that have been retconned, perhaps one of the finest examples of comicbookering I’ve yet to come across is collected in…

The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck

Written & Illustrated by his majesty, Don Rosa

When I was but a little shaver and would come down with the occasional ailment, Papa Money would often bring me home a Donald Duck or Uncle Scrooge comic, the only known remedy for the flu.

Scrooge McDuck is many things: globetrotting entrepreneur, adventurer, Scottish ex-pat.  But most importantly, he is the richest man -er, duck- in Duckburg -nay- THE WORLD.  He keeps all his money not tied up in his many businesses but in a huge bin on top of a hill in the center of town and whenever he’s got time, he likes to swim through it “like a porpoise.”

Most Uncle Scrooge comics involve him following up on a new invention he has funded or returning to sources of revenue he forgot he had, often with his bumbling hot-head nephews Donald and competent and cool-headed (I guess great-nephews?) Huey, Dewey, and Louie.  Adventure was constant and flippin’ awesome.

As it turns out, my favorite stories from those comics were probably as old as Papa Money himself and created by comics legend, Carl Barks.  Many of Bark’s stories would go on to be distilled into episodes of  Duck Tales, another fond childhood memory until its truly epic shark-jump with the additions of GizmoDuck and Bubba the Caveduck.

I was not the only one who liked Barks’ work it seems  as Don Rosa created a masterwork of scripting, humor, warmth, and most of all, rock-hard continuity wrought from throw-away snippets of dialog from old Bark’s comics – a marvel considering that Barks never really created any continuity between his own comics.

This collection of twelve original issues explains just where Scrooge got all that money in The Bin and, more importantly, how he got so dang cantankerous.  Told by way of letters to his family back in his homeland of Scotland, Scrooge gradually grows older, wiser, and ultimately, more cynical between the periods of his childhood in roughly 1877 to his crotchety old-age and technical first meeting of his nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, in 1947, thus beginning his adventures anew.

Along the way, Scrooge is constantly running into his family (future or otherwise) and trying his best to make his fortune fair and square while being “sharper than the sharpies and tougher than the toughies.”  The question of the series, however, is “but at what cost?” and the series can actually get quite dark as Scrooge must get more and more leathery to survive and ultimately profit at the cost of his connection to family and, ultimately his humanity (er… water-fowl-anity?).

Lovingly rendered with heaps of chicken fat (non-sense going on in the background of comics) to find with each successive reading, this series is a pleasure from start to finish.  It’s no wonder that it won an Eisner Award in 1995.

There is also a companion, aptly called, “The Life and Times of Uncle Scrooge Companion” that includes further adventures of Scrooge from the times chronicled in Life and Times as well as some of Rosa’s earlier works about Scrooge’s youth, especially pertaining to Scrooge’s time in The Yukon.

You know, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it…

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is probably the perfect comic.

It’s got a front and back, it’s got heart, and it’s got a dude riding a moose.  If you can find a better comic, I’ll read it.

That said, put down whatever you’re doing right now and run out and grab this fine, fine piece of comic anywhere you can.

If you like The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck, you might also like these comics (but don’t take my word for it):

TUNE IN NEXT TIME WHEN WE HEAR YOU SAY: “But Cash, aren’t comics for kids?” “Maybe if your kids read Ayn Rand.”

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Right. Not exactly anime, I know.

Perhaps I’ve been overly influenced by the fact that a new comics store opened only three blocks away from me recently, but I’ve been on a tear through Transmetropolitan, DMZ, and The Walking Dead these last few weeks. And by tear my inference is that entire days, nay, whole weekends at a time have succumbed to their inky goodness.

Needless to say, my wallet hates me.

Then again, it probably hates you too. But that’s inconsequential. You’re not chained to the thing.

For me at least though, I enjoy the sheer physicality of holding a trade collection, or a book for that matter,  down to the smell of the ink and even paper cuts. Antiquated, I know. But coming across a recent tweet announcing that Joss Whedon’s X-men was going all moving picturish on Hulu put me in mind of this. It’s a remarkable example of the successful convergence of forms. A moving comic. Not animated mind you, simply moving. And frankly, the outcome is really pretty stunning.

As much as I love the comic form, my burning (and sometimes itching, I should have that looked at) desire for animation makes this in many ways the best of both worlds. There’s actually something quite effective in the limited range of motion offered by the style. Though infrequently used (at least to my knowledge) in its current incarnation, I can see the form eventually becoming the standard for a digital comic distribution. Fantastic artwork and storytelling, combined with a wee bit of Flash, and immediately available to the world at large. There’s a certain restraint involved in not attempting create a fully animated piece, each cut and choice of movement become more necessary and valuable to the impact of the story.

So what say you? Do you remain a purist to the physical form, as many have done with Ellis’s free offerings of Freakangels? Or would you rather see an intertwining of existing forms into something entirely, enticingly else?

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If you haven’t seen it yet, I really can’t say as we’re going to be friends… ever… but I will at least extend you the courtesy to you by of saying:

<<Warning, Potential Spoilers. Dingdong>>

During the first episode of this, our fourth season, entitled, “Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel,” you may have noticed some kinda cockamamie bar that would butt in on occasion [kaching!] with the labels “CGC Rating” followed by a number, a letter or two, and a dollar amount. Like this:

[kaching!]

I was left scratching my head for a long time and at first I thought it was some sort of FCC thing where the writers were predicting how much they’d be fined for this episode and that leads us to our titular question:

What the hell is CGC?

As a comic bookin’ sorta guy, I really should have known (or at least remembered) this, but CGC stands for “The Comics Guaranty Company” or more to the point, the condition rating they have given a particular comic book, in this case the issue of Marvel Comics #1 that Number 21 has given Dr. Venture in order to clone his late heterosexual life mate, Number 24.

The Comics Guaranty Company (technically Comics Guaranty LLC) is an “independent and impartial third party grading service for comic books,” that will basically tell you if your old copies of Spawn are worth anything. The other reputable comic book rating service/system is the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, though their rating system (0 to 100) does not appear to be used in this episode.

The reason I forgot was this: I am a comic book reader, not a comic book collector. When I read my copy of Deadpool, you know what I do? I put it on top of a stack. That’s right, nerds, a stack with no baggy. It’s curling the bindings! BWAHAHA! WRITHE IN SKIN CRAWLING DISCOMFORT!

What are the letters?

The CGC’s guidelines for rating a comic are strict. Geek strict. As such, there are several levels, each with very specific indicators of quality and thus, (apparently) value. When Number 21 first gives Doc the comic, it is rated at 9.6 which is (perhaps falsely) rated as “Mint Condition” in the episode. As Number 21’s comic depreciates in CGC numeric value, it also passes through the various strata of grading terms.

Generally, these levels are broken down like-a-so:

Mint (M or MT, 10 to 9.8): Basically it’s fresh off the presses. It is pristine with absolutely no blemish upon its immaculate being. This is hard to score, even in a store.

Near Mint (NM, 9.8 to 9.0): A real douche of a rating if you ask me as you, The Collector, have no real control of packaging, travel, wear, print errors, humidity, and the host of other variables that that occur before you even get a chance to bend, rip, roll or generally mar the comic yourself! Weak sauce.

Very Fine (VF, 9.0 to 7.0): Some wear and tear. Let’s face it; someone read this comic. Maybe twice.

Fine (F or FN, 7.0 to 5.0): Maybe some minor tears and discoloration. Older, pulpy pages are probably somewhat yellowed or browned.

Very Good (VG, 5.0 to 3.0): Rusty staples, the dreaded Spine Rolling begins to appear, some repaired tears. Oh dear, someone has really let down their guard on this one.

Good (G or GD, 3.0 to 1.5): Oy vey. Where’d you get this? A yard sale? In the rain? The cover might be detached, she’s all patched up. Could be worse, I suppose.

Fair (F or FR, 1.5 to 1.0): Major wear, the spine may be split up to 2/3rds of the cover, and the pages? Well, they’re still readable. Maybe.

Poor (P or PR, 1.0 to 0): Oh my god… did you… where on earth could… did you change your oil and use this to wipe your gaskets… why would you… [retches violently]… oh god… how… [retches again]… ugh… oh my… sweet jesus, My eyes! MY EYES! I’m actually a little confused at a rating of 0. Does that mean there is actually no comic at all?

As you can see, things get very particular at the tippy-top of the scale and at the very bottom. This is because most old comics simply were not designed to last and nobody even gave considered that, someday, their comic collection could put their kids through college. As such, even the best conditioned comics from the 30’s are, at the end of the day, in pretty crummy condition. Now that comic collecting is a real honest-to-god way to make a living, as new issues come out and are instantly bagged up and stored for posterity, the smallest of details are crucial to ensuring that, down the line, the comic gets top dollar.

This is very important to a lot of people.

I am not one of them, Patton Oswalt.

Why is the money never at the same value or sometimes declining?

Chronologically, the episode jumps all over the place. The better part of a year, it would seem. As such, the degradation of Number 21’s comic helps to decipher when in time each segement clip takes place. Or, conversely, it helps to confuse the bejeezus out of you.

What’s with the goofy ass titles that pop up like “The Sub-Mariner” and “Ka-Zar?”

The afore mentioned Marvel Comics #1 (actually technically Marvel Mystery Comics #1), one of the first comics ever, came out in 1939 and included stories featuring The Human Torch (the android one), The Sub-Mariner (basically the original Aquaman), The Angel (pretty much Batman wearing Superman’s outfit), The Masked Raider (Lone Ranger clone), and Ka-Zar the Great (Tarzan plus dinosaurs).

The issue also included a two page prose story about racing entitled, “Burning Rubber.” Here’s an excerpt:

“VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!! BRRRRRRROOOOOWWWW! NEERRRRRRRRR! WAH-WAAAAAAAAH!”

There were 80,000 copies of the original issue which came out in October of ‘39. After it sold out and the publisher realized that they’d struck pay dirt, they reprinted the issue the next month for a run of 800,000.

The episode is right in that a Mint (again, pretty impossible that a Mint edition would exist, so maybe they just mean “pretty darn good”) edition can score you upwards of $500,000 but finding any first issue of any golden age comic is more or less unheard of which makes one appearing on the market something of note.

Financial value aside, one of the coolest things about Marvel #1 is that so many of the characters are still in play today. Sub-Mariner (Namor to his friends… of which he has none) is still a cranky son-of-a-gun trying to keep his undersea kingdom safe from us dim-bulb surface-types, Ka-Zar still hasn’t got any pants (which hasn’t stopped him from marrying boobaliscious bikini adventurer, Shanna the She-Devil), and even the original Human Torch pops up to show the second Human Torch, The Fantastic Four’s Johnny Storm, just how it’s supposed to be done.

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