Book of the Day : Almost sold out Batman Kelley Jones Gallery Edition HC DC Comics Graphitti Designs

Today’s Book of the Day!

 

BATMAN: KELLEY JONES Regular Edition
by Doug Moench, Kelley Jones, and John Beatty

248 pgs • 12′ x 17″ • Smyth-Sewn Hardcover

“Graphitti Designs proudly launches their new, large-format hardcover book series with BATMAN: KELLEY JONES GALLERY EDITION. For the first time ever, Dark Knight fans and collectors will have the opportunity to see and own museum-quality reproductions of memorable Batman art…as it was originally conceived by the artist. Printed in color from high-resolution scans of the actual original art, this first entry in Graphitti Designs’ new Gallery Editions line replicates the look, feel and attitude of the artwork. Every page is reproduced at original size on heavy paper stock, capturing the artwork – stray pencil marks, whiteout, coffee stains and all! The pages are alive with all of the subtleties and nuances one would expect from investment-quality original comic art.

BATMAN: KELLEY JONES GALLERY EDITION is the first in a series of deluxe, hardcover books from Graphitti Designs that faithfully reproduces the original art from select, key DC Comics series. This inaugural volume contains the covers and interior pages from BATMAN #515 through #525, minus the interior of issue #520, which Kelley did not draw. These stories are written by Doug Moench, with most pages inked by John Beatty.

Graphitti Designs’ Gallery Editions reproduce the look, feel and attitude of the original art as it was originally created by the artist. Though it appears to be printed in black and white, the contents of these books are sourced from high-resolution, full color scans taken directly from the artwork. Each high-quality, Smythe-sewn hardcover book captures every detail of the art at actual-size, and are printed at 200 line-screen on a rich, heavy paper stock. Replicating the original art experience is our goal. Our Gallery Editions are the next best thing to holding the original art in your hands – and easier on the wallet, too!”

Thanks for looking, check available stock here!

 

Book of the Day : ALEISTER & ADOLF

Like most of you reading this I have a backlog of material to get to. Being a collector I likely have more of a backlog than most. Books, comic books and graphic novels, music, cds, movies, streaming, old time radio, podcasts, youtube, and the list goes on.

So it is not unusual for Books that I get with all intention of reading, getting parked in a very long queue. For any of you with Netflix or Amazon Watchlists, you’ll understand this.

So often times books only make it to the top of that list when going out the door.

Case in point with ALEISTER & ADOLF. I have started finding new homes for books I have not had a chance to get around to, ALEISTER & ADOLF became one of those books. I was packing it up to ship to its new owner, and while I had flipped thru it never really had gotten a chance to read it. Well about to pack it up to ship off, I wanted to read a bit of it.

I opened the book, and ended up reading the whole thing, standing in one spot…. and I found it, riveting. I found it an interesting tale of the part symbols play in history, and in our concept of reality. That advertising and salesmanship, while seen as a very modern thing, is actually since time immemorial… at the heart of empires, their rise and their fall. The hearts and minds of people, is where wars and peace are won, and oligarchies sustained.

If you are a fan of writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, while not told with the elegaic poetry of these writers, Douglas Rushkoff‘s writing and Michael Avon Oemings‘ art, weaves a succinct and engrossing page turner of strange fiction, based on even stranger facts. 

A worthy addition to the writings, both fact and fiction, on that most pivotal and bloodiest of Wars, what Roosevelt would come to call… The Survival War.

Great read. And I see myself re-adding this to my collection in the future.

Grade: B+.

 

Get your copy here. You may want to hurry as they are almost out of stock.

Stunning and undervalued GOLDEN AGE Comic Book Cover of the Day!

One of the best Comic Book covers ever, this one is DIRT cheap,  and way undervaled.  You can pick up this issue of this 1950s horror anthology book, in very good or better condition, for well under a $1000. Stellar art, and great stories. This is the comic that started me purchasing Golden Age comicbooks, and now a couple years into that journey, it still remains the single best Golden Age cover.

 

https://www.comiclink.com/

https://www.ebay.com

 

12 Best DC Warner Brothers AT&T Power Girl Comic Book Covers!

 

 

You can get this entire collection of key issues, and sought after first appearances by clicking this Link!!!

Get great books and support this blog!!! A win-win!

Book of the Day! HALL OF HISTORY BERMUDA’S STORY IN ART!

Hall of History Bermuda’s Story in Art Hardcover – 2011 by Graham Foster

An essential gift for anyone who has visited or plans on visiting Bermuda!

I have been to Bermuda. I have been to the Commissioner’s House, which is one of the highest points in Bermuda and looks out over the ports, and incoming tourist ships, like a lord looking over his domain.

It is a stunning multi-floor living, breathing, part of history… and work of art all at once. 

There are so many amazing things about that building, and all the history and import crammed into it. From rooms of priceless coins, to rooms of birds, to rooms of canons and the implements of war. To the architecture itself that swoops over and above and around you, all the towering ceilings, the marble, the limestone, the pillars, the hand wroth wood, the massive windows, the airy, beautiful verandas, with the salty breeze coming off the sea, blowing in. The building is at once a work of art, gilded with beautiful architecture of a bygone age of pomp and circumstance, and also a massive and imposing monolith of war. 

So much glory, in one building.

And one of those glorious things, you can just make out in he picture above.

It is a mural, a massive, massive mural, years in the making, that leads up, and up the main hall and the main stairs, And is astounding. It is hundreds of years of Bermuda History, of an island that for 800 miles in every direction… is all alone in the night. It is the history of that magical, beautiful, mysterious, at times foreboding island… done in vibrant colors, and verdant hues.

The absolute overwhelming detail of that mural, is JAW DROPPING. It can not all be taken in in one visit, or likely even in a dozen of them. 

Thankfully in 2011 the artist created a book, a massive tome, befitting the massive mural it covers.That book was sold out when I visited Bermuda in 2014. I wish I had it when I was there, it would have been a great compliment to my tour of not just the Commissioner’s House, but Bermuda in General.

There are now a few copies of this increasingly scarce book, (when copies become available people are snagging this book and putting it away in their private collections) currently available.

If you are a fan of art, plan to visit Bermuda, or have visited Bermuda and want a great reminder of your cruise/trip, this is the book for you. Also makes a great gift for that traveler in your life.

Get your copy here!

Purchases thru the link, earn this blog always needed pennies, but more than that, you get a work of art, that may just be the most stunning coffee table book you will ever own.

Today’s Must own Blu-Ray Steelbook in the age of Digital : THE THIRD MAN (1949)

In the age of Digital when traditional DVDs are going the way of the dodo, Steel-books are just getting more and more popular. Here is this installment’s STEEL-BOOK of the day:

Orson Welles and Carol Reed’s THE THIRD MAN (1949)

 

Credited to Carol Reed, Orson Welles directorial hand is all over this one. In my opinion Orson Welles’ finest film, and that is saying a lot considering his masterpieces like CITIZEN KANE, MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, LADY IN THE WATER, OTHELLO, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT and the list goes on. And if any film deserves the upscale Steel-book treatment… it is this one. And this one offers a stellar transfer, commentaries, and great features.

 

Get yours here! (Use this link and get a great item, AND earn a couple very appreciated pennies for this blog):

THIRD MAN LIMITED EDITION STEEL-BOOK

 

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Best Comic Book Covers of All Time: Joe Kubert’s LOSERS run

What makes a great comic book cover, in this age of virgin variants and gimmick covers, is the same thing that has always made a great cover. When all these flash in the pan virgin covers, are resigned to the 50 cent bin (where most of them belong), the really great covers, will still be… great covers.

They will still have stunning typography, married to great art, with great placement of the various parts, and together the whole, in one moment, both tells a story and sells a product. It is not just this lazy and brainless current fad of a pretty image, but with no context to the story or to the storytelling. Today’s cover artists and editors and art directors, and buyers, confuse a pinup with an effective and affecting cover, and the two are not the same.

Now that is not to say there are not exceptions, where the pinup is so good that you want it for eye candy’s sake alone. That does happen, and is fine, but in my experience it is rare, and is not conducive to books you are actually buying, serialized entertainment you are actually buying,… to read. In that case a pretty picture does not cut it, you need a storyteller as an artist and an art editor, to design a cover that tells a story.

And like i said it is a marriage of many things, some of which are not in the artist’s hands. But when all those disparate elements come together, you have have some of the greatest covers of all time.

There were a lot of people I could have started this new segment with, Neal Adams, Gil Kane, Berni Wrightson, Jack Kirby, but for my money the best cover artist of all time very rarely worked in Superhero Comics, and that is the great Joe Kubert.

Kubert had many magnificent cover runs to choose from but the one that launches this segment is the work of his that made me a Conflict Comics collector. His run on OUR FIGHTING FORCES AT WAR. Not the whole run, because while he did hundreds of covers not all of them have the elements that make an iconic cover. I mentioned a great cover having to do with things sometimes beyond the artists control such as typography and placement of disparate elements on a cover. But Here, for this run of issues, Kubert had complete control over the typography of his covers, and completely integrated that typography into his artwork, in a manner that would have made Eisner impressed. Creating a brilliant image AND telling a story and selling a product.

In the 181 issue run of OUR FIGHTING FORCES AT WAR, all of which had good covers,  there are nineteen covers that stand out as masterpieces… only nineteeneighteen. They are not ‘key’ issues, they are seminal issues in the history of comic book cover design. The following scans were the best I could find on short notice, and do not do the books justice. But they give you a taste of the brilliance that make these 19 consecutive issues of OUR FIGHTING FORCES AT WAR a milestone of cover design, and worth owning.

They are…

 

   

 

Issue 142 would signal the end of the ground breaking covers, as well as heralding the end of Joe Kubert as editor on the series (his name would officially be removed as editor two issues later). Archie Goodwin would take over for a while as editor, followed by Jack Kirby(with all due respect to Jack Kirby, I am not a fan of his work on this book). And while Kubert would continue to do covers sporadically for the series up till the end, never again would the typography and mast-head be part of the story-telling. 141 would be the last of that wild imaginative experimentation with art and typography, the last of nineteen issues of the best and longest consecutive run of great covers by one creator in the history of comics. Pick them all up today, while they can still be had affordably.

 

Use the link below to get your issues today:

https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=180611&AffID=200301P01

If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more like it, please subscribe, leave a like and comment. And what are your favorite cover runs, or cover artists/artwork?

Till next time… be well!!