Sterling Silver

Had a great week this week, comics wise. After sitting on my rear end for near three months, I'm back hunting out books and purchasing Silver Age.
I managed to buy some early Amazing Spider-man books from a nice chap over at the CGC boards, ASM #11 and #24, both in the VG range. The cover to the ASM #11 is especially sweet


If you want a bigger scan, just left-click and drag the scan to the url
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Love those funky Ditko poses and the grade is just prefect, still a good
looking book but not high enough to command nosebleed prices. I wouldn't
mind getting the rest of the #1 to #40 run in the same grade

And from fellow Mid-grade Silver Age collector "Aces" Chris I bought some
early Thors. It looks like Thor will be the new series I'll be trying to
complete this year, after buying the entire Simonsson run last month, I've
now bought a near full run from #143 through to #160 (Kirby !!)....If My
math is correct I'll need another 60 or so books prior to these (including
the Journey into Mystery books) and then of course about 250 after
that...but hey who's counting ? Certainly not me as I'm too busy enjoying
the great Jack Kirby artwork and the far-out stories of these 60's gems.

Funny really I never really liked Thor before, but then again I never
really read the books, I just assumed they wouldn't be my cup of tea...go figure

When I paint my masterpiece

My second mini-spotlight is on Comic Book Artist magazine (CBA),although similar in size and layout to Alter Ego,it tends to focus more on the creators than the comic-world itself and doesn't restrict itself to the Bronze, Silver and Golden Age, the way Alter Ego does.

Comic Book Artist, celebrates the lives and works of great cartoonists, writers and editors from all eras through in-depth interviews, feature articles, and unpublished art.

I've never been an big fan of any artist, (more a writer's person myself), but the magazine manages to make me enthusiastic about artists (or writers or editors) I hadn't even heard about. One of the issues is a special on Warren Comics (the 70's and 80's House of Horror which published and created comics like Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella) Now I had zero affinity for these books, couldn't have cared less, but I did spend a record breaking total of 7 hours reading this issue of CBA from cover to cover. The interview with James Warren (the Stan Lee of Horror) was 31 pages long...Thirty-one !!! I don't think I ever read an interview in any publication on any subject that was this long...
It got me interested in the World of Warren comics and I'll be seeking out a couple of 70's horror mags after reading about the greats like Richard Corben, Berni Wrightson, Alex Toth

On the publisher's website you can read samples of certain interviews that appeared in CBA, heres the Warren one : http://twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/articles/04warren.html

But I encourage you to print it out rather than reading it on the screen, or better yet seek out CBA #4 for the full monty.

TwoMorrows Publishing canceled CBA at issue #25 (which is the only issue I don't have) but Top Shelf publishing resurrected the imprint in late 2004 and is now publishing Comic Book Artist Vol2.
I haven't read any of the Top Shelf editions,but they seem to profile more on modern-day artist (or the "dark side" as I like to call them hehe).

So of you're looking to pick up some CBAs be careful that you order the volumes that interest you. I wouldn't want a David Mack fan to pick up a CBA devoted to the Cosmic Comics of the 70's, or a Silver Age fan to pick up a vol#2 chock-full of profiles on Image artists.