Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential, and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art, and business of comics, and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.

[00:28] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber. With me, as always

[00:34] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:35] John: David, we're here, and we're not alone.

[00:39] David: No, we’re not, John. Put your pants back on. Jesus.

[00:42] John: I'm sitting down. It's fine. It's not that kind of show. Don't worry.

[00:46] Rob Worst: Can it be, please?

[00:48] John: The shower opens up, in our house, directly into where my wife's camera—where she is set up, when she's working at home.

[00:58] David: Is that true?

[00:59] John: I try to time things.

[01:00] David: You try to time things, so you're always on camera, whenever possible?

[01:04] John: That's it. I'm very popular at her work.

[01:08] David: You're making your own version of OnlyFans over there, John?

[01:13] Rob: You realize people will pay for that?

[01:15] John: What? Oh, no.

[01:20] David: Well, this is the last time we'll have John on the podcast. He's suddenly realized he could be creating a whole new revenue stream for himself. Obviously, and certainly, much more lucrative than anything you could possibly do in comic books.

[01:31] John: Oh, boy. Probably not, David.

[01:34] David: No?

[01:35] John: I think, for some people. I don't think I'm one of those people.

[01:37] David: You’re not giving yourself enough credit, John. You're a handsome devil. I think you’ll do just fine.

[01:41] Rob: Yes, some of those […], I'm pretty sure they'll tell you, they make a pretty good living.

[01:45] John: Wait, who is that? That's our special guest, Rob Worst.

[01:49] Rob: That is my name. I'm sorry that I have that last name that goes W-O-R-S-T, but it just lets me know, if I tell somebody my last name, and I followed up with, “it's okay to laugh. Everybody else does,” and if they do laugh, they're going to give me a lot of problems. So, that's how I know.

[02:04] David: Rob, my last name is “Hedgecock.”

[02:10] Rob: We're going to get along famously.

[02:12] David: You're going to be just fine around here. John, we're very lucky to have Rob on. Rob is the YouTube sensation who runs the Near Mint YouTube channel.

[02:22] Rob: Not Near Mint. There's a Near Mint Condition. Those guys are fantastic. They do all the research in omnibi—omnibi, omnibuses, whatever—they do that. We just review comic books that come out on the regular—new comic Wednesday, back issues—and we don't really care about the slabs and 9.8. We're just happy to have the damn thing, most of the time.

[02:45] David: So, Rob Worst at the Not Near Mint. Rob does a lot of discussions around collecting comic books, particularly more expensive comics, and tracks a lot of the comings and goings of the comic book marketplace for back issues. So, I thought it'd be fun and interesting to have him come on and educate us two yahoos about how this comic collecting thing actually works, because you and I are so busy making the comics, we don't spend a lot of time collecting them. Although, I'm very interested in getting back into comic collecting, and have been for a couple years now. So, I'm glad to have you on, Rob. Thanks for joining us.

[03:28] Rob: Well, thank you for having me, and if I'd say right off the bat, we're about similar in age—I'm 45. Going to be 46 next week, and if you remember those old Marvel comic cards that came out, that let you know “here's X-Men #1. Here's the first appearance of Spider-Man.” If you're trying to get back into collecting, and you're not trying to buy the $3/4 weekly issues—you're just trying to be in it for the $1 value, as an investor, go for those issues that were printed in the Marvel comic cards from the 1990s—That X-Men #1, the Amazing Spider-Man #1. Those are going to be the evergreens, forever, for the most part, because I have two nephews, and I asked them the last time I was up there in Seattle, Washington, for Christmas, “Hey, kid. What do you like? What are you into? What are you watching on TV?” “I like cars.” “The movie?” “No, I mean, the cars on the street.” “What? Do you like Spider-Man? Do you like Batman?” “That's for the olds.” “I'm sorry, old? What are the olds?” “Anybody over 25, or so. That's old.” 25 is old now. Okay. So, just by listening to the younger people, I don't know if, by the time I'm old and gray, if I try and sell an Amazing Spider-Man, if I'm going to get $12,000/20,000, or $12, because nobody's collecting it, and all the olds, like me, have all passed on.

[04:53] David: Yeah, I have had that concern. Occasionally, I'll buy some original art, and occasionally, I'll get something from a bigger name, but oftentimes, it's just from somebody who—I just buy stuff because I like it, and I'll pay whatever the premium price is, and I often think to myself, “man, when people my age are gone, nobody's going to want this.” The money that I'm paying for this now—there's not a return on investment on this, whatsoever. The real return, though, is my pleasure in owning that thing, and being able to open it up in my big art book portfolio, or have it hanging on the wall, and enjoy looking at it. So, I want to start with the basics here, Rob. What do you think is the biggest misconception that casual fans have about comic book collecting these days?

[05:44] Rob: I’d probably say the biggest misconception is graded comics—that if you have it, it's in a slab, that it is waterproof. There's a thing called water resistant. It's like wearing a really expensive wristwatch that you pay, let's say, $5,000 for a Rolex, or an IDW. You go diving with that, and you might be good if it just slightly gets underwater, for a moment, but if you go down for any distance, it's going to get flooded out. Why? It's not waterproof, it's water resistant. Same thing with the slab. 9.8 is great that you have it. What about 100 years from now? Do you still think it's going to be 9.8 within that container unit? Maybe, maybe not, depending on the quality of the paper. Quality of the paper is important, because paper oxidizes, and after a bit of time, you watch that paper start to go from nice clear white, to a light brownish, until it's pretty much brown and brittle, and that's going to happen, no matter what, because of exposure to oxygen, to the air. It's foxing. I mean, whenever you're looking at a comic book, at every angle, the book looks pretty white, and then you get a corner that's just brown, because it was in a stack for a long period of time, and that piece that was exposed to the oxygen, that turned brown. It’s called foxing. It's going to happen to, largely, any book.

I look at comics like an archeologist would. Maybe in 100 years, or 1000 years from now, some of the books from 1960s and before will fade to dust, but these ones that are being put out now, with the foil, they're going to still remain, because the paper’s that durable, and the quality is finer now. Some of the foil might rub off in time, but most of the time, people much later on in the future, they're just going to want something complete. So, when it comes to a slab, great that you have it. I can't read it. It's just a heavy trading card, at this point, and really, not all 9.8s are the same, because if you're looking at a 9.8–and anybody that comes into this room, they're going to realize right away, I have zero slabs. It's not because I'm against them. It's just because I know better, and I'm a volume collector. I'm somebody that likes reading all this stuff. I'm a run collector. So, if everything was graded, this room would turn into about four or five times the size that it is, and it's a problem that just about any collector will have, in time, if they are an active collector—is running out of room, and after you run out of room in one room, where are you going to put it? The bathroom?

[08:01] David: I guess we should pause just here, for a moment. If anybody goes to the Not Near Mint YouTube channel, you'll be able to see Rob's background, but it is an amazing background. Rob's got, behind him, shelves and shelves of, I think, long boxes—maybe those are short boxes—I mean, I'm seeing at least five shelves, on several walls, including—oh, yeah, there's more on both sides. So, he's got heavy industrial racks that are full of long boxes, and wonderfully presented, because he's also got a comic book of note in the front of the long book. So, it's really a beautiful presentation, and then on the back wall, at the top of the wall, it says “Hall of Justice.” He's got a couple American Flags, which is cool, and then original piece of art, but it's too far away from you to tell what it might be. So, a fantastic comic book room that you've got, Rob. You've obviously spent some time, not only curating your collection, but thinking about how to present it. It's really cool to see.

[09:10] Rob: That's another facet of collecting that I really want to impress on people that are collecting, because if you're buying a book that just came out, you put it in a bag and board, which is great, but if you're living in a state Florida, like I am, if you have anything from before 1992, where I was talking about before—paper quality—we didn't have the thin, very slick paper before ’92. It was mostly newsprint. So, if you put something in a bag and a board, and file it away, within six months, that thing will be wrinkled all to sh*t, and the reason for that is humidity. So, if you're not using damper in your room—you should switch them out about every two to four weeks, or so, depending on the time of year. Summer, every week, you should be changing that, but that wrinkled bag, if you keep it in a box that has too many books—and really, a long box can get about 300. A short box, maybe 150–if it gets really packed, and that bag is shriveled, that shrivel imprints on the book itself, and I don't care if you have a 9.8– it's no longer 9.8.

[10:12] John: Interesting.

[10:14] Rob: A couple years ago, right during the pandemic, that's when I put everything into CLZ, and that's when a friend of mine, Lady Fantastic, Caroline on my show, we were going back and forth on “what's the best stuff to preserve our stuff? Because if we can afford the comic, we should be able to afford to properly preserve it, like the comic archeologists that we are.” So, for anything that was after 1992 that's just a standard book, I put it in something called OPP. You can get that from any different types of formats. The one that I use is comic clear, and then anything that's a key, or anything before 1992, it's mylar, through and through, because you're not going to get wrinkles in mylar. I don't care if it's 10 years. I don't care if it's 100 years. The United States Constitution is being kept under mylar, and if the Constitution is good enough for mylar, it’s good enough for our collection.

[11:03] David: That's fantastic. I didn't know that. Is that really true? It's in mylar?

[11:08] Rob: Absolutely. Well, we just found out the other day that Harvard University paid $25.50 for a Magna Carta copy. They later came to discover that it was one of the original copies of the Magna Carta, worth millions. So, you never know.

[11:24] David: Holy moly. That's crazy. I've already learned several terms, John. Foxing, never heard that before. Did not really think about the difference between a comic clear book or a mylar book. So, now I'm going to have to go into my entire collection and re-bag everything, John.

[11:45] Rob: It took two years of all of my free time to do this. Comic collecting is like being a librarian, and more than anything, if we're a collector, it's like being an art historian. There was one time where I was looking at an app, because, let's face it, if you want to try and find comics, you buy them for fair market value, FMV, or probably higher, because the store is charging nostalgia value and storage fees. So, you try and look on apps, like Let Go or Offer Up, for the lapsed collector, and you can find a lot better stuff out there with that, but once you bring it back, put them back into mylar and OPP, because that stuff will shrivel, and if you have a decent book, if you forget about it, over a period of time, “that used to be at least an 8.0. That is a 6 now, and all the weightiness is inside the paper, and just printed on it.”

[12:34] David: With some of the books that you talk about and you're dealing with, and that you've shown on your show, and on your Bluesky account, the difference between an 8 and a 6 is a lot of money.

[12:44] Rob: Oh, yes, it can be. That's why I just buy things from regular, lapsed collectors, by going on to those apps. One example. So, when I say that it's like art history, when somebody puts a spread in a picture of about maybe 80 books, and you just see a teeny tiny corner, and you go, “that is an Avengers #57.” How much is everything? They don't list a price. How far away are they? 350 miles.” Well, four and a half hours later, I drive up there, I arrive at seven in the morning, and there's teeny tiny roaches that are coming out of this box. I'm going, “I don't want to be here,” but as I'm going through the box, it is almost a damn full run of Avengers, from issue #2, minus the four, and going all the way up to #115, or so, and I go, “how much do you want for everything?” “$200.” “For each box?” “No, for everything.” So, I just give them the money, I load up my car, because I need to clean everything out afterwards, but that's how I got most of my Avengers, for almost nothing, because it was a lapsed collector finding out real fast, it wasn't stolen.

[13:48] David: You called out almost exactly what I have left in my Avengers run. I'm trying to put together a very fine Avengers run, and I'm getting down into the 80s and 90s now, and it's starting to get a little expensive. So, I need to start doing what you're doing, I think. So, you named off a couple of different ways—shopping apps—where you’ve found comic books. Do you think that the hobby is more accessible now, or do you think it's become too speculative?

[14:14] Rob: It’s really a bit of both there. You have—and I will not denounce him, because he does such justice for our industry—but Comic Tom 101, Tom Garcia, does his Top 10, where it's based off of cover price, and go collect, and what they have as volume sales. So, he brings in the collectors, but at the same time, a lot of the collectors are just all for FOMO. So, there's a rule to that. We say: six weeks to six months. If you see something on a Top 10 list that you want really badly, go look it up, and then put a placeholder on that for about six weeks. Come back six weeks later. If the book is still up, then wait six months. If you come back six months later and that price is still as high, or higher than it was, you’d better just buy it, right then and there, because that price is not coming down, but more often than not, especially in a down market, like right now—today has never been a better time to start collecting.

Gatekeepers are something we do not need in the hobby, because, like how we started the show here talking about “small children, are they reading comic books? No, they're into things that we're not into,” but I always say, “wait, and listen to what your kids like,” because one day, 20 years from now, they're going to want to buy back their childhood at top dollar, but for everybody else, if you wanted to buy stuff, look for those lapsed collectors, go to a garage sale, go to a pawn shop, go to places that you will not normally see comics, like in a comic shop, and if you find a lapsed collector, and you're going through that long box, and you pull out a Walking Dead #1–don't go, “How much for this book?” Because, of course, they're going to look it up right away. Instead, put it back into the box, and if there's a few other good things in that box, keep a dollar value in your head, and go, “How much for the whole box?” because they're not going to look up every book in that box. They're just going to give you a round number, and if they come up with some off-the-wall number, just say this, whether it's true or not, “listen, I'm a reseller. I need to make a profit off of these. If I can do 50¢ a book, I can do that. For a long box, I can do maybe $100. For a short box, maybe $50,” and if they want to haggle, haggle, and then you get your Walking Dead #1, but if you just pull out that one book, you're going to be paying through the nose for it, but don't try doing that at a comic shop. They know.

[16:34] David: No, they know. Most of them do. That's good advice. I like that. We're talking about the heat of things a little bit there. How much of the current market heat do you think is being driven by speculation, like movies and TV, rumors, first appearance stuff, versus the long-term love of the medium?

[16:54] Rob: So, with new books, people today are far more likely to spend around $50-100 than they would be on the blue-chip books. A couple of weeks ago, you had a Wolverine [#8]. It was one of those anniversary issues—a black cover with Daniel Warren Johnson art on it, and it's Wolverine all shot up without arrows. It was a $7 book, or so, and today, people are paying $50-100 for it. It is easier to move that than it is to move something like, say, first appearance of Enchantress from Journey into Mystery, which isn't to say that those books aren't moving. They're just moving much slower than they were back in 2021, when “here's a stimmy check. I'm going to go overspend on comic books.” That's not happening right now. Right now, people are buying things that—they love the look of it—the thing that everybody else is talking about, and again, if everybody else is talking about it, of course everybody wants it. Wait that six weeks to six months, and maybe you'll get it cheaper, but if everyone's talking about it right now, you're going to be paying through your nose for it. Instead, it would be better served, if you're a longtime collector—want to be a longtime collector—to go for those first volume runs of things. If you're into Green Lantern, start with Showcase #22/23/24. Then start with your 1959 or 1960 Green Lantern run—not every book, you need. Just because a series runs for 300 issues doesn't mean you need to get every single one. Maybe you're a key collector. 

[18:26] David: Hold on. I need all of them, Rob. I need all the comic books.

[18:31] Rob: Then there is a better way to go about doing that. You can decide to go and piecemeal one-by-one, but if you go on eBay right now, I guarantee you there's at least two or three sellers that are trying to sell the entire run of whatever it is, for whatever the dollar amount is. Better to go and do it that way, than “here's $300 there. Here's $800 there. Well, I know Amazing Spider-Man #14 is going to be a bit harder. So, I'll get that.” No, just get the whole damn thing in one shot. It’s not as fun, doing it that way, but you’ve got it, and if that’s all you want—

[19:04] David: You’ve got it, yeah. You track the back issue market closely. What trends are you seeing, in terms of what's hot right now, and just as important, what's cooling off? This is leaning into what you do every week here, Rob.

[19:19] Rob: So, what's really selling now are—since we don't know what it's going to look like with the new Superman movie, you're not really seeing the high-end, “here's Adventure Comics #210, the first appearance of Krypto.” Yeah, anybody that wants comics is going to want that, regardless of a movie, but the movie's not moving that. They just released a trailer of Ironheart, just this past week, and nobody's out there trying to purchase lots of copies of The Hood #1, or Invincible Iron Man #7 and #9, or the Specialty Cover with Ironheart on it. No. I mean, people were starting to buy stuff because, of all things, a video game. Marvel Rivals—Maybe I'm too old for this, or the fact that I'm colorblind and I run into walls, or off cliffs, because I can't play a video game to save my life—but people are taking the Marvel Rivals characters, and they're trying to look for those first appearances. Galacta—Do who Galacta is? I didn't know who the hell Galacta was. “Oh, daughter of Galactus. There's a drawing by Adam Warren. I'll pay $50 for that. I'll pay $100 for that.” She has less than five appearances, total.

[20:32] David: I know.

[20:34] Rob: Video games just started moving the market. I mean, that started all the way back from when Miles Morales was being put in a video game, and it took that Ultimate Fallout #4, from a $50 book to a $500 book, […] a video game.

[20:51] David: It was the video game that made that book blow up?

[20:54] Rob: Yes.

[20:55] David: I always assumed that it was the movie that eventually made that.

[20:59] Rob: So, first it was the video game, then the movie was released, and the movie was really good, and then the second one was released, and that was when 9.8s were going for $4,000. There was that 1:50 or 1:100–I can't remember which one it was—the ratio variant—that thing was going for $20,000 on a 9.8.

[21:22] David: Holy crap. Really? That's insane. That book's not that old.

[21:28] Rob: It also caused something else that we have never really seen before in collecting, where you would hear something like “This is the first front-facing image of Miles Morales.” What the fuck does that mean? “Well, it's on a preview that everybody threw away. “Wait a second—that everyone threw away. Okay.” So, here's a big thing that I have a problem with, with comic collecting in general—the difference between actual rarity and manufactured rarity, when you have a company like Bad Idea, which I love—the guy that runs the company, he's a genius, and a comic collector—he prints 500 of something, and that's it. So, that's manufactured rarity. Then there's previews, where most people just scribbled in it, threw them away, and now, if there was 50,000 printed, there might be maybe 1000/2000 left floating around out there that anyone gave a shit about. Well, now that's actual rarity, because most people threw it away, just like an Action Comics #1, where way back in the day, in the 1930s, there was a little advertisement inside of other comics saying, “If you rip the cover off of Action Comics #1, and send it to us, we'll give you a whole dollar.” It was for the war effort, but it just shows you what the difference is between actual rarity and manufactured rarity. When you know the difference—you can't fool me with “but this is a 1:200 ratio edition.” I don't give a sh*t. That's manufactured rarity.

[22:57] David: My first big foray—we talked about a little bit on the podcast, but I haven’t talked about it in a while—my first big foray into “Okay, I'm going to try to collect this thing,” because John and I, we've worked in the industry for forever, at this point. So, when you've been working inside the industry, the hobby piece of it goes away, for a little bit. Although, in the last couple years, I've regained my fandom, in a way, and I think, actually, talking to John every week on the podcast here has certainly helped with that. Part of that is the collecting aspect. Most of my life, I've been into comic books, because I just like to look at the art, and I like to read them, and I keep them, of course, and I try to keep them fairly well—I'll throw them in a bag and board, occasionally, but I thought, “I've never really experienced or tried to really dive into the collecting side of it.” So, Spider-Boy came out a year and a half ago, or whatever, and I was like, “you know what? I'm going to collect this. I'm going to get all the things,” because I didn't know anything about it, but I saw that Humberto Ramos costume design. I was like, “Man, I really like that. It really appeals to me,” and Dan Slott was writing it, and he's been the Spider-Man writer forever. So, I was like, “I'm going to jump in with both feet,” basically. So, I started to, and quickly jumped out, Rob, because there was 37 covers for the first issue, and I was like, “Oh, my God.”

[24:22] Rob: Oh, you noticed that too, huh?

[24:25] David: Yeah, that 1:50/1:100 thing, and the prices for that stuff was insane. The book was out for a week, and one of those covers was going for $100, and that's before you even start slabbing those things, and trying to get the 9.8 versions. All the custom covers that came on top of that—it was insane, man. It was crazy. So, I quickly realized that, “man, comic book collecting might not be for me,” but over time, thankfully—even though I didn't really know this—by accident, I was firmly like, “I'm not spending that kind of money for a comic book. No. I'm just not going to do that,” but over time, because I wasn't willing to do it, I've been looking at some of the covers that I never got, because they were so “rare”— the manufactured rareness that you're talking about—and it's been more than six months, and a lot of those covers have come down. I think Spider-Boy's popularity is still okay, but certainly not where those those prices were 12 months ago. So, I'm actually, slowly, now finding reasonably priced—they're still ridiculous for what it is, but what I consider reasonably priced—and certainly, 25% of what they were asking for 12 months ago.

[25:47] Rob: When you ask yourself, what is the definition of special? Something that is rare, difficult to find, unique. Well, if everything is special, it takes away from the very definition of what special is, and if you have 87 different covers for one particular issue, just pick whichever cover you like, because that book is never really going to go up all that much, unless there's a movie that people go, “Hey, Keanu Reeves is going to be in that BRZRKR. Wasn't a million of those produced? I'll pay $20 for the cover A.” For that one week, it's in the Top 10 because people don't realize the manufactured rarity, and then the week after, they realize, because of all these other people, like myself, like Comic Tom saying, “hey, you know how many covers this thing had?” Then people go, “this thing had 80-100 covers.” Drops right back down to cover price again. So, unless it is an actual rarity, probably the best bet is just to wait that six months, and go, “let me see if I can get every single Spider-Boy variant there is,” and you can go, “$600? Oh, that's 100 more than I wanted to pay, but I'll do it.” It's just a few years ago, […] had pre-code horror, that a $2,000 book, people were paying $5,000 for. It's since come down, but sometimes—one of the best quotes that I've heard was from Comic Tom, where he says, “sometimes you have to pay tomorrow's price today.” If you want everything without the frustration of piecemealing it, you just pay tomorrow's prices today.

[27:19] David: That's good advice. Rob, what was the comic book that turned you into a fanatic?

[27:29] Rob: So, that's a short story there. I can try and do it the best I can. So, when I was seven years old, my parents went, “hey, the kid doesn't seem to have many male friends. They're all female friends. He might be gay.” So, my mom got this great idea. “Let's take Rob flying out to Colorado with his uncle to go hunting, to butch the boy up.” So, it's 1987, there's no such thing as gameplay, and hunting is a drinking game, it runs in my family. So, I needed to pee. My dad and my uncle—they're throwing back beer. So, I wander away a bit, and I go to take a pee, and then all of a sudden, “pow! What the—? Oh, my God, I'm bleeding. My uncle shot me.” So, it's 1987, I'm on my way to the hospital, and my dad's saying a line, basically right out of Pulp Fiction—“You can never tell your mother. If she does, we’ll get divorced, and I don't want to get divorced.” So, imagine watching Pulp Fiction, going, “Hey, that happened. Oh, God.” To this day, my mom never found out. She passed away two years ago, but to her dying day, she never found out that her brother shot me.

[28:46] David: How did you explain the giant scar on you from the gunshot?

[28:52] Rob: I stayed in Colorado for two months, because my uncle, he really likes it out here. He's enjoying himself. It's actually how I got my first Nintendo, because it was blackmail material for my dad—Love you, dad—and when I came back, I mean, I was already a fat boy. So, it wasn't like I was taking my shirt off, like, “Hey, let's go to the pool,” and I leave my shirt on because I'm fat, and I don't want people to see my fatness. So, they never found out, but that's how I first started reading comics, because my dad just went, “Hey, I went to a comic store around the corner. I don't know what you like. Here you go,” and one of those books was Daredevil #227, the beginning of Born Again. I read that thing over and over, and when a couple people would come visit me, “can you get me more of the Daredevil books?” And then when I went all-in, it was only back in 2019, because prior to that, I was a drinker, heavily. Every morning I'd wake up, “let's get some vodka.” Go to bed. “Well, I'm still shaking. I need some more of that sh*t.”

So, I had a girlfriend a long time. We were supposed to get married, and then one day I come back from a trip in Quay West, which I do a lot of, because I'm a court reporter, and get a text from her sister saying, “Wendy passed away at the hospital,” and it was April 19 of 2019 that she passed, and on April 22, 2019, that was the last—I mean, over the weekend, I got wasted, but for her funeral, I just promised myself, I wouldn't drink anymore. So, instead, my religion changed—the religion of comic books, “because if I'm spending money on this sh*t, I don't have money to spend on brain-eraser vodka.” So, here I am, with now three times as many comics that I had way back in 2019. I'm sober of six years now, as of last month, and comics is just a better avenue to throw your money at, because the other place where I was throwing money at, for at least a good decade, I'm never going to see that sh*t again. At least this, I have something I can touch, still, and read.

[30:56] David: I feel like i's probably a little healthier too, in the grand scheme of things—lifting those heavy comic book boxes, move around, you get some exercise, and not drinking.

[31:06] Rob: Literally, all my free time is in here—putting stuff away, changing boxes out, moving boxes. “Hey, how are you so strong?” I lift long boxes all day long.

[31:18] David: Wow, John, usually I hear stories about comic books destroying lives. This is the first time I think I've heard that comic books are preserving lives.

[31:27] John: Typical origin story for reading comics. You probably get that a lot. Everybody's like, “that's wild. I'm sorry about all of it.” Sorry.

[31:40] Rob: Seriously, I've been shot, struck by lightning. What do I live for? Comic books.

[31:44] David: Wait, what? You got hit by lightning?

[31:47] Rob: Yeah. Seventh grade. I was waiting for my dad to come pick me up from school.

[31:51] David: How the hell did you make it to adulthood?

[31:54] Rob: With great difficulty, apparently. This is what I look forward to—comic books. I mean, when I was taking my dog for a walk a few weeks ago, somebody had their garage door open, and they're like, “are you planning on stealing anything?” I look at them and I go, “Are you a comic book?” “No.” “Do you have any comic books?” “No.” “Then I don't care about you.”

[32:15] David: Where did you get shot? Did you get shot in the arm?

[32:19] Rob: So, the first time I was shot, was by my uncle, in my side. I've been shot three separate times. The second time I was shot was back in college. We were waiting for—of all things, this was just a protest for the G8 conference. It was 2001. George W Bush was just installed into office, and I'm holding up a sign, and Miami Police were given the opportunity to use non-lethal weapons. So, when I heard “open fire,” I turned to my friend, Lily, and I go, “did I just hear what I thought I just—” I didn't even finish the question—shot right in the chest, rubber bullet shatters my rib cage, a cop grabs me by the ankle, drags me to what would later be called a “free speech zone,” and I'll never forget this—it's the reason why I don't trust police—I ask, “I need to see a doctor,” and I'll never forget what the cop said. “What you need is a good dose of shut the f*ck up.”

[33:13] David: Oh, God.

[33:15] Rob: So, now, if I ever have to call the cops, first question I ask myself is, “can I handle this myself?” That was the second time. Third time I was shot was right after divorce. I moved to Hollywood, which is the Bohemian capital of all of Florida. It's where all the troglodytes go to the beach, like me, and I’d just got divorced, I wanted to party in my 30s, because I didn't do it my 20s. Walked to the bar wearing this nice new Mark Echo shirt. It's only four blocks away. I'm three blocks away, right across the street from a church, and it feels like somebody punched me in my shoulder. I'm looking all around. There's nobody. Instead, some idiot takes his phone out, and just starts pointing it in my direction, and that's when I realized, after I'm brought to the hospital, somebody shot a gun into the air, and it came down on my shoulder.

[34:02] John: Oh, wow.

[34:03] Rob: And the best part—it happened on April 1st. My college roommates—

[34:08] David: I don’t think there’s anything best about that.

[34:10] Rob: […] the worst. People were saying, “this can't be true. This is an April Fool's joke.” My former college roommate, Risa, goes, “No, this is Rob we're talking about. It absolutely happened.”

[34:21] David: Oh, man. There's still a lightning strike that we have to talk about, John.

[34:28] Rob: Yeah. I wake up in the ambulance. I was told I was dead for seven minutes, and yeah—

[34:34] David: Wait. You were dead for seven minutes?

[34:37] Rob: I was dead for seven minutes.

[34:39] David: I'm starting to not believe this. I feel like we might be getting our leg pulled. This is too much.

[34:45] Rob: This is one of those things where it has to be true, because to tell it the way I do, if it was false, I would rather have the false life, at this point, because—

[34:58] David: Were you dancing in the rain? Is this seventh grade?

[35:00] Rob: It wasn't even raining. It was […]. I'm leaning against the flagpole at Forest Glen Middle School. Not a cloud in the sky. Next thing I know, I'm waking up with one shoe that's off of me, inside of a damn ambulance. The one guy is just looking at me like this—not blinking—like “What's going on?” He’s like “you were dead.” That's about all I remember from that. That’s why I have a thing—Rule number one, don't die. Rule two, don't be a dick.

[35:29] David: I mean, I feel like there's a “don't stand so close to flag poles” rule that might be applied there, somehow. I don't know.

[35:36] Rob: Don't go hunting with drunks. Just don't go anywhere with drunks that have a gun.

[35:45] David: All right, well, I feel like Frank Miller's Daredevil is probably a good starting book for you. There's the reason why that appealed to you. That's starting to make a lot of sense.

[35:55] John: You shouldn’t have signed this, Uncle Joe.

[36:00] David: Also, John, a surprising number of people had Frank Miller as their first comic book.

[36:06] John: Oh, is that right? I guess so. I can see—I mean, it wasn’t my first comic book, but my first issue of Batman I ever got was Year One Part 3, which, like a lot of people around our age, I think, gave us a very incorrect estimation of the baseline level of quality of Batman comics.

[36:23] David: We had Chase Marotz on the other day, and his first real, true love was Dark Knight, Frank Miller. He said he saw the girl with the swastika things on her boobs, and he was never the same.

[36:36] John: I don't know. Maybe it wasn't taken out of context. That sounds worse when you say it, though, David.

[36:42] Rob: So, the real question is, do you now have a fetish for women with swastikas on their breasts, or just tattoos, in general, period?

[36:49] David: I didn't dig that deep. Chase is a disturbed individual. You don't want to push too hard there.

[36:54] Rob: I don't know. I feel like we've gone full circle from this interview, talking about your wife coming out of the shower and a camera pointing at her, to—

[37:02] David: John coming out of the shower. Let’s be real clear here.

[37:05] Rob: Giggity.

[37:07] David: Exactly. John, do you have any questions for Rob?

[37:10] John: Well, a lot, yeah, but not related […].

[37:15] Rob: People start talking comics with me, and it ends up in a train wreck of insanity, and just insanity—That's where we are.

[37:24] John: How did your journey go after that? Were you reading Daredevil, […] that grow into collecting it?

[37:31] Rob: The funny thing is, much like how I learned Spanish in South Florida in a school where there was only seven people that spoke it, I lost the whole language. When I came back to South Florida, I was living up in Fort Lauderdale, and there weren't that many people that collected comics. So, I was the one that would ride my bike to the comic shop—three miles out, three miles back—hit by a couple cars a couple times. That was always fun. It was whenever my dad would come home from work, I'd know to ply him with a drink, give him 30 minutes to relax, before I’d go, “Hey, Dad, can we go to that good comic shop?” “Okay, at least I feel better now. If you would had asked me the second I got in…” So, you have to grease them up before you can go to the good comic shop with the back issues.

[38:18] David: I'm so jealous of you guys that had comic bookstores near you when you were kids. I didn't have anything like that. I did not get exposure to that until I could drive myself.

[38:27] Rob: During college, I would give away Wizards, as I would get them, to try and get my fellow people at New World School of the Arts to get into comics, so I'd have somebody to talk to.

[38:40] David: During college, I made conscious decisions to buy comic books instead of food.

[38:46] Rob: You and me both, brother.

[38:47] David: There were some real hard decisions made in the comic bookstore, but almost every time, I chose comic books, and I don't regret buying that Andy Kubert Venom cover. It was really rad.

[38:59] Rob: Back in college, I bought one of my best friends Amazing Spider-Man #129, first appearance of Punisher. It was in ratty condition, and he just sold it two years ago, so that he could pay rent. So, I'm like, “You know what? I did my job. I'm feeling good about that. I know I paid $20 for it, but the fact that you were able to pay rent—go you.”

[39:22] David: I think we should wrap this up soon, Rob, because I don't know where to go, but I would like to—

[39:28] Rob: I do have one thing that I can point out. I don't know if people have been paying attention to what's been going on in the world, but we have a certain guy that runs a certain platform that's been firing a lot of government employees. So, if people are wondering, “Hey, can I find a grail for less money than I could a few years ago?” Absolutely, you can. You place a search for something on Google Alert or eBay Alert, and wait for the stock market to drop 500 points, or more, on a Friday, and whatever book you want, you are not having to compete against a lot of the investor class collectors, and it doesn't matter what it is. Chances are, you can get it. I know this is a fact, because I got my first appearance of Black Panther that way.

[40:14] John: Nice. Just recently? In this run?

[40:17] Rob: Yeah, just last year. It dropped about 700 points, and it was a $500 book then, and I got it for $228.

[40:26] David: Fantastic. Rob, are there any specific titles, new, old, whatever, that you've been following trends on, that you're like, “this is going up big. Grab it now,” or “this is going the wrong direction. Hold off”? Are there any specific titles, for our listeners, that you're tracking right now, that you're excited about, either because they're climbing, or because they're dropping?

[40:54] Rob: Welcome back to 2010. We have the Ultimate Universe again. We're back for a second volume of All-New Ultimates, whether you like Spider-Man, Black Panther, Ultimates, where it's just everybody—including the Guardians of the Galaxy, but a different version. You start reading Ultimates, it doesn't matter what the title is, because they have some of the best writers doing it. You're not muddled up with a ton of continuity, but just like the last time we had an Ultimate Universe, if you're paying $100 for that first issue, well, that first issue of the Brian Michael Bendis version, you can get for $30/40 now. It used to go for $100, and just like the Ultimate Spider-Man written by John Hickman, people are paying $100 for it—more than that now, but if you wait a few years, it's going to be right back down to $30/40, but right now, you're having some of the best stories coming out, because a writer can do whatever they want. Same thing with the Absolute Line over at DC.

Any of the independent books that are coming out right now, if you have a writer that you've been following, now is a good time to be getting into it, because with Diamond and the bankruptcy, a lot of books are being held. We don't know if shops are going to get them. So, if you're looking for last issues of whatever it is—last issues have a much lower print run than a first issue. So, look for last issues on—it doesn't matter what it is. If it's gone over 12 issues, anybody that's a collector, they're going to want that last issue. They're going to pay more than a first issue. That's just where we are now. For older collectors that just want to invest their books, you can't go wrong with anything pre-code horror—anything from the Golden Age—doesn't matter what it is, except, seemingly, war, which I've just only recently gotten into, but as it's been evidenced with John Cena playing the role of Peacemaker, Fightin’ Five #40 was a $10 book forever. “Hey, John Cena is going to be Peacemaker.” $1,000. Wait, what? That's where we are right now.

So, last bit I'll drop on you, and then I guess we can wrap up. Sergeant Rock. There was supposed to be a movie that was being made with that. They had, at one point, Daniel Craig that was going to be playing the role. Well, eventually, they just wrapped the whole production. It's not going to get made, but what if we have some big name that gets associated with it? And already, Army at War #83, which is the whole weird thing with prototypes, but that's considered his first—you can't even find a sh*t-tier grade book for under $2000. If you get a good actor that's going to play that role, you're not going to be able to find a sh*t-tier grade under $10,000, because it was a book that came out in the late-1950s, and all those old prototypes, like the GI Combat #68, the All-American Men of War #28–those prototypes—maybe you could get it for $200/300 now, in lower grade online. You get a good actor playing that role, you're not going to be able to find it for under $1000.

[43:46] John: What do you mean by prototypes? What is that? I'm not familiar with that.

[43:49] Rob: So, Sgt. Rock, his name as Sgt. Frank Rock, they call him that title in Issue #83 of Our Army at War. In Issue #82, one panel, they actually call him Sgt. Rock. In issue #81, he's in the goddamn book. They still call it a prototype. Why? He's Sgt. Rocky. Why? And it's by the same writer, Robert Kanigher, who wrote almost all the big five war titles, and in GI Combat #68, there was a character that was very much like Sgt. Rock—not Sgt. Rock. In All American Men of War #28, there was a character that was very much like Sgt. Rock, looked just like Sgt. Rock, but didn't have Joe Kubert on the pencil. So, it looked a little different. Still, basically the same character. Prototypes.

[44:41] David: Interesting. Well, Rob, thank you so much for joining us today. I feel like, wow, what a full meal we got today. John, is there anything else, comic-related? I know you have a lot of questions.

[44:55] John: I was fascinated and entertained by this.

[45:00] David: Thanks, Rob for coming today. I hope all of you listeners—all four of you—got a great earful today. Comic collecting is dangerous and hazardous.

[45:10] Rob: Just don't die—do your best not to—or injure yourself where it gets really painful later in life.

[45:15] David: As we've learned, you can do it. It's possible, and thanks to folks like Rob out there, educating us on exactly what we should be looking for, what we should be doing, it's all that much easier these days. So, thank you, Rob, for all of your efforts out there in the internets, in the interwebs. I truly enjoy your Sunday posts on Bluesky, talking about all the ups and downs of the current comic book collecting, and just recently found your YouTube, and am enjoying that, as well. Rob, anything else you want to add before we sign off? Anything you want to pitch, promote, outside of your YouTube channel?

[45:52] Rob: No, just that I'm on Bluesky. I no longer post on any of the other socials. Just Bluesky at Not Near Mint, and we do our shows every Friday at 9pm Eastern. It's Not Near Mint on YouTube, and I do Shorts, showing some of my collection, all set to trance dance music, if you're into that.

[46:09] David: Fantastic. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We'll see you next time on The Corner Box. Like and subscribe.

[46:15] John: Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates, and links at www.thecornerbox.club, and we’ll be back next week with more from David, and John, here at The Corner Box.