12 Gifts of Christmas: Framed Comics

Photo courtesy Youseph Tanha

Blogger Youseph Tanha has provided comics fans with not only a cheap way to show off some of our favorite issues but an inexpensive way to make a comic book gift for your cooler friends and family.

It’s simple; frame some comics! Ikea’s Nyttja photo frames cost $1.99 and are the perfect size for issues. Since your picking out comics to give as a wall hanging, they don’t have to be OMG COLLECTOR ~! comics; just ones with cool covers. And the cheap bins at your local comics shop are stocked with something with a nice cover, done by an artist or with characters your gift recipient likes.

It’s that easy…check out Youseph’s website for some more pictures!

I Survived New York Comic Con 2011

The New York Comic Con was certainly adventure time! Photo by Steven Leung (www.flickr.com/gluetree)

So the 2011 New York Comic Con has come and gone. I made the trek up this past Friday and Saturday. I certainly had a much better time then last year’s. Not that I didn’t enjoy myself last year, but I just wasn’t having it.

There are a bunch of pics, purchases, sketches and such that I’d love to talk about, but I’m really pooped. So I’ll just leave you with this.

Jem is totally outrageous. In hindsight, I really should have gotten my picture taken with her. Picture by Edward Liu (www.flickr.com/edwick)

One of the weirder things that I found myself intrigued with is Jem. After stumbling across the cartoon this summer on the Hub, I’ve become totally smitten with this totally outrageous character. Seriously.

I’ve wound up staying waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay past my bedtime to watch the show because it is surreal. Anyway, they had a display case of vintage toys and marketing stuff. I wonder if there will be some new Jem stuff in the future. Or, at the very least, a re-release of the cartoons on DVD, so I won’t have to leave my girlfriend’s DVR filled with it.

So I’m going to leave you with this.

We can make a difference.

Sorting Comics Is Hard

I’d like to argue with Big Daddy Kane that really it should be sorting comics ain’t easy. This weekend was the first in a long time where I didn’t have to work or have any set plans or any house work to worry about. So I decided that Sunday would be sort out the ol’ comics collection day. There were two reasons for that

1. It’s something I’ve been putting off for a heck of a long time.
2. It would be nice to have an accurate list of what I need to have. There’s no reason I should keep buying multiple copies of Armageddon: The Alien Agenda. No joke…I found out that I have at least three full sets of it.

This is something that I felt was a good idea to do, as I’m going to the Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend. So I wound up sorting the boxes, pulling stuff I want to get signed and what not.

Nearly twelve hours later, I got as far as I could yesterday, giving up at the letter “K”, which will take a decent chunk of time with my enormous collection of Ka-Zar comics.

So here are some of the interesting things I’ve found so far.

1. Not only do I have a complete run of Dazzler, but I also have all the issues with variant cover prices (issues were priced differently for the direct market and at newsstands as part of a sales experiment).
2. I had a bunch of Justice League America issues signed by Adam Hughes on the interior page. I guess I can thank the prior owner for getting that done for me.
3. I’ve bought/read a lot of comics.

So how do you organize your comics? I’ll talk about what I do tomorrow.