So, the Professor’s out of school, and only has two weeks’ worth of questions to cover this time. Let’s get to them. First, from May 8:
value of Heavy Metal 1977?
Short and sweet, eh? Hard to answer, too — since, while the first issue of Heavy Metal was dated April, 1977, the other eight months of that year had issues too. The April one runs about $25 in not-quite-mint condition (some price guides have it higher, but All About has it in stock, and sells it for $25). The later ones from 1977 go for about $10 each, again in almost-mint condition; in lesser condition, they’re around $2 – $5.
Next up, from May 10:
What are 3 favorite comic books that are still going, maybe new? What are your 3 favorite comic books not running anymore? I’m relatively new to comic book reading and want to get into some good ones.
And, from the same writer, on May 17:
I’m relatively new to comic books and want to start reading some that are still continuous and some that are not. Do you have any suggestions?
Note that it’s the same question, because the Professor hadn’t answered the first one yet. Not going to now, either, because this weblog itself is the answer — look at the archives here, and you have 122 weeks’s worth of answers: two posts a week, averaging about 7 books each time, equals reviews of over 1,700 comics over the last 2+ years. Read through those, and you’ll get a good sense of the Professor’s tastes in current comics. For the not-current ones, the Professor will admit to the usual suspects — Will Eisner’s The Spirit, Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck, Harvey Kurtzman’s EC war comics and John Stanley’s Little Lulu — along with Sheldon Mayers’s Sugar and Spike and Al Wiseman’s Dennis The Menace (the Professor, obviously, has a weakness for 1950s/60s humor books). Seriously, though — read the reviews; that’s a big list of both picks and pans, and it’s what they’re there for.
One more, from May 25:
What are your favorite Spider-Man comics of all time?
Hmmm…. The first two the Professor ever read would be at the top of the list: that’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2, with a great Spidey/Dr. Strange story by Lee and Ditko, and Amazing #25 (“The Man In The Crime-Master’s Mask”), by the same team. There’s also #33, where Spidey lifts the huge honkin’ machinery off his back, #s 101-102 (Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, with a six-armed Spider-Man vs. Morbius) #s 121-122 (Gwen Stacy’s death, with Kane art and Gerry Conway on script). After that, the Professor would recommend the Roger Stern issues (in the mid-200s), and the J. Michael Straczynski stuff from a few years ago, in Amazing Vol. 2 #s 31 and up.
