It's.....A Sunday Ramble About Comics

There are currently 128 publications at the Black Tower Comics and Books online store. This week that number should rise somewhat.  This while I am still toying with a cover for The Green Skies Vol. 3 Pt. 1 and some Captain Cosmic pages for Black Tower Super Heroes.

I let things slip somewhat.

With millions of views I suppose that I should not be surprised that posts from 2011 and 2015 are still being read in 2020. Some people interested in buying a title check out a review or post here and the number of comic history posts still being read 10 years later is good. People learn.

I do often think that I need to cater for specific countries. If I look at the countries visiting CBO in the last few hours I see the United States, UK, Canada, Japan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Germany, France, "Unknown Region" (we knowwho you are), Russia, Ukraine, Netherlands, Austria, Philippines, Portugal, Poland, Bulgaria...the list goes on and on.

Japan I am surprised at with 58 visits since, unfortunately, other than the posts on Manhwa, Manhua and Manga, I have had nothing to really offer an audience there but it could be these are people with a general interest in comics/media?

Perhaps the audience in Japan does not want to read about Manga -after all they are exposed to it everyday and I am sure that there are plenty of books on the history of Manga and creators.

Can anyone remember that wretched American TV show "Toy Hunter" -inspiring greed and ruining the joy of collecting toys?  There was an episode where the, uh, "Toy Hunter" came to a London based event. Still the usually set up/faked scenes but he -as THE expert ("X"=The Unknown and "Spurt" is a drip under pressure) made the mistake of a newbie.  He reasoned that if he came to the UK and bought up items that are popular and sought after here then he'd "make a killing". Despite the show trying to gloss over the failure to a degree, he later realised his mistake.

People in the UK might well be on the look out for this or that item but if it is a UK manufactured toy then collectors can buy them at any time.  The "Rare"/"Very rare" etc that Ebay dealers add to their descriptions of toy soldiers are just bull-shit. I once spoke to a fellow who worked at the old Timpo factory and asked him about their "Solids" and "Swoppits" (figures you can take apart and add items from other Swoppits to) and how many they manufactured in a year. "I have no idea" he told me: "We made thousands per day so I'm guessing more than a million each year other the decades". The same applies to William Britain's soldiers. An example: an "exceptionally rare" cowboy in the Crescent 60mm range I picked up for £2.50 including postage. When I was told how rare it was I checked Ebay. There were at least 10 in my 20 minutes search -all described as "very rare".

The reason collectors went to see what a US toy seller had was to buy American toys that were hard to find in the UK. I think they even showed people on the episode stating this. "You do not send coal to Newcastle" as the old saying went.

So I spend time looking for Manga related stuff for Japanese readers and it dawned on me that it would be like asking someone in Japan if they had ever heard of Ramen noodles!

The same applies to other countries; I tend to not try to tell people about comics they see regularly. If I did (I think I did a long while ago) a post on Bulgarian comics it is not to tell Bulgarians that they have these comics but to show people with an interest in comics what Bulgaria publishes. There are exceptions of course.

I was once pretty active on Chinese Manhua sites -Hong Kong, Singapore, etc., and mentioned certain titles from the 1960s to 1980s and was shocked that no one on the forums of "avid collectors" had heard of these titles. I thought I was being kidded but I was assured that they had not heard of these books. So I posted articles on them

I had a similar experience with Germany where I was even outrightly insulted by a couple of people on a forum (that type are everywhere it seems) because I insisted that there were comics in Germany during World War 2. It was rather like the insults I got from the comic "elite" in the UK during the 1980s when they told me very fdirmly that "There were no super hero comics in Europe and few now".  In both cases it showed a complete ignorance of the subject matter (the "elite" now claim "we knew that" but still have little knowledge).

See http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2016/11/german-comic-book-history-there-were.html

And the existence of the site in question shows that I am NOT the only German comic book historian out there.  I am damned sure that there are others interested in Chinese Manhua other than Wendy Siuyi Wong and myself.

So, if and when I can, I will post items on comics from different countries (anyone wants to donate some let me know!) but I won't drive myself to distraction trying to cater to a particular country where comickers know what they have!

A closing note: if you like the content then please consider a donation to help keep CBO going beyond September. There is a nice little box top right of the page.  Thank You