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Your narrator, the Leader
The Leader with his traveling companion Jim Frost attended the RVA Comic Collectors’ Con at the Holiday Inn hotel in Richmond, Virginia on 10 December 2016. This show was promoted by Brett Carreras who operates the regular quarterly VA Comic Con at the Richmond Raceway that the Leader and Jim always attend. Brett decided he wanted to do a traditional pure comic book show with just comic book dealers with no guests, seminars or COS players gumming up the works. He offered free tickets for all comic book fans who wanted to attend. The show was successful and Brett is considering doing similar shows in the future. At this show the Leader was pleased to see his friends, Bill Smith, Bob Bretall, Wayne Ehrmann, Donald Gehl, Derek Woywood, Guy Rose, Julio Crespo, Donald Jones and his favorite comic book dealer Gene Carpenter. The Leader was also pleased to see HeroesCon promoter Shelton Drum from Charlotte, North Carolina who hasn’t set up at any Richmond shows for over two years. The Leader and Jim made their customary stop at Sal’s Italian Restaurant on the way home.

Derek Woywood
Derek Woy promotes the Philadelphia Comic Con and usually sets up at the quarterly VA Comicon in Richmond and other shows in the area. At this show he was set up in the smaller dealers’ room next to the main dealers’ room.
Derek Woywood
Here’s Derek with the leading EC comics fanzine Squa Tront #2 and #1 from 1967 published by Jerry Weist. I have a few issues of this wonderful fanzine but just don’t seem to have the time or money to put together a complete run of them.
Bob Bretall
Veteran comic collector Bob Bretall with two reading copies of the Silver Age DC science fiction comic Tales of the Unexpected. I first met Bob last September at the Baltimore Comic Con were we had a nice conversation while waiting for the dealers’ room to open. He lives in California and makes occasional business trips to the East Coast. Bob has his own internet Blog, ComicsSpectrum where he writes extensively about comic books. He also has the distinction of being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the owner of the world’s largest private collection of comic books. Bob told me that with his collection of over 100,000 comics he was able to overthrow the previous record holder living in Australia with only 60,000 comics.
Donald Gehl
Donald Gehl of Ducky’s Comics attends the quarterly VA Comicon in Richmond so I wasn’t surprised to see him at this show. $2,600 for a less than Very Fine copy of X-Men #4, 1964 seems expensive to me but if Marvel keeps producing big budget X-Men movies then a few years down the road that price may seem cheap.
Donald Gehl
Donald with Batman #232, 1971 and Detective #359, 1967 featuring the first appearance of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. Donald told me he had just bought these comics at this show and he wasn’t ready to sell them yet since he might want to keep them for himself.
Bill Smith
Bill Smith was set up with Wayne Ehrmann of Zeno’s Books in Chesapeake, Virginia selling some of his science fiction pulp magazines. Bill is an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan and many of his Argosy and Blue Book pulps at this show had Burroughs stories. This Weird Tales pulp has art by Virgil Finlay and stories by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. The Famous Fantastic Mysteries has an eye catching cover with a human skull made out of human bodies. Comic books have nothing on pulps when it comes to grotesque, bizarre and socially unacceptable covers.
Bill Smith & Sunny Stoudemire
Pulps frequently had sexy babes on the cover and here are two examples, displayed by Bill and Zeno’s Books associate Sunny Stoudemire. That's Jim Frost hovering out of focus in the background at Gene Carpeter's table.
Enrique Fernandez Roberts
Enrique Roberts was a dealer I had never seen before but he had some nice high grade Silver Age Marvels comics for sale that caught my eye. The Tales of Suspense #79, 1966 is unusual since the regular artist on the Iron Man story, Gene Colan, got sick and and the story had to be finished by Jack Kirby. The #66, 1965 features the first Silver Age appearance of Captain America’s main enemy, the Red Skull. Like Cap, the Red Skull had spent the time since 1945 in suspended animation.
Brett Carreras
Brett Carreras promotes the quarterly VA Comicon which is normally located at the Richmond Raceway but this show was held at one of the Holiday Inn hotels used before moving to the Raceway. Brett hadn’t set up as a dealer at one of his own shows for the last five years. The Strange Tales #114, 1963 with “Captain America” on the cover is an interesting book because the real Captain America isn’t in the book. The villain is actually a previous enemy of the Human Torch named the Acrobat who was impersonating Captain America. This Strange Tales #14 book is dated November 1963. Captain America’s actual first appearance in the Silver Age wasn’t until The Avengers #4, March 1964. I don’t know if Marvel was waiting for sales figures to come in on the Strange Tales #114 to see if was worth resurrecting Cap for real, or if the Strange Tales was another example of Marvel teasing the readers with a preview appearance of a character before giving him his own feature in a book.
Julio Crespo, Donald Jones, Guy Rose
Guy Rose Vintage Comics always sets up at the VA Comicon and Guy’s partners Julio and Donald are always with him. Here’s Julio with a Tales of Suspense #98, 1968 for $200, Donald with a Captain America Comics #16, 1941 for $3000, Guy with Superman #16, 1940 (1st Lois Lane cover), $550.
Gene Carpenter
The Leader’s favorite comic book dealer Gene Carpenter with two examples of the Leader’s favorite comic book genre, pre-superhero Marvels: Strange Worlds #2, 1958 with a Steve Ditko cover. Ditko had one story in nearly all pre-superhero Marvels but only did a few covers. And World of Fantasy #16, 1958 with a rare Al Williamson story in addition to the usual stories by Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby.
Shelton Drum
Shelton Drum is one of the leading comic book dealers in the Southeast quadrant of the United States. He promotes the annual HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina. He used to be a regular at the quarterly VA Comicon in Richmond but he quit attending that show about two years ago, even that show’s annual two day show. So I was pleasantly surprised to see him at this small one day show in Richmond. Here he is posing with some bound volumes of Warren Publishing horror magazines Vampirella, Creepy, Eerie.
Jim Frost, Seth Peagler, Shelton Drum, Gene Carpenter
Shelton gloating over a small but interesting collection of Golden and Silver Age comics he had just bought from a collector at this show.
Shelton Drum
There were two copies of this comic Fantasy Masterpieces #1, 1966 in the collection Shelton bought and one of them was signed inside by Jack Kirby. As a fan of pre-superhero Marvels dating back to the 1960s I was thrilled to buy this book new from Mr. Wu’s 7-11 in my hometown of Savannah, Georgia. It is the only Marvel comic that has a full page photo of Stan Lee on the inside front cover.
Shelton Drum, Gene Carpenter
The show’s two Golden / Silver Age heaviest hitters conferring on a matter of cosmic importance, no doubt. Shelton is holding a Golden Age Star Spangled Comics from the collection he just bought.
Bill Smith, Bob Bretall, Jim Frost, Shelton Drum, Guy Rose, Gene Carpenter, Lewis Forro
Near the end of the show the Leader was able to round up enough old timers to pose for the second installment of the Comic Book Methuselahs. The Leader defines a Methuselah as a collector who has been reading comic books for at least 50 years. So that’s a total of 350 years of comic book experience in this photo. That’s a longer time than historically important institutions like the Lloyds of London insurance company, the Rothschild dynasty, the Tudor dynasty, the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire and most of the other great empires of history. It is the Leader’s hope to one day assemble enough comic book Methuselahs to equal the duration of the greatest empire of them all, the Roman Empire. Dated from the start of the reign of Augustus Caesar in 27 B.C. to the fall of Rome in A.D. 476 that is 503 years. At 50 years a pop the Leader needs ten Methuselahs in one photo instead of just the seven shown here.
Dealers’ Room
The regular quarterly VA Comicon uses the large exhibition halls at the Richmond Raceway complex. This smaller show had to make do with this much smaller room in the Holiday Inn and an even smaller room next door. Regardless of the size of the room, the amount of work in setting up and tearing down remains the tedious, arduous same. Imagine doing this 50 times a year like Gene Carpenter.
Gene Carpenter, Jim Frost
As usual, after the dealers’ room is closed and most of the dealers broken down and gone, Gene and Jim are still looking over some books and considering last minute deals.
Jim Frost
Two of Jim’s better catches for the day: the Atlas comic Journey Into Unknown Worlds #2, 1951 with a Bill Everett “When Worlds Collide” cover, cashing in on the George Pal science fiction disaster movie of the same name in the same year. Also, the Timely comic Marvel Mystery #82, 1947 featuring the first appearance of Namor the Sub-Mariner’s kissing cousin, Namora. Look for these books and all the other goodies Jim scooped up at this show on the CGC sales threads.
Jim Frost
The Journey Into Unknown Worlds #2 comic gets some extra kick from a story drawn by Bill Everett, “The First Rocket” about Adolf Hitler escaping from the defeated Third Reich at the end of World War II and establishing a base on the Moon.