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Your narrator, the Leader
The Leader attended the Baltimore Comic Con 3 and 4 September 2016. He missed last year's show and definitely didn't want to miss it two yeas in a row. He enjoyed seeing his dealer friends Gene Carpenter, David Alexander, Shelton Drum and Dave Wulf. He was especially delighted to see his old friend John Verzyl now of Big Sandy, Texas. The Leader fondly remembers John from their Comic Heaven Days together in Southern California in the 1980s.

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Click here for the Main Introduction Page for the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Con Report
Saturday, 3 September 2016
Dealers’ Room
Eric Mowery & Mike Carbonaro
Eric and Mike with some CGC graded Marvel key Silver Age comics. Mike Carbonaro aka the Prince of Pop Culture was using Dave & Adam’s Comics as a base from which to scour and pillage the show. I've bought a few Marvel items from Mike over the years and see him at lots of shows on the East Coast. Mike liked my Pre-Marvel science fiction dye sublimated shirt and asked to me sell him a hundred of them so he could resell them at his Big Apple Con in New York next March. I am planning on starting a business selling dye sublimated shirts but I don’t know if I can make Mike’s deadline or not.
Douglas Gillock
Douglas Gillock is the owner of ComicLink, one of the best and oldest consignment companies for selling comic books on the internet. ComicLink always has an eye catching booth with nice signs and fancy visual display equipment.
David T. Alexander
David Alexander of Tampa, Florida and I go back a long way together. I first me him in the early 1980s when I visited his store the American Comic Book Company and his home in the Los Angeles area to buy some pre-Marvel science fiction comics. I also set up as a dealer at one of his pulp and paperback shows in Tampa, Florida in the late 1990s. We both like pulps, movie magazines and other popular culture magazines in addition to comics. I see him occasionally only at the Baltimore Comic Con nowadays. Dave’s holding a popular Silver Age Marvel, Journey Into Mystery #112, 1964 featuring the first time the Hulk fought Thor.
IDW Publishing
Here’s Joel Elad of IDW Publishing with two hardcover reprint books. I don’t read any new comic books but I do buy quality reprint books of Silver Age material from publishers like, IDW, Darkhorse, Titan and so on. I passed on this Best of DC War Artist Edition for now, even though I did have a small Sgt. Rock comic collection when I was a kid. I did recently buy IDW’s Thor Artist Edition and regret not buying their first Artist Edition on Wally Wood EC art. I’ve been looking for it at the comic shows for the past two years with no luck.
Alex Needleman
Alex Needleman of Absolute Comics & Statues in Astoria, New York with a nice copy of Fantastic Four Annual #3, 1964. This is first Marvel annual I bought and so it’s a sentimental favorite. I still have it of course. I had a little trouble persuading my aunt Betty June in Birmingham, Alabama to give me the .25 since that was double the normal comic book price of .12.
Comics, Cards & Collectibles
The Baltimore comic store Comics, Cards & Collectibles sponsors the Baltimore Comic Con and sets up a dealer’s booth at the show. I liked these two examples of lurid 1950s science fiction comics Amazing Adventures from the noted pulp magazine publisher Ziff-Davis. Pulps always had flamboyantly painted covers and Ziff-Davis carried on that tradition with their comic book line.
Richard Evans
Speaking of science fiction pulp magazines, here’s Richard Evans of Bedrock City Comic Company from Houston, Texas with two oversize “bedsheet” pulps from the 1930s. Check out that creepy looking aquatic monster on the Amazing Stories.
Richard Evans
Richard Evans with a wall of regular size Amazing Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories pulps. Look closely at the cover of the Amazing Stories he’s holding. It has a woman hanging upside down in a giant test tube. What type of demented pervert would buy a magazine with a cover like that?
Steve Stryke
Steve Stryke of Golden Memories had some nice Golden Age and Silver Age comics, including these two nice Hawkman comics. The Brave and the Bold #34, 1961 at left is expensive because it is has he origin and first appearance of the Silver Age Hackman. The great monster cover by Joe Kubert also adds to the price.
Peter Klaus and Joe Giella
Pete is probably the world’s most accomplished Phantom collector. He says there are one or two other guys who have as much Phantom stuff as he but I doubt it. I did enjoy reading the Phantom Sunday newspaper comics when I was kid in the 1960s. I thought it was pretty neat that the Phantom had a Major Treasure Room full of art and literary treasures his ancestors had collected and a Minor Treasure Room full of just routine gold and silver coins and artifacts. Pete told me that artist Joe Giella drew the Phantom Sunday and daily newspaper strips when the regular artist Sy Barry was on vacation.
Peter Klaus
Pete with a copy of a new Phantom art book he’s working on.
Derek Woywood
Derek Woywood promotes the Philadelphia Comic Con which is the longest running running comic con on the East Coast. I sometimes see Derek at the Virginia Comic Con in Richmond. I asked him to show me these two nice 1950s Atlas science fiction / fantasy comics. After EC, Atlas is my favorite line of science fiction comic books. I was faithfully reading Marvel’s line of Atlas Era hardcover reprints until it was cancelled a year or so ago.
Gene Carpenter
Gene Carpenter of All American Comics always has a fantastic selection of rare comic books. Check out his juicy display wall. Included there are the first issues of two Warren Publishing magazines: Famous Monsters of Filmland and Vampirella. I’ll next see Gene at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Con in Maryland in a few days.
Shelton Drum
Veteran comic dealer Shelton Drum promotes the big annual Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina and until recently usually setup at the Virginia Comic Con in Richmond every three months but now he says he doesn’t do as much traveling. I asked him to consider returning to the Virginia Comic Con and to bring another friend of the Leader and big time Southern comic dealer, David Hinson, with him.
Shelton Drum
Shelton with two EC Weird Science comics. The #20 at right has a Wally Wood cover for the famous story “50 Girls 50.” The interior story is drawn by Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta.
Shelton Drum
EC had the best science fiction comics of the 1950s but Avon Publications had lots of neat science fiction comics as well. The Avon Strange Worlds #3,1951 is the most desirable of the run since it has art by EC artists Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson with a Everett Raymond Kinstler story to boot. The Rocket To The Moon, 1951 has a cover by Wally Wood.
Shelton Drum
Legendary Marvel artist Steve Ditko did a lot of work at Charlton as well and three of the most spectacular science fiction covers he ever did was for the #10, #11 and #12 issues of Science Fiction Space Adventures. The #12 Shelton is holding is the most famous due to the big orange monster and sexy babe. I bought a high grade copy of this issue from Redbeard’s Book Den in the early 1980s and have been zealously guarding it ever since. David Spurlock of Vanguard Press used this cover for a reprint collection of Ditko art and had a one of a kind display poster made to promote the book. I bought that from him at a show for good measure.
Beyond Comics
Beyond Comics has the biggest and best statues at the show. Here’s Stacey Cohen with a statue of the Captain America villain, the Red Skull.
Basement Comics
Brian Kellagher & Al Stotz Jr. The owner, Al Stotz Sr. aka Big Al is a bit camera shy he tells me and rarely appears in photos. I’ve known Big Al since the late 1990s when we both set up as dealers at the Tyson’s Corner show and other collectibles shows in the DC and Baltimore areas.
Basement Comics
Brian Kellagher with two late 1960s Marvel magazines, The Spectacular Spider-Man. The #1 at right was in black & white and the #2 was in color. These two magazines were from 1968 and may have been an experiment to see if Marvel could expand from comic books into magazines. The next Marvel magazine wasn't until 1971 with Savage Tales #1. That title was suspended for several months until about 1972 when Marvel finally got a black & white magazine line going with Dracula Lives, Tales of the Zombie, Savage Sword of Conan and so forth.
Basement Comics
The Strange Worlds #1, 1958 is the first pre-Marvel and the first comic to feature Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko all in the same comic book. The Strange Tales #89 is the popular Fin Fang Foom issue. The Mechanix Illustrated has some collector interest due to its Creature From The Black Lagoon cover. The War Of The Worlds magazine is very rare and sports a hefty $150 price tag. Behind that magazine is camera shy Al Stotz Sr.
John Verzyl
Veteran comic dealer John Verzyl of Big Sandy, Texas with a CGC graded More Fun Comics #52, 1940 featuring the first appearance of the Spectre. John is always flashing around big books like that.
I’ll always have a special sentimental fondness for John. In the 1980s when I was in the U.S. Air Force stationed in San Bernardino, California I would make a trip to John’s comic store in Alhambra every few months. He had a knack for finding high grade Silver Age Marvel comics and was tied into Ron Pussel, Ernie Gerber and Steve Geppi who were among the few dealers who had Mile High pedigree comics for sale. I would write him a bunch of pre-dated checks (that he could cash on military payday every two weeks) and I would leave with a small stack of high grade Marvels or Mile High comics.The only Mile Highs I have came from John and no dealer ever sold me more high grade 1960s Marvels. We kept up that routine for a few years until the late 1980s when John moved to Big Sandy, Texas after the Los Angeles riots. So I didn’t see him again for many years until three years ago when he started making buying trips to the Baltimore Comic Con. This year he stayed the entire three days and I enjoyed spending more time with him talking about the old days.
John Verzyl & Lewis Forro
John is a Marvel and pre-Marvel expert like me so I knew he would register an acceptable level of appreciation for my dye-sublimation pre-Marvel shirt!
Karen Hornfeck & Adam Feierabend
Karen as AZ Powergirl and Adam as Captain Marvel
Karen Hornfeck & Lewis Forro
Karen Hornfeck and your awestruck narrator.

Click here for Page 2 of the Leader's Report on Baltimore Comic Con 2016.