I visited Zeno’s Books 6 August 2013 and bought from the owner Wayne Ehrmann the hardcover book Feldstein: The Mad Life and Fantastic Art of Al Feldstein. The cover price is $50 but Wayne always give me 30% off. This is another coffee table size hardover with quality slick pages and color photos from IDW Publishers. I’m really getting to like IDW as their books reprinting Silver Age comic book art and stories are better than most of the other publishers and second to none. 

IDW released a signed limited edition with slipcase version of this book at this year’s San Diego Con but the scalphunters on ebay are already asking between $250 and $350 for it.  I’ve been an EC comic book fan since the early 1970s and buy any quality hardcover books about EC. So I’ll wait and see if I can scarf up this limited edition for under $200 sometime.

I met EC’s legendary artist and head writer, Al Feldstein, twice. The first time was in February 2006 when he attended the Mega-Con in Orlando, Florida. He signed a few EC related books for me and joked that he figured I was probably going to sell them on ebay and try to make a quick profit. I assured him the books were strictly for me. A few years later I saw him at the Baltimore Comic Con and bought for $20.00 a signed print of one of his EC cover reproductions. I asked him about doing one of his paintings of an EC cover for me which he frequently does for fans, but the $6,000 price was to steep for me. Al said the price was going even higher soon as he had noticed that previous clients were reselling paintings he had done for them and getting enough money to justify him raising his prices.  I guess I’ll have to make do with the $20.00 print.