My Life With Comic Books: Part # 108

The current cast of characters:
Paul Howley: age 41
Mal Howley: my wife
Adam Howley: my son, age 17
Cassy Howley: my daughter, age 12

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP-Part 108

One day in late 1996, when I happened to be in my Worcester store, one of my favorite people, Zvi Szafran, came in to pick up the huge lot of new comic books that we reserve for him each month. As usual, we spent quite a lot of time trading bad jokes and talking philosophy. As I’ve mentioned before Zvi is the most intelligent man I know so I’m pretty sure I learned more from him than he learned from me. During our time together that day, Zvi mentioned an exciting new website he had discovered. He tried to explain to me the concept of this interesting new way to buy and sell collectibles through the Internet, but I didn’t understand how this whole “cyber-space” thing worked. We went up to the office area of the store and he typed in the website address of eBay, showed me the basic workings of this auction-based site and related a few of his buying experiences on eBay. I told him that I didn’t really have time to play with this right now so he “bookmarked” this website so I could easily get to the site sometime in the future.

Even though I didn’t yet grasp the importance of the Internet, I had just recently allowed my son, Adam, to establish a connection to the Internet at our home. Adam knew how to navigate his way around the Internet but I didn’t even know how to connect to it! After a while, Adam taught me some basic things and one day I remembered what Zvi had told me about eBay. I connected to the eBay site and somehow I figured out how to do a basic search for a collectible item I had been actively looking for over the past ten years. I typed in “The Man From Uncle Thrush Gun” and I was shocked to see that someone actually had one of these ultra-rare toy guns available in perfect, mint condition, still in its original box! The current bid price was only five hundred dollars. This was “The Holy Grail” of “Man From Uncle” collectible toys from the 1960’s. After many years of searching, I was beginning to think that these guns were originally sold without a box because none had ever been seen at any of the toy conventions or in any of the printed toy publications.

I asked my wife if she’d mind if I spent a bunch of money on this gun set and she encouraged me to go after it. I bid one thousand dollars for it and I was still the high bidder as of the final day of the seven-day auction. I made sure that I was sitting by my computer when there was only fifteen minutes left for this auction and I was excited that I was still the high bidder. If I got this “Thrush Gun” it would be the most rare “Man From Uncle” toy in my massive collection. I waited as the minutes went slowly by. With only five minutes to go I was quite secure that I was going to be the high bidder at the end of this auction. Certainly no one would think that this toy gun set was worth more than one thousand dollars!

I decided to spend a moment or two searching on eBay for another item I was looking for. By the time I went back to check on the “Thrush Gun” I found that I had been outbid and there was only one minute left before the auction ended. I quickly placed another bid of $1,100 but four other collectors outbid me within the final ten seconds and this rare toy ended up selling for $2,700! The “collectors world” has gone crazy! Within a year eBay would become an important part of our business.

Next chapter: Chris, our company manager, gets Ty Law of the New England Patriots to be a guest at our Fitchburg store.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 71

Cast of characters:
Paul Howley: age 34
Brian Paquette: a friend and fellow collector

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 71

I had attended a convention called “Spy-Con” in the late 1980’s to promote “The Man From Uncle” comic book series that I was publishing. This convention was a gathering place for fans of spy-related movies and television shows including “James Bond,” “The Man From Uncle,” “The Wild Wild West,” “The Avengers,” and many more. Dealers and fans from around the United States set up booths to buy, sell, and trade many spy-related collectibles. I hoped that I’d be able to locate some of the rare Uncle toys that I was missing in my collection. I was disappointed to find out that most of the dealers only stocked the paperback books, magazines, and fan-produced fiction. There were very few toys offered for sale at this show.

One collector displayed a small notebook that contained photographs of many of his favorite Man From Uncle collectibles and this was of great interest to most of the Uncle collectors. Many of these items were rarely seen by collectors and a group of us discussed the need for a complete listing of everything that was made about The Man From Uncle. When I returned home, I got together with my friend, Brian Paquette, and we came up with the idea of publishing a book about The Man From Uncle collectibles.

I had published the official Man From Uncle comic books in 1988 so I figured that I could handle publishing a “real” book. Brian was an artist and I knew he’d be great with the entire creative end. Between the two of us, we had almost every item ever made about The Man From Uncle television show. We would use our collections as the main part of this new book project. We began photographing the hundreds of items using colorful backgrounds and began to write detailed descriptions of everything. We wanted this book to be different from most of the memorabilia guides based on other television shows so we made sure that the photographs were large and clear and the descriptions were detailed and accurate. We also carefully researched the current values and actual selling prices of these collectibles by attending toy conventions and monitoring dealers’ catalogs and auction results.

Since this project began before home computers were commonplace, the whole book was done by “hand”. The photos were taken using a film camera and then developed at a local photo studio. If the photos came out okay, we matted them with a black paper border. We designed each page and pasted the written descriptions underneath the photos. We got together at my house to combine our collections in order to create a photograph for the front cover of our new book. Brian designed our chapter title pages and was mostly responsible for the professional “look” of this project. We decided to title this project “The Toys From Uncle Memorabilia and Collectors Guide.” My good friend, Michael Warshaw, a very talented writer, wrote the introduction for this book as a favor to me. After a few months of work, we sent the pages to Associated Printers of North Dakota (my favorite printer) and they “screened” all of the photos so the photographs would reproduce quite clearly.

The cost to produce this project in full color, as we had wanted, would have been outrageously high. A cover price of almost thirty dollars would have been required. Brian and I wanted collectors to be able to buy the book for less than ten dollars so the book was printed in black and white with full color front and back covers. Most of the books were sold through Diamond Comic Distributors at fifty percent of the cover price of nearly ten dollars. Although it was a lot of work to put the book together, Brian and I enjoyed this experience.

Over the years following the publication of “The Toys From Uncle”, this book has become recognized as an important reference work and a valuable “checklist” for every collector of “The Man From Uncle.” Ironically, this book now sells on Ebay for as much as fifty-five dollars!

Next chapter: The end of the eighties.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 47

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 47

I now “owned” the publishing rights for The Man From Uncle comic book for the next two years and it was my intention to publish as many issues as possible during that time. We decided that it would be smart to make the first issue part of a continued story so that the readers would be likely to buy the second issue of the series. One of my employees, David M. Lynch, was writing the stories for the first two issues as fast as he could and Ken Penders began penciling, inking, and lettering the first issue. He was also drawing the front cover. Skip Simpson, one of David’s friends, offered to color the cover for the first issue.

In order to have these comic books sold all over the United States and Canada, we contacted as many of the comic book distributors as we could. We contacted Diamond Comic Distributors, Capital City Distribution, Alternate Realities, Heroes World, and about a half-dozen smaller distributors. All of them expressed interest in helping to sell our new comic book series. Having decided to establish the suggested retail (cover price) at $1.50 per issue, the distributor would buy each issue for sixty cents (sixty percent off of the cover price) and they would sell them to the retailers for seventy-five cents. The comics could be printed and shipped for about thirty-five cents each, leaving me with a gross profit of about twenty-five cents each. A lot of that money would be used to pay the artist and writer and I’d keep whatever was left. Based on our projections of selling 15,000 copies of each issue this would give me a net profit of about two thousand dollars each issue.

Each distributor needed a three month lead-time before each issue was released so they could publish their ordering catalog with a description of our comic book and allow enough time for the individual retailers to decide how many copies they wanted to order. The distributor would then total all of the retailer orders and submit a purchase order for as many copies as they needed. This project was really meant to be mostly fun for me personally so I had a chance to add certain “personal” touches to the series. For example, I wanted to release the first issue on my birthday in January. We’d need to work fast.

Ken drew the cover of the first issue right away so I could send a copy to all of the distributors. As soon as the cover was done he worked hard to finish the twenty-four pages of interior art. He finished it all within the thirty days that he had promised me. Ken was a man of his word and a nice guy. We sent it to MGM-Turner and they gave us their approval. Ken started on the art for the second issue. Ken was also working on a new comic book idea that he wanted to develop with Stan Timmons, a writer, titled “Shadow Blade.” Ken and Stan wanted me to publish this new comic book series for them. Meanwhile, Skip Simpson finished coloring the front cover of The Man From Uncle #1. This was done in the early days of laser scanning and Skip didn’t really understand the process. We thought it would look okay but we would be very disappointed when we saw the final printed product.

We found a company in New York that promised to print the comics and do all of the shipping for us. One of the managers of the company was a fairly famous comic book artist so the promises seemed credible. As we got closer to the actual release date we began to worry that we chose the wrong company to print the comics. Their terms suddenly changed. They wanted more money in advance of the shipping date. Then they decided that they didn’t want to ship the comics to all of the different distributors. I decided to drive to New York and pick up the comic books myself. I had ordered 16,000 copies of this first issue but when I arrived in New York they had printed 21,000 copies and demanded the money for them. I reluctantly paid them and loaded them in my car. I’d certainly never do business with them again!

My son, Adam, had many episodes of Strep throat when he was growing up. His doctor recommended surgery, so while I was trying to coordinate all of the various writers and artists for our Man From Uncle series, my wife and I decided that we should have Adam’s tonsils and adenoids removed. We knew he’d probably be afraid to be left in the hospital overnight, since he was only seven years old, so Mal and I decided that I should sleep in his hospital room in the chair next to his bed. It was scary for me to see him being wheeled into the operating room even though it was a simple operation but everything turned out fine.

Things were not fine for our friend Debbie. Her cancer had returned and it was in multiple parts of her body. Her son, Peter, was only three years old, and Debbie was determined to beat this disease. She began a program of a new chemotherapy and responded well. The tumors seemed to be under control.

Next chapter: 1987: The beginning of our big vacations.
Picture: Adam get his tonsils out.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 46

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 46

In 1986 the comic book industry was in the middle of an explosion of “black and white” comic book publishing. After the immediate success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, many people wanted to release their own comic book. It seemed as if anyone who could scrape up a couple of thousand dollars was drawing and publishing their own black and white comic book. Some of these were good but most were not.

My employee, David M. Lynch, was a talented writer. He was the “regular” writer of our amateur comic book of “Insect Man.” Insect Man was officially recognized in 1986 as “America’s longest running amateur comic book” with over 100 issues published from 1965-1986. For a brief time we considered publishing Insect Man in a full sized professional comic book but we decided that there were already enough superhero comics in the market.

One day, as we were talking about our favorite television shows from the 1960’s we discovered that we both enjoyed the “The Man From Uncle.” We both used to pretend we were secret agents when we were kids. David said, “I wonder why no one is publishing a comic book about The Man From Uncle. That show must still have a lot of fans that would get a kick out of new adventures.” David knew he’d have some fun writing the stories and he had a good friend, Skip Simpson, who could draw the comic books. We agreed on the amount of money that I would pay for him to write each issue. After we discussed the possibilities of storylines and some of the difficulties of publishing a professional comic book I told David that I’d put up the money if he could get the rights to publish a comic book about The Man From Uncle.

After a week or so, David had made contact with MGM-Turner, the owner of the Man From Uncle. MGM-Turner was willing to sell us a two-year license to publish the comic book series for an initial up-front payment of five thousand dollars plus eight percent of the cover price of every issue we sold. They would also have complete script approval and final art approval for all of the issues. I agreed to all of their terms.

While David began writing the first two-part story, his friend Skip Simpson drew a sample page of art to show me what he could do. Although it was very clean and professional, I decided it was a little too “cartoony” for the Man From Uncle comic book series I had envisioned. David and I were disappointed because Skip was a very reliable artist and we didn’t know of any other competent artists.

We started asking our customers if they knew any artists and were surprised when a man named Ken Penders offered his services. Ken brought in his portfolio and we were impressed by his layouts and use of perspective. He even was a talented inker and letterer. Most importantly, he was willing to work for the lower than professional rates that we were offering.

Next chapter: My son, Adam, goes to the hospital

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 45

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 45

It was beginning to be a tradition that once each year I would plan a major auction at my comic book store. These were extremely popular with my customers but I was desperately out of space in my small store so I needed to find someplace else to hold the auction. I found The Yankee Drummer Inn, a local hotel that had a large function room that was available for about $250.00. I booked it for a Friday night and sent out flyers to everyone on my ever-expanding mailing list and I passed out flyers in the store to every customer who came in for a month before the event. I began selecting individual collectibles and runs of back issue comics to be auctioned. I had a few very valuable comics left from the complete Marvel Comics collection that I had acquired earlier in the year including an almost perfect copy of The Incredible Hulk #1 that I decided to offer at auction. I invited my cousin Steven to bring some of his store inventory to sell at the auction. As I would finish auctioning off an item, Steven would start auctioning off one of his lots. This kept the auction moving quickly. My wife, Mal, came to take care of recording the results of each auction and to handle the cash-out procedure. My son, Adam, worked as a “runner” to deliver each item to the high bidder. My daughter Cassandra came but she was only two years old so she was just an observer. To complete the “family affair,” my mother and father came to help.

My mother asked if I would auction a group of collectible, stamped, first-day covers that she had bought at a yard sale. I decided that I’d play a joke on dear ol’ Mom. When she left the room for a moment I quickly explained the joke to the audience of over 200 people. I told them to bid like crazy on the stamp lot and I wouldn’t really make them pay for the lot. When Mom came back into the room I started the auction of the stamps. “Do I have any offers on this lot of first day stamp covers?” The audience played their part perfectly. The opening bid was 25 cents. Another customer bid $1.00. Then it went to $2.00. Then it was $10.00. My Mom was perking up. “Do I have $20.00 anywhere?” There was a hesitation. “Yes, I have $20.00.” Suddenly the audience started bidding faster. Within a minute the bidding was up to $200.00! My Mom was giddy with excitement. Then I stopped the bidding and revealed the joke to poor Mom. The audience thought it was pretty funny but I’m sure Mom didn’t. She was already mentally spending all of her proceeds. We did eventually auction the lot off for around $25.00. She was happy with that but not as happy as she would have been if the lot really went for $200.00.

My auction policy was that it would be a real auction. I hate it when auction companies have minimum bids in their auctions. To me, that’s like saying, “I’m willing to sell this item for $10.00 but if you want to pay me more for it, I’ll take it.” All of my items were sold with no minimum bid! Sometimes this would be scary for me but it always made it more fun for my customers. At this auction I would be offering the gorgeous copy of The Incredible Hulk #1 that was worth about $700.00 at the time. The opening bidder offered one dollar. The bidding slowed down around one hundred dollars and seemed like it would end when it finally reached one hundred and fifty dollars. I was saying, “Going…going…gone” when someone new jumped into the bidding and bid two hundred dollars. Within a couple of moments the comic book sold for six hundred and ten dollars to a man I had never met. He certainly got a great deal on that comic book. It’s now worth over $15,000.00.

By not having the auction at my store location I lost the potential of my customers spending any unused money on other product but because everyone had fun, I still considered it a success.

After the death of Mal’s mother, we had decided to begin to seriously plan for a very early retirement from the day-to-day involvement in the comic book and collectable business. It was my intention to make as much money as possible over the next eight years before I turned forty years old. I needed to somehow increase our store’s business very quickly. My employee, David M. Lynch came up with a great idea one day while we were shooting the breeze. ( I’ll tell you about his idea soon.)

In 1986, my sister Sharon and her family decided to move to New Hampshire because her husband Greg had a new job opportunity there. Sharon and Mal were very close so it was difficult to think of Sharon not being nearby anymore. Her kids and our kids loved to play together so we were all sad to see them move over one hundred miles away.

Around that time our good friend Debbie was also told that her cancer was back.

Next chapter: The Man From Uncle returns.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 24

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 24

In 1981, Richard Howell and Carol Kalish contacted me. They were working for a new comic book distributor near Boston, MA named “Solar Spice.” They guaranteed that I would be able to get the big shipment of new comic books on Friday morning each week. This would help me to compete with the other comic book store in town. Carol also offered me generous credit terms. I accepted their offer and stopped ordering the comic books from “Capital City Distribution” of Wisconsin.

I would go to their small office in Cambridge, MA at about 6 AM each Friday morning to pick up my shipment. I would then drive about an hour to get to my store in Worcester, MA by about 8 AM, unload my car, sort the comic books, and fill the customer’s “subscription list.” Each customer had filled out a list of the comic books that they wanted me to reserve for them and I saved the comic books for them on shelves behind the counter. By the time I opened the store at 10 AM, the new comic subscriptions were all done and the remaining comic books were displayed on the racks. Most Fridays, there were customers waiting outside at 10 AM to get into the store to have the first pick of the comics on the racks.

My customers were very loyal and they seemed to enjoy shopping at my store. They would come into the store, pick out the new comic books, look through the large selection of back issues, and many would hang around the store to talk about comic books with other customers and me. The store had a festive, party atmosphere on Fridays. Stanley Hosmer, David Grilla, Stan Moniak, Charlie St.Pierre, Paul Dinsdale, Bob Forte, Andy Fish and many more would form the core comic book customer base and would eventually become friends of mine, not just customers.

Michael Warshaw came into the store looking mostly for old model kits. I had recently bought a collection of old toys from the 1960’s and I sold him an Aurora model kit of “Spider-Man,” unmade in the original 1967 box, for $27.00. We’ve been friends for over twenty years now!

Kevin Simpson was on the way to my competitor’s store when he came by and discovered my store. He came in looking for the current issue of “Starlog Magazine.” While we were talking he told me that he also collected old trading cards. He mostly collected cards that were based on old TV shows like “Lost In Space,” “Batman,” and “The Green Hornet.” It quickly became apparent that Kevin and I had a lot in common. We both collected bubble-gum cards, loved to play Monopoly, and we both watched too much television.

We even videotaped lots of TV shows and we both had the exact same video tape machine. In the early 1980’s, video tape recorders cost about $1400.00 and a blank video tape cost around $20.00 so I was shocked when Kevin asked me to lend him my video tape recorder! He explained that he needed another VCR to hook up to his so he could make a copy of a tape and he didn’t want to pay the high fee to rent another one. Since I had just met him that day I politely declined. After Kevin had been shopping at my store for about a month it became clear that he was becoming a great friend. He was kind and had a good sense of humor. He didn’t seem to mind that I almost always beat him at Monopoly. He was always willing to help out his friends. It didn’t take long before I was happy to lend him my VCR.

Brian Paquette was looking for old toys from the 1960’s TV show of “The Man From Uncle.” “The Man From Uncle” was one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid. I used to pretend that I was a spy from the “Uncle” organization when I was ten years old. My parents bought me quite a few of the toys that were sold in the mid-60’s based on the show including the Napoleon Solo gun set and the “Foto-Fantastiks” coloring sets so Brian and I shared a common interest.

Mostly because of Mike Warshaw and Brian Paquette, I became interested in collecting old toys. My parents really spoiled me at Christmas time and now I decided to try to collect many of the toys I had as a kid. I put up signs in my store to let the customers know that I now wanted to buy old toys. I began going to local toy shows to try to find some of the cool toys I wanted. My first “find” was a “Steve Canyon Jet Helmet,” mint condition, still in the original box. (I still have a photo of my brother Jay and I wearing our helmets on Christmas morning!) I was now a serious collector of comic books, movie and TV-related bubblegum cards, records, old model kits, and toys! I was fortunate that the income from the store was growing so I could afford to buy a rare collectible every so often.

David Lynch was the employee who ran the store on Sunday, but he wanted to be able to set up at a local flea market to earn some extra money since I wasn’t able to pay him a decent salary. Luckily, my new friend, Michael Warshaw was willing to help out until I could find a permanent replacement.

Through a strange series of events, I’d discover my best friend in the comic book business: my cousin Steven.

Next chapter: I beat Steven again at cards and he becomes my Sunday employee.
Picture: My brother Jay and I wearing our Steve Canyon Space Helmets on Christmas morning in 1959