I’m holding my last garage sale of the year on Friday and Saturday, September 8 and 9, at 840 Damon Drive, Medina, Ohio. The hours for the sale are nine a.m. to noon each day, though I will let them run a little longer each day if there are customers still shopping at noon. Because this is the last garage sale of the year, I might be able to let you shop later in the afternoon or early evening, but you’ll have to e-mail me to arrange that.
What can you expect to find at my garage sale? There will be boxes of comic books priced at a buck apiece. There will be hardcover and trade paperbacks at around 30% of their cover prices. There will be a few boxes of comic books priced at a quarter, though not nearly as many as in past garage sales. There will be five-dollar mystery boxes. There will be five-dollar collectible Monopoly games. There will be copies of Black Lightning; July 1963: A Pivotal Month in the Comic-Book Life of Tony Isabella; and a few of those fun Garfield books from Papercutz on which I’ve been contributing script restoration and additional dialogue. There will be a box with Isabella-written comic books and a box of older comic books priced at higher than a buck. There will likely be other stuff as I hope to add items right up to the moment my garage doors on open Friday morning.
I hold the garage sales to reduce my Vast Accumulation of Stuff. I had hoped to hold more of them this summer, but my family, writing and other commitments made that impossible. My current goal is to make enough money from my writing and outside appearances to afford to hire more help for next year’s sales. My overall goal for these sales is, over the next five years, to reduce my VAOS to the point where I can fit it into my office, my reading room and a section of my basement. My dream goal is to get the accumulation to the point where I can again call it a collection and start buying stuff for that collection. A man’s gotta dream.
My lofty goals for this year’s convention were not met. I’d hoped to do a convention-style panel and have some guest artists during the summer. I’ll work harder on those for next year.
However...if you cosplay at this weekend’s sales, you can earn a buck and receive a suitable-for-framing Certificate of Cosplay, signed by me. The Certificate is pretty sweet and my signature on it will be free. Indeed, as with my other garage sales, I’ll sign anything I’ve written or worked on for free...whether you bought it from me or not.
There might be one other kind of special thing about these last two days of garage sales. This same weekend, a film student is coming to my house (and garage sale) to interview me about my work during the Bronze Age of Comics. He won’t actually interview me until after the garage sale, but he might film some background during the sale and, if he doesn’t object, I’ll grab some chairs so you can watch him interview me.
If you’re unable to come to this weekend’s garage sales, here’s my appearance schedule for the rest of 2017 and the first few months of 2018:
Saturday, September 30: Buffalo Comicon
Sunday, October 1: Buffalo Comicon
Friday, October 20: Grand Rapids Comic-Con
Saturday, October 21: Grand Rapids Comic-Con
Sunday, October 22: Grand Rapids Comic-Con
Saturday, November 4: Akron Comicon
Sunday, November 5: Akron Comicon
2018
Friday, February 23: Pensacon
Saturday, February 24: Pensacon
Sunday, February 25: Pensacon
Friday, March 9: Cleveland ConCoction
Saturday, March 10: Cleveland ConCoction
Sunday, March 11: Cleveland ConCoction
Saturday, March 24: Akron Comicon
Sunday, March 25: Akron Comicon
As with all of my 2017 appearances, there will be no charge for my signature at those conventions. That won’t always be the case next year, but it does hold for the three shows listed above.
Originally, I thought Akron Comicon would be my last appearance of 2017, but I’m open to adding an event or two after that. I’m also open to adding events in January or February. If you’re running a convention or hiring speakers for libraries or schools, you should e-mail me sooner rather than later.
In these and other cases, I’m looking to come to cities where I’ve not appeared before or haven’t appeared in a long time. Or where I have non-comics friends I’d like to see. Or where you have another guest I’d really like to meet.
Cities I’d like to come to would include Atlanta, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York and Reno. As for guests, well, looking at some of my fellow Buffalo Comicon guests, I’m really hoping to get a chance to chat with John Wesley Shipp, Fred Williamson (who I met a couple years back at Pensacon) and Eric Roberts. While everybody will be asking Shipp about his flashier roles, I’d like to hear about his appearances on NYPD Blue. As for Roberts, he’s been such great fun in so many of my beloved cheesy monster movies that I really want to ask him about some of those.
That’s all for today. Come back tomorrow for another installment of “Rawhide Kid Wednesday.” There’s a new reprint editor in town and he started shaking up the title immediately.
© 2017 Tony Isabella
What can you expect to find at my garage sale? There will be boxes of comic books priced at a buck apiece. There will be hardcover and trade paperbacks at around 30% of their cover prices. There will be a few boxes of comic books priced at a quarter, though not nearly as many as in past garage sales. There will be five-dollar mystery boxes. There will be five-dollar collectible Monopoly games. There will be copies of Black Lightning; July 1963: A Pivotal Month in the Comic-Book Life of Tony Isabella; and a few of those fun Garfield books from Papercutz on which I’ve been contributing script restoration and additional dialogue. There will be a box with Isabella-written comic books and a box of older comic books priced at higher than a buck. There will likely be other stuff as I hope to add items right up to the moment my garage doors on open Friday morning.
I hold the garage sales to reduce my Vast Accumulation of Stuff. I had hoped to hold more of them this summer, but my family, writing and other commitments made that impossible. My current goal is to make enough money from my writing and outside appearances to afford to hire more help for next year’s sales. My overall goal for these sales is, over the next five years, to reduce my VAOS to the point where I can fit it into my office, my reading room and a section of my basement. My dream goal is to get the accumulation to the point where I can again call it a collection and start buying stuff for that collection. A man’s gotta dream.
My lofty goals for this year’s convention were not met. I’d hoped to do a convention-style panel and have some guest artists during the summer. I’ll work harder on those for next year.
There might be one other kind of special thing about these last two days of garage sales. This same weekend, a film student is coming to my house (and garage sale) to interview me about my work during the Bronze Age of Comics. He won’t actually interview me until after the garage sale, but he might film some background during the sale and, if he doesn’t object, I’ll grab some chairs so you can watch him interview me.
If you’re unable to come to this weekend’s garage sales, here’s my appearance schedule for the rest of 2017 and the first few months of 2018:
Saturday, September 30: Buffalo Comicon
Sunday, October 1: Buffalo Comicon
Friday, October 20: Grand Rapids Comic-Con
Saturday, October 21: Grand Rapids Comic-Con
Sunday, October 22: Grand Rapids Comic-Con
Saturday, November 4: Akron Comicon
Sunday, November 5: Akron Comicon
2018
Friday, February 23: Pensacon
Saturday, February 24: Pensacon
Sunday, February 25: Pensacon
Friday, March 9: Cleveland ConCoction
Saturday, March 10: Cleveland ConCoction
Sunday, March 11: Cleveland ConCoction
Saturday, March 24: Akron Comicon
Sunday, March 25: Akron Comicon
As with all of my 2017 appearances, there will be no charge for my signature at those conventions. That won’t always be the case next year, but it does hold for the three shows listed above.
Originally, I thought Akron Comicon would be my last appearance of 2017, but I’m open to adding an event or two after that. I’m also open to adding events in January or February. If you’re running a convention or hiring speakers for libraries or schools, you should e-mail me sooner rather than later.
In these and other cases, I’m looking to come to cities where I’ve not appeared before or haven’t appeared in a long time. Or where I have non-comics friends I’d like to see. Or where you have another guest I’d really like to meet.
Cities I’d like to come to would include Atlanta, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York and Reno. As for guests, well, looking at some of my fellow Buffalo Comicon guests, I’m really hoping to get a chance to chat with John Wesley Shipp, Fred Williamson (who I met a couple years back at Pensacon) and Eric Roberts. While everybody will be asking Shipp about his flashier roles, I’d like to hear about his appearances on NYPD Blue. As for Roberts, he’s been such great fun in so many of my beloved cheesy monster movies that I really want to ask him about some of those.
That’s all for today. Come back tomorrow for another installment of “Rawhide Kid Wednesday.” There’s a new reprint editor in town and he started shaking up the title immediately.
© 2017 Tony Isabella
My pal Chris Gumprich sent me this:
ReplyDelete"I watched "All My Children" for three years in the 1990s on the strength of Shipp's post-FLASH role. Ask him about that, because he was just amazing in the role."