Comic Books - Antman

In this article we're going to briefly discuss one of the more obscure comic book characters ever to hit the medium, Antman.

Unless
you were a total comic book fanatic and bought everything that hit the
comic stands, and also unless you're pretty old too, you probably never
heard of Antman. He was as obscure as he was weird. Nevertheless, he
did exist.

Antman first saw life in Marvel Comic's "Tales To
Astonish" in 1961. He was created by the same person who gave us such
classic characters as Spiderman and the X-Men, Stan Lee. The artwork
was done by a gentleman named Jack Kirby.

Antman's beginnings
were actually quite low key. At first he was just a character in Tales,
which was a science fiction thriller. It was pretty typical of the kind
of stuff Marvel Comics churned out in those days. But the comic just
happened to be published at a time when super heroes were coming back
in style. Eight months after the release of Tales, Antman came back
wearing a skin tight costume with the ability to shrink to the size of
an ant. That was his big weapon against the war on crime.

Antman's
real name was Henry Pym, who was a scientist who created and used the
size changing ability. He also added a cybernetic helmet to his
arsenal. This helmet could communicate with ants. No, that isn't a
misprint. Okay, so it was a little corny. This is an ability he didn't
have in the first story. If he had, that story itself (especially the
part on the anthill) wouldn't have been as exciting.

As the
Antman he fought such evil villains as Egghead, The Scarlet Beetle, and
The Man with the Voice of Doom. He did this all on his own until
finally in June 1963 he teamed up with a female super hero called The
Wasp. Later that year they met some soon to be pretty famous characters
such as The Hulk, Iron Man and The Avengers.

Antman himself
didn't last very long. Later in his career Pym started to change his
size in reverse and became Giant Man. A couple of years later he lost
his spot in the Tales comic book to The Sub-Mariner. Since that time
Pym has used two other super hero names, Goliath and Yellowjacket. But
this was only as a supporting character to the Avengers. In 1969 he
married the Wasp but they have since divorced.

In 1979 however,
Antman tried to come back. Scott Lang, who was an employee of Pym's
borrowed the technology for the Antman costume for a personal
emergency. He then used it to become the new Antman. Pym eventually
gave him the costume to keep in order to keep the Antman legacy alive.
Unfortunately the resurrection of Antman lasted even shorter than the
original series. Today he is seen occasionally as a supporting
character to the Fantastic 4 and even became a temporary member of the
group when Mr. Fantastic was missing.

Antman never made a splash
outside of the comics. Quite honestly, the character would probably be
long forgotten if it weren't for his role in founding The Avengers and
his association with the Wasp who was a much stronger character. But
for those of us who do remember, he was certainly one of a kind.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Comic Books

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Russell

Fantastic Four Comic Book

There have been many, many comics with the X-men in
them as you mention. X-men, Alpha Flight, New Mutants, and X-Factor all
feature multiple mutants. Spin-offs featuring one or two characters
include Wolverine, Dazzler, and Cable. Then there were many issues
where some or all of the X-men made guest appearances in other titles,
such as the old X-men in Fantastic Four 28, Captain America 172-175,
Angel in Tales of Suspense 49 (with cameos by the other X-men),
Avengers 53, the intro of Wolverine in Incredible Hulk 180-182, new
X-men in Marvel Team-Up 53, Annual 1, New Mutants in Annual 6.

This
list could go on and on I think. And that's not even counting the many
appearances of mutant villains of the X-men like Magneto who fought
non-mutant superheroes. Or how about the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver,
mutants both who appeared as regulars for many issues of the Avengers?

Right
now the Surfer could not be any hotter due to his inclusion into the
new, Fantastic Four movie. History shows that a character that makes
it's way into the mainstream, a la movies or TV has an instant surge in
popularity which translates into a run on buying their books which
usually translate into big, inflated dollars for collectors and
vendors. If I understand your question, you want to know if these books
are worth anything, right?

Well, the obvious answer is, yes! Yes!
And Yes! I suspect you're really wanting to know: "What are they worth?
How can I sell them? The problem with selling/appraising an item that
fluctuates in value based on the wants of collectors is that it's only
worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. To get the flavors of
what your book is worth you should check out some price guides which
approximate their values based on a criteria of how your particular
book is selling in several parts of the country factored together with
the number of books available for sale, etc."

Wizard and
Overstreet both publish guides that will help you with this. You can
find these guides at a local Barnes and Noble. You can also check out a
more "real world" marketplace by plugging your book into some kind of
online auction or another auction sites and see what it's selling for
or if books like yours have sold. Next, you're going to want to
discover exactly what condition your books are in because the quality
of the book is the most important factor in determining what it's
worth. For this you can self grade or get a comic book store guy to do
it but be ready for a lot of slings and arrows from people that will
tell you that your grading skills stink and that your Near Mint is more
like a Very Fine, if you're lucky.

The industry has taken a turn
towards legitimizing its "grading with the establishment of
professional certification organizations that will professionally
certify your book for a fee. The book is graded by experts, sealed and
authenticated. I like this because it provides an unbiased 3rd party
evaluation and comes with the pedigree and paperwork that collectors
can trust when buying a book. The service is not new but it isn't
necessarily Lloyd's of London so it will take a while to eventually
become the industry standard but at some point it will. I liken it to
the idea of getting a complete history of a used car faxed to you from
a State Agency as opposed to just taking the word of the seller.

CGC
and PGX are two such book certification companies but I think you could
probably find a professional appraiser in any city. Again, you want the
appraiser to be an unbiased 3rd party who is making a living at this
and is willing to provide certification and pedigree. See some examples
of his previous work. There are several factors that have a direct
influence on the value of a book. Some of the ones I use are:
condition, print run, availability, scarcity, origin issue, major
storyline, new character, new developments, etc.

The Silver
Surfer is hot, hot, hot right now and it's probably the perfect time to
sell so it's up to you. As far as the cover being off the #1 issue you
can have it repaired by a restoration company but it must be identified
as repaired when listing the book for sale or having it appraised. A
lot of people out there would love to get there hands on this kind of
comic book make sure you keep a very close on the price range when you
have it up for sale.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant for http://www.SellUsedComics.com/ Sell Used Comics is a community of used comics sellers from around the world. If you have used comics to sell, click here to create a Used Comics Account: http://www.SellUsedComics.com/merchant/signup.html

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Victor_Epand