Guess what the Postman delivered today? #8

Why, its another batch of comics from my favourite online comic emporium, Mile High Comics!
In keeping with my current desire to track down some loose ends by purchasing possible sources of Bart Sears work, this shipment was another one of those times when there were unfortunately more misses than hits.

As a for instance, you may recall that I recently purchased several issues of Image Comics Prophet Vol. 1, to no avail. Well, I went back to the well and ordered the first four issues of Volume 2, in the hope that the elusive Prophet pin-up might appear in one of them. And that's strike 2! But fear not, the well is not dry yet. There is still the Prophet TPB to account for, which I'll try and get my hands on soon.

Another leap into the unknown (last metaphor, I promise) was the Wizard Special Edition from back in 1992.



This is another item I owned once upon a time, but lost it or turfed it along the way somewhere. Apart from the cool fold-out cover, I vaguely recalled Bart being mentioned in it, and wouldn't you know?

It felt good to win one for a change.

I also picked up a copy of the Zoom Suit #2 Sketch Edition.

As you can see on the cover, it is limited to 1500 copies, and I'm glad to finally own one of those. But that's not all there is to this cover -

If you look closely, there's a randomly placed 'S' just hovering there.
I thought it was funny.

I also got my hands on the three Will To Power covers Bart did. I already own these issues, but they need to be re-laminated and will get that treatment soon.

These covers are interesting in a few ways.

Firstly, Bart has signed each cover as 'SEARSS' -

Bart has often played around with his Signature, but I'm yet to find out why he signed these ones with two S's at the end. (Bart?) NOTE: Bart has since informed me that "I used the 'double S' to denote work that was Sears Studio work." Thanks Bart.

Secondly, Bart's original art for the second cover featured the character 'X' in the bottom right of the page, but was removed by the time the issue was printed. Again, I'm not sure why.

But definitely the pick of this particular litter is this rather impressive item -

I must confess to not knowing about this item until I saw it on Mile High Comics a few weeks ago, which is ridiculous, really, I mean, how the HELL did I not know about the existence of this Ominous Press comic? Appauling...
It has since been added to the Bart Sears Checklist, which has stretched out to 280 individual comics now.

So what's different about this 'Limited Edition' as opposed to the regular edition? Well, apart from it saying 'Wizard Limited Edition 1995' on the cover in stamped gold... nothing at all. Still, that's the sort of item that I simply had to own, no question about it.

I've got another Mile High Comics shipment arriving next week (hopefully) and I'll post more then.

This Bart Sears and That Bart Sears

I thought it time to do a more generalized post to bring some news from both Bart himself and some of my own Bart related news.

First off, if you didn't know already, Bart is on Facebook! Hard to believe, I know, and even more unbelievable for the fact that he posts regularly! I'm sure Satan just felt a chill. He and wife Michelle have also set up a fan group on Facebook, with lots of galleries of his work and links to sites where Bart can be found, including this very site you're on now. So if you're not already, be a Facebook Bart Sears fan!

Next up, I've found a few items of Bart's that up until very recently I was completely unaware of. I love when this sort of thing happens normally, but not this time. You see, I just placed another order with Mile High Comics (to which I'll write about when I receive them in a few weeks). The money has been sent, the comics are on their way, and now I've gone and found a few more covers of Bart's that Mile High has on sale at the moment too. Sadly, they'll have to wait for the next order, when I can buy up enough comics to make the shipping cost worth my while.

But anyway, here are the covers for you. They're pretty good. They are 'Blade of the Warrior: Kshatriya #1,' and Ramayan 3392 AD Reloaded #7' respectively, both from Virgin Comics.

I also found this image, which was scheduled for Ramayan 3392 AD Reloaded #10, to be released some time in late 2008, but as far as I can tell, never came out. If I find out more, I'll let you know.


Lastly, my 32nd birthday was last week, and I got some cool stuff, including a new baseball cap that says 'Bart Sears - Ominous Press' on it, I also got an A4 magnet that says 'Bart Sears - #1 Fan - Bart Stuff' on it that is currently attached to my chest of Bart stuff. I also got a cool keyring saying 'Bart Sears #1 Fan.' All of these things came from my awesome wife, who saved the best gift for last. We had a car for the weekend just gone, thanks to my father-in-law, and we clocked up 800km over the two days. We travelled around the countryside of the West of Ireland, and saw some amazing things.

We stopped off at a spot that I've been wanting to visit for a long time - Queen Medb's Tomb. It's pronounced May-v. To read up on her, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medb. She's a very interesting person, and even features in Pat Mills' Slaine comic - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sl%C3%A1ine_(comics).

Here's a picture of me standing in front of her tomb, which is a 1km walk up a ridiculously precarious mountain. I've got my trusty Mael Postcard with me, and I'm wearing my new Bart Sears cap.

We also went across the border to Northern Ireland (for all of 10 minutes), and here I am standing in front of a decommissioned Police garrison.

We also visited the grave of one of the greatest writers and poets of all time, W. B. Yeats. Despite the lashing rain, heres a picture of me next to it with my Bart Sears cap on again.

But the best part of the weekend was when my wife treated me to a Falconry lesson at the amazingly posh Ashford Castle. It was a blissful hour of walking around a forest and estate gardens, getting a Harrier Hawk called Wexford to land on my arm, feed, take off and do it again. It was darn incredible, and I couldn't resist replicating a pose from one of Bart's comics.

In other matters, the great Bart Sears laminating experiment is going well. I'm working my way through The First, which has been a pleasure to read again, I'd almost forgotten just how good Bart's art is in it. I had originally hoped to have the experiment done in November 2009, but it looks as though it will have to be extended to about May 2010, only because I've been spending my meagre Bart Sears allowance on actual comics instead of laminating sheets over the past few months. I'm up to my 15th box of laminated comics, all of which tower to about 60 centimetres in height. They will eventually be put into 100 sheet folders, but that will dramatically increase the space required to store them, so will have to wait until we have our own house and my study is fitted out to hold everything.

I'll be writing another post later on this week, so check in again soon.

Guess what the Postman delivered today? #6

This is the delivery I've really been waiting for.
As I mentioned in my Mile High Comics post, I've bought a lot off of them, and this is what I got in the delivery that arrived today-

Bad Company #3 - cover by Bart. I've had a copy of this for about 10 years now, maybe longer, but about 5 years ago, the tape that I use to seal the backing board and bag got stuck on the cover, and ripped a nice little chunk off it. It'll be going through the laminator tomorrow so that doesn't happen again.

Rogue Trooper #14, 15, 17. Just cool early covers. Replacing old laminates.

Weapon X: Days of Future Now #5. My worst laminating moment. I laminated my original copy of this and the laminator chewed it up. I'm a far more experienced laminator now, and it hasn't happened since.

The Dark #1 Second Printing, Continum Comics. There are two variant covers to the first printing of this, one with a Blue Chromium cover, one with a red. I didn't know about these until I saw that Bart had copies of them when I was visiting him. They're cool looking.

Legends of the Dark Knight #200. Another replacement copy. I bought LOTDK #200 the day it came out, but didn't think to check the comic for printing mistakes, and wouldn't you know, when I got home I noticed that there was some odd ink smudging going on. This new copy is clean.

Legends of the Stargrazers #2. This comic has such a cool pin-up by Bart on page one that I've bought it twice now. Actually, this one is a case of my old laminated copy wasn't laminated the best, so this will replace it. I used to use laminating sheets of about a 150 micron thickness, I now use 250.

Ramayan 3392 AD Reloaded Guidebook. Has all of 1 reprinted panels from Bart's back-up story in Reloaded #5. Still, now I know.

Wonder Woman #28. This issue features a full-page Ad for Justice League Europe. Nice.

Wizard #37. Hands down, the best Wizard for Bart stuff ever. First off, you get the Brute & Babe Infinity mini-comic in the bag, there's a 6 page 3-point perspective tutorial by Bart, not to mention a 6 page Ominous Press interview. I've actually owned two copies of this magazine, but have needed to redo the laminating.

Wizard #61. Has a cool Sabretooth v Psylocke cover. Again, I've owned it twice, but needed to re-laminate.

Wizard X-Men Special. Another one to be put through the laminating machine. This cover is interesting in that it features Wolverine, Cyclops & Jean Grey, but Colossus & Nightcrawler were then added after printing. It features Wolverine with those dumb-ass skeletal claws.

Wizard #115 Megacon Edition. The Megacon Edition has a cool cover of Seahn & Persha from The First. It's a hard enough issue to come by, and this one will replace my previous version and it's old laminating style. For those interested, my old laminating style consisted of laminating the page, then cutting off the excess laminate to the edge of the page. I now buy A4 size laminating sheets, center the page on the laminating sheet, and store it properly. They look great done this way.


Wizard #83. Not much in the way of Bart stuff in this issue, but it does have a full-page Ad on page 129 for the X-Men Special, and the advertisement uses Bart's cover for Wizard #56, but mirrored over.

Wizard #110. Pages 14-15 have a two-page Ad for The First. Wizard #'s 109 & 111 also have two-page spread Ads. Each subsequent Ad has a shot of Elysia from above, zooming in as it goes. I got these issues when they came out and actually joined the Ads together to make a poster, but I now have them all again to laminate normally. Anal much?

So there you go. Not a bad bunch, I think.
Jay (the Laminatrix, to coin a word)

Mile High Comics

I first bought a Bart Sears comic off Mile High Comics way back in October, 1999. It was X-Men Classic 92 as well as Hero Alliance 1, and it cost me about $35 including shipping to Australia.

Since then, I've bought a total of 86 Bart Sears comics from them, with a grand total of about $263 spent, averaging to about $3 a comic, including shipping. That's pretty darn good if you ask me.

The beautiful thing about MHC is that you can easily combine shipping on multiple items, which, to be fair, many online stores offer. But the difference with MHC is that it has such an incredibly large 'in stock' list, that it blows everybody else out of the water. Couple that with MHC's buying power, which essentially means that if they don't have what you're looking for today, chances are they'll have it tomorrow. And finally, they might have what you want today, but maybe its more than you want to spend; MHC is seemingly constantly having one sale or another, with usually drastic price cuts on certain items.

A perfect example of how good MHC is, is what happened to me a few weeks ago. I've been looking to replace my copies of Rogue Trooper 14, 15 & 17 for a long time now, as my copies were laminated to a level not to my high standard. I've regularly been checking MHC for them, but they are rare enough comics, especially in good condition, so I never had any luck. Then, a few weeks ago, I see that MHC is having a huge sale across most of their stock. So I go and have a look, and find a whole lot of the Bart Sears comics I want, at crazy cheap prices... including those Rogue Trooper issues. I got issues 14 & 17 for a little over a buck each in Mint condition, and 15 for only 75 cents, in Fine condition. Mental, I tell you, mental.

So why not check out what MHC has to offer you. From my experience, you won't find a better place to plug in a couple of your Bart Sears collection holes.