death

I spend hours nerdily reading antique newspapers on microfilm at the Fargo public library — because, as they say, “Library, library, more than a book!” and, as I have already admitted, I am a nerd. And it’s a good thing for you that I do such things, or you probably wouldn’t know about this gem from the November 4, 1907 edition of The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican.

The article, “A Mighty Rare Autograph,” is simply attributed to ‘Collector’ — which is far more information than newspapers at that time often felt compelled to provide, really. But in this case, anyway, I don’t think such poor attribution should cast doubt, for the advice published over one hundred years ago was probably as true when it was written as it is today.

A Mighty Rare Autograph

There are an unlimited number and variety of the genus autograph collector. Some have the grewsome fad of collecting all autographic matter relating to the assassins of our presidents. To be successful even in this limited range requires much careful research and great patience. The more inconspicuous and unknown the subjects chosen the more difficult the task of collecting. It may be said that it is an easier task to secure an authentic autograph of Napoleon Bonaparte or Cromwell than one of the practically unknown murderer of President McKinley. The very obscurity from which the perpetrator temporarily emerged is hard to penetrate and therefore makes the securing of his autograph a difficult task.

A Mighty Rare Autograph, 1907

I find it rather odd that Bonaparte and Cromwell are named, but the ‘obscurity’ of the ‘temporarily emerged’ McKinley assassin is cemented via the omission of his name. Never one to really follow trends — and much liking the spirit of yesteryear’s intrepid ‘girl reporters’ — I’ll dare to name McKinley’s assassin: Leon Frank Czolgosz.

Anywho… According to the May 2009 issue of Autograph Magazine, collector/dealer A. Lovell Elliott has the rare Czolgosz’s autograph:

I have Leon Czolgosz’s signature on a note sheet. Czolgosz was the man who shot President McKinley at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Deputy Sheriff Otto Welker accompanied Czolgosz on the trip to his execution in Auburn, New York. And Welker had the presence of mind to ask him to sign a page in his notebook. I bought it from his niece. Aside from Czolgosz’s signed confession, which was auctioned at Christie’s for $110,500, this is the only known signature in private hands. It’s featured in Charles Hamilton’s American Autographs, Volume 2, p. 511.

Since Czolgosz’s signature is so rare, it likely has a very high value; but that value is equally dependent upon the number of interested parties. If far more collectors know of Napoleon and therefore desire his John Hancock as opposed to the obscure Czolgosz, well, that lowers the demand and the value. But by naming Leon Czolgosz, I (along with Sarah Vowell in Assassination Vacation), have likely just increased awareness of him and therefore the value of his signature. You are welcome, Mr. Elliott.

By now, you know that the King of Pop has passed on. One’s fame is directly proportional to how fast people will learn the intimate details of your life, or death, as the case may be, so the news traveled quickly. The folder of Michael Jackson songs on my hard drive is once again seeing use, and people have been coming into the library looking for something, anything, about MJ. It’s strange how a person who, in life, was reduced to little more than a punch line is suddenly revered in death.

Where celebrity meets mortality, there is eBay.

When Steve Irwin died, the gulf between his collectability before and after death was cavernous. A doll that didn’t sell for $18 on Monday was selling for over $350 on Wednesday. Sellers immediately pulled their Irwin auctions so that they could relist them at inflated prices.

While Irwin’s fame was perhaps C-level at best, MJ’s ascent towards collectability has always existed, and has been on a fairly constant climb since his self-imposed isolation began years ago, soon after his unconventional relationships with children were explored. When you offer less of yourself to your adoring public, the demand increases. You become a modern deity. Your signature becomes evidence of the hand of god.

Why people grieve with money is another issue entirely, but it happens. We all express ourselves differently, and I’m not here to question that. It’s the vultures, those resellers whose businesses are predicated on death and injury, who make their appearance now. Yes, we’re in a bad economy and people need to make a living, but it’s endlessly profitable to pinpoint which celebrities are in failing health, scoop up as much of them as you can on eBay, and wait for the inevitable. After losing two different sources of income over the past 2 months, don’t be surprised if you see me stalking Hollywood with a pen and a baseball bat soon.

Of course, there are also those people who buy stuff immediately after a celebrity’s death in the hopes that the value will Increase – much like the people who went out and bought comics when they read that Captain America died. Too late, fellas. Things tend to peak in the few days immediately following a tragedy. By the time your signed 8 x 10 arrives in the mail, it’ll be worth less than what you paid for it. Mourning does not age like wine.

Most telling is this MJ coin. Manufactured by a no-name company in China, and not even licensed, it failed to sell for a mere $7 on June 23rd, and multiple times before that. On June 26th, the closing bid hit over $117. This seller definitely doesn’t fall under the ‘vulture’ category, as it’s an item that was already listed on eBay before MJ’s death, they certainly lucked into a killer sale.

While general memorabilia are selling strong, it’s signed items that remain the truly powerful sellers after a death strikes. People can always print up another poster, but the quantity of celebrity X’s signatures has just become finite.

Amazon’s top 16 albums, as of this writing, are all Michael Jackson albums, pushing Regina Spektor and Wilco into the high teens, with more MJ albums peppering the rest of the countdown also. I’d presume that illegal downloads also skyrocketed during these past 24 hours.

Interestingly, this spells interesting things for Beatles collectors also. Upon MJ’s death, the rights to every Beatles song that he owned reverted back to Paul McCartney. As a Rock Band fanatic, I have to wonder if this sudden change in song rights will affect the release date of Rock Band : Beatles, currently scheduled for September. Death doesn’t need to be more complicated.

An strange man with a stranger life – but what artist isn’t? Thanks for everything.

If anything can be said about the large community of comic artists and writers (and to an extent, readers), it’s that they function like a small town – everyone knows everyone else, has had some interaction with them, might have some ongoing political debate that the rest of the world has no interest in or awareness of, but ultimately, there’s a closeness and an innate desire to help each other out when times get rough. We’ve seen our share of illnesses and deaths, and I’ve never experienced an instance where respect was not properly paid.

So, the comic-reading audience collectively mourned in late 2006 when we learned that notable creator and artist Dave Cockrum passed away due to complications with a long-time illness. He’s most noted for being a co-creator to some staple X-Men characters, including Colossus, Storm, and Nightcrawler, as well as redesigning and thus redefining DC Comics’ Legion of Superheroes. In addition to that, he’s had a hand in just about every comic you can name, in one way or another – Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Spider-Man covers, Batman and Justice League interiors, Marvel’s Star Trek comics, and even pre-career letters to the editor found in the back pages of a handful of comics. When he passed, a significant creative force passed as well.

As most comic creators are, he was also a comic collector, and as collectors here, we’ve all idly wondered what our poor families are going to do with our stuff when we’re no longer around to deal with it. After his passing, his widow was left with a significant comic collection.

Enter Clifford Meth : writer, advocate for comic creators, and close friend of my most favorite author, Harlan Ellison (which terrifies me to no end) – mostly because I’ve always imagined Mr. Ellison at the top of a gargoyle-riddled watchtower with a typewriter, a shotgun, and the largest NO TRESPASSING sign known to man. You could see it from space. Even before Dave Cockrum’s death, Clifford Meth (along with Neal Adams) arranged a benefit to help Cockrum’s failing health and increasing poverty, and while that afforded him some more comfortable final years, Meth’s efforts still continue, providing continuing comfort for the family.

Meth has single-handedly been arranging the sale of Cockrum’s vast comic collection, eschewing the fee-riddled venue of eBay and depending on word-of-mouth and the admiration of comic fans – which shouldn’t be underestimated. Nothing says ‘disposable income’ like income that’s spent on costumed superheroes. Meth stopped by the blog here a few days ago to make mention of this, and I thought that it deserved a much larger mention that a blog comment. The frequently-updated comic listings can be seen at his blog, The Clifford Method. Each comes bagged, boarded, and with seal indicating that it has come from the Estate of Dave Cockrum. Beyond even this, Mr. Meth is selling some of his own comics, all checks payable to Paty Cockrum.

There’s a certain appeal to owning a comic that’s been read and appreciated by someone intimately involved with the medium. Included in the assortment are comics that Cockrum referenced while drawing his own art, books that he’d worked on, and books that he just liked. Swing on by the blog and buy some books, and don’t think of it as charity – think of it as genuine and well-deserved appreciation.

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Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect – Join our Collectors’ Community!

I had other stuff planned for today, you know. I had planned to eschew the geek-stuff for a while, wax poetic on that scary portion of the world that doesn’t involve wearing capes or alien lineages or accidentally changing the timeline by punching a dinosaur after you’re transported into the Mesozoic by your arch-nemesis.

And then they had to go and kill Captain America.

In Marvel Comics’ Captain America comic series, issue #25 (released this past Wednesday, March 7th), Captain America was shot and killed, and not even in the glorious blaze of battle. For a superhero, dying anywhere but in battle is the equivalent of a regular person dying on the toilet. Cap had just admitted defeat in the Civil War between the heroes, conceded his true identity to the world, and was walking up the steps to a federal courthouse. It was there that he was shot by a sniper, unarmed, and presumably killed. This killing was orchestrated by The Red Skull, Cap’s most significant archenemy and a World War Two era Nazi.

While Marvel Comics’ editors are not admitting to any particular allegory between the Marvel Universe and our own, they’ve readily admitted that there is a significance, and that readers are more than welcome to draw their own conclusions. News outlets exploded in similar fashion to 1993’s Death of Superman event, and people came up to me at my workplace and asked me if I was in mourning, as I’d apparently spilled geek all over my shirt this morning and didn’t realize it. Certainly the death of a beloved fictional character can hit us just as hard as a nonfictional death, sometimes even more so. The intimacy of fiction has the potential to be far deeper, far more personal, and far more perfect than our intimacy with the awkward, real world.

There’s a certain four-letter word that comes to mind anytime a death strikes the media.

eBay.

Indeed, Captain America #25 was published with two covers (one by Steve Epting and one by Ed McGuinness), both of which are currently fetching a significant price. These issues immediately sold out at comic shops nationwide, or equally as likely, were pulled from shelves and sold at twenty times their cover price on the ‘Bay by savvy comic shop owners, at prices ranging wildly from $15 to $100 for a first printing, depending on buy-it-now prices, migration patterns of circus clowns, and what I had for dinner. Honestly, I can’t make sense of the prices, but it’s clear that every copy has sold. People want to see Captain America get murdered, cry a little, and wait for Marvel Comics to inevitably bring him back to life in some unsatisfying way. Maybe the Super Soldier Serum that makes him so strong has some unknown property that will preserve him. Maybe a cosmic being from beyond will intervene. Maybe he’s food for some very patriotic worms. Other such Captain America collectibles, of which there are many, have not seem an increase in demand just yet.

So, how does the principle of ‘insider trading’ fall into investing in comics? Most of the world only found out about Cap’s death on Wednesday when the comic was released. Wizard Entertainament, however, was tipped early off by Marvel’s EIC, Joe Quesada. What makes this complicated is that Wizard also operates both online and brick-and-mortar shops (which was even more complicated when Wizard Magazine was primarily a price guide for comics). A quick eBay search reveals that WizardUniverse has an unusually huge number of unnaturally highly graded issues of Captain America #25 for sale. This is not the first time that this unnatural pairing of ‘news outlet’ and ‘retail outlet for the things that you report on’ had caused shady dealings for Wizard, either.

There are very few names that the average person would recognize in terms of superheroism, and Captain America is one of them, because he’s OUR guy. He’s not from space like Superman, he’s not a jerk like Batman, he doesn’t turn green and huge and he doesn’t shoot sticky webs and have ultrahuman agility. He was a scrawny nerd who beefed up and fought for the right of scrawny nerds to be scrawny nerds, or whatever you wanted to be free to be. And he’s named after where we live.

Rest in peace, Captain America, and thanks for making my very expensive Marvel Comics Encyclopedia completely inaccurate now.