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Entertainment
University Daily Kansan, September 3, 1982
Some students collect comics for kicks, cash
By VINCE HESS Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Comic books are not just for kids.
That's the opinion of two local comics collectors and the owner of a Topeka comics store.
On the average, the collector is a very literate person, more intelligent than the average person, with a very vivid imagination," said Tom Graves, Lawrence graduate student and owner of Kwality Comics, a comics shop at 107 W. 7th St.
"If you have a good imagination, it's a good way to amuse yourself," he said.
John Howerton, Overland Park sophomore,
he began collecting comics seriously at
a young age.
"Then it kind of got manual," he said.
"It's everything about comics that you like when you get into it, even the smell of the pages."
Larry Ellison, owner of Comics and Fantasys, a Topeka comics shop, read comics as a youth but paid no more attention to them until five years ago, when he worked at a used-books store. After two years there, he opened Comics and Fantasys, where he sold the comics trade to both business and fun.
"Now I wish I had kept these books I had so I wouldn't have to work so much," he said.
According to these comics fans, nearly every type of comic book — including titles that feature superheroes, cowboys, soldiers and even Donald Duck — is of interest to some collector somewhere, and that collector could be of either sex, have any background and be of any age.
A sign of the sophistication of current comics collectors is the proliferation of comics shops. New issues of comics were once available only at newstands and bookstore, said shop owners Ellison and Graves, but the shops sell new issues as well as back issues.
The shops also offer such items as plastic storage bags to protect comics, portfolios or collections of art by comic artists, "limited distribution" comics that are published by small firms and various hardback and paperback science fiction and fantasy books.
Ellison said most collectors became interested in comics when they were young, and they usually collected what they read in their youth. "A lot of times it's the only thing the kids learn
Graves read science fiction stories when he
was young and became interested in comics when he was a junior high student in the mid 1960s. His favorite comics were published by HarperCollins, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. for his store, which opened three weeks ago.
Howerton first read comics when he was in the seventh grade and began collecting them two years later. Marvel was the dominant comic publisher then, he said, and a Marvel title, Spiderman, became his favorite. He has all but eight issues of that comic.
Hewerton said that reading an issue of Spiderman or some other comic made him want to know more about the characters. Often he found out more because most stories were continued from issue to issue, causing him to be interested in issues in order to understand the plot in one title.
Ellison said individual collections ranged from hundreds of comics to thousands. The average collector probably spends $5 to $10 a week on his hobby.
What a collector can buy with that amount, however, depends on what he is collecting. According to the collectors, a new issue costs from 60 cents to $1.50. However, the price of today's 60-cent comic was 50 cents a year age and 26 cents several years ago. Howerton said.
Collectors classify comics according to time period, Howerton said. "Golden Age" comics appeared in the 1930s and 1940s; the current price for them is about $500, although two comics from that time — the issue of Action Comics containing the first story about Superman and the first issue of Bettran — cost about $1,000 each he said.
"Silver Age" comics were published in the 1960s and early 1970s. Howerton said, and today cost $200 to $300. Some rare issues, such as the "Mythology of Infinite Fantastic Four and Spiderman," cost $60 or more.
One of the eight issues of Spiderman that Howerton lacks is the first issue; he had a chance to buy it several years ago for $150, but even that price was too high for him then. Graves said he owned no Golden Age comics because of their cost.
Age is only one of several criteria for determining the price of a comic, according to Graves and Howerton. Also important are the title, the artist, the story and the condition of the book. A fold or crease in the cover can cause a dron in value. Howerton said
Ellison said comic collecting was a long-term investment, his store leaves new issues on hold.
them in bags and increases the prices by 5 to 10 cents over the cover prices. Rarely does the price of a comic increase as high as a $5 value in only a few years, he said. Some collectors keep their comics for a long time and sell them at lower prices to finance their college educations.
The comic scene is stable, he said. Prices reach plateaus, then rise again.
Howerton agreed with Ellison.
"I've never seen a price for a comic drop — maybe stabilize, but not go down." he said.
Despite higher prices, sales of comics continue to increase. Graves said sales of new issues were up 17 percent last year, and Ellison said sales of comics and others had risen this year from 1980 and 1981.
Protection of the expensive items usually means inserting the comics into plastic bags. Howerton he stored his collection of about 1,500 comics in bags and sewing machine boxes.
Before the comics can be stored, they must be bought. Graves said the work necessary to complete a collection depends on what a collector wants. One specific issue can be more difficult to find than a title or several titles, he said.
Howerton he searched the Kansas City area to find old Spiderman issues. He found most of his issues at a used-book store, where he argued and argued with the owner for a lower price.
What issues or titles are in demand among collectors? Graves said Teen Titans X-Men, which feature teams of teen-age superheroes, are the popular. Spiderman is next in popularity.
Ellison said his store obtained much of its inventory by buying the collections of people no longer in need.
Ellison also included Daredevil, Fantastic Fear and Warlord among the most popular Blade.
Of these six titles, however, two are from IFLA, the comics company best known for Batman and Superman. The other four are products of Warner Bros., and WarnerBros. all said was the most popular company.
He created the Fantastic Four and Spiderman,
The work of Charles Walter Stetson, impressionist painter. is on exhibit at Spencer Art Museum.
Picture is real 'talkie'
Movie-goers listen
BY MICHAEL GEBERT GUEST REVIEWER
Two hours of dinner conversation is not exactly the most exciting subject for a motion picture that one could name. That is probably part of the reason that "M My Dinner with Andre," which is precisely that, is such an offbeat surprise and is currently attracting selout audiences in the Broadway Theatre, 232 Westport Rd., Kansas City, Mo. where it is playing until Sept. 27.
A makes some difference, needless to say, whose conversation is involved. In this case, the quite enthralling conversation is between Andre Gregory, an avant-garde New York theatre director who several years ago dropped out and sent seismic shock to audiences of all ages and Wallace Shawn, a playwright and actor who played Diane Keaton's ex-husband in "Manhattan."
The two are a fascinating contrast. Gregory is
a visionary, with touches of the lunatic and an awareness of his tenuous grasp of reality that makes him far more endearing and easier to take than most '70s mystics. It is his spellbinding recollections of his adventures that most of the film and make it worthwhile.
Traveling across the Sahara with his Buddhist guru; bringing the guru to New York, where he falls in love with the bourgeois culture Gregory had abandoned; participating in bizarre theatrical "happenings" in a remote Polish forest; these are his experiences.
Shawn stands in for the audience to a certain extent. It is hard not to appreciate his pleas for creature comforts, especially in a setting such as Westport where Haagen-Dazs is on one side of the Bijou and a bookstore selling copies of the film's screenplay is on the other.
When Gregory insists that one should reject comforts, it is Shawn who comes to the defense of his electric blanket. It is Shawn who is most likely the one who has been the victim of the film, he challenges Gregory in the end.
Shawn, who performed the Boswellian dulies of turning tape recordings of several real-life conversations into a screenplay, is much more down-to-earth.
questioning his heartfelt but hazy demands for a better mode of life.
More telling is the audience's seeming acceptance of Gregory's ideas. When he rejects some of his mystical experiences as being close to truth, he becomes so accustomed to be reminded of their own powers of persuasion
In the short-term, the viewer should be quite grateful for Gregory's dramatic skills, for it is he who carries the film through its two hours. He is a fascinating speaker, for whom Shawn makes a fine advocate, and his speeches, interrupted only by the occasional minations of the waiters at the New York restaurant where it was filmed, make "My Dinner with Andre" a witty, enthralling and decidedly different night at the movies.
bringing a humanness and believability to comics, Graves said.
Graves said the established DC attitude was, Wow, if I had a super power, life would be no doubt.
"Everybody relates to Spiderman," Howerton said. "In real life, he can't seem to get dates, everybody's out to get him."
"All he does is try to do good."
Graves, however, thinks the Marvel age is over. Small companies are becoming more
competitive, he said, and Marvel and DC are collaborating on issues that feature combined stories of Teen Titans, X-Men and other characters.
It's, obvious Ellison, Graves and Howerton aren't involved in comics just for the money.
Ellison said he liked comics because they allowed escape, "a chance to get away from it."
Howerton said he once attended a comics convention in the Kansas City vicinity. He saw a man who had rolled up an expensive issue and stuffed it in his back pocket.
"You're just going, 'Aah,'" Howerton said.
"Comics are like children, and you don't hurt them."
Stetson exhibit features art of American impressionist
Although he was once called "the nu-
mer American impressionist," Charles Walter Stes-
son's work is now known to only a limited
number of people.
Fifty-three pieces of Stetson's work will be on display until Oct. 2 in the Kress Gallery at the Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art in a show titled "Color and Fantasy."
"He is a colorist," said Ruth Lawner, editor and designer at the museum. "He uses color to describe."
"His impressionism is vague," said Lousei Crider, 3104 Flint Dr., an exhibit viewer. The paintings have an unfinished feeling about them, she said.
Stetson was a very popular impressionistic painter at the turn of the century. But, because of a shift in the style of American artists, his work was quickly forgotten.
The Stetson show features paintings and
examples of landscapes, flowers and Greek
wine.
The show was assembled by Charles C. Eldredge, former director of the Spencer
"While I make no claim for him as the greatest of his age, I do believe that his reputation deserves better than the nearly total oblivion of this great man. His degree in the foreword to the show's guidebook.
Museum, who is now director of the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.
Eldredge assembled the collection after discovering Stetson's etchings in a secondhand shop in a small town in Rhode Island in 1973. Something about the drawings caught his and his interest developed as he discovered similarities between his own life and Stetson's.
Eldredge and Steton both share the same first name, are both from Rhode Island and both have the same wedding anniversary. Although he didn't know it at the time, Eldredge used to walk past Steton's Rhode Island studio on his way to school.
Stetson lived from 1858 to 1912. His wife, Charlotte, was a pioneer American feminist.
Student studies on Broadway
To most KU students, the word college might bring to mind visions of residence halls, fraternities and sororities, classrooms, the local community, and other places. One KU student, college has a different meaning.
"Nothing is comparable to New York," Richey said in a telephone interview from New York Wednesday. "Something is going on all the time."
For Grant Richey, Shawnee senior, Broadway is campus. He will be attending classes this year through an internship at the Circle in the Square Theatre School and Workshop in New York City.
Instead of sitting in big lecture halls and taking pages of notes, Richey will learn singing, acting, dance and voice techniques taught by professional actors and directors.
After applying for the internship last February, he went to New York during spring break for interviews. Richey said. He found out he was accepted in Anil.
He said the University of Kansas and New York University were the only two schools that had a female faculty.
Richey said that later this month he would begin attending classes every weekday and
would have a schedule equivalent to 15 credit hours at KU. The internship runs through May,
He said he felt lucky to have been placed in the school because the school was popular and had limited space. About 100 people auditioned for placement in the school.
"The Circle is a good school and the internship was a great opportunity I couldn't pass up."
Greg Hill, assistant professor of speech and drama, said, "Grant has a strong stage personality. He is willing to work and is very energetic."
Grant has a glowing, radiating acting power that an audience catches. Hill said.
Richey had a part in a play, "Dracula," which Hill directed last year.
Richey said going to school at a theatre in New York was different because there was no campus and the school was located in the heart of Broadway instead of the country.
He misses his friends at KU and at the drama department, he said, but believed the time had come.
"I don't even miss the Wheel," he said
Theatre group entertains children
Some things are just for fun
The Seem-To-Be Players, a six-member acting group that performs for children, doesn't try to teach the characters how to act.
"Our shows are just generally good entertainment and good stories." Rita Averill, director
They will present "The Ant and the Grasshopper" at 1:30 p.m. each Saturday in September at the Lawrence Arts Center, 9th and Vermont streets.
Averill adapted the play from the Aesop fable of the same name.
The company also will perform "The Con-
tinuing Adventure" with the Sprite, Part 27"
of the musical entertainment.
The adventures of Nyrm comprise a series, but each part can be viewed and understood
separately. Averill said, He also wrote the Nvfmr series.
In Part 72, Nymir tries to get over a volcano, but is almost sacrificed by the empress of the Arabian empire.
The Players perform Saturday matineen during the elementary school month. The show may include more than one game.
Each show consists of an original or adapted musical folk or fairy tale and an adventure of Nymfur. Between the two the Players perform visual bits, or "dvudeville for kids." Averiil said.
The Players sing and play instruments as well as act.
They also perform family shows and at grade school assemblies.
The Seem-To-Be-Players are members of the Lawrence community.