Found This Week: Dealer's Choice
Ninety-one things went live since the last one of these. Fifty-six more telecas on Thursday, then thirty-four pieces of 1980s and 90s apparel at one in the morning Sunday night, the kind of pile that reads like one comic shop's back room: Elfquest, Alien Legion, Grim Jack, two Jokers, a Frazetta. Also a record, a Japanese camp shirt, and the jacket this post has been promising for three weeks. Ten entries, by price, with the cards squeezed into one. No story from the desk. The pile talks.
Frank Frazetta Death Dealer all over print tee, Wild Oats, 1986, XL, $400
Death Dealer is the 1973 painting, the horseman with the axe and the glowing eyes under the horned helmet, the one a lot of metal album covers spent the next twenty years chasing. This is it printed edge to edge on a black Wild Oats tee, dated 1986, made in USA, tagged XL, 22 by 28.5. Used, ten photos, judge them. (Wild Oats did the fantasy all over prints of that era and the Frazetta ones are the ones people hunt. This is the most expensive shirt this series has run. It is also the one with the least explaining to do.) Here.
Two Jokers, $75 each
Not the same shirt. The 1989 one is faded black, HAHAHA, single stitch, tag unreadable, print cracked, which is the Batman movie year and looks like it. The white one is HA HA on a Velva Sheen 50/50 single stitch, XL, with the DC character copyright printed on it and a gray-green stain inside the neck, stated. (One is the year the whole country wore the bat logo. The other is a Velva Sheen blank, which is a different kind of flex. Pick a Joker.) Both used, fourteen and ten photos.
Fashion Victim rat all over print, Hanes Heavyweight, single stitch, $75
Black, rats everywhere, Fashion Victim, Hanes Heavyweight blank, XL, single stitch, 22.5 by 31. Used. (Fashion Victim was the skull-and-vermin all over print label of the early 90s and the rat one is the one that still looks mean. Nothing has aged on it except the owner.) Here.
Elfquest navy ringer, $60
Navy ringer, Elfquest graphic, no tag, 19.5 by 23, so it is small. Twelve photos. Wendy and Richard Pini's comic, self-published from 1978, which is the thing people forget: it was indie before indie was a section. (A ringer with no tag is a shirt that outlived its tag. That happens to the good ones.) Here.
Alien Legion 1985 and Grim Jack, $55 each
Two tees from the same shelf of the same shop, both with the tag cut out, both faded. Alien Legion, Carl Potts, Epic Comics, dated 1985, faded black, 18.5 by 26, small brown stain on the print. Grim Jack, Timothy Truman, First Comics, faded charcoal, 17.5 by 24. (Epic was Marvel's creator-owned line and First was the Chicago indie. Two publishers that did not survive the 90s, on two shirts that did. Both run small, read the numbers.) Nine and twelve photos.
Cold Blooded werewolf, 1994, Fruit of the Loom, $55
Black, werewolf, Cold Blooded, 1994, Fruit of the Loom, XL, made in USA, 22.5 by 31.5. Used, nine photos. (The 1994 monster tee is its own genre and most of them were airbrushed at a boardwalk. This one was screen printed and it shows. Real.) Here.
Psychedelic jester surf eye, Fruit of the Loom, single stitch, $55
White, a jester, an eye, a wave, single stitch, XL, 22.5 by 28.5. No brand on the print, no year. Not sure what shop or what year, the shirt is not saying. Eleven photos. (Sometimes the graphic is the whole provenance. This one has enough.) Here.
Dry Bones sake print camp collar shirt, lilac, 38, $55
The one piece in this post that is not a tee and not a card. Lilac camp collar, short sleeve, all over sake bottles, lanterns, and food, a city skyline running along the hem, coin-style metal buttons. Dry Bones, Japanese label, size 38, which is about a medium, 20.5 by 24.5. Light pilling, faint mark by the placket. (Dry Bones does 1950s Americana from Tokyo. This is the one time the Americana went back to Japan and ordered a drink.) Here.
Perez Prado Orchestra, Mambo Jambo, Japanese pressing, Globe SLPC-5003, $50
First record this series has ever run. Mambo Jambo, the Perez Prado Orchestra, Japanese domestic pressing on the Globe label, SLPC-5003, stereo, twelve inch. Cheesecake cover, which is what the Globe mambo reissues did. Vintage, not graded, sleeve has shelf wear, five photos. (A Cuban bandleader's Mexico City mambo, reissued in Tokyo, found in Sacramento. The supply chain again. It is always longer than the thing.) Here.
The cards, fifty-six of them, one entry: Hiroyuki Utatane, Ultra Jump, Heaven's Prison, $50
Thursday's drop was the rest of the September card pile: the bishoujo and gravure magazines (Young Comic, Men's Action, Monthly Entame, Young King, Weekly Playboy, four Playboy Japan cards), a run of game and anime promos, and a Tecmo Dead or Alive set, six not-for-sale cards from DOA2 and DOA Xtreme 2 including Kasumi in a Santa suit, which is a sentence I have now typed. Representative card: Ultra Jump, illustrated by Hiroyuki Utatane, from Heaven's Prison, two figures in period dress wrapped in chains on black, catalogue code 1UJ-A0028, unused, no punch holes. (Utatane is a real illustrator with a real magazine credit, which is why this one stands in for the pile. The rest are in the store under telephone card. Magazine, artist, code, condition. The genre, again.) Here.
Not making the ten and worth the click: Popeye TNT 1993 double sided and Animaniacs Brain 1994, both $50; a HUF Fire Starter in tan that the listing itself calls a likely reissue, $50, honesty in the title; a stack of Mickey Unlimited and Ritz gym tees at $30 to $45 for the person who collects Goofy lifting; a Barry Zito A's jersey, $45; and a Ghost in the Shell ARISE Logicoma tee, Movic 2014, XL, unworn with the retail bag label still on, $30, which is canon around here.
And the ACG is off the bench. Nike ACG Clima-FIT Max three layer shell, slate blue, size L, pit zips, the triangle patch. Listed as damaged: the foam behind the sleeve cutout is going and the lining has grime, all in the photos. $30. In due time turned out to be three weeks and thirty dollars. That is the jacket.