I finally got around to seeing X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Having two kids will do that to you. There was a lot that I enjoyed, but probably more that I disliked. This made me think of another comic book movie I saw via Netflix recently - The Specials. It was weird that I had never heard of it. There were a lot of known actors in it - Rob Lowe, Jamie Kennedy, and Thomas Haden Church. After watching it, I found out why. Super low budget effects and an overall blah storyline made this a movie that kind of wished I had not seen.

Its always funny to see who jumps on the superhero bandwagon. We dog on those celebrities that come out with comics, but at least they are putting something out there to add to the comicverse. It still may not be any good, but I think its better than some of the groups out there looking to cash in on the popularity of comics. I'm just hoping some of these endeavors won't contribute to the popularity of comics being extinguished in this fickle thing called pop-culture.

It's a two-fer this week. Two titles caught my eye, one funny and one serious. The funny one is Amazing Spider-Man #611 featuring Spidey in a Cable-esque garb alongside Deadpool. The second comes from Booster Gold #26 and features Booster's buddy Ted Kord as the Black Lantern. Both are great covers for different reasons and show the variety good covers can reveal to us. Check em out.

Joe Kubert, legendary comic book artist, writer, editor, and teacher, is putting up some of his one of a kind art for sale through comics auction house Heritage Auctions. There is some fantastic material here from comics like Sgt. Rock, Sojourn, Tarzan, Justice League, Star Spangled Stories, Jonah Hex, and more. Even if you can't find the funds to bid, and some of them are already in the thousands of dollars, they are fabulous to look at and at least daydream about owning. My personal favorite is this History of the DC Universe featuring Sgt. Rock. It's a fantastic piece. Which one catches your eye?

I have often used eBay to find what I call a "real-time value" for a comic book, in other words, what that comic is going for right now and what you can expect to get if you sell a similar item. Sites like Comic Seeker have gone a step further, giving you the capability to search through many different sites for a comic. These are great resources for the collector and having these kinds of tools will only aide you in selling and buying comic books.

I recently got an email from another company - Terapeak. They do market research data on eBay auctions and offer a plethora of information about the trends of what a superhero is selling for. The first site they sent me to was their superhero widget that shows information on certain superheroes. The main widget in the center wasn't working and I tried it in Firefox and Chrome. The search function at the bottom however, did work.

The real jewel was in clicking one of the comics on the side of the main widget. That took me to the main Terapeak site (this link takes you to a Batman query) where you can run a search about a character on eBay. You can search the last 14 days of listings as well as the last 90 days of purchases if you sign up (it does cost $24.95 a month) but you can search up to 8 days for free. You can see when items of that character were listed, what day, what type, if they used special features, duration, keywords, etc. There is a TON of information that any serious buyer or seller can use to make decisions about their collections. It is a very neat tool that could aide you in your endeavors. I dug a little and Terapeak was one of the first companies to do data licensing from eBay and have grown from a startup company to a worldwide endeavor. They state that people who use Terapeak earn 30% more than people who don't. The cost seems high for everyday sellers, but for serious buyers or sellers, it could be a very useful tool.