These stylish, practical wooden comics inspired shelves designed by Oscar Nuñez are now available for sale in the US from Groopti.

At $249 for the big one and $149 for the smaller one, they are more expensive than an Expedit, but they are a subtle way to declare your allegiance to the funny book while offering a gracious home. Perfect for storing your DC Showcase collection.

[Via Freshome]

If you’re a fan of Carl Barks, the “good duck man” who revitalized Dusney’s duck comics in the ’40s and ’50s, Heritage Auctions is selling a ton of great stuff, including autographed comics, correspondence, and, at the very high end, some of Barks’ incredibly collectible — and expensive — oil paintings, like “Red Sails in the Sunset,” above, which starts at $30,000.

There’s also this Barks Treasury Gold Limited Edition with Signed Certificate #320/1000 (Applewood Books, 1997) made out to “Steve.”

Which makes you wonder if it might have once belonged to Steve Geppi, owner of Diamond and a HUGE Barks collector. Since he also owns Heritage, it seems pretty reasonable that some of the Barks stuff might once have been part of his collection.

[Thanks to "Algernon" for the tip.]

Not since Star Trek waffles (I’m not kidding) has a movie had so many unconventional food tie-ins as Captain America: The First Avenger. Clearly this called for a review in the interest of science journalism. So while visiting my parents for the Fourth of July weekend, I decided an expedition into patriotic tie-in food was required and resolved to try and review it all, a project which revealed one vitally important fact – apparently Americans really, really like patriotic donuts.

On July 3, I set forth in search of the fabled Captain America donut, and at all three Dunkin’ Donuts locations within ten miles of my parents’ house, I was told they were entirely sold out of the themed pastries. No donuts, not even for ready money. No donuts at the inn.

Apparently every time they baked more, they sold out again. Unprompted, one clerk told me that business had been great, and pressed a button on her register which displayed how much cash was currently inside. Over $2,500. No donuts now, she said, but come back tomorrow.

At around 11:30 on July 4, the star-shaped Captain America donuts were entirely sold out at the nearest store, but there was one red Captain America donut left. At the larger store two or three miles down the road, both were in stock. I had no difficulty procuring the Captain America Cherry Coolata of wacky commercial fame or the Super Soldier Swirl ice cream, though this may be less a lack of demand and more the fact that they don’t need to be baked fresh.

Obviously, together all of these confections are too much sugar for any one sane human being, so I brought my parents in on the taste test. They had the advantage of being unblinded by any sentimental attachment to Steve Rogers, or, in my father’s case, any fuzzy feelings toward flag-themed items. “Anyone who puts up a flag is probably actually a Communist,” is his take on the subject, and he’s only mostly joking.

Look, it's a slush, what do you want from it?

Captain America Cherry Coolata

Aesthetics: It’s a cherry slush. It looks like… a cherry slush.

Aesthetic rating: *

Taste: More of a mild sour cherry flavor than a plain cherry flavor and not as sweet as most slush.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery: (Dubious look, shrug.) “It’s not as overly sweet as most things like this. That’s good at least.” – My mother.

“It tastes like fake cherry, it has a bitter quality I don’t like, I turn my snoot up at it.” – My father.

Taste rating: **

Price: $2.99 for the smallest size.

Calories: 240 calories for the smallest size

Should you buy it? If you love slush drinks or artificial sour cherry and don’t care if it’s a bit overpriced, it’s fine but nothing special.

Verdict: We poured it down the drain.

Definitely better than anything with fake blueberries

Captain America Super Soldier Swirl

Aesthetics: A nice pure white flecked with blue, with bright red streaks you can see the chunks of cherry in. Points for coloration as well the same vague shapes as the flag and actually appearing tasty.

Aesthetic rating: ****

Taste: A good vanilla flavor with a streak of real and actually good maraschino cherries. Maraschino cherries are not universally popular, though.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery:

“This is better than the slurpee, that’s not hard, but no, this is a reasonable flavor I could actually eat. The combination of flavors and textures is quite nice.” – My father.

“I just ate a donut. No.” – My mother.

Taste rating: ***

Price: $2.43 for one scoop

Calories: 170 for one scoop

Should you buy it? If vanilla and maraschino cherry sound good to you and you want flag-colored or comics themed ice cream, go for it. It’s not even that bad for you.

Verdict: It sits in the freezer, to be happily finished tomorrow.

The prettiest belle at the ball

Captain America star-shaped donut

Aesthetics: An attractive star-shaped donut with creamy white icing, red white and blue star sprinkles, and vivid red jam, it looks just as pretty as in the ads.

Aesthetic rating: ****

Taste: While the jam and the donut itself are tasty, the thick white icing sends it over the top into sugar shock.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery:

“It’s a good jelly donut! It doesn’t really need the icing.” – My mother

“It’s far too sweet, the texture’s all wrong and there’s not enough donut for all that jam.” – My father.

Calories: 320

Price: $0.88

Should you buy it? If you’re looking for the prettiest, most patriotic donut around, or you are under the age of twelve, buy it. If you’re willing to compromise a little on looks, buy the other donut.

Verdict: After the test, the icing was scraped off, at which point it was immediately eaten.

Sprinkle fail

Captain America Stars & Stripes donut

Aesthetics: At two different Dunkin’ Donuts locations, they had the red icing and were sold but lacked the trademark red white and blue star sprinkles that make it Captain America / flag-themed, instead substituting the usual rainbow sprinkles. Disappointing!

Aesthetic Rating: * with normal sprinkles
*** with patriotic sprinkles as shown in the ads.

Taste: A nice fluffy donut with a little extra sweetness from the icing.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery:

“It’s sweet, but not too sweet, and the texture is far nicer.” – My father.

“I liked the jelly one better.” – My mother.

Taste rating: ****

Calories: 290

Price: $0.88

Should you buy it? Well, it’s not exactly health food, but it’s very tasty and at eighty eight cents, it’s about five times cheaper than movie theater popcorn!

Verdict: Eaten immediately, dipped in coffee.

Zenescope is one of those publishers that hangs around the middle of the pack; they’ve been at it for a while, and if they don’t sell giant numbers or have household name hits, they are still at it, occasionally pacting with Discovery or putting out a kids line or doing something else to expand their line.

But the bread and butter that keeps Zenescope afloat is cheesecake — especially of the variant we like to call “loincloth comics.” It’s like the ’90s “Bad Girl” era never went away for GRIMM FAIRY TALES, their flagship title, which features skimpily clad girls thrusting their body parts at various fairy tale based characters on the covers. Sometimes tacky, but harmless.

Just how popular is this stuff? At the recently concluded C2E2, Zenescope released a special edition of issue #57 of the title by bad girl artist Eric Basaldua (also known as ebas). This is the regular cover by Joe Brusha and Pasquale Qualano.

And this is the special C2E2 variant:

But there was also a super duper, extra limited 250-copy “Naughty Variant” cover by Basaldua in which the comely lass is exploring new frontiers in naughtiness by making a rude gesture, wearing sunglasses and wearing even skimpier panties.

Copies of this variant are currently selling for over $150 on eBay.

Paging Wimbledon Green! Just who are these rabid collectors willing to shell out a benjamin for a little extra ass?

There’s gold in them thar panties!

Via a press release, and speaking of Frank Miller, Heritage Auctions set a record by selling a page of Miller art from Daredevil #188 for $101,575. According to Todd Hignite, who is Consignment Director for Original Comic and Illustration Art for Heritage, it’s a record for original art from the ’80s, and “one of the handful of highest prices that Heritage has ever seen paid for a piece of comic art, period. It’s in very rarefied company.”

The Heritage Comics & Comic Art Auction overall saw more than 1900 bidders competing for more than 1200 lots. The $3.2 million+ total represents an astounding 99.35% sell-through rate by total lots.

Superman has been much in the news lately for record-setting copies of his early adventures, and the May 21 auction added to that recent run as two bound volumes of ACTION COMICS #1-24 (1938-1940) sold for the most ever paid for a bound volume lot when it brought $143,400.

Among other bestsellers, a page of Robert Crumb’s very early Fritz the Cat story, “Fritz Comes on Strong,” which sold for $35,850. A high-grade copy of ZAP #1 sold for $26,290, a record for an undergound comic. Finally, a page of Far Side art by Gary Larson sold for $20,315. Such pieces rarely come onto the market, the release noted.

Yesterday was the final moving day at the old Publishers Weekly office. One last day to shovel everything into a box. Every move comes with a purge purge purge mandate, and since we’re moving to a smaller office, the need to travel light was particularly urgent.

(Some background: as part of Reed Elsevier’s dismantling of their RBI trade magazine division, PW was purchased by former publisher George Slowik, and PW is now part of a brand new company, PWxyz. Although The Beat blog has moved to it’s own website, I’ve worked there on and off as a part time freelance editor for six years, and I’m continuing in that position. Since I coordinate the comics reviews, I get…a LOT of comics and graphic novels.)

After I’d packed up boxes and boxes of reference books and current review copies and books I’d been meaning to get to and so on, I was left with a few short boxes of, well, let’s call them “comic books”. YOu may call them by a different name, but that’s what they are. Lovingly curated boxes which I’d been sorting through and winnowing out through my previous two moves. It was late, I was running out of labels for boxes, and since I’m moving to a shared work space, it just wasn’t fair to drag all that stuff along with me. Stately Beat Manor is full up. My storage space is full up. My parent’s attic is full up. It was time to make a decision. What the hell to do with all those comic books.

And so, I just dumped them out.

Over the years, we’ve (myself, PW’s Calvin Reid and a succession of brave interns including Cheryl Lynn, Ada Price, Laura Hudson and Kate Fitzsimons) tried to dispose of our comic books in a responsible and pay it forward way. We’ve sent them to the troops. We’ve sent them to the children. We’ve given loads of boxes to dealers. We’ve given them to friends. But in the end, it was too overwhelming.

At first I was upset. All those great covers. All that history. But then I remembered all the collections in my storage unit and on my shelves and I thought to myself, “Are you ever REALLY going to look at those comic books again?” You didn’t need to call in CSI to figure out the answer to that question.

As collectors and hoarders alike know, it isn’t necessarily the act of diving into our collection like a dolphin, burrowing through it like a gopher and throwing comic books into the air and letting them hit us on the head that is satisfying. It’s knowing they’re there, feeling secure in the complete run and the alphabetical order. But going through life you acquire so much baggage…so many comic books.

In time, a line is drawn.

After a little while, I began to feel liberated. Then empowered. Then, I wished I had time to go through ALL my comic boxes and chuck the whole damn lot. (Well, except for the Miraclemans and the Flex Mentallos.) Because it just isn’t necessary to have boxes and boxes of comic books AND shelves and shelves of trade paperbacks collecting those comic books, let alone the Deluxe, Omnibus and Absolute editions of those comic books.

And besides, if I really, REALLY need to read some particular comic book… there’s going to be a digital edition, right?

As if by design, I note that Comixology has launched the beta version of the online comics reader.

The Web reader lets you zoom into each panel and click arrow buttons to go to the next one. Or you can look at the whole page. It is not as satisfying as swiping with your fingers on an iPad, but it does the job if you are on your computer. If you’ve purchased comics in the iPhone or iPad apps, they are available in your library in the Web reader. There are also some freebie comics you can check out.

Very very few of the comics I had to leave behind are available in a legitimate digital format. VIrtually all of them are available illegally. But I think that is going to change. And we’re all going to change with it.

To be continued.

Rich Johnston has the exclusive news that this week’s record comics sale of $1 million for an issue of ACTION #1 has already been broken by a copy of DETECTIVE #27 which sold for $1,075,500. That issue, of course, reprints  presents the first appearance of Batman. The Caped Crusader is topping the Man of Steel yet again.

Johnston observes:

What’s remarkable is that until this week, no comic had ever broken the half million barrier. This week two comics have broken eight figures. Where the hell is this recession everyone’s been going on about?

The ComicConnect.com website has been slammed, but shows five figure sales for many key Golden and Silver age books. And at least one modern comic going for a nice piece of change: a perfect CGC 10.0 copy of WOLVERINE #1 from 1982 is priced at $16,000.