I used to work at the warehouse for Mile High Comics back in early 90s. You have to know how hard this video got me nostalgia-ing about those days... Cheers!
I worked for a service company back in the late 90s and the Overstreets were one of my customers. Their basement was one large comic memorabilia museum. Very cool. There were stacks of his price guides randomly placed all around the first floor. Never got to meet him but his wife was a very nice lady.
This documentary came out right before the comic book industry imploded which sent comic book sales into a tailspin that lasted until the early 2000s. This is definitely a snapshot of what the comic book industry was like in the early 1990s.
Thanks for the video. I was a full-time comic book and collectibles dealer than. Was an Overstreet advisor for a few years. Great times. I gave up the business in a few years once i got married and migrated it all online to eBay only. Had a 100% sale rate on eBay then :-) NOW i post my rarities to YT to let others enjoy the rarities from the Platinum Age and up in raw form vs slabbed.
I'm assuming that convention floor was San Diego? I'm not sure when it happened that it became so huge but in the early 2000s you could still decide to go to the show the morning of and park right at the convention center and Thursdays were really empty. I wonder if there's any footage of SDCC at the old convention center besides a couple of the old local news channel segments?
Thanks so much for posting this, so good to see this vintage video. Can't believe some of those Sotheby prices, be interesting to see what grade those books were.
😎Watched this Documentary when it first appeared Alex , sadly things progressed from the Funnies to the Monie$ where it's really no longer about the entertainment value but the market value. Favorite parts of this show was the comic books and the interviews especially Anderson , Kirby and most notably Barks and Ellison. My 2nd favorite Disney character is Carl's Gyro Gearloose ( Scamp is #1). Harlan was 100% accurate especially about the influence comics have on a fans creativity ; in my case whatever I draw or have written (short stories , one act plays , radio plays) has been inspired by the comics I've enjoyed. Disappointing that female contributions to the industry such as the Fiction House talents as well as Ramona and Marie were not acknowledged. My opinion on the EC scapegoat scandal remains to this day that it really wasn't the horror content that offended critics , regardless of how many gruesome covers appeared , it was the social commentary stories.especially about race relations that appeared in both the war titles and Suspenstories and the sci-fi story "Judgment Day" that caused concern. Eventually imitators would look at other content in ECs line and discover the creativity that could be mined with social commentary. If that seems doubtful I can only point out the absence of "others " , except in the resumed stereotypical appearances , during the post Code 50s through the Bronze Age 70s which did offer an inclusiveness that still played into familiar perceptions. Another slight disagreement I had with the historian about EC was that yes the company had top artistic talent involved but so did other companies with names like Bill Everett , Mort Drucker , Ogden Whitney , Harry Lucey , Syd Shores ... Okay I'm throwing out names that I appreciate but to say the best in the industry does no justice to many fine contributors to our beloved medium. Like Harlan stated that he claimed his creative influences were names people would expect but in truth it was the pop culture entertainments that he enjoyed which developed him. So the historian didn't have to follow the familiar script and could have said some of the best in the industry. We like what we like that's all that matters.
