To : CBM Marketplace Mail

Just finished CBM #66. I would like to react to Craig Rader's Speak Out ! Forum.

Craig, you should realize that the Overstreet guide does not make the prices of comics. It just reflects what offer and demand are. Just the same as the Wall street stock exchange. Why do you think the asian markets collapsed a while back ? Because "steady, stable growth" had been forced upon them for too long, that's why. One day, reality takes its toll. Your books have absolutely no value as long as you do not try to sell them. If you do try, they are worth exactly what somebody is willing to pay for them at that precise moment, given his budget and the appeal of the books, nothing more, nothing less. Not what a guide says it's worth. Please stop expecting to impose artificial price-calculation processes over the market ; you can't possibly win this one.

This is a capitalist marketplace here, my boy, not the Soviet Union.

All this mishmash in the Marketplace Mail about adversary grading systems seems so pointless to me. You know what ? See a book, decide what you're willing to spend on it. If it matches the seller's point of view, it's done for. Else ? You've just saved money, is all. Quite simple indeed.

Apart from that, great issue. I didn't remember there were so much femmes fatales in the Spirit series. The gallery of portraits was good enough to show these gals aren't all lookalike clones.

The MAD magazine/Kelly Freas spotlight was great too.

Bonjour chez vous

J.C. Lebourdais

P.S. : You did it again, Gary : an article which began on pages 80-81 ends on page 79 ! How logical reading is that ? Sometimes I have to flip back to the beginning of the mag to make sure I haven't skipped an article…