 Hi everyone, this is Chih-chou. Welcome to my channel and welcome to another comic book related video. And just to let you know, we're also live streaming this on Twitch as well. And once I tell you what we're live streaming, you have an appreciation for what's going on right now. But basically the short version of it is someone that's been supporting our work here that ended up buying some of the comic books that we had listed on eBay, ended up getting the comic books, I packaged them up, ended up getting the comic books and they mentioned that they were sending the comics to be great and I was really curious to see what the grays were that they were going to come back as. And the person that bought it, Mark, thank you, the person that bought it, mentioned that as soon as he came back, they were going to send one of the comics back to me as a gift. And we're going to take a look at that. I mentioned when the live stream started that I had my fingers crossed that came back as a great we were that I graded it at on the eBay auction. Either way, amazing, literally amazing. Right? No pun intended. Okay, so we're going to take a look at that. And what I'm going to do also is I'm going to show you a couple of comic books that I bought in the last couple of months. Okay, as you know, I'm sort of flying on low budget. So I've been sort of scavenging, right? There's auctions coming up for local sellers. So I've been trying to bid on stuff and whatnot. I've lost out most of almost all of the business that I put in, but I was able to get my hands on a couple of fantastic buys and very happy. Actually, more than a couple of the other ones sort of were things that I wanted. They were really on the low end. They were on the cheap cheap. And they're just filling in collections that I'm very happy to have. And at some point, I'll show them to you. But I thought I would show you these ones, which were leaps and bounds way more expensive than any of the other penny comics that we ended up buying, right? But I'm going to show you these other two as well. Very happy to have these in my collection. Okay, one of them is CGC. So we've added another CGC comic to our comic book collection, as well as the gift that has found its way to us. And there's three books that I want to review for you. Okay. And I thought we start off with the reviews. Because, well, two of these books, actually all three of these books, you would have heard me talk about. But one of them I mentioned that I was going to read, basically, I grabbed it, I bought it pre, I think it was during the spring it came out, spring of this year, right? And I mentioned that I was going to have a read through it during the summer. And I did end up having a read through it. Okay. So let's do the reviews first. And then we're going to look at the comic book hauls. Okay. The first comic book, right, is the one that I ended up getting in the spring. And I've shown this to you guys. And I showed it a couple of times during the live streams. And this book is Monk by Yusef Dakoudi. Okay. This book right here. Now, I don't, you know, I've never heard of Yusef Dakoudi, right? I tried looking him up and I did look him up and it looks like he's not a fair bit of work. I believe he's releasing the books in French. I'm not absolutely sure on this, right? I didn't dig too deep into who the creator of this book is. Know this name. I'm going to keep my eyes out for this person as well, from now on, for anything that they're putting out, right? But the reason I bought this book was because of Monk, Thononius Monk. And I've mentioned Thononius Monk before, right? And as soon as I saw this, advertising previews, because I look at the catalog that comes, you know, I get the previews catalog every month when it comes to the comic book store, he basically supplies free previews to anyone that has a subscription box at his comic book store. So I get that every month and I flip through it. And at the beginning of this year, I believe, 2019, I saw this, solicited it, and I ordered it through the comic book store and it arrived in spring, right? Now, this book hands down is brilliant, really. Let me show you some of the artwork, right? And the reason that I picked up this book is because of Thononius, this is the way you pronounce his name, or spell his name, T-H-E-L-O-N-I-O-U-S. Thononius, hopefully that'll focus, Thononius Monk, okay? He was a jazz pianist, composer, from the 19, I shouldn't know because I read this, but the dates, you know, escaped me, but from the 1950s, 60s, and I forget when he passed away, right? I believe it was last decade or so, maybe 90s or 2000s, like, again, I should know because I read this, but I finished this a few months ago, okay? And if you want to read an amazing biography on an amazing musician, consider it to be one of the greatest musicians ever, really, in some of people's top five greatest American musicians ever, top 10 greatest musicians ever, greatest composers ever, just an artist, really. This is it. You need to read this, okay? Now, for me, I had heard of Monk through a documentary that Dave Chappelle put out called Block Party, right? And Block Party was a sort of documentary Chappelle put out, where he invited a whole bunch of musicians to come and basically have a block party, right? He sent out some invitations and stuff and brought in Jill Scott and Dead Prez and Kanye West and Talib Kowel and Most Def, right? They were also playing, and there was a few other people playing, right? And I knew some of them. And some of those people, I sampled their music after watching that documentary, okay? Now, during the documentary, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching it, right? It's called Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Now, during the documentary, Dave Chappelle mentions Phenolius Monk. It's just a, really, it's like a 30-second little, or even a 15-second little rant that Chappelle does regarding Monk. And then when I watched that documentary, that sort of stuck with me, and I checked into Monk back then, but because I was sampling some of the other music that other musicians that were playing during the Block Party, and he really didn't get a chance to go off on Monk, right? When I ordered this, when the book arrived, right, in spring of this year, what I ended up doing was I already had Miles Davis on my MP3 player, right? So I started listening to a lot of Miles Davis. I started listening, sort of looping that with Scars on Broadway, the person that came out for System of Down, right? So I was listening to Miles Davis and Scars on Broadway, right? As soon as this book arrived, thanks to recommendations from people on Twitch that know their music, they recommended that I had listened to John Coltrane as well. So I sampled a few albums from John Coltrane, right? So I started looping Miles Davis, and I started looping John Coltrane, right? In preparation to listening to the Novelius Monk. And what I ended up doing, I sampled some of the albums from Monk. Let me give you the list of the albums that I listened to, right? Genius of Modern Jazz, Volume 1 and Number 2, okay? Live at Five Spot, Mysterioso, okay? Monk's Music, Plays Duke Ellington, Straight No Chaser, Columbia Collection, Complete Prestige Recording and Underground, okay? Those are the albums of Monk that I ended up looping. So basically the way I prepped myself, really, and you have to prep yourself for this, okay? The way I prepped myself, I looped Miles Davis, Scars on Broadway together, and then I kicked into John Coltrane looping about five of his albums, right? A few times. And then I listened to these albums from Monk, okay? Once I had gone through one iteration of this, because I needed to have an appreciation for what Monk's Music was about, right? Just a 15-second little rant that Chappelle had of Thelonious Monk. It was praise, like leaps and bounds beyond one-hour speeches of people praising other musicians, right? It was amazing. It really stuck with me, right? So I knew it was going to be magnificent. So I looped these albums once, or listened to them once. Once I had gone through one iteration, I started reading this, and I listened to the albums multiple times, right? I'm not sure how long it took me to read this. I savored it. There's times where I would just read a few pages, right? Really. Just read a few pages, and then I would listen to the music, right? And this is basically a biography. There are other musicians that have appearances in this book, right? Some of the stuff, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, right? They talk a little bit about it. There's a little bit of New York history with Roth trials being in here. That's how it started, which blew me away, right? And this book is created in a way that reflects Monk's music. Like, I can't explain it beyond that, because, well, let me try, right? This thing is sort of goes into sort of dreaming to a certain degree. And that's what I found myself happening, or what was happening to me when I was listening to Monk's music, because when I was listening to Monk's music, some of the stuff is offbeat, some of the stuff is very mellow, some of the stuff just goes chaotic. So basically, I would go for two hour walks and listen to the music. I was traveling somewhere for, you know, an hour trip or hour and a half trip. I was listening to the music. And what I found myself feeling, experiencing, was basically the same type of experience you would have if you were in a room with a lot of people where all of a sudden the conversation picks up and the volume in the room becomes, grows and grows and sometimes just becomes overwhelming and that just dies down and there's whispers in the room and quiet where you can just sort of meditate and lose yourself in your own thoughts and then slowly the music picks up again and all of a sudden you find yourself sort of carried away in some kind of experience or conversation where it's picking up and it's lots of excitement and then all of a sudden, boom, right? That's the feel of Monk's music to me, okay? And that was exactly the feel I got from this book. I know I'm giving it, like I'm really, I'm losing some of my words, right? Because reading this and looping Monk for, I don't know, it took me a couple of weeks, right? I took a little break in the middle and I looped Monk a few more times, these albums and then I went back to this again, right? Because I really didn't want it to end and I was finding that I was reading parts of this and then I would have to go back and listen to the albums again and try to catch some of the description, some of the some of the feel of what the music represents, interpretation really of Monk's music represents and then try to listen to it, hear it on the albums, right? And I would, you know, there's, they drop a few names of albums and songs in this, right? So I would go back to my playlist to make sure, you know, I had the music that I was, you know, that was being mentioned here in the albums that I was looping and some of them I did, some of them I didn't, right? Because Monk has, his library is enormous. I don't know who's, who's a larger, Nino Simone's or Monk's. My guess is Nino Simone produced 38, I believe 38 unique standalone albums and there's a whole bunch of compilations of the best of and whatnot. I haven't looked into how many albums Monk released, his discography, but what I had, what I've been looping, what I mentioned, the albums that I listed, that's just a fraction of how much work he's produced, right? And a lot of those, well not a lot of it, but a fair bit of the classic stuff that they're supposed to be, they're considered the classic, are mentioned in this graphic novel. Highly recommend it, really, I could sit here for an hour talking about this, flipping through this, but I don't want to give too much spoilers, if I've given too much already, hopefully I haven't, okay? Highly recommend reading this if you like amazing biographies, comic book, graphic novel biographies, and if you're a music aficionado, if you want to listen to someone which is unique, unique, unique, it will blow you away if, for sure, read the graphic novels at the same time, because you'll have an appreciation for what's going on with the music, right? Because at first, first few loops that I did, I really didn't appreciate what was happening until I hit certain parts of the graphic novel that was talking about some of the tracks that I was listening to, and then I would go back and listen to those albums, I would go, oh my god, that is brilliant, that is amazing, right? And then you can sort of try to focus in on the piano, because Monk was the pianist in all of these, I believe, right? You can listen to the piano and try to catch the notes that Monk is playing, right? And then no matter how hard you try, you find yourself sort of lost in the music and the piano drifts away from you, and the other instruments kick up, and then once the sound, right, the rhythm hits a certain place where I haven't figured it out yet, but it's most likely when Monk is sort of slowly coming back into the conversation of the music, you see it pick up again and go, oh, wow, wow, wow, boom, drop, right? Absolutely brilliant, highly recommend it, highly recommend it, okay. The next graphic novel, the next graphic novel is volume number four of Monstress. Now I've been collecting and buying the singles of this, and I bought, I hopped on this from the get-go when the number one came out like in 2016, I believe, right? This thing is brilliant, highly recommend it. If you like epic tales and the artwork is very unique, right? And this is created by Marjorie Lu and Sanata Takita. Okay, the names are up here, Monstress. So this is volume number four, don't pick up, don't start reading this from volume number four, that's like jumping in to Lord of Rings in book number two. You can't do it, you need book number one, you have to go through that, right? This is on the same level, it is absolutely an epic piece, and in this volume, I'm going to give a little spoiler here, in this volume, all of a sudden we see the players that are about to embark on the journey, just like many great fantasy science fiction tales in literature, where there's character build-up, incredible for issue after issue, and then all of a sudden you find yourself, you know, sometimes lost in the story, but once you move on a few pages or a couple of issues down, you realize what was happening in previous issues, right? Absolutely brilliant. If you want an epic read, one of the greatest comic books, comic book stories that have been told at least in the last couple of decades, right? Fantastic read, highly recommended, highly recommended, okay? Great read. The third review, sorry about the quick review on these ones, because I don't want to give away any spoilers for Monstress, right? I really don't, because it's very important if you like science fiction and fantasy to have a read through that. Okay, here's another book that I picked up, and I picked up the first issue of this when it first came out, and this is Black Hammer. Now, this thing just came out last week or the week before, so week before, right? And it's a $1 special reprint of Jeff Lemire, Jeff Lemire and Dean Ornstone. Ornstone are the creators of this book, right? This universe really, Black Hammer. And Black Hammer just had a recent crossover with Justice League from DC Comics, so it's pretty much established that Black Hammer, this universe is going to be around for a very long time to come. And what's happened is Jeff Lemire and Dean have formed a production company, and I believe there is movies and TV series about to be produced based on this universe, right? So if you want to delve into this universe, go to your comic shop, the odds are they will have copies of this. I grabbed the high and full of copies of this, right? Because it's three comic books in one reprinting three number one issues of different stories from the same universe, right? The first one is the first Black Hammer issue that came out. Now I picked up the first, this issue, and I picked up, I think there was at least, I got both of these covers, like this one was one of the covers for issue number one, and this one was another cover, I believe there's a third cover. I picked up the first few issues of Black Hammer, and I had to read through Black Hammer where it first came out. It is absolutely brilliant. Fantastic storytelling. And if you watched some of the other comic book videos that we put out, we've talked about Jeff Lemire. Jeff Lemire's work specifically related to Valiant Comics. He's told some classic, epic stories for Valiant Comics, and he's put out a lot of independent works as well, right? This one, I just did a little research on them. He considers this to be one of the most important things that he's released, right? He said this is dear to his heart, so there's a lot of depth to this series, Black Hammer. And what this thing is, is the first issue of Black Hammer that came out. And then he put out another story arc related to what's it called, Sherlock Frankenstein, right? And this was cover number one of the covers for right here. And this is a cover by Mike Mignola, the person who does Hell, The Names, right? What you would call it? Hellboy, right? And he did the cover for this one. And this story was pretty good as well. It wasn't bad. The art style was a little different, or it could have been the same. You know what, I didn't really look into who did the artwork for this. Yeah, I'm not sure who did the artwork for this. It felt a little different. The inking might have been different. So the second story is not bad. It's related to the original Black Hammer story. And the original Black Hammer story, I forget how many issues it ran for, okay? I believe it was a Maxi series. And then the Sherlock Frankenstein was a mini series, I believe. And then there's another number one that came out and he called it, what was this one called? It was called The Quantum Age, okay? And this is the cover of the first cover A, I believe, and this was cover B, okay? I didn't pick up this one. I picked up Sherlock, the first issue of the Sherlock Frankenstein one, but I didn't continue buying any of the other ones because I didn't read it. And I didn't pick up this one, but this one wasn't bad either. But the cream de la creme for this is Black Hammer, in my opinion. Pick this up. It should still be available in your comic book store. Go to your comic book store. There should be plenty of these around, okay? Get them to order this. For one dollar, you get three comic books and the first appearance of the characters in this universe, Jeff Lemire's story. It's a great introduction and this is the back cover for it, right? Great introduction to this universe. And for one understand, TV series and possibly movie in the works for this, okay? That's the comic book reviews I wanted to do. I went off on Monk a little bit hardcore because really, I'm still looping Thinolius Monk. I'm still looping the music. So when I want to sort of drift away and just lose myself in my own thoughts and experience something magnificent, right? I'm listening to Thinolius Monk and I'm not. I mean, I'm going to be looping these albums, how many albums? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten albums. I'm going to be looping these ten albums for a while before I load on anymore, right? Because I only have a little four gig mp3 player, so I have a few masters on that thing and I cycle through things, okay? Now, aside from the comic book reviews, let me show you comic book halls and a little gift that we ended up getting, okay? Here's one book that I bought and I didn't have this and it's a golden age comic book and it's three dimension adventures of Superman in 3D, okay? Awesome. And this, you know, they released this thing in 1953. It came with 3D glasses and if you open this up, it's got the 3D. Here, let me crack this open so you see it. It's graded at two, right? So it's graded at good, so it's low end, right? So two out of ten, basically. But I ended up getting at an amazing price and then I'm picking it up for, let me put the tape here, and then I'm picking it up for 1950 Canadian, which is basically $15, $14.50 US, which is a fantastic price, fantastic price. So you can see it's, you know, it's worn, it's still attached, like the cover is attached and this is what it looks like. Take a look. I don't actually know who the artist for this is. Does this even say who the artist for this is? I try to find it initially just quickly, but the man who stole the son, Superman. Take a look at this. Awesome. So the whole comic is like this. I haven't put on 3D glasses. Try to track one down to see what it looks like in 3D. I've actually had other 3D comics as well. I got one, I got the, I believe there's only one EC comic book from 1952 that they released in 3D and I ended up getting that as a steal as well a while ago. And this was a great price. Okay. The EC comic one, I think we got for less than $10, maybe maybe for $12 or something. So that was a great buy and glad to have that in my collection as well. But this one, fantastic. Golden age 3D Superman comic. When I picked it up, the comic shop owner was like, damn, you got that at a great price. Very happy with it. Who doesn't love a 3D Superman comic? What was the price on this when it came out? $0.25 in 1953. That's seriously on the expensive side from that period. All right. Let me show you this. I tried to get my hands on this and I can't believe I got it for this price. Again, the comic shop owner was, damn, you got that at a great price. It's a CGC graded. Let me take it out of the plastic. CGC graded comic from 1952 and it's crime detective comic volume three, number three. Serious reflection here, right? You can see the camera. What I'm looking at, right? And it's a female smoke in a cigarette. This is so like, and it's a brand new case. That's why it's shining so much. He mentioned that this was a brand new case. So let me show it to you like this. All right. Fantastic. Fantastic. Maybe this is less reflection, right? Beautiful artwork. The crime comics from that period have someone almost amazing artwork and there's Bill E. Lee art in this. It's the last story. I looked this up. It's the last story, right? And the reason that this is graded at two, I believe is because the spine, the cover was detached. And I didn't know this, but it looks like when the cover is detached, it automatically drops down to two. Someone, you know, if that's false, if I'm on the false or I understood it incorrectly, please let me know. But as far as display wise goes, this thing looks beautiful, right? There's no extra notes on it here, but it only mentions here at the bottom of the CGC thing that the cover is detached. So I'm assuming if the cover is detached, it automatically kicks it down to a two. I'll have to look this up. Okay. I'm not 100% sure how the grading works. I just grade things according to what I think they are. And personally, just because the cover was detached, I wouldn't grade a comic book as a two, not if the cover is this intact, right? Oh, yeah. How much did I get this for? Check this out. I ended up getting this for $26 Canadian, which is basically $20 US, right? That's less than what it cost to send this comic to be graded, right? When I picked it up, the guy said he was expecting to get a lot more from this. And I think what happened was some of the other books that he had went for insane amounts. So people were tapped out. They couldn't afford to bid on some of the other books. So luckily Chicho ended up getting this guy for $20, basically. The third one, right? Now, this book is the book that was with me a few months ago. It's a book that one of the people on Twitch popped in and, you know, we're talking about comic books and stuff like this. And they knew, I'm not showing you the front of it just because the names and the addresses and stuff are on there, right? So we're going to crack this open. And this thing is basically a comic book that I put up part of a collection. And if you're following the other videos, you would have seen it being loaded on, we graded it and put it on to eBay. It's Amazing Spider-Man 361, right? And I put this up with the rest of the Amazing Spider-Man, the appearances of the first appearances of Cletus, the cameo appearances of Carnage and Cletus, and the first two full appearances of Carnage. And this is the most expensive one. It's first full appearance of Carnage was Amazing Spider-Man 361. And this thing, Mark is the person that ended up buying it. Thank you, Mark. I mentioned during the last stream that I appreciate it very much, right? And he mentioned that he was going to send it back to me. It was like, no, man, you can't do that. Because this was more expensive than, I believe, most of the other ones put together, right? So it was a cream, right? So what he ended up doing was when he got the books, he sent the scent to CGC, got it graded and then sent it back up to me as a gift, right? So huge, huge. And if you know the history of Amazing Spider-Man, this is a very, very important book, right? Very important book. And what I ended up grading this as was 9.4, right? Near mint. Seriously, I'm like nervous on this. I think that's why I've been sort of forgetting names and sort of losing my train of thought because this thing's been sitting on my couch for the last day for us to set up the live stream for me to crack this open, right? So it's packaged like lots of bubbles and wrapping and stuff. So let's take this out. Look at this. Oh my God, serious bubbles. Look at this. Awesome. So we're going to crack this open. Hold on, let me put this guy here. Okay, let me put this here. Crazy. Let's see what this is. And I don't have this graded. For sure I don't have this graded. I only have, I think with this one, we have a total of, I don't know, probably 10 or 12 CGC graded books or something. Let's check it out. And this thing, when I graded it, I mentioned that on the spine, on the lower staple, I should, dangerous. The lower staple was a little bit of crease on the lower staple. So I'm not, my estimate of this thing would be 9.4 because the rest of the book was absolutely beautiful, right? And that was sort of a stress mark or whatever it is on the staple. So I'm not sure how much that kicks down the grade, but let's see what CGC considers that to be. I don't know yet. Oh my God, no way. Awesome. By the way, Mark is watching on the live stream, right? So I guess we're lowballing it on the eBay auctions, right? This sucker came back as 9.6. That is sweet. Crazy, crazy. Awesome, awesome. Mark, fantastic. And this thing, by the way, this thing had, because of the printing, right, the way they print comic books, in the bottom of it, there's the cut things that they do with Marvel. Marvel had a lot of these because this stuff was sort of on newsprint. When they did the cut for the comic books, there's usually a couple of slits, not usually, but a lot of the comic books have a couple of slits at the bottom where the cutting happens. So they look like holes and they are holes, but that doesn't knock it down on the grading. So I knew about that. So I didn't knock off anything on it. I just assumed just because of the spine thing on here. I was a 9.4. But it came back as a 9.6. Oh, crazy, crazy, dude. Awesome, awesome. So some of the things we must have graded at 9.6, 9.6, they would have come back as 9.8 and kick it up, kick it up, right? So people that did the buys on the eBay, the auctions, I'm glad they're getting great comics. We have one person commenting, laughing at how low I was grading some of the comics, right? He was very happy, the person buying, there's a few people that have been buying the comics, they've been very happy with the comics, right? So first, full of fears of carnage, 9.6 slapped. And so this thing basically, Mark ended up buying for it was 167.50 Canadian, which came out to, you know, that comes out to $126 U.S. or so, right? So $126 U.S., right? I don't know how much it costs to send in for grading. I know it costs, from Canada, it costs too much. It costs like 40 bucks or something or more, right? So 40 bucks Canadian, so it would be 30 bucks U.S., right? So this thing total cost, not including shipping that Mark sent. Mark, seriously, dude, thank you for the love, man. Thank you for the love, right? I'm just doing a price thing just because we're doing a lot of price things on comic books, right? So include the shipping and all this jazz. So 130, not a 30, 160, 170, let's say, 180, let's say, right? 9.6 CGC for 361, I think it's selling for 200 plus, right? So with all this shipping, sending in yourself to be graded, doing a Hail Mary buy on eBay, you find a right buyer, you get great deals, right? Fantastic. And if the seller is super lucky, has amazing people that are sending them amazing love, they get a grade and send them back to them. So this is great. What else did they say here? Amazing Spider-Man, 361, Marvel Comics, January, February, March, April, 1992, $492, David Michellini's story, Mark Bagley and Randy Ember-Lean cover and art, first full appearance of carnage, cleatus caceti, fantastic, like this thing. Awesome. This thing is making me crazy happy, like really, just because it's this, you know what it is too? I've never sent a book in to be graded, right? The feeling I'm getting right now, this was in my hands, right? I looked at it, we flipped it just to make sure, right? We graded it, we sold it, right? Went to the United States, Mark kind enough, sent it in to be graded, comes back, comes back here, right? This is a book that was in my collection that went on a serious trek and found its way back. Fantastic. Wow, wow, wow. Super, super cool. Super cool. This thing just became one of my favorite comics in my collection, really, like cherished, right? Cherished, cherished, cherished. Very cool, very cool, Mark. Thank you, brother, thank you. Awesome. It was about time we did more comic book videos. We're going to do more. Okay, we're going to get into readings. We're going to start doing a little bit more comic book hauls. The odds are I probably won't do any more, we might do more videos where I load comic books on eBay. We'll see how it goes on way behind. I've made some promises to people to load stuff a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, and I'm way behind. I'm going to try to get some done this week, but slowly we're going to start rolling back into comic book mode. Mathematics mode will always be there, okay? Julian Assange will be there, but comic books, you're going to slowly start seeing more presence, more videos being put out. We took long enough break from comic books. We've got to do some readings. We're going to talk about some history and whatever else comic book involves, which is many, many, many, many amazing things, gang. Okay, aside from that, thank you for being here. Thank you for watching. Pick up Monk, read it. Pick up Monstrous, read it. Pick up Blackhammer, read it, and enjoy your comics. Bye for now.