Shelf Bound Charity Auction: Day 2 – BAKER STREET & THE MARQUIS!

This auction is now closed.

The bookcase purge for charity continues! You can see a complete list of all auctions here, in chronological order starting with the latest, here. Full auction details are included at the end of the article, but to bring the new folks up to speed real quick:

Every weekday until Friday, June 5th, we publish a new Shelf Bound article announcing a bind or bound set up for auction.

Each bind auction’s bidding starts when its article is published and ends 72 hours later, so today’s auction will close at 4 PM EST on May 1, 2020.  

Bids must be posted in an item’s comment section to be considered for that item; highest bid posted before close of auction wins.

Bids from outside the U.S. are welcome, although shipping outside the U.S. may incur additional fee.

The winning bidder emails me (greg at multiversity comics dot com) to verify donation particulars, then makes the donation and send me verification.

I send out the bind.

Everyone wins.

30 weekdays. 34 binds. All proceeds going to charity. Sound good? Let’s get to it!

BAKER STREET / THE MARQUIS

Written by: Guy Davis, Gary Reed
Drawn by: Guy Davis
Inked by: Guy Davis, Vince Locke
Colored by: Guy Davis
Lettered by: Vince Locke, Guy Davis

Published by: Caliber Press | Oni Press

Collecting:

• Baker Street #1-10
• Baker Street Sketchbook OS
• Baker Street: Grafitti OS
• The Marquis: Les Preludes OS
• The Marquis: Sin of One OS
• The Marquis: Danse Macabre #1-5
• The Marquis: Hell’s Courtesan #1-2

Additional Material: None

Bind Details:

• Oversewn binding
• Black Arrestox cover material
• Black/white headbands
• White endpapers
• Page edges trimmed

Signatures: None

Sketches: None

Bound by: Herring & Robinson Bindery.

From stunning color to stark black & white, our next bind combines two creator-owned works from the incredibly talented Guy Davis. If you only know him from his run on B.P.R.D., this book will cast some light on those dark corners of your Davis knowledge.

The bind’s first half covers Baker Street, an early work from Caliber Comics where Davis truly starts to find his voice as an artist. Co-created with Gary Reed, the series recasts the Sherlock Holmes dynamic with clever gender-swapping and sets it in an alternate late 20th century London where 80’s punk and Victorian aesthetics walk hand-in-hand.

The back-half jumps from Baker Street to The Marquis, leapfrogging over Davis’s stint as artist on Sandman Mystery Theatre. The Marquis finds us across the Channel in another alternate historical period; this one a mid-18th century France several steps enough removed from reality to be called Venisalle. These stories lean much closer to They Live than the previous series’ A Study in Scarlet: Marquis follows an ex-Inquisitor of the Church who can now see demons that have inflitrated Venisallian high society and acts accordingly. Thankfully, this means putting on a badass disguise and going after them guns literally blazing.

The bind itself is relatively straightforward, but a few things worth noting:

One, the wraparound covers used for Baker Street were flipped so they now appear as full-page spreads. Yay!

And two, is how LIGHT the book is despite its thickness. The reason for that is it’s made up of the original newsprint comics, not any of the glossier-papered reprints. A sheet of that newsprint weighs less than a sheet of a more-coated stock (like the cover stock used), so going this route gives you a noticeably lighter & more comfortable book to hold and read. Had I not had the option to use original issues, I doubt I would have put both series in the same book precisely because of the weight.

Why You Should Bid

Both of these series are currently out of print.

The Marquis has moved through several publisher since its debut in 1997: from Caliber to Oni to Dark Horse. The most recent Dark Horse trade came out back in 2012, so you will have to go aftermarket for it. There do seem to be plans for a big recollection of everything Marquis towards the end of 2020.

Baker Street, unfortunately, doesn’t appear that lucky. The series had been collected by Calber in two individual trades contemporaneous to its original run and later in complete collection as Honour Among Punks by iBooks in 2004. Both of those publishers have gone to the great newsstand in the sky by this point, so it would take a publisher like Dark Horse to step in and resurrect the work. The fact it hasn’t happened yet does not bode well for it happening any time soon.

The aftermarket prices for these books aren’t that high, and their storylines are pretty self-contained without excess spinoff miniseries and the like. So you COULD take the time & effort to track all those issues down and turn them into your own book via a binder using the techniques & approaches we cover every month in Shelf Bound . . .

OR

you could bid on the bind we’re auctioning today, get the benefit of someone else doing all that work for you, have two fantastic series together in one easy-to-lift package, AND do some good for the comics community we all love in the process!

Starting Bid: $25
Auction Ends: May 1 at 4pm EST
Proceeds Benefit: The Hero Initiative

AUCTION FINE PRINT

• This auction ends 72 hours after the date & time of this article’s posting.
• Bids MUST be placed as comments below to be valid.
• Bids from outside the U.S. are welcome; shipping outside the U.S. may incur additional fee.
• DO NOT TRY BIDDING FOR THE BOOK BY REPLYING TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT TWEET!!!!! BIDS SENT IN THIS MANNER WILL BE IGNORED!!!!!
• Highest bid posted before the end of the auction wins. The winning bidder has 24 hours to contact me via twitter or email (see below) to set up payment. If contact is not made in this timeframe, the winning bid is invalidated and the next highest bid will be the winner.
• Winning bidder will make the donation in the amount of the winning bid to the agreed-upon charity. Upon successful donation and receipt of receipt (hehe) by me, the bind will be mailed out via Media Mail on the following Saturday unless an alternate schedule is agreed upon by all parties.
• Feel free to post any additional questions you may have prior to the end of the auction below; I will do my best to answer them ASAP. Additional and/or specific pictures of the bind are available on request.
• Thanks in advance to anyone bidding on these binds. Good luck!