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 4, 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!
MILESTONE: WELCOME TO DAKOTA
Written by: Dwayne McDuffie, Robert L. Washington III, Ivan Velez Jr.
Drawn by: Denys Cowan, Mark Bright, John Paul Leon, ChrisCross, James Fry III, J. H. Williams III, Arvell Jones, Trevor von Eeden
Inked by: Mike Gustovich, Jimmy Palmiotti, Steve Mitchell, Andrew Pepoy, Mike Manley, Shawn Martinbrough, John Lowe, Shepard Hendrix, Robert Quijano
Colored by: Noelle Giddings, Janet Jackson, James Brown, Rachelle Menasche, Michelle Wrightson, John Cebollero, Prentis Rollins, Jason Scott Jones, David Montoya, Chuck Drost, Tom Roberts
Lettered by: Steve Dutro, Janice Chiang, Steve Haynie, Joe Brozowski, John WorkmanPublished by: Milestone Comics (DC Comics)
Collecting:
- Hardware #1-10 (April 1993 – December 1993)
- Icon #1-9 (May 1993 – December 1993)
- Blood Syndicate #1-8 (April 1993 – December 1993)
- Static #1-7 (June 1993 – December 1993)
Additional Material: None
Bind Details:
- Oversewn binding
- Eggplant Arrestox cover material
- Black/white headbands
- White endpapers
- Page edges trimmed
Signatures: Yes (Denys Cowan)
Sketches: Yes (Denys Cowan)
Bound by: Herring & Robinson Bindery.
I may want this book as an official release more than any other bind in my collection.
Milestone is one of the caveats one adds when saying comics in the Nineties were horrible. There are others, for sure: Bone, Starman, Leave it to Chance, just to name a few. But the comics Milestone put out from their launch in 1993 to their shuttering in 1997 were consistently some of the best mainstream superhero titles of the era. And the craft that went into them, married with their mission statement of making sure underrepresented minorities were given attention, made them some of the best of any era.
Books like Icon, Blood Syndicate, Static, and Hardware weren’t the one-dimensional ‘black comics’ some retailers and critics derided them as, and partnering with DC didn’t make Milestone the sellout company some independent black companies of the day dismissed them as. Milestone was smart editors & businessmen licensing their well-crafted & diverse comic line (on the page and behind the scenes) to the second-largest comics publisher in North America to get a vision of what comics could be to as wide a swath of the marketplace as possible.
The fact they did this just prior to the lowest point in the history of the industry is just one in a long line of bad breaks Milestone and its fans have had to endure. Among the others is an almost complete lack of collections for that original material, despite being actively partnered with DC several times in the last decade or so. Out of the 38 comics collected in this book, representing the initial storylines of the four Milestone launch titles, none of them are currently in print or available digitally on DC Universe. Fourteen issues from two of the series had been collected at some point previously (Icon #1-6 as “A Hero’s Welcome” twice, and Hardware #1-8 as “A Cog In The Machine), but nothing from the others.
I know this isn’t done out of spite. I know there are legal issues needed to be straightened out. I know things get announced early or things change overnight. Life happens; I get it. But these comics need to be available. I got tired of waiting for that big Milestone omnibus from DC . . . so I made my own.
Continued below
When I later saw Denys Cowan was tabling at a nearby comic show, there was a split-second of indecision about what book I was going to show him. Was it my two-volume Question bind? I really enjoy what he did on that series, what he brought to Denny O’Neil’s work. But then I realized that wasn’t what was going to make the trip; it HAD to be this book. After smiling and flipping through the pages, he immediately picked up a pen and starting making this happen:
Why You Should Bid
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 me doing all that work for you, AND getting a sweet Denys Cowan sketch thrown in, AND do some good for a specific part of the comics community we all love in the process . . . because this auction’s donation will go directly to The Dwayne McDuffie Fund!
Handled by his widow Charlotte Fullerton, the Dwyane McDuffie Fund’s goal is “to help establish The Dwayne McDuffie Foundation, which will be a non-profit organization to award academic scholarships for diverse students. The fund will also continue to keep Dwayne’s vision alive by managing and maintaining an archival website for research purposes, and applying on behalf of Dwayne’s fans for his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”
His list of accomplishments is way too long to list here (even if I weren’t already pushing the limits of verbosity), but suffice it to say that without Dwayne, the comics landscape would be an even dimmer place than it already is without him still in it. If there’s a way we can get the Dwayne McDuffie Foundation a little closer to reality and specifically keep his legacy alive, then we owe it to him to do that. He certainly did enough for us.
Starting Bid: $25
Auction Ends: May 4, 2020 at 4 pm
Proceeds Benefit: The Dwayne McDuffie Fund
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.
- 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!
