We love to brag about our customers especially when they are as cool as Joe Keller! Keller is the writer and director of the new short film Artifacts which is premiering at the Neighborhood Theater Saturday, January 15 at 2 pm. Special guests Bat Regurgitator will be on hand to perform Soul, the theme song from the film.

Here is the synopsis for the film direct from Keller himself:

“Photographer Clayton Ardubon leads a life of indulgence comprised of women and success. But no amount of either can satisfy the hole at the center of his life. That is, until Marion, an ex-lover from his youth, shows up unexpectedly at a showing. Fueled by an insatiable curiosity and a longing for days gone by, Clayton tracks down Marion. But his search leads to Marion’s daughter, Paige; a rebellious youth who opens the door to an unexpected love affair as dangerous as it is sincere.”

Check out the trailer for Artifacts on YouTube to get you pumped to see the short film! For more information visit the Artifacts website. It is full of behind the scenes info, cast and crew listings and trailers! I highly recommend that you make it out to support this wonderful up-and-coming filmmaker!

Artifacts Short Film Premiere with live performance from Bat Regurgitator
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Doors open at 2 pm
Neighborhood Theater
511 E 36th St.
Charlotte, NC 28205

The only thing we love more than hearing about the cool things our customers are doing is letting everyone know about the cool things our customers are doing! The debonair Adam Crohn has started a comics blog entitled Absolute Omnibus. It is jam packed with comic related news, reviews and much more! Crohn has been creating custom action figures and so far has a Red Skull, Aquaman and Moon Knight. He also has Message Boards set up so you can chat with fellow comic book readers. Coming soon to the site is a complete listing of every Absolute and Omnibus in existence. Head on over to Absolute Omnibus for your comic-related website fix!

Time flies! The last Heroes Discussion Group was over two weeks ago, but it sure seems like yesterday. We posted a few pictures from the meeting on our Flickr site. Everyone had a great time! Heroes would like to thank everyone who came out to a Heroes Discussion Group this year. Thanks to you, it was an exceptional year of debate and conversation and we hope that you will continue to support the group in 2011. If you haven’t made it to one yet then let your New Year’s Resolution be to attend at least one of these lively meetings. We have a great time talking about some amazing comics. Thank you everyone for your help and support! We will be announcing January’s discussion group topic shortly. Until then enjoy these pictures from the Tintin discussion group!

Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find is starting off the New Year right! We are proud to announce that the Charlotte Minicon will be Saturday, January 22, 2011 from 11 am to 5 pm. The show will be at the Palmer Building at Fireman’s Hall which is just half a mile from our store. We love having our Minicon at this cozy location and it is well worth the $3 admission price just to come and check out this cool, old building. If you are not familiar with the location, fear not, we will put up signs along 7th St. to help direct you to the event!

Our awesome guest list includes Rich Barrett (Nathan Sorry), Chris Brunner (Boondock Saints, Loose Ends), J. Chris Campbell (Zig Zag), Sanford Greene (1000), Dustin Harbin (Diary Comics #1), Jason Latour (Noche Roja, Scalped, Wolverine), Budd Root (Cavewoman), Bridgit Scheide (Kindle), Andy Smith (X-Men Forever 2) and Chrissie Zullo (Fables #100).

We are also pleased to announce our very special guest Chris Stevens! Stevens popped up on the radar doing illustrations for RPG’s and working with UDON Entertainment on numerous projects. He then made a splash in the world of sequential art with a pair of short stories that appeared in Image’s Popgun 2 and 3 anthology volumes. The shorts evolved into the new series, Skullkickers from Image. Stevens is the cover artist for the series and issue #1 has gone to a 3rd printing (that’s a lot of covers)! Stevens was a very popular guest at HeroesCon 2010, creating this gorgeous Captain America for our annual Art Auction. His work so impressed Adam Hughes that he had to go home with the piece! Special thanks go out to the one and only Patrick Sun for capturing an image of Cap before Hughes snatched it up. Please give Stevens a warm Charlotte welcome when you stop by his table!

In addition to our special guests there will be a room full of dealers from all over the Southeast selling their comic wares. Come by to dig for comics both new and old as well as other comic related items like toys! As a special bonus treat the Charlotte Minicon will feature pony rides (weather permitting)! All you have to do is donate at least $3 to the Latta Plantation Equestrian Center. Funds raised will go to erect a covered area at the center. I can’t think of another convention that can boast that they have pony rides!

We hope to see you Saturday, January 22, 2011 at this incredibly fun, family-friendly event!

Charlotte Minicon
January 22, 2011
11 am to 5 pm
Admission is just $3!
Palmer Building at Fireman’s Hall
2601 E 7th St
Charlotte, NC 28204

click image for print version

Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find is on the road again but this time we don’t have to go far! Sunday, December 19 is the Charlotte Comicon and this great one-day show is in our own backyard. Print out the coupon on the right and you and 3 of your friends will get $1 off the admission price! The Charlotte Comicon is a fun, family-friendly show and Dave Hinson and Rick Fortenberry do a great job putting together this quarterly convention. This is the perfect place to dig for bargains and to purchase any last minute Christmas gifts! Plus they have a bunch of great guests in attendance, like Bradd Parton, Andy Smith, Budd Root, John Aston, Eraklis Petmezas, wolly vinyl, Al Bigley, Chrissie Zullo, Derek and Nikki Davis, James McGee, Chris Sim, Chad Bowers and many more! Check out their website for the full list. The convention also provides free parking at the Cowne Plaza Hotel parking deck.

Special Update! We will be giving away a Steve Niles signed Mystery Society #1 HeroesCon Variant to everyone who asks. Just find our booth and say you heard about the offer on the blog and we will give you a free comic! These will be given out throughout the day while supplies last.

Charlotte Comicon
December 19, 2010
10 am to 4 pm
Admission is $3 (You get $1 off if you use the coupon Heroes has provided!), Kids 12 and under get in FREE!
Crown Plaza Hotel
201 S. McDowell St
Charlotte, NC 28204

Stay tuned to the blog for updates related to the Charlotte Comicon. We have a surprise or two up our sleeve!

Christmas is right around the corner and the time for buying gifts is running out. If you still have some comic fans on your list I have a top five list of books for the young and young-at-heart.

1) Thor The Mighty Avenger

I love this book! It is beyond wonderful. Roger Langridge’s storytelling combined with Chris Samnee’s art makes for a perfect superhero book. Every page is filled with love and joy. You can definitely tell that Langridge and Samnee love what they do. Thor The Mighty Avenger is an out of continuity book so you don’t have to worry about knowing characters’ histories. There is an over arching story but, for the most part, each issue is a stand alone and easily enjoyed on its own merits. The first trade paperback just came out and it contains the first four issues. It is currently up to issue #7 and unfortunately it is being canceled at issue #8 but at least that means it will be easily possible to collect the entire series of this wonderful comic!

2) The Little Prince

Joann Sfar recently adapted Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s beloved children’s classic and it is fantastic. I love the way Sfar interpreted the story. It is a beautifully packaged hardcover book and at $20 it is worth every penny. It would make a perfect gift for an older child or an adult who remembers reading the story when they were younger. Along these same lines, Jim McCann and Janet Lee‘s Return of the Dapper Men is a fantastic book. Everything about it is wonderful. It is a modern take on the fairy tale genre. The art is beautiful and that story is thought-provoking. Again this could easily appeal to a child or an adult.

3) Tiny Titans

Tiny Titans makes my heart smile. It is geared towards younger kids but anyone can enjoy this comic. It is full of activities and it is also full of DC related jokes. Art Baltazar and Franco do an amazing job on each issue. Each issue is adorably humorous. Most recently they did a Tiny Titans/Little Archie crossover book. Aw Yeah Titans! I would love to wake up Christmas morning and find a few issues tucked into my stocking or a few trades wrapped up under my Christmas tree. If you are looking for other kids superhero books Chris Giarrusso‘s G-Man is an excellent book too. Or if you are looking for a cute and adorable Marvel comic, his Mini Marvels are both cute and adorable.

4) The Muppet Show Comic Book

I am sure you have heard me wax poetic about the Muppet Show Comic Book before but that is because they are that good. I particularly love the Roger Langridge issues but all of them are fun to read. My favorite storylines are Meet The Muppets, On The Road and Treasure of Peg Leg Wilson. The comic book is magically able to capture the feel of the show. It truly is like watching an episode of the show. Kids can giggle at the sight gags and adults can enjoy the word play. It is the perfect gift for any comic book fan or any Muppet fan!

Boom! Studios (who publish the Muppet Show Comic Book) have a wonderful kids’ line. They genuinely put out high-quality books that kids and adults can enjoy. There have recently been a number of titles that have really stood out to me. Cars The Adventures of Tow Mater was an excellent book that was goofy and fun and yet well-written. Tow Mater is my guilty pleasure. I really do adore that tow truck. Also, Darkwing Duck is amazing. It completely captures what was awesome about the cartoon and puts it on the page. The same can be said of Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers even though only one issue is out so far. With the release of Toy Story 3, the Toy Story comic would be a perfect companion gift. I really enjoyed The Mysterious Stranger and The Return of Buzz Lightyear. The current issues (Tales From the Toy Chest) have been great too though.

5) Secret Science Alliance

This is the perfect gift for that precocious child on your list. The book is about three kids who happen to all be secret scientists. They discover that a villain plans to rob a local museum so they attempt to stop him using their brains and their inventions. Secret Science Alliance is a really smart book that any kid interested in science would enjoy.  It might even get them interested in inventing. It will also appeal to Indie comics fans as it is written and drawn by Eleanor Davis and inked by Drew Weing. Davis is well known for her mini comics including The Beast Mother and Bugbear. Weing’s recent book Set to Sea was reviewed on this very site!

It has been a rather exciting and busy year for us at the Heroes Discussion Group. At our Annual Stock-Holders meeting at Heroes HQ in the Cayman Islands, we agreed that wanted to end this banner year by giving ourselves a well-deserved Christmas present. And what could be a better treat than to sit down and discuss the single most popular and beloved comic book series in the history of the four-color art form? None other than the world famous Belgian boy reporter–Tintin by the famed cartoonist extraordinaire Herge.

With the three mega-movies on the horizon, the Tintin juggernaut will finally conquer the American audience. We want to make sure we sit down and examine and appreciate this seminal series before the civilians (you know who they are– some of us even live with some of them!) get their mitts on it. But which of the 7 volumes to tackle?? Believe me, any would have filled the bill nicely. Our fearful leader Shawn decided to run a poll to let Heroesdom Discussioneers vote for which volume to spotlight. With over half of the vote, the clear cut winner is Adventures of Tintin Volume 1 – which contains Tintin in America, Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus.

Please plan to join us in the back of the store on Saturday Afternoon, December 18 from noon to 2 pm for the Tintin Discussion Group!

Issues we hope to discuss will include:

Why the first 3 books?

Is this the desire/compulsion of most (if not all) comic readers for completion and continuity?

The art and storytelling in Tintin — what makes Herge‘s oeuvre the Primer for much of the past century’s Comics Literature.

How do we handle the near century old anachronisms and era (in)appropriate racial stereotyping?

What is the continuing appeal of the Tintin comic?

Why has the series escaped such mega-stardom in America while it is the single best selling comic of all time throughout the rest of the world?

How does Tintin remain as popular with young female comic readers without any sort of lead female character?

Most importantly:

Are the Thompson Twins actually related to one another

and

Can Snowy really speak?

The mind reels!!!!

So give yourself a well-deserved break from shopping, cleaning, cooking, eating and the general feeling of Holiday Stress and join us for an entertaining two hour oasis. We will meet in the back of the store on Saturday afternoon December 18th at noon. We will most likely head across the street to one of the local watering holes– Hey, this is a celebration for Rao’s sake.

The Tintin 3-in-1 volumes are available from Heroes for a low, low $18.99. Don’t forget the Heroes Discussion Group 10% Discount which is available on Volume 1 provided you remember to mention it at check-out. For those of you who have not read any of the Tintin adventures– you will be clamoring to read the following adventures as well. And all of these volumes make superb Holiday presents. This is not me shilling for Heroes, I am just stating a fact of Comic book life.

See you there!

Below is the official Press Release from Heritage Auctions announcing the start of The Savannah Collection auctions. The signature auction will be February 24, 2011 and books will continue to be auctioned off throughout the year in the Sunday Internet Auctions. Click here to sign up for a Free Membership so you will be ready to bid when the time comes. You will also be signed up for the newsletter and you will have access to the full scans of the books as they become available. For more information about the bidding process click here. We will be updating the blog regularly with information about The Savannah Collection auctions especially when the catalog becomes available!

$1,000,000 comic book collection to be auctioned in Dallas

Heritage announces “The Savannah Collection” of more than 40,000 comics, starting Feb. 24, 2011

December 15, 2010 – DALLAS, TX – Heritage Auctions has announced that a newly discovered collection of more than 40,000 comic books, “The Savannah Collection,” spanning from 1958 to the present and valued in total at more than $1 million, will be sold by the firm beginning Feb. 24, 2011.

The collection has already been recognized as a pedigree collection by the certification service CGC, one of few collections from this era to receive that designation. The comics are being put up for auction by Shelton Drum, proprietor of the Charlotte, NC comic store Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find, and a comic seller for three and a half decades.

Drum purchased the comics from the original collector, a Savannah, GA resident who was middle-aged in the late 1950s when he began collecting in earnest, but continued purchasing every comic he could for the following 50 years.

“I was amazed by the consistent quality of the comics from 1959 and up,” Drum said. “While quite a few people have extensive collections of superhero comics from that era, almost nobody bought every genre. This collection also has all of the science fiction, horror/mystery, romance, and war comics, as well – lots of books you don’t usually see as a dealer or a collector. This guy bought everything! He collected DCs and Marvels as well as the other publishers like Charlton and Dell.”

The collector had an ingenious way to make sure he never missed an issue: he acquired the comics directly from the distributor from the late 1950s through the 1970s.

“It’s tough to overstate the importance of this, because it means the comics don’t have the various markings that news dealers would make on comics back then,” said Steve Borock, Consignment Director for Heritage, “and, of course, they’ve been handled much less than comics on the racks would have been. Condition is everything in comic collecting.”

Drum, who today runs the well-known Heroes Convention in Charlotte each year, had organized one-day comic conventions in various states throughout the 1980s, and the collector knew him from those days.

“The pre-1975 comics were in vertical stacks, with the earliest issue at the bottom,” recalls Drum of his first look at the collection. “The first stack I got into had a mid-1970s issue of X-Men on top, and when I got to the bottom there was X-Men #1. I knew this was going to be something special right then.”

“The very best comics from the collection will be featured in a special auction catalog in February, and we’ll be offering the remainder to our bidders throughout 2011,” said Ed Jaster, Senior Vice President of Heritage.

Heritage Auctions, headed by Steve Ivy, Jim Halperin and Greg Rohan, is the world’s third largest auction house, with annual sales more than $600 million, and 500,000+ online bidder members. For more information about Heritage Auctions, and to join and gain access to a complete record of prices realized, along with full-color, enlargeable photos of each lot, please visit HA.com.

Want to get the up-to-the-minute updates and breaking news stories about Heritage Auctions? Get them as they happen at: www.Twitter.com/HeritageAuction; Facebook: www.HA.com/Facebook.To view a compete archive of Heritage press releases go to: HA.com/PR. To link to this press release on your blog or Website: HA.com/PR-1953.

click image for print version

Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find is on the road again but this time we don’t have to go far! Sunday, December 19 is the Charlotte Comicon and this great one-day show is in our own backyard. Print out the  coupon on the right and you and 3 of your friends will get $1 off the admission price! The Charlotte Comicon is a fun, family-friendly show and Dave Hinson and Rick Fortenberry do a great job putting together this quarterly convention. This is the perfect place to dig for bargains and to purchase any last minute Christmas gifts! Plus they have a bunch of great guests in attendance, like Bradd Parton, Andy Smith, Budd Root, John Aston, Eraklis Petmezas, wolly vinyl, Al Bigley, Chrissie Zullo, Derek and Nikki Davis, James McGee, Chris Sim, Chad Bowers and many more! Check out their website for the full list. The convention also provides free parking at the Cowne Plaza Hotel parking deck.

Charlotte Comicon
December 19, 2010
10 am to 4 pm
Admission is $3 (You get $1 off if you use the coupon Heroes has provided!), Kids 12 and under get in FREE!
Crown Plaza Hotel
201 S. McDowell St
Charlotte, NC 28204

Stay tuned to the blog for updates related to the Charlotte Comicon. We have a surprise or two up our sleeve!

Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find will have a big presence at the Raleigh Comic Book Show on December 12. We are thrilled to announce that Budd Root and Andy Smith will be making the journey with us! They will be signing autographs and doing awesomely affordable convention sketches all day long. Root and Smith both are incredibly talented artists who have been pleasing fans for years and now is your chance to have them do a commission just for you! Or if you are feeling in the holiday spirit you can get one of them to do a drawing as a Christmas present for a friend or family member. Who wouldn’t want a Superman by Andy Smith or a Cavewoman by Budd Root under their tree on Christmas morning? We want to help support Lyn Anderson and his long-running Raleigh show and we hope that Root and Smith will be an extra attraction that benefits this great event!

The show is Sunday, December 12 from 10 am to 4 pm and admission is FREE! We would love to see all our regulars there in attendance! It is fun and laid-back convention and it is the perfect place to dig for bargains. We are super excited to be a part of this show! We will be bringing our ever-popular convention stock which is fully loaded with some of the best comics from the 80’s to this week! For more details check out their page on the Convention Scene website. Also, you can let your Facebook friends know that you are attending and by doing so you can help us spread the word!

Special Update! We have some incredible giveaways to announce for the Raleigh Comic Book Show. We will be giving away a Steve Niles signed Mystery Society #1 HeroesCon Variant to everyone who asks. Just find our booth and ask Shelton Drum for your copy! These will be given out throughout the day while supplies last. Also, we will be doing hourly door prizes so don’t forget to stop by our booth and sign up! We will be giving away some awesome prizes including hot variants and cool back issues. The winner of the 4 pm door prize will be walking away with a copy of X-Men #94 that we will choose out of our very own stock! You are not going to want to miss out on the Raleigh Comic Book Show!

Don’t forget that the Charlotte ComiCon will be on Sunday, December 19 from 10 am to 4 pm at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Rick Fortenberry and Dave Hinson put on a fun show that is perfect for digging! We hope to see you there!

Raleigh Comic Book Show
Sunday, December 12
10 am to 4 pm
Free Admission!
Holiday Inn Crabtree
4100 Glenwood Ave.
Raleigh, NC 27612