Mob City TV series posters
Author: Bert Ehrmann
Dangerous Universe has been Bert’s web playground since 1998 when personal web sites were a rarity rather than the norm.
Underrated & Under Appreciated: Zero Effect (1998)
Over the last few years there’s been a few attempts at reimagining and modernizing the Sherlock Holmes mythos with movies like Sherlock Holmes and TV series Sherlock and Elementary. I think one of the best reimaginings of the ideas behind the Holmes stories is the movie Zero Effect.
Here, Bill Pullman plays Daryl Zero, a reclusive Howard Hughes-like private investigator who is so good at what he does he’s paid an obscene amount of money for his services. Zero and associate Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller) are hired by businessman Gregory Stark (Ryan O’Neal) to find out who’s been blackmailing him. But the case, of course, isn’t as it seems and as Zero instantly uncovers the true identity of the blackmailer, the question Zero wants answered is why is this person targeting Stark in the first place?
While most versions of the Sherlock Holmes character are, if a bit eccentric, are none-the-less put together and suave. Daryl Zero isn’t. He’s practically a shut-in, eating only tuna and drinking Tab locked in and alone in his penthouse apartment between cases. But when Zero is on a case that excited him he becomes almost manic and uses his skills of careful observation, a mastery of disguise and almost limitless bank account to get to the bottom of almost any mystery.
And that’s where the real fun of Zero Effect comes from, Zero is a total screw-up most of the time, doesn’t take the feelings of others into account and is a pretty gross person overall. But he does this one thing really, really well. Daryl Zero might not make a good friend, but he’s someone you’d want to be on your side in a pinch.
Unfortunately audiences stayed away from Zero Effect when it was first released and it earned a paltry reported $2 million at the box office. Ever since I saw the movie for the first time a decade ago I’ve been waiting for others to find this movie on TV or DVD, but so far it hasn’t happened. Here’s hoping some new generation of film fans will discover this underrated and under appreciated gem.
Zero Effect is available on DVD and Amazon Instant.
“Now, a few words on looking for things. When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you’re sure to find some of them. ”
-Daryl Zero
Cool images of the week for September 6, 2013
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A mishmash of cool images I’ve collected throughout the week.
New Doc Savage comic due out this December
At Baltimore Comic-Con 2013, Dynamite Entertainment announced it has signed a new licensing deal with Condé Nast, granting access to publish a new ongoing “Doc Savage” series this December, bringing all-new adventures for the fan-favorite pulp hero into a new generation.
How I made $1,500 selling 3 comic books on eBay
Typically I don’t collect things because I think they’ll increase in value, I collect things because I think they’re cool. That’s why I bought the first issue of the comic book The Walking Dead (TWD) back in 2003, because I thought it was cool and was interested in the story. After I’d read the comic a few times, I bagged it up, filed it away in one of my comic book boxes and all but forgot about it.
Until recently, that is.
A few weeks back I noticed a local comic shop had posted on Facebook that were surprised to see that the first issue TWD was worth $800. I didn’t believe this since a) TWD #1 came out less than 10 years ago and conventional wisdom says that only comics 50+ years old are worth that much and b) no comic I’ve ever owned has been worth much of anything.
Sure, I’ve had a few comics over the years that were worth $20 or $30, but $800? Out of the question.
But that post had my interest piqued, even if TWD #1 were worth $100 I might be able to make a few bucks selling it. So I did a bit of research and found that TWD #1 wasn’t worth $800, it was actually worth closer to $1,000! And a cursory search on eBay revealed that several issues of TWD #1 there had active bidders, which is important, with bids upwards of $500+.
Why is TWD #1 worth so much? Two reasons. First the TWD TV series is incredibly popular and secondly early issues of the comic had very short print runs. For example, while a popular comic today might sell 200,000 copies, reports indicate that only around 7,000 copies TWD #1 were ever printed making it a rarity for collectors looking to own it today.
Having collected comics all my life and seeing the insane price swings that comics can take and the fact that what’s popular today won’t necessarily be popular tomorrow, I wanted to sell my copy of TWD #1 as fast as I could and make as much as I could while I still had the chance. Knowing that the comic could easily increase in value later on but it could just as easily decrease in price faster than I could sell it.
First I had to find my copy of TWD #1. I’ve got boxes and boxes and boxes of comics and I had to dig through practically all of them to find it. In my digging I also found copies of TWD #2 and #3 that I had bought back then too. And, luckily for me, all were in great shape with no scuffs or corner dings. So I took photos of my stash and put each issue in eBay under separate auctions all with starting bids of $25 each.
Within five minutes of posting the auctions I had bidders contacting me wanting me to pull the auction and sell them the comic directly, which I took as a good sign of interest. By the next day bidders had sent #1 to over $200 and that’s where I thought the auction would sit for the next week until closer to the end of the auction.
But that’s not what happened.
Over the coming days more and more people bid on my TWD #1 auction, and in no time the comic was sitting at nearly $600. And to be honest, I was ecstatic that something I had bought for $3 was worth even that much. But on the last day of the auction the bidding really took off. First $700, then $800 then $900. At one point the bids were coming so fast that the eBay app on my phone let out a series of “dings” to let me know new bids had been placed for nearly ten straight seconds.
Then the auction settled at $1,000 and I began to literally shake. Somehow I had gotten lucky, had won a sort of nerd-lottery and had a copy of the most desirable comic out there at one of the most desirable times to be selling that comic.
In the end I got $1,050 for TWD #1 and that along with #2 and #3 would net me right around $1,500 for all three issues, of which eBay would take about $50 in fees and I would spend more than that to insure and ship the comics to the various winners.
What do I plan on doing with the money? Using it as a slush fund to buy more comics and toys, of course!