DARK ADVENTURE CON RED CROSS DELUX PRINT SET

[ckb]

I have set #17.

I've gone through all this with Lon before. There are 25 deluxe sets. The first 10 of the 25 came with the non-Valiant autographed pics. That's the differentiation he's trying to make. So, unless non-Valiant autographed pics made out to another person are important to you then any of the first 25 sets should have the same value for you. To me, this is one of the coolest Valiant items ever made. ~Pete

Actually, the verbage we are seeing from Lon and the text of the letter from my non-deluxe set says that the first 10 of the non-deluxe 100 have the colored prints, H0 gold, and the non-Valiant autographed pics.

There's nothing I can see anywhere about the first 10 sets of the 25 deluxe sets having anything special with them.

I need to check, but I believe my sheet reads a little different.

I have a deluxe, a "artist proof" set, & a non-deluxe set. The deluxe & non-deluxe sets were purchased from a guy on the original board several years before Dark Adventure rereleased them. He bought them at the con. The proof set I bought from Dark Adventure a couple years ago. I'll check my sheets to see how they read.

PROOF SETS??????

[Zero]

I looked at the auction again. My set #17 has every item that is included in the auction except the non-Valiant autographed pics. My set came in the original brown envelope with the gold decal. It has all of the sales sheets that came with them. I think there's just a misunderstanding somewhere.

I was under the impression that the first 25 sets were deluxe, but that the first 10 sets (of the 25) came with the additional personalized convention autographs. ~Pete

[Zero]

I have set #17.

I've gone through all this with Lon before. There are 25 deluxe sets. The first 10 of the 25 came with the non-Valiant autographed pics. That's the differentiation he's trying to make. So, unless non-Valiant autographed pics made out to another person are important to you then any of the first 25 sets should have the same value for you. To me, this is one of the coolest Valiant items ever made. ~Pete

Actually, the verbage we are seeing from Lon and the text of the letter from my non-deluxe set says that the first 10 of the non-deluxe 100 have the colored prints, H0 gold, and the non-Valiant autographed pics.

There's nothing I can see anywhere about the first 10 sets of the 25 deluxe sets having anything special with them.

I need to check, but I believe my sheet reads a little different.

I have a deluxe, a "artist proof" set, & a non-deluxe set. The deluxe & non-deluxe sets were purchased from a guy on the original board several years before Dark Adventure rereleased them. He bought them at the con. The proof set I bought from Dark Adventure a couple years ago. I'll check my sheets to see how they read.

PROOF SETS??????

I will give you their exact verbage on what they called it as soon as I get home. I bought them because they were the hand colored prints. Lon told me they were not additional sets, but the colored prints left from the unsold 25 deluxe sets. He said there are only 25 sets of colored prints in existance, but that not all of the deluxe sets sold. Take that for what it's worth... Lon has not been real clear on this.

[krypto2000]

Hi,
This is Lon Webb of Dark Adventure in only my second post ever on this forum. The Deluxe print set in our ebay store is actually #3 of the first 10 of the 25 Deluxes. I'm running this for the original owner as a favor who has some medical issues. In writing the copy apparently we rely too much on memory & I need to pull the ad check the pics and rewrite it myself for the utmost in clarity's sake for the overzealous.
Anyway, the first 10 had the complete show package, the next 15 had the Hard Corps Gold w/out the autographs, etc. et al, ad nauseum. If anyone has as acute an interest as it seems just check out my other previous post from 2006 in the Valiant General Discussion forum for a very exhausting overview of the show, print sets, materials, history and so on I wrote from my original files & notes.
A primary reason I dig out & sell very little of our Valiant material & space out what we do sell is that it is just not worth the hassle of doing so (I even have a poor memory of our own material). If we sell one regular print set there must be 100,000 of them. If we sell a Deluxe (which incidentally, we've only sold two of those in the last 17 years and both to members on this forum) there must be 1000. If we sell a program we must still be printing them just as we must be printing promo preview books and Gold Books. I've even turned down selling the remainders of the regular prints we have in storage to some on this very forum who had a plan to re-do & re-sell them as a brand new "Red Cross" print set through this forum at a premium.
Anyway, it is a shame I have to state that everything Valiant-related I sell is legit (just ask anyone who has purchased anything from us) & is either material we originally produced for our con or Valiant or received from our distributors or Valiant. Valiant material is way less than even 1% of what we sell, so 'nuff said.
I would also like to say Hi to all on this forum I have had the good fortune to get to know over the years-thanks!

[mrwoogieman]

Lon,

Thanks for coming on here and addressing this issue; it's appreciated whether you believe it or not.

Sorry you find people who look before they leap in spending multi-hundreds of dollars on a non-publisher created collectible as "overzealous" and having an "acute interest". Yeah, maybe one man's cautious theorizing about the veracity of certain items is another man's "hassle", but I don't blame anyone who has concerns from voicing those concerns. Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has said Lon's a thief and no one has shown that you have misrepresented any of the items you have sold or are selling. I call it a healthy, cautious approach to collecting, nothing more.

Anyway, so long as you're around to give people reassurances I don't see that there is any issue here, other than more precision in the listing details for this particular auction.

Here is your original post so people don't have to go and look for it:

Hi,
This is Lon Webb of Dark Adventure Comics-I was contacted by the above post member & informed of this conversation thread. I had not even known this forum existed so I figured I would brush up on the past and jump on with some information. I literally thought no one even remembered our con outside Georgia, let alone the print set.
Our 1992 Con was built around Valiant who attended their first con primarily because of our Valiant Fan Club I had organized. The members basically beseiged their offices & I built the show around their response. I had known their marketing director, Jon Hartz, from trade shows before Valiant had even published a comic. We began an early great relationship & my store was a primary focus in the Southeast in promoting Valiant from the beginning as I had much faith in their ideas and we were a large operation.
Jon wanted to premiere the Hard Corps Gold at the show as a premium for the Valiant Fan Club & all card-carrying members received one and also anyone in a Valiant costume. Though they sent us cases for the show we returned all extras & kept a strict accounting. Jon also suggested a special Rai & the Future Force advance art/ad print to promote Rai as a premium for the Red Cross Blood Drive.
With discussion, this idea later morphed into an actual print set to be used for the Blood Drive & for a dealer's premium for the exhibitors. As this was a last minute special plan, our show ads promoted only the special Rai print & not a print set. From inception to actual show I had four months to keep w/Valiant's strict publishing schedule & we received three art mechanicals a week before the con & also had our con program cover & poster art.
In a perfect world, six months to one year is a must for scheduling an event like this one, but Valiant was the hottest ticket and they committed to us and only us for their first con contingent to following their schedule. Other companies could have learned about a tight ship from their early work ethic. It would have been even better had our advertising been able to reflect our final premiums but the schedule precluded that, yet in spite of this, word spread & we had a very large response on Con opening morning.
Hundreds of people arrived early, we learned the Red Cross had cancelled without telling us because they didn't feel a comic show would have a turn-out (!) & we didn't have enough programs for the demand for multiples. I got with Jon & we decided on the cuff to give away a print set to the first 100 people (amazingly enough, some people turned them down), get our printer on the ball for more programs & keep to our other plans-tight ship on the spot. I grabbed four volunteers and had 100 collated & quickly manilla-enveloped print sets done in 15 minutes w/the programs arriving every 30 minutes until noon.
To spare everyone the entire story of handling a massive response, it went off well with very few problems other than Bob Layton breezing in a little late (he had no idea he was to be greeted with a line out of the room and hotel). I laid out serious money for the show, advertising, national tv commercials during the premiere of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, etc. and by the end of the day Jon suggested after the prints were given to the dealers that I sell the remainder at the show to offset the cost of the event. I countered w/an idea to recreate the sets as a premium & nationally sell them for charity through CBG for the local children's hospital. Bob Layton volunteered to sign a print for each of them (the original Rai ad mechanical that was the original unprinted show premium I later printed that was meant to be an extra, tipped in print) & send some signed Hard Corps Golds & Jeff Austin volunteered to handcolor a limited amount of each as this was not a for-profit thing.
And that was that-a little over 300 of each of the prints were printed originally (in case of imperfections or damages for the 300 planned) & about half that was given away at the show. I set the remaining prints for the charity at 25 Deluxe sets (all handcolored) & 100 Limited sets and sent the initial ad for publication w/staggered prices for early numbers w/the premium package w/signatures. We had a nice initial response.
Then a primary partner at Valiant (who will remain unnamed for reasons anyone familiar w/the interior workings of Valiant will know-hint: he wasn't Shooter) apparently freaked that money was about to be made by someone off a promotion, whether it was for charity or not. Bob I believe fell into a sticky work situation & the prints sent him were lost & I temporarily (turned out permanently) cancelled the ad. Then they were found. Then lost again. Then found again & put to the side as promises and apologies kind of rained on us. Then I received the prints back unsigned & the Hard Corps Golds never materialized. That I received the prints back at all was probably Jon at work.
I cancelled the entire charity promotion at that point as I could only look so bad in the furthering of the situation I had been placed in. I filled the intitial premium print set orders from a few signed program cover & Unity prints that were signed by Bob witnessed & notarized at the show that I had personally made & purchased all I could of those 2 from Fan Club members to offset the problem along w/the required Gold books at $100 each.
The skinny: From the results of one ad over a space of 2 or so months most of the Deluxe sets were sold & filled. Of the Limited set of 100 most of the very early numbers were sold & filled & of the balance about a third were sold & filled. I have dead accurate numbers & fill rates somewhere in my 1992 paperwork files of 27 boxes & I'm not anal enough to spend days digging as my taxes were done correctly & audited.
The numbering of the sold sets varied as buyers could request a particular number or it be our choice so they were not filled sequentially. Jeff handcolored around 40-50 complete sets (what a fantastic, special artist!) of which 25 were in the Deluxe, 10 in the first 10 of the Limited & 1 of our decision going into each of the filled later numbered sets. To be specific, there was not one designated print that was handcolored for the 1 in each of those, but one of the four on hand, so any one of the four could be the colored print in one of those sets sold.
At that point all monies received were sent to the charity, the remaining prints went into storage boxes with all show non-accounting paperwork, programs, tickets, etc. & disappeared into the morass of store accumulation in the warehouse. I moved forward as this was a very disappointing situation for me as the Valiant I loved was swiftly moving into a greed hell that consumed part of the company & promises made in good faith turned to avoidance. Nuff said. I will say Jon & Bob were always exemplary to me and at later dates sent me special in-house materials, enough Darque Brew to get me drunk if I wanted, professional fanboy one of a kind stuff and even introduced me to Aerosmith in Chicago. When I last spoke to Jon in San Diego, he was retired and had bought a farm in CT & was a gentleman farmer. Bless him.
Fastforward 12 years & the dissection of the remaining warehouse began moving slowly on to free up space. A box w/some prints here. Later a few there, all put to the side. A few weeks ago, a fellow store owner contacted me out of the blue & asked about rare Valiant stuff & I dug through it and sold him one of each of some material. A friend of his emailed & wanted info on the remaining sets and I put together the con sets that were on hand then and he will probably purchase them for a very reasonable price. The past week we put together a few sets of loose remainders & have a few loose colored ones and placed one regular set on ebay to see if anyone remembered it.
Sorry to disappoint any doomsayers but that's it. No 4000 laying around, not 400-the math is there to reach the conclusion. Not only that, but in all honesty there are not even 25 Deluxe sets & 100 Limited sets that were actually filled & in circulation, so they are actually more scarce than you know. To be technical, the Gallery on this site should actually list the Valiant Fan Club regular con B/W set of four as an actual item as they were the first to exist & were given out at the show. There was also an in-store set of 5 sets signed by everyone & all present club members we gave away at our Valiant Fan Club store private sale. The plain manilla envelope is no great shakes as they were just a temporary container & have no intrinsic value whatsoever-many people tossed them & a few actually tossed the print sets at the show to lighten their load. Premium sets were housed in portfolio mylar, again with no intrinsic value.
I have seen variations of the presentation of the regular sets done by dealers who received them back then to try to maximize returns for themselves but these are just blowing smoke and again, are not sets of original integrity. We produced a limited number of con videos of the awards presentations & panels & guests for the fan club also and none were ever sold to the general public. If you ever see one of these the label reads "Dark Adventure Con '92" and has a small Valiant logo w/TM w/my handsigned initials "AAW" below it w/NOT FOR SALE.
The Unity & Rai prints were gold-embossed at the lower logo, the program print has 2 autograph spaces which were mostly filled in w/signatures of Jeff & myself on numbered and premiums & left blank for the recipient at the show to have signed themselves by Valiant personnel. The Rai ad print we did for Bob's signature was never signed, just returned with many damaged & we have all of these somewhere-not one is in circulation and as a bonus addition was never completed. Please don't mass email me to try to dig them up.
The true rarity of the entire process is more the material, membership cards & ephemera of the Valiant Fan Club, which was local, not national, and existed for 1 year and was entirely non-profit. I created it w/Valiant's blessing & created all the materials for them and they ran it and probably still have most of these items personally. I do not have stock on them & the items I have are not for sale-this was a true FAN club.
I promoted Valiant for years & made a modest amount of retail dollars during that time. If you knew our store you also know that until 1993 you could buy virtually any Valiant back issue in our store at cover price-we carried Solar #1 for 2 years. From the beginning I back ordered all remaining Valiant titles from my distributor by the thousands & sold every one at cover price in my quest to help a company I loved become huge. Locally, I was thought insane but the quality was unsurpassed and reasonable. I never made a dime on the con-I lost money. The con was never for the money. It was for the fans.
This was probably too much info for most but it has been a trip down memory lane (and I thank Jeff Austin and a few old employees for their sharpening of the memory for this) and if you read it all you love Valiant as much today as I did then, when you could get as truly excited about comics as you did when you were a kid. That is what this has always been about for me other than honest business. I sold my store location in 1998 to care for my terminally ill mother until her death 3 years later & now do mainly mail order, trade shows & ebay. My mother was a fixture in my store for years as hundreds of customers know & handed me my first comic book at 5 and the values that started me off. Everyone should be so blessed. Thanks for your time.

[ckb]

Lon,

The old post and the new post are in conflict with each other and the letters that came with the "regular limited" and "deluxe" set.

From the "regular limited" letter (#34) which I obtained by purchase through CBG:

The Red Cross Print Set is limited to 100 sets signed and numbered by Jeff .... with sets 1-10 being hand colored by ... and including and HARDCorps 1 Gold .... and an autograph package...

From the "deluxe" letter (#18) which I obtained by purchase through CBG. Note there is no mention of anything special about sets 1-10.

The Deluxe Red Cross Print Set is limited to 25 sets, numbered and hand-colored by Jeff .... including and HARDCorps 1 Gold signed by Bob Layton...

There is no information anywhere about the first 10 numbers of the Deluxe x/25 editions containing anything special - except in your recent auction for set #3 of 10 (what I am contending) of 100 and your recent post here.

If you happen to remember what issues of CBG your ads appeared in for the sets, I may be able to get access to those and provide them as well.

[geocarr]

Well Lon, if you're still reading, thanks for all the great Valiant items I've been getting and the great shipping job. Sorry I doubted you earlier in this thead!

[Squirrel]

I just sent this to Lon:

As one of the original purchasers of these sets from the offering in CBG in the early 90's, I wanted to state that my color set with HC 0 Gold is numbered out of 25, not out of 10. I could probably dig up the CBG ad which also says the deluxe edition is limited to 25. Please explain the discrepency.

We will see what he says.

We know he has been taking "leftovers" of the non-color prints and selling them a-la-carte. If he is "manufacturing" color sets as well, I would not be a happy camper.

Wish I knew this before I purchased this from him.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Valiant-Capital-Cit ... dZViewItem

The cover with the Magnus is not so nice, was that the one my 6 yr old submitted at the last MotorCity Con???

[Smashey]

The more I read this topic, the more I become confused. I dont even understand the original post.

Hundreds of people arrived early, we learned the Red Cross had cancelled without telling us because they didn't feel a comic show would have a turn-out (!) & we didn't have enough programs for the demand for multiples. I got with Jon & we decided on the cuff to give away a print set to the first 100 people (amazingly enough, some people turned them down), get our printer on the ball for more programs & keep to our other plans-tight ship on the spot. I grabbed four volunteers and had 100 collated & quickly manilla-enveloped print sets done in 15 minutes w/the programs arriving every 30 minutes until noon.

So were these just done on a regular photocopier? I dont really understand what they are.

If so, couldnt i just buy this and own as many as i want with my copier?
program and poster
Or were these made by valiant or something?

[Zero]

The more I read this topic, the more I become confused. I dont even understand the original post.

Hundreds of people arrived early, we learned the Red Cross had cancelled without telling us because they didn't feel a comic show would have a turn-out (!) & we didn't have enough programs for the demand for multiples. I got with Jon & we decided on the cuff to give away a print set to the first 100 people (amazingly enough, some people turned them down), get our printer on the ball for more programs & keep to our other plans-tight ship on the spot. I grabbed four volunteers and had 100 collated & quickly manilla-enveloped print sets done in 15 minutes w/the programs arriving every 30 minutes until noon.

So were these just done on a regular photocopier? I dont really understand what they are.

If so, couldnt i just buy this and own as many as i want with my copier?
program and poster
Or were these made by valiant or something?

This was a print set that was authorized by Valiant. They actually had a creative hand in the end product. It was supposed to be a fund raiser for Red Cross at the convention.

The quality of printing is very high & the prints have gold embossing. Your everyday person would not have the means to forge them. Also, the deluxe prints are hand colored. Could they be reprinted or forged? Yeah, but so can every comic book you own.

[krypto2000]

Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the emails I have received-it is unusual to get some on a topic other than basic business stuff. Anyway, it is a hassle to sell Valiant material especially when it's ME creating the hassle! I will avoid any excuses and outright say that when I sat down w/the set for sale & started on reviewing and correcting the copy I just took a look at the COA & knew at once I was incorrect & posted to the forum off the top of my head (not a good thing).
This is #3 of the limited set of 100, the first 10 of which have the autographs included, NOT a Deluxe (sometimes they all blend into one thing in my mind, which is not clever). I would have posted back immediately but I took the time this morning to dig out some original info from our files and it indeed matches up. The owner had told us that it was Deluxe & the confusion went on from there as I noted it was in the first 10 w/the whole package. I should have just taken the time to sit down & do it all myself & I am accountable so I take responsibility for the errors & my incorrectness.
It is embarrassing that I made such an error on our own promotion, but we did did dozens w/companies over the years & as I said, I eat crow.
In reply to an earlier post, the prints were very high quality & our printer was indeed a real printer (with a press, etc) and not a copy shop.
They were actually fairly expensive to produce at the time.
In response to a few other emails, no, we do not have any Fan Club merchandise for sale-most of that is still in the hands of the original members as far as I know & my material is stored away. And yes, we do still on occasion sell regular print sets that were left over from the original giveaway at the show & there are not many of those. And no, we do not "manufacture" colored, limited or any other kinds of prints other than those originally done which are mostly in the hands of the original purchasers. To this day Jeff would have no interest in handcoloring again (it was a thankless job for him) and handcoloring is obvious to the eye & not reprintable.
Our original CBG ad was sometime in late '92 to the best of my memory & I have a copy of it somewhere but it doesn't contain any other relevant info other than discussed here & previously other than the staggered (or staggering) prices on the early # sets.
So again, thanks for the emails and I reiterate that it's good someone keeps me on my toes and again, apologies! Hello to rufusharley, geocarr & a list too long to note-
Lon Webb

[ckb]

Thanks Lon. We just want to get it straight.

[geocarr]

Thanks Lon for taking the time, energy, and humility to clarify and educate us Valiant geeks on something that I think most of us agree is not only unique but very special and a treasure to own for those of us lucky enough to own one. Good luck in the future! Come to Heroes Con in Charlotte and I'll buy you a drink!

[krypto2000]

Hi,
Again, thanks for keeping me on my toes. Just looking at the COA was obvious, as the first 10 had the autographs also but I wanted to doublecheck. But I do reiterate, this is #3 of 100 of the limited set with the first 10 containing the whole package. Thanks-
Lon Webb

[krypto2000]

Hi George,
If I get to Heroes this year I might just take you up on that! It is always good to get together w/people-
Lon