Holy plastic slab! Untouchable comic books

Remember when comic books were considered too juvenile to be read? Now, it appears they have become too valuable to be touched.

A company in Sarasota, Fla., has created a sensation among collectors by taking their comic books, both rare vintage issues and brand-new ones, and encasing them in plastic slabs that make them both unreadable and instantly more valuable.

The Captain Marvel and Donald Duck comic books that arrive at the offices of Certified Guaranty Co. are treated like archival treasures of the highest order - armed sentries guard the lobby, technicians and appraisers wear latex gloves as they carefully examine each page, and a sophisticated sonic device is used to seal the books up in the sturdy plastic containers that some collectors call "coffins."

Depending on the age and pedigree of the book being appraised and "slabbed," Certified Guaranty charges from $12 to $1,000 for its services. In coming months the seven-year-old company will slab its millionth comic book.

That may be a 60-year-old issue of Detective Comics that costs as much as a Porsche, but it could also be the latest $3 issue of World War Hulk. About half the books that come to the company are fresh from the printer, and probably 80 percent of them have never been read.

All this seems like heresy to many old-line comic purists.

"It's changed the nature of the hobby, it's turned comic books into a medium of exchange instead of a medium of entertainment," groans James Friel, who works at Comic Relief, the landmark store in Berkeley, Calif. To Friel, who has been collecting comics since 1958, "it makes these books a sealed-up commodity - you can't read them. It makes me sad. Some of these books will be sealed up forever."

Frank Miller, arguably the most important comic-book artist of the last two decades, has seen plenty of fans lock up his books in the slabs in recent years, and he shakes his head at the whole concept.

"I think it's all pretty silly," says Miller, whose graphic novels 300 and Sin City have led to major Hollywood success stories. "But I'm of a generation that love the feel and smell of these ephemeral old leaflets. . . . Maybe it will get to the point where I can put out comics that have blank pages inside - just covers - and no one will notice."

The slabs are made with two sheets of thick, stiff plastic, and the books inside are encased in a thin, heat-sealed interior sleeve as well. A label inside the archival slab has a company hologram, a unique bar code, and a description of its condition with a numeric grade. The overall package is as sturdy as a plastic clipboard and lands with a clatter if you drop it on the floor.

Certified Guaranty's success story is not based on just the plastic "coffins" - it's also the company's introduction of a 25-point scale for grading the condition of comics. That new standard has brought a precision to the once-subjective hobby that has inspired a wave of investments by noncollectors. In other words, people who don't know the difference between Green Lantern and Green Arrow are now buying slabbed comics and putting them in safe-deposit boxes.

"With our grading, it's much easier for novices to come and buy valuable comic books and know what they are getting," says Steven Borock, company president and the primary grader. "In essence, what we offer is the cheapest insurance in the world. If you're buying a $5,000 comic book, why wouldn't you send us the book to be sure it's what you think it is? There is a long, long history of people getting ripped off."

And Borock should know: The reason he has his job now is that once upon a time he was the naive collector getting ripped off.

It's a sad day when a starry-eyed fanboy finds out that, in real life, truth and justice are not always the American way. For Borock, that heartbreak moment came in the mid-1980s after he decided to sell vintage issues of Amazing Spider-Man and The Brave and the Bold that he had been buying at comic-book conventions through the years. That's when the Brooklyn native discovered that many of his most prized issues had been doctored with acrylic paint, glue and paper patches to disguise flaws.

The surreptitious surgery made Borock's books into kryptonite on the collector's market. "They were worth about $16,000 less than I paid," Borock recalls. "If I wasn't such a die-hard fanatic, the whole experience would have chased me out of the hobby."

Instead, much like Batman, Borock sought vengeance for his youthful trauma. He didn't don a cape, but he did become an outspoken merchant and a detective of sorts, learning all he could from his father (who owned the Letter Guild, a prominent Manhattan print shop) about paper stocks and printing nuances.

He also learned all the tricks of "fixing" comic books - how a light dusting of Pam cooking spray could give a cover a false sheen (and, eventually, eat away at it), or how a ragged-looking cover could be given a nice clean edge with a careful razor cut. A rolled-up piece of white Wonder Bread, he notes, is an effective way to erase blemishes on old comic books without leaving streaks.

"But you have to take the crust off first," he adds.

This curious education paid off big for Borock when a new era began in comic books: the age of eBay. The online auction house created a major surge in the sale of comics, baseball cards and other collectibles. The problem was that crooks and rubes often came together in the bidding rooms. To be fair, even among honest dealers, there were wildly different definitions of what qualified as "mint condition."

"It was the Wild West," Borock says. "You could buy a book from someone who said it was in mint condition, and when it arrived, it was beat-up or missing pages. And what could you do? The person that sold it could say it wasn't like that when they mailed it, or they could say you had switched it with another book."

A company called Certified Collectibles Group, a mainstay in the appraisal of coins, took notice of the slippery comics marketplace and decided that a third-party appraiser - especially one that (literally) sealed the deal with a plastic-protected book - could make big money. Then it tapped Borock, who had become a figure of integrity to other merchants, to lead its start-up comic-book division.

"And everybody instantly hated me," Borock says. "Like 90 percent of the dealers. They hated what we were doing. People said bad things about me. . . . I lost sleep over it."

The naysayers accused his company of everything from biased appraisals to manipulating the market. Borock defended himself and his staff, but the mistrust still clearly pains him.

"My word is everything to me. Everything," Borock says. (He no longer actively collects vintage comic books, a nod to the delicate ethics of his post.)

The accusations faded through the years, and now there are many merchants and fans who will not deal in high-value books unless they are slabbed.

But there is still plenty of grumbling.

"Things will never be the same again," says Robert Beerbohm, a nationally known dealer who opened his first store in 1972. He was initially a sour critic of slabbing, but now he sells them.

"They changed the hobby, whether you love it or hate it."