Comics collector, historian, and creator Scott Braden served as co-author of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide To Lost Universes #1, now on sale. Retailers can reorder this book now, and readers can now see a free preview (sans prices, you’ll have to buy the book for them).

Scoop: How would you describe The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide To Lost Universes to someone who hasn’t seen it yet? 
Scott Braden (SB): A four-color foray into the lost comic book companies of times past, and simultaneously an exhaustive catalog of future collecting possibilities.  

Scoop: What was your favorite part of working on this new book?
SB: I thoroughly enjoyed researching all these wonderful publishers and their stellar output. These books were all gems in their own ways and each of these company’s respective triumphs and tragedies will act as road maps for all the new publishers to come in our not-too-distant future.  

Scoop: Now that you’ve had a chance to see the finished product, what do you think?
SB: What was a labor of love has become a dream come true. Absolutely amazing.  

Scoop: As you know, at Overstreet we generally stay out of the prediction business, but what do you think is going to happen when people see this book?
SB: I believe comics from publishers like DEFIANT and Malibu that once filled comic book dollar bins will find new sales potentials.  

Scoop: What do you think might be intriguing about collecting Lost Universes for new collectors?
SB: They are both affordable and fascinating. Each of these comic book lines told their individual uber-stories with their various releases. Now, comic book enthusiasts can collect these stories in their entirety – and this book lays the map out before them.  

Scoop: What about established collectors? Is that a different answer or the same one?
SB: It’s new territory for advanced collectors to ponder, explore, and accumulate. 

Scoop: What’s your personal favorite lost universe (and why)?
SB: I am and always will be a DEFIANT fan because of the promise that Jim Shooter made to entertain collectors on a grand stage. Although the publisher’s main event, SCHISM, was unrealized, the excitement it still generates among fans is, at least in some way, a promise kept. 

Scoop: Although you haven’t been on staff for years, you’ve continued to freelance for The Guide and our other publications, and you’ve been an Overstreet Advisor. From your perspective, what is the Guide’s place in the development of our hobby/industry?
SB: It offers a place for collectors to gather and learn. It is a necessary tool for comicdom, as it has been since its inception in 1970, and always will be.   

Scoop: When you were Gemstone’s Research Editor, working with Bob Overstreet back in the days of Overstreet’s FAN, did you ever imagine that you’d co-author a book with him?
SB: Never in a million years. I’ve said it before, but Bob has forgotten more about comics than I will ever learn. It is a sincere honor to once again work with the great man.   

Scoop: What else are you working on these days?
SB: I am a contributing editor for Joel Meadows’ Tripwire: The Genre Magazine and a contributor to The Associated Press during presidential elections and such.  

Beyond that, my real passion is my and lauded children’s author Mike Malbrough’s exploration of pulp and circumstance, Kent Menace, which is published by American Mythology Productions. I originally conceived the character and back story in 1999, and it was my collaboration with Mike that breathed life into the supernatural sailor. Every aspect of the comic is layered with deep, geeky knowledge and reverence for the comic book as a genre. Kent Menace is a decidedly reflexive, self-referential comic book, and I am all too aware of our hero’s place in a long line of meta-fiction. For example, I cite Grant Morrison’s critically acclaimed revamp of DC Comics’ Animal Man, a popular tale impressing upon me what it would be like if a fictional figure came to life, as one of the forbears of our mysterious mariner. He’s a comic book hero who unexpectedly finds himself ripped from the pages of his fictional quests, followed into our existence by nightmarish creatures who threaten the world we puny mortals inhabit. 

In other words, life is good. But, I am always striving to make it better through comics. Aren’t we all? 

The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide To Lost Universes #1 is also available on the Gemstone Publishing website, if your local comic book shop doesn’t carry it for some unthinkable reason.