10 Facts About the Internet Guaranteed to Astound You

With comic books now available online, advertising comic books being online, and the ability to find out ANYTHING about comic books online, it’s time we took a look at the history and facts about being online.

Here are 10 Facts About the Internet Guaranteed to Astound You (well....they astounded me)

1.)  There are 47 BILLION websites including the first one that was created 24 years ago (can you tell me the site?).  There’s no telling how many are filled with adult content but one would think there is at least a billion.

2.)  There are 3.2 BILLION Internet users worldwide accounting for almost 44% of the global population.  Almost half of the Internet users are based in Asia.  The other half are sitting in a Starbucks or a Panera Bread at this very moment.

3.)  There are 950 MILLION households worldwide with a television, but twice as many people access the internet with a handheld device.  In fact, I just realized that my handheld device is also a telephone!  That is so cool!

4.)  YouTube visitors view 6 BILLION hours of video each month and over 300 minutes of video are uploaded every second.  80% of those visitors are from outside the U.S.  No wonder world opinion about the U.S. is so questionable.

5.)  There are 1.49 BILLION people on Facebook who use the social media site an average of 21 minutes every day.  Those same people also share 1.3 MILLION pieces of content every minute.  Whether the content is interesting or not is another story completely.

6.)  Facebook accounts for the highest percentage of total time spent on mobile apps at 18 percent.  When you add Facebook Messenger and Instagram the total reaches 22.4 percent.  The second highest percentage spent on mobile apps is on Pandora, which account for 10.5 percent.  Say bye-bye to Pandora if Facebook develops a music streaming service.

7.)  Between 5 and 10 MILLION iOS apps are downloaded every day and more than 100 BILLION total apps had been downloaded as of June 2015.  I am positive that if you subtract out the apps I’ve downloaded both numbers would be dramatically lower.

8.)  In 2015 we will send and receive 205.6 BILLION emails, 60% of which will be spam (all of which land in my mailbox).

9.)  It is estimated that 1 TRILLION photos will be taken in 2015.  In 2000 there were only a measly 86 BILLION taken.  I’d love to see a study on how many of those are selfies.

10.)  The web as we know it--Facebook, Amazon, Wikipedia, etc.---represents only 1 percent of the total discoverable web.  The remainder is what is referred to as the “deep web”, an area not discoverable by standard search engines.  It is also the final resting place for all of the socks that I have lost and, occasionally, my car keys.

Think about it for a minutes, it took the telephone 75 years to reach 50 million users.  It only took the internet 4 years.  It only took Angry Birds 35 days.

So, the next time you are cursing your tablet or smartphone for taking more than 5 seconds to download a song remember that it is a staggering accomplishment that you can do it at all.


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Just Give Me a Friggin’ Sign!!

This post will be somewhat of a rehash and it won’t focus as much on comics like normal, but it needed to be written.  Consider it therapeutic.

It’s no secret that my son and I are trying, very hard mind you, to get our business regional and national attention.  The fact is that this blog is read internationally as well as nationally.  I want to thank all of the readers in China, Japan, Malaysia, Germany, the UK, Portugal, the US, Canada, and several other countries.  The hard part about thanking people is that you don’t want to miss anyone, so if I missed you I apologize.

Anyway, we are trying to get our business more exposure.  As you know, we buy, sell and appraise comic books and we run a charity called “Comics Help Kids Read” that gets comic books in the hands of kids who are learning to read.

Recently I’ve felt as though we weren’t gaining enough traction and saw that we were actually losing followers on Twitter and Facebook.  Being a hard working and ethical person I often look to the universe to somehow reward me for staying on the right path and doing the right thing.  In the past this has always been the case.  I also look for signs that the universe is listening and look for any possible forms of “feedback” that confirm that it’s “listening".

I got that feedback recently and here’s the story.

I keep notes posted all over my office and bathroom (the two places I spend time thinking) that are motivational and designed to help me with my “self-talk”, the stuff I say to myself in my head.

Oh, don’t tell me you don’t talk to yourself in your head.  You give yourself feedback constantly.  Things like, “I look terrible in this shirt” or “Why couldn’t I get that thing to work?”.  That kind of stuff.

Having read that your “self talk” is very important I keep these notes hanging all over the place and my wife puts up with it.  I want to remind myself to think positive.  To put those positive vibes out into the universe.

Then I check to see if the universe is listening.

It sounds freaky and new-ageish, if new-age is even a term anymore, but it’s not.  It’s being written about more and more that what you say to yourself is important and what you think changes your life.

I recently started a business partnership with someone to do something outside the comic book industry.  Like you, I need income so I needed a revenue stream to keep a roof over my head.  But in doing so the doubts hit me.  Shouldn’t I stay focused on one thing?  Shouldn’t I stick with the comic book business and keep pushing until it takes off?  I admit I was really torn.  It’s no secret that my wife has cancer and if I don’t have income I can’t take care of her and my kids.

So, I put it out to the universe.  What should I do?  Where should I focus?  I need an answer!!

I didn’t immediately see an answer as I had hoped.  Trust me, I looked and looked.

So, here’s the rehash part.

Then yesterday it came.

I was in my office working on plans for The Comic Whisperer and how we could continue to grow and I, as always, heard a piece of a TV show my wife was watching.  It was the Garage Brothers.  A show I blogged about previously.

As I said in the previous blog I don’t watch much TV, I prefer to read or mess around on my iPad, so I don’t catch many episodes of, well, anything.  Name a show and I can virtually guarantee you I haven’t seen more than a couple of episodes...if any.  There are exceptions; I love American Horror Story, Impractical Jokers, The Carbonaro Effect and Dexter (which is no longer making new episodes) but in general I don’t spend much time in front of the TV.

So, since Garage Brothers has had many episodes that aired the chances of me seeing (or hearing in this case) an episode I was familiar with was virtually nil.  Actually, that’s what’s nice about not watching TV.  Whenever you sit down in front of the boob tube you are almost guaranteed not to see a rerun.

Hearing it was on, and me needing to take a lunch break,  and almost guaranteed that I hadn’t seen the episode, I sauntered into the living room and sat down.  The show was at a point where they were just uncovering something so I came in at a good point.  I recognized the piece immediately.   They were uncovering a statue of the Silver Surfer.  This was the show with the comic book expert....the only episode I have ever seen.  The very one I blogged about.  What were the odds??

I took it as my sign.  Stick with the comic book business.  Stick with doing what I know and love.  After all, isn’t naming a show Garage Brothers making a commitment?  They can’t exactly go off and start an accounting firm.  They are committed.  American Horror Story can’t start showing a romance (unless it has a gruesome ending).  They are committed.  Michael Carbonaro can’t do a show on remodeling houses (unless he just makes new furniture appear).  He’s committed.

Again, I owe a debt to the Garage Brothers.  It’s just weird that the lesson comes from the same freakin’ episode.

All this being said, we can’t fail can we?  The universe told us so through that episode, right?  The odds of seeing the same episode when countless others could have been aired is too small, right?  It had to be a sign.  Well, this sign said “Garage Brothers” and I am going to take it and run with it.  It’s what I wanted anyway.

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We look forward to many years of serving you.  The universe said so.

Old School Collecting

I am fortunate enough to live near a bagel shop that is owned by a gentleman and his wife that sells comic book art along with their deli/bagel items.   The funny thing is that he tells me his shop has been there for 12 years and I never saw it because it was on a road I don’t normally take.  Having lived here for more than 15 years I may have missed out on some good items.  The good thing is that I now know it’s there.

The gentleman is easily recognized when you walk through the door.  Not because he is the only gentleman behind the counter but because underneath the hat he wears is a crop of bright green hair.   Hair that can easily be confused with the hair of the comic book villain, the Joker.  I would put a picture of this gentleman, but I haven’t gotten his permission to do so and I don’t feel comfortable doing it.  Take my word for it, though, he looks like the Joker would if he worked at a bagel shop.

I commented on his hair and he handed me his card.  He is famous for going to ComicCons and dressing as the Joker.  It’s no secret that I live in CT and he calls himself CT Joker.  My son, knowing that there is a person who dresses as the Joker at local ComicCons, and is known for his high pitched Joker-like laugh, asked him if he was, in fact, him.  He responded by laughing this high pitched shrill laugh that could easily be that of the Joker himself.  It was him.

What a rare find, a bagel shop owned by someone who may be the Joker come to life, and it was miles from my front door.  The comic art for sale was an incredible find as well.  It will soon find it’s way onto the walls of my office.

Needless to say we all got talking comics, collecting, and the value of individual comics we have.  The topic eventually came around to old school notions about collecting and grading comic books.  I had to get in a plug for my business, so I started digging into his thoughts after collecting for 35 years himself:

“I’m The Comic Whisperer and I have a local business that is known for buying, selling and comic book grading.”

“Wow, that’s cool.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an independent appraiser outside of CGC doing grading on comics I see on eBay.”

“No, you won’t.  I do more of private stock for old school collectors.  I’ve been grading comics for over 40 years.  I was grading before the appraisers at CGC were even born.  I’m not criticizing them, it’s just a fact.”

“Yea, I wanted to get a comic book graded but I didn’t feel comfortable sending a valuable comic of mine through the mail not knowing who got it and how it was handled.”

“I know what you mean.  Many people feel like that and that is where my business comes in.”

I went into a gratuitous advertisement for my business that you really don’t want to read, so I’ll skip ahead.  He continued:

“I’m more old school when it comes to collecting.”

“Yep, me too.”

So, what does old school mean?  For those of you that are in your 20’s or 30’s you won’t know exactly what he is referring to, but I do (I’m way out of my 20’s and 30’s).  Old school means that you treat every comic book with care, don’t let anyone else handle them without you watching like a hawk, and you still like to read your collection.  This means you don’t get your comics sealed in a shell, you still read your comic books, you don’t send them away for a stranger to handle, and you certainly don’t sell them unless you are forced to at gunpoint.  In other words, you treat your comics with tender loving care, like your kids.  Your don’t lock your kids in a shell, you still like to talk to your kids, you don’t let strangers babysit your kids, and you would’t give them up for anything in the world.  THAT is old school.

I have to say it’s nice being old and watching how comic book collecting has evolved over the years.  I don’t always like the way the trends are going, that comics are treated like museum pieces not to be touched or read and they are sold at the drop of a hat for a profit.  But things change and that’s good, I like change.  My way isn’t always the right way and without change I’d still be riding a horse to a client’s house.

The very next day we were back at the flea market looking for good deals on comics and something hit me.  It hit me when we got to a stand that was selling an old dental hygienist chair that dates back to the 70’s (still younger than me...sigh).  There was a crowd around it of people talking about what a great find it was.  I talked to an older gentleman next to me (yes, older than me) and said:

“It looks like what was out is now coming back in.”

He nodded his head and smiled and said:

“So true, I wish that I had kept all my stuff instead of getting rid of it.  I could sell it for a fortune today.  It’s all coming full circle.”

I couldn't agree more.  All of these new fangled ideas of locking comics away never to be read again or buying them just to flip them for a buck (my apologies to those who have comic book businesses or stores, you are the exception and the reason for me living) will come to pass and the old school will come back again.  It all does come full circle.

I’ll be ready when it does and please remember who I am.  I am The Comic Whisperer.  I can be reached at any time of the day or night and comics are my life.  Please follow me at:

Facebook:         The Comic Whisperer
Twitter:             @Comic_Whisperer
Instagram:         The Comic Whisperer

I also have a charity in which I collect donations and old comic books to donate to children who are just learning to read.  You can donate at:

www.gofundme.com/comicshelpkidsread

I look forward to working with anyone who want their comics treated like they’re my own.