WESTMINSTER, Md. (AP) – A Westminster business is hoping Thor, Captain America and the Green Lantern can help generate sales this summer. After all, this business is selling products with the superheroes’ faces on them.

Gotham Comics owner Keith Forney stocked up on Green Lantern, Thor and Captain America comics, graphic novels, T-shirts, action figures and posters, and he’s hoping the hype surrounding the upcoming films can generate more business this summer.

“I’m looking forward to the release of the movies and hopefully they do well,” Forney said. “And if they do, I anticipate they will generate more business for me, but, more importantly, I hope the movies are good and everyone enjoys them.”

Thor opened in theaters on May 6, Green Lantern opens June 17 and Captain American: The First Avenger opens July 22. Forney doubled his stock of Thor and Captain America comics and graphic novels. He usually has about 11 different volumes, but he now has more than 20 in stock. He’s also increased his stock of Green Lantern comics and graphic novels by 50 percent, and he stocked up on back issues in case a reader wants to catch up on a series before a movie is released, Forney said.

Sometimes comic book adapted films have a positive impact on business, Forney said, but sometimes they do not.

“It really depends if it’s a good movie or not,” Forney said. “If it’s a bad movie, there’s very little chance it’s going to motivate people to come in the shop.”

For Forney, the most recent biggest impact a film had on business was in 1989 when Batman, starring Michael Keaton was released.

“That was a well-received movie with an all-star cast,” Forney said. “It was also darker and grittier than previous superhero movies, so that kind of gave way to new possibilities for comic book movies.”

More recent films The Watchmen and The Dark Knight also increased sales at Forney’s store. The movie trailer of The Watchmen, shown before The Dark Knight, drove customers to Forney’s shop, and the demand for the graphic novel skyrocketed, he said.

The Dark Knight boosted graphic novel sales by 50 to 100 percent in summer 2008, Forney said. Prior to the movie, the shop was selling five novels per week, but after the movie was released, Forney began selling 10 each week. The shop was selling one or two Watchmen novels per month, but after the trailer debuted, it sold about two or three per week, he said.

Comic book fan Samantha Weaver, 19, is planning to see both Thor and Green Lantern when they come out in theaters.

“For the comic books, Thor is great because it has really strong villains and Green Lantern is neat because of all the abnormal powers,” Weaver, of Westminster, said while shopping earlier this month at Gotham Comics. “If the movies are good people might be pushed to read the books.”

Sam Robinson, store manager at J&M Comics and Games in Eldersburg, said comic book movies help business, but more so leading up to the movie rather than after it.

“We see a lot of people coming in and trying to get the older books for whatever movie is coming out and we’re seeing a lot of that for Green Lantern right now,” Robinson said. “People definitely like to refresh themselves on the story so they’re all ready when they go to the movie.”

Other comic shops in Maryland and Pennsylvania are also stocking up on items to supply new and old customers.

When Iron Man was released in 2008, comic sales increased by 10 to 20 percent, said Charles Fitzsimmons, store manager of Cards Comics and Collectibles in Reisterstown. The shop was selling 30 Iron Man comics per month, but after the movie debuted the shop began selling 35 to 40 per month, he said.

With Thor and Green Lantern debuting soon, Fitzsimmons is expecting the store’s stock of action figures to fly off the shelves.

“They are definitely going to sell,” Fitzsimmons said. “I think Thor could have the most impact because noncomic book fans may be interested in the mythological aspect of it.”

Comix Universe in Hanover, Pa., has added five to 10 Thor-based comics and graphics novels to its normal supply, said Rob Bream, co-owner of the comic shop. This summer, Bream said he is expecting a jump in comic and graphic novel sales because Thor and Captain America both tie in to next summer’s release of The Avengers.

“Every year more and more people are getting interested in these movies,” Bream said.

In preparation for the Green Lantern, the store will be receiving a special collection of five comics, with each one showcasing a main character in the movie, Bream said.

Douglas Cathro, an employee at Beyond Comics in Frederick, said the shop has stocked up on Thor hammers and helmets, and Green Lantern mask and ring light up sets.

“Thor and Green Lantern are the two big ones right now,” Cathro said. “We’re expecting a lot of new and old customers.”

Last month, a customer came in who read the Thor comic books when he was younger, Cathro said, and he purchased the older books when he learned the movie was being released. Other older customers came in and purchased copies of the Thor comic books for themselves and their children, he said.

Some new customers come in because they want to learn the history of a certain character, Cathro said.

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Information from: Carroll County Times of Westminster, Md., http://www.carrollcounty.com/

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewrittin, or redistributed.

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PITTSFIELD, Mass. (AP) – At a local auction, Colin Twing bid $60 on what he thought were two 19th century railroad tickets, figuring each might be worth that much apiece.

As it turns out, the Pittsfield man acquired a pair of baseball tickets that two researchers are calling rare finds for the national pastime.

Twing, who has been shopping at auctions for 10 years, is now the owner of what looks like a season ticket from the late 1860s or ’70s to the Athletic Club Base Ball Club of Philadelphia and a ticket to the 11th annual National Association of Base-Ball Players convention that took place in Philadelphia on Dec. 11, 1867. The ball club and the association were precursors to the modern organizations.

“They are earlier than the earliest tickets that we have in our collection, and they date from 1871 to 1874,” said Tim Wiles, the director of research for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Wiles examined scanned images of the two tickets that Twing sent him via email.

But Wiles said he doesn’t know if they are the earliest baseball tickets that exist. “We don’t know what is in other private collections,” he said.

Wiles said it’s hard to tell what price the tickets would fetch on the open market. The Hall of Fame doesn’t appraise baseball items.

Twing has brought the tickets to the attention of some auction houses.

“Everybody’s got a different opinion,” Twing said. “The auction houses are saying that it’s hard to put a value on these because there’s no precedent.”

The tickets are printed, but each ticket bears a handwritten, “Philadelphia Inquirer,” suggesting both had some connection to the newspaper at the time.

Renowned baseball historian John Thorn discovered Pittsfield’s 1791 town bylaw banning “base ball” – currently the earliest known reference to the sport in North America – seven years ago. Thorn says the earliest known ticket having something to do with baseball is a social gathering given by members of the Magnolia Baseball Club on Feb. 9, 1843.

Thorn also examined Twing’s tickets through pictures, and called them “very rare.”

“I’ve never seen a ticket to a National Association meeting before,” he said.

At the 1867 convention, the National Association’s nominating committee banned black teams from joining the group, which marked the beginning of the color line in baseball, Thorn said.

“So it’s definitely an historic ticket,” Thorn said. “It’s the real thing.”

Thorn said he believes that the Athletic Club of Philadelphia ticket is most likely a season pass, because it contains perforations that indicate each time it was presented, the number of games was punched.

Thorn also believes the pass may date from the early 1870s because it appears similar to season ticket passes that were issued in 1874. The Athletic Club of Philadelphia is not related to the Philadelphia Athletics, the major league team that exists today as the Oakland A’s.

Twing, who buys and sells antiques, rare books and musical instruments, said he didn’t realize how significant the tickets were until he returned home from Fontaine’s Antique Auction Gallery in Pittsfield and examined them in greater detail. He bought them in what’s known as a box lot.

John Fontaine, owner of Fontaine’s Antique Auction Gallery, said he was unaware of the tickets and that they were likely included in a box lot.

“I looked at what was on the tickets, and I saw the date, 1867, and I said, ‘Oh, boy,’” he said. “So I did a little research of my own, then I called the Hall of Fame.”

“It’s a piece of good fortune,” he said. “You look for these kinds of things. You go to estate sales and you look for things that are really going to pay off. You settle for things that you can buy for $50 and sell for $100. But if you can buy something for $50 and sell it for $5,000, that’s what you look for. It happens two or three times a year.”

Twing said he plans to sell the tickets – “I’m not financially well off where I can donate these things” – but would be interested in selling them to someone who was willing to donate them to the Hall of Fame. The Hall only displays items that are donated or on loan.

The tickets are “worth what someone is willing to pay” for them, Thorn said.

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Information from: www.berkshireeagle.com/

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

AP-WF-05-14-11 0403GMT

 

CLEVELAND (AP) – When Wanda Jackson was a teenager with a gravelly voice who opened for Elvis Presley in the 1950s, nobody had ever heard a woman sing like that before.

By then, Presley was already gyrating his way to superstardom. But Jackson – called the “queen of rockabilly” for her gritty, feisty performances – couldn’t even get her songs played on the radio.

“It’s like they just got their heads together and said, ‘We will not help this girl do it,’” the 73-year-old Jackson recalls. “They just wouldn’t play my records if it was the rock stuff. So it didn’t take long before I was putting a country song on one side of a record and a rock song on the other.”

Jackson’s old acoustic guitar will be featured at a new exhibit dedicated to female artists that opens Friday at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in downtown Cleveland. “Women Who Rock: Vision, Passion, Power” chronicles the pioneering role of women in rock ‘n’ roll, from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith to Bikini Kill and Lady GaGa.

The hall of fame had toyed with the idea of opening such an exhibit for years, and it gained traction after Cyndi Lauper paid a visit last year and watched a film about the roots of rock, said Jim Henke, vice president of exhibitions and curatorial affairs.

“She thought it was too male-dominated,” Henke says, “and she wondered where the female artists were.”

Museum officials say just about 9 percent of its inductees are women – a reflection of the rock industry, which was a macho culture at its core, says Glenn Altschuler, a Cornell University professor who wrote the book All Shook Up: How Rock n’ Roll Changed America.

“Women were the subjects of songs,” Altschuler says. “They were the objects of affection. But they appeared in the audience and not on the stage.”

There weren’t many role models for women who wanted to make it big in the early years, says Shirley Alston Reeves, a member of the hit 1960s girl group The Shirelles.

“You know, somebody has to break the ice,” Reeves says. “We wanted to do it because we enjoyed the male groups and the harmonies, and we thought it would be a good idea.”

Darlene Love, who is considered to be one of the greatest background singers of all time, says many women sang backup vocals because the prevailing belief was that they ought to stay in the background. At the peak of her career, Love sang on records for the likes of The Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra and Luther Vandross.

“Women are the backbone of rock,” she says. “If you listen to every record that has probably been recorded in the last 60, 70 years, there are women in the background, not men.”

Gender discrimination was still alive and well in the 1970s, when some radio stations would not allow deejays to play two singles by female artists in a row. And for women such as Nancy and Ann Wilson, who were just beginning to form a their rock band called Heart, there were industry assumptions about who they were supposed to be as artists.

“You can’t be aggressive, you know – you have to be a little shy, retiring female,” says Ann Wilson, who some critics say is one of the best rock singers in music. “Well, you know, that doesn’t fly with us.”

Since rock was “invented by men to get girls,” as Wilson puts it, female artists struggled to mold the industry in their own image.

“Just because we’re female, we don’t necessarily think we have to come out dressed as porn stars,” she says. “There’s more than one way that it can be. You have choices.”

The museum exhibit itself is an exercise in contrasts. There’s the gold bustier Madonna wore during her “Blond Ambition” tour and handwritten lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s first album. There’s Bonnie Raitt’s dobro guitar and a Mickey Mouse Club jacket worn by Christina Aguilera. There’s the nude rhinestone outfit that Britney Spears famously revealed at MTV’s Video Music Awards in 2000 and Stevie Nicks’ handwritten lyrics to Stand Back. Oh, and let’s not forget Lady GaGa’s infamous “meat dress,” which is also on display.

Visitors can watch a short story about how women in rock have shaped music, and the museum will host educational programming throughout the year highlighting the history of female recording artists. On Friday, Jackson and Lauper will headline the museum’s annual benefit concert.

It is a triumphant moment for Jackson, who is enjoying the most success she can remember as she tours the country performing with Jack White, formerly of The White Stripes, promoting the new album they recorded together.

“The new fans of our little simple ’50s rock music, they have gone back and found all these songs and sing along with me,” Jackson says, “And I thought, ‘Man, this is what I wanted in the ’50s and ’60s but never had that opportunity. So I’m certainly enjoying it big-time now.”

Some artists, though, are not so sure that times have changed as much as they’d like. The industry still pressures female artists to play up their sexuality because that’s what sells, says Liz Phair, who is most lauded for her 1993 album, Exile in Guyville. The pressure was so intense, Phair says, that she felt she had been stuffed into a “little typical box” and tried to turn the exploitation on its head.

But she has since learned to coexist with the status quo.

“There was a moment when the cool girls were kicking ass and taking names,” Phair says. “And right now it’s the hot girl. I’m happy, personally, as long as our numbers are up.”

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-05-12-11 1907GMT

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