Comic book collectors gather up.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

If you don't know who Carl Barks is, if you subscribe to the misguided notion that comic books are to be read and not entombed in plastic, if you stopped collecting action figures before you reached your teens - well, then, you don't know what you're missing.

What you missed was the fourth annual Eugene Comic Book and Collectible Show at the Lane Events Center.

More than 300 visitors and 55 vendors attended the Sunday show, a benefit for the Cottage Grove Lions Club. The gathering was part of a time-honored ritual in the comic book subculture - one of at least 15 comic book conventions held over the weekend around the country, from Calgary, Canada, to Mobile, Ala.

Comics, once the province of kids, are now bought and sold mostly by grown-ups, who spend hundreds and thousands of dollars for the right, rare comic.

Consider, for example, David Patterson, the owner of a small Eugene company that "grades" comic books for a fee, then encapsulates them in hard plastic for collectors. Patterson isn't grading quality of art or story line, but rather the physical condition of each comic.

Patterson, who's been collecting comics for 15 years and grading them for 10, started his company about four years ago after he decided the U.S. market could support a second comic book grading company.

He charges $10 to assess a modern book and $20 for a golden age book - those published before 1956. Rare comics cost more to grade. Business has been growing steadily, and his company, which employs seven people, now grades about 1,200 comic books a month, he said.

Rare comics can go for big bucks. Detective Comics No. 27, where Batman made his first appearance, sells for $450,000 in near mint condition, said Anthony Eberle, who organized the Eugene show. A near-mint Action Comics No. 1, which introduced Superman to the world in 1938, can go for $550,000.

Ryan Elliott, a Eugene collector and dealer, said the most valuable comic in his 100,000-book collection is Coo-Coo, drawn by legendary Disney artist Carl Barks. Elliott said it's the only known copy of the comic, which came out in 1930, and he said it's worth $10,000.

Barks, who was born in Merrill and died in Grants Pass, was best known for creating Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge McDuck and other denizens of Duckberg.

Across the hall, comic book artist Mike Royer told another chapter in the Donald Duck saga, as it relates to his longtime role as University of Oregon mascot.

Donald has been the face of Oregon athletics since the 1940s, when UO Athletic Director Leo Harris struck a handshake deal with Walt Disney enabling Donald's likeness to be used as the university's mascot. The deal was finally put in writing in 1973.

Royer, who spent 21 years as a staff and freelance artist at Disney, got involved with the Oregon Duck about 15 years ago. That's when the powers-that-be at Disney's consumer products division grew concerned that the quality of Donald images being used by the UO was lacking, he said.

So Royer was part of a three-artist team that created a slate of new duck images for the university to use. They created artwork depicting the Oregon duck in a variety of athletic guises, including football, wrestling and track, Royer said.

But the one that stuck, and became a popular campus logo for years, shows an angry-looking Donald, wearing a beanie, pumping his fists and bursting through the eight-sided Oregon O.

"It looked good and professional and met the approval of Disney," Royer said.

CAPTION(S):

Tymon Sturgeon, 9, inspects a comic book at the Eugene Comic Book and Collectible Show.