Robert Beerbohm

By the 21st century Beerbohm was selling vintage American popular culture artifacts (mostly comic books) via the Internet, and setting up shows across the United States.

Tom had enlisted in the Navy late Dec 1941.

His parents in affluent Piedmont section of Oakland, Calif kept buying one of each.

Placing them untouched on shelves in their son's bedroom.

Tom is killed during a kamikaze attack in the Pacific summer 1945.

His parents sealed the room.

Robert Lee Beerbohm (born June 17, 1952) is an American comic book historian and retailer who has been intimately involved with the rise of comics fandom since 1966.

Robert Lee Beerbohm was born June 17, 1952.

In October 1966, while still in junior high school, Beerbohm took out his first ad in Rocket's Blast Comicollector (a.k.a. RBCC) #47, launching what has eventually become known as Robert Beerbohm Comic Art.

Beerbohm set up a booth at his first comics convention June 16–18, 1967, at the first Houstoncon.

Traveling 28 hours on a Greyhound bus, Beerbohm turned 15 the first day of that seminal show.

Beerbohm estimated from June 1967 thru April 2012 he set up at a thousand comics shows.

Beerbohm was among the first generation of dealers to traffic in original comic book art, sourcing his originals from suppliers with sometimes questionable provenance, claiming to have bought hundreds of allegedly stolen pages of Marvel and DC art from dealers set up in a hotel room at the 1969 27th World Science Fiction Convention in St. Louis.

Beginning as a teenager in the late 60s, he became a fixture in the growing comic convention scene, while in the 1970s and 1980s he was heavily involved in Bay Area comic book retailing and distribution.

Beerbohm has been a consultant and author detailing the early history of comics in the United States, including rediscovering the first comic book in America, Rodolphe Töpffer's The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck.

He has supplied data and visual aids as listed in the acknowledgements of over 200 books on comics and counting.

He attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln from 1970 – 1972.

In late August 1972, ten days following the first El Cortez Hotel San Diego Comicon, with housemate Bud Plant and John Barrett, Beerbohm co-opened Comics & Comix on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California.

They died Dec 1972.

The young men ended up with 7/9s of the collection April–June 1972.

Within 3 months they had opened 3 more stores dubbing the corporate firm Comics & Comix.

In April 1973 Comics & Comix hosted the first Bay Area comics convention, Berkeleycon 73, in the Pauley Ballroom in the ASUC Building on the University of California, Berkeley campus.

Berkeleycon was the first comic-con that highlighted underground comix.

During the Berkeleycon they were blessed with what became known as the Tom Reilly 'pedigree' collection of close to 4000 white-paper, never-opened NM/M comic books published summer 1939 thru summer 1945.

Beerbohm, John Barrett and Bud Plant as Comics & Comix published the first three issues of Jack Katz' The First Kingdom beginning in 1974.

They also published comics by Jim Pinkoski and Dan O'Neill during Beerbohm's involvement.

Beerbohm sold out in early 1975.

He went 'solo' opening his first Best of Two Worlds early Nov 1976 at 1707 Haight St, San Francisco.

By May 1977 he opened a 2nd Best of Two Worlds on Telegraph Ave near UC-Berkeley, taking over his ex-partner's old location a block apart.

On Oct 4, 1978, with partner Gary Wood he opened The Funny Pages on Pier 30, the first high traffic tourist location comic bookstore in America.

San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf was then the 3rd largest tourist attraction in the world.

This location sold high-end popular culture artifacts.

In 1980 Beerbohm opened a third Best of Two Worlds on 4th St in Santa Rosa.

In 1982 Gary Wood sold his 50% to Robert Borden.

In early 1985 Borden and Beerbohm sold 14% to Rory Root.

In February 1986 snow-melt flood waters cascaded out of the Sierra Nevada mountains, causing widespread property damage in much of northern California.

Best of Two Worlds central warehouse was mostly destroyed.

It contained a million comic books, half a million cards, 10,000 concert posters, 3000 pages of original comic book art, plus 90% of Beerbohm's comics fandom archives 1966–1985.

After Best of Two Worlds was forced by natural disaster into bankruptcy, Beerbohm went solo again with a single store in Haight Ashbury, but moved to a better location at Masonic, a major bus transfer hub.

Two strokes saw him close it all down July 10, 2018.