Holy plastic slab!

Instead, much like Batman, Borock sought vengeance for his youthful trauma. He didn't don a cape, but did become an outspoken merchant and a detective of sorts, learning all he could from his father (who owned the Letter Guild, a prominent Manhattan print shop) about paper stocks and printing nuances. He also learned all the tricks of "fixing" comic books -- how a light dusting of Pam cooking spray could give a cover a false sheen (and, eventually, eat away at it) or how a ragged-looking cover could be given a nice clean edge with a careful razor cut. A rolled-up piece of white Wonder Bread, he noted, is an effective way to erase blemishes on old comic books without leaving streaks.

"But you have to take the crust off first," he quickly added.

This curious education paid off big for Borock when a new era began in comic books: the age of EBay. The on-line auction house created a major surge in the sale of comics, baseball cards and other collectibles. The problem was that crooks and rubes often came together in the bidding rooms. To be fair, even among honest dealers, there were wildly different definitions of what qualified as "mint condition."

"It was the Wild West," Borock said. "You could buy a book from someone who said it was in mint condition and when it arrived, it was beat-up or missing pages. And what could you do? The person that sold it could say it wasn't like that when they mailed it or they could say you had switched it with another book."

A company called Certified Collectibles Group, a mainstay in the appraisal of coins, took notice of the slippery comics marketplace and decided that a third-party appraiser -- especially one that (literally) sealed the deal with a plastic-protected book -- could make big money. Then they tapped Borock, a genial 44-year-old Grateful Dead fan with a ponytail who had become a figure of integrity to other merchants, to lead its start-up comic book division.

"And everybody instantly hated me," Borock said. "Like 90% of the dealers. They hated what we were doing. People said bad things about me. . . I lost sleep over it."

The naysayers accused CGC of everything from biased appraisals to manipulating the market. Borock defended himself and his staff but the mistrust still clearly pains him. "My word is everything to me. Everything." (Borock said he no longer actively collects vintage comic books, a nod to the delicate ethics of his post.) The accusations faded through the years and now there are many merchants and fans that will not deal in high-value books unless they are slabbed.