mrhan

I remember that. Never read it since we only had a subscription to the Sunday paper. I never knew it was collected.

The Valeyard

mrhan

Bought these at a local comic book show yesterday. Nothing significant but picked up another copy of a 100 pager I already owned. Not bad for $2 each.

Trevor

Nice score. I can't resist those 100 pagers at $5, let alone $2. Although I think I am getting close to owning them all. There's a pricey romance one or two that I know I need, haven't decided how much I'm willing to spend.

mrhan

I have most of them also but I don't know if I'm going to get any of the Romance or Love issues and I've run across them at several shows. As for this issue I think this is my 3rd copy but at $2 I couldn't resist it; especially for the grade it was in. I'd say it is at least a VF+. It was also done by Sal Amendola. Basically an unknown artist that only did a handful of work for Marvel and DC before becoming an art teacher in NY. This is one of the two issues of Detective he drew. Too bad he didn't do more. I really like his style. A sort of cross between Adams, Aparo and Novick.

davidh777

Yep, love those 100-pagers.

And Black Orchid! I haven't thought about her in decades, but I always liked this cover:

mrhan

A friend I met back in the 90's knew Tony De Zuniga (Jonah Hex and Black Orchid artist) and said he lived up in Stockton. I had no idea he lived in the Bay Area.

Mike86

I didn't buy them but my parents picked up a couple issues for me randomly from a Hastings while they were out of town.

Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E. #6
Batman/Superman #31 (The Final Days of Superman)

Trevor

There's another sale on The Sixth Gun at Comixology, so I'm current again.

Mike86

Batman '66 Meets The Man From U.N.C.L.E. #1-6 (have a duplicate copy of issue six now but I wanted to read the full storyline)
Scooby Apocalypse #1 and 2

mrhan

Some recent books I picked up. I've been looking for the Sword of Sorcery comic for a long time. It's a follow up to the characters' appearance in WW and is inked by Neal Adams.

PhantomStranger

They don't make covers like that anymore. I wonder how many issues that Sword of Sorcery title ran?

mrhan

^ It ran for five issues. I'm on the lookout for the 2nd issue; NA did the inks for that issue, also.

Trevor

Quirky aside, but on so many of those sword and sorcery or non-superhero series from that period, all DC titles like Kong and Starslayer and Weird Worlds, for decades I only had issue number two of each series.

I didn't buy them on the newsstands, bought them all years later in bargain bins, but somehow it was always just issue two. Like six different short-lived series of that era, all the lone second issue.

I've recently been filling in some holes so that I can actually read them (can't read issue two before issue one...).

Anyone else have any quirky collecting coincidences like that?

mrhan

I had the same thing happen to me but that didn't stop me from reading the second issue. Three titles that come to mind are Mr. Miracle, Spectre, and Adventure Comics with Deadman. I have all the first issues of the series' now.

PhantomStranger

Picked these two up in grab bags. The first is Original Sin #0, a prequel of sorts to the Marvel mini-series. I don't know if the digital code has expired but the first one that wants it can try.

This basically uses Nova (some younger version I am not familiar with) to explore the Watcher's origin. A pretty forgettable issue I had a couple of problems with overall. It's a lame telling of the Watcher's origin, practically written for elementary school children. I also don't think the Watcher would simply let Nova mess around with the Ultimate Nullifer.



Justice League of America #194 was a far better read. This happens to be drawn by George Perez and Gerry Conway begins a very cool story involving a villain based on the tarot. For me this is probably my favorite period of Justice League. It was before Crisis and the stories were getting more sophisticated, but there wasn't the grim, adult storytelling that would come later. It also features most of the big DC superheroes.

There is a very funny sequence between Green Arrow and Black Canary about their relationship.

This also happens to be the last JLA issue priced at fifty cents.

The Valeyard

A few books from SDCC.

ytrez

I remember buying this off the news stand and loving it. I must have read it a dozen times on the day I bought it.

mrhan

I've always wanted to collect Kirby's run on Jimmy Olsen. I'm working on finishing his run on Mr. Miracle right now. 9 more issues to go.

PhantomStranger

Avengers: West Coast #97

Call me nuts, but I didn't like it when Marvel changed this book's name from West Coast Avengers to the pointless Avengers: West Coast.

For a standalone issue from this era, it's a readable and decently entertaining one-off. The only Avengers that really show up are Mockingbird and Goliath (Hawkeye having temporarily given up arrows for size) and an unhappy War Machine. Apparently most heroes have been pulled off world for the Infinity Crusade. Which I vaguely remember but haven't read in two decades.

Clint and Bobbi are already married by this issue after years of bickering and a rocky relationship. I always found Marvel's dialogue between spouses or significant others in battle hilarious. While Clint is battling several powerful aliens, he professes his love to Bobbi as he punches someone. She gets in a couple of goofy lines about their marriage as well while fighting. It's one of those comic book conventions found in the medium that probably looks incredibly stupid to outsiders.

Trevor

I guess they did this to keep it next to Avengers on the rack.

mrhan

I guess it's a bitch if you have OCD and want to keep your titles in alphabetical order.

PhantomStranger

I would take the minor name changes, in place of the endless renumbering we seemingly have every other year these days.

PhantomStranger

Uncanny X-Force #6 (variant cover)

This one came out three years ago going by the ads. I had no idea that Marvel now had Tony Stark being a pitchman for cars with drawn ads.

Picking a random issue up from current Marvel and DC is always a gamble. Much of the time an issue these days doesn't make sense outside the bigger arc. The plot holds up on its own in this issue. I could figure out what was happening, though it helps I knew every single character of note in the book.

This issue actually had an interesting meeting between Wolverine and Psylocke. Spiral was the villain, though her role was kept separate from Wolverine. Fairly entertaining stuff for one of the first X-Men-related books I've seen in about a decade.

I got this issue from a grab bag. This variant cover was actually the item that caught my eye and why I went with this specific grab bag. Checking Google, the normal cover for this issue is terrible by comparison.

Trevor

Sort of a lie, not sure when I bought this issue, but wanted to bump this thread anyway.

Bought this issue because I'm a fan of the Flash, but mainly because Dr. Fate is one of the characters that I think I want to own every appearance of, at least Bronze Age.

Pretty fun issue as both the stories were entertaining. The Flash story had art from Infantino, and was a tragic tale of the Mirror Master. Guest writers for the issue were Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, I think this was during Cary Bates' long run of writing the title. Nice little done-in-one story.

The backup, written by Martin Pasko and drawn by Keith Giffen, had Dr Fate premiering as the back-up feature of this book. That was one thing I really liked about collecting Flash back in this era, it often had recurring backup features. Not sure how long it had been since Fate had been active in DC books, but perhaps awhile since this was partly a re-telling of his origin. Giffen wasn't at his experimental art stage yet, as I can tell what is going on.

Very nice surprise in this back issue dollar bin find was that the backup splash page is signed by Giffen.