Comic Reviews by Walt

Over the weekend, I had a chance to get to a quasi-local (for me) convention–Halloween Comic Con, hosted by The Pop Shop in Sandusky, Ohio.

:: Halloween ComicCon :: • Saturday, October 22, 2016, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. • Details [ https://t.co/1yMdVgMjTL ] pic.twitter.com/qmgzWTp3TV

— POP Sandusky (@POPSandusky) October 22, 2016

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Prior to even going to the event itself, a friend gave me a few things he’d had for me, including a couple of Ultimatum hardcovers he’d picked up for me some time back!

The main Ultimatum volume has Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum itself…unfortunately, does not have the Annuals that were collected in the March on Ultimatum regular-sized hardcover. The Ultimatum Companion includes tie-in issues in the run-up to, during, and after the event for Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men, and Ultimate Fantastic Four; it also includes the Requiem issues for those titles.

All in all, a couple of excellent oversized volumes for the Ultimate collection, and they’re very much the sort of collections I absolutely love: One volume for the “main” event itself and anything “core” to it…then a “companion” volume with the various tie-ins and such! Great package…

Then we get to the actual convention stuff…

Free with admission we got this Soulfire Collected Edition volume. Nothing overly special (to me), but as a freebie…not bad at all!

This Superman figure worked out to roughly $4…the price of a single Marvel comic…yet it’s something that generally would be basically a $20 item. Anyone can say what they will about Superman…but me? $4 for a full-size figure like this is something I’m quite game for! (And someday soon I may have to post a photo of my Superman shelf…)

Unfortunately, none of the other figures in this wave were present… I’m not a huge fan of this version of Wonder Woman, but Flash, Green Lantern, or especially the Captain Marvel figure would also have been great scores!

I initially made a mental note of the Hawk and Dove figures, though didn’t spring for them right away. Once I’d had a chance to wander the tables, and we were about to leave, I doubled back to check, telling myself they were a set. I would buy both if they were both still present, leaving whichever one was there if someone had already bought the other. Needless to say…they were both still there, and I snagged ’em.

Neither figure is that remarkable or interesting to me on their own…but the two of them, together, are really freaking cool to me!

The Superman figure above and these four volumes were part of a $5/ea or 5/$20 deal. There’s a whole bunch of Superman paperbacks I’d like to own, but not enough to pay much for. At the same cost as a Marvel comic, though…I’m quite willing!

The Resurrection Man volume “rounded out” the deal, and for the price and having 14-ish issues (from the original 1990s run), not bad at all!

Moving on into stuff, I snagged a 2nd copy of Superman #s 150 and 166 with the extra-shiny-ness thing going on. For the price, I was sucked in with the shinyness and the relative rarity…as in this is only the second time I can think of that I’ve seen this version of #150; and my original copy of 166 suffered some unfortunate rolling/bending years back being in the back of a longbox. For under $2/ea, glad to double-up!

For “50 cents each or 5/$2,” I added an extra copy of the Superman: Save the Planet! special to the other four issues that had my attention.

While I’d made sure ahead of this convention that I had my Ultraverse and TMNT comics sorted and missing issues logged…I neglected to log my stack of DC One Million issues…and unwilling to spend the extra $1 or 50 cents or whatever they would work out to on yet more doubles of those, I probably passed on a simple score of wrapping up my set of DC One Million.

That said…I snagged the DC One Million 80-Page Giant as well as what I hope is only a 2-part DC Two Thousand. I’d hoped for Flash: Terminal Velocity (the run-up to #100) but the stock skipped from the early 50s to the 120s…I settled for the four-part Born to Run story, as I couldn’t remember if I had the single issues or not.

For basically $2 apiece, got Shade the Changing Man #1 and the Prime versus The Incredible Hulk. The former to compare/contrast with the new Young Animal iteration (Shade the Changing Girl) and the latter because hey, that’s a great price for an issue like this! (remember it, as this comes into play a bit later!)

I believe I dug the Wild Dog and Uncanny X-Men issues out of a $1 bin. Hearing the character will be apparently playing a role in this season of Arrow and the surprise reference in another title recently, I figure I’d be glad to have this issue (unfortunately, they did not have the other issues of the series). And with the rumour of stuff for the upcoming Logan film (aka Wolverine III), I wanted to be sure to snag Uncanny X-Men 229 before it pulls a 266 in pricing on me!

(As an aside: if anyone has or could get me a copy of 226 in the $10ish range up to $20, I’d love to talk!)

For the price of a single Marvel comic, I “upgraded” Aquaman #1 from a beat up copy to a nice copy…and filled out my Peter David run to now having a full run of #0 & 1-48! This includes “the” key issue–#2–where Arthur loses the hand…and I danced a fine line taking these photos between not actually sitting to read #s 1-3 and 0 and skimming through #2 and #0 in particular!  I remember when this series started, as well as noting Aquaman’s appearance in Zero Hour itself (see my 2016 Zero Hour Revisited posts), but had never gotten into/kept up with the series, to my later regret. Gladly, with ’90s comics being so (financially) cheap, I’ve embraced being able to catch up at a fraction of even the original cover price cost!

My friend and I found a table with a huge selection of ’90s 25-cent comics. The listed deal was something like 25 cents each, so many for $2, or fill a USPS priority box for something…he saw us both amassing a decent stack, and made us a deal to go in one one together…so sharing the cost, we proceeded to grab some extra issues we’d passed on…and filled a box. Lotta cool/fun stuff…especially for less than 25 cents apiece!

I have (somewhere) a couple issues of the X-Men Archives, and apparently grabbed 5 of the 6 here. My friend pointed out the Magic: The Gathering issue…in a bag and board, it felt extra-thick, so I snagged it for curiosity of the thickness (turned out it included a copy of the Acclaim Comics preview I’ll reference below).

Nothing really screams “’90s!” to me like these covers (and a handful of others from Image in 1992-1994). The ’90s get a bad rap, and to me, I’d say that a lot of what I think people really think of in the negative can be best referenced with early Image books moreso than stuff that leaked into DC and Marvel (as I obviously have an incredible fondness for the decade when it comes to comics!)

I also get a certain “satisfaction” out of scoring the “hot Image #1s!” of the early ’90s for a mere 25 (or less!) cents apiece.

And speaking of…Gen13. I pretty clearly remember this issue being one of THE “hot” issues of its time…to the point that I now probably have bought 5 or 6 copies for 25 cents each just to retroactively stick my tongue out (figuratively) at all the people who may’ve paid $20, $30, even $40ish for a copy of the thing!

Some more random stuff. Magneto #0, Plasm #0 (later to be Warriors of Plasm)… this is only the second time I’ve come across this #0 issue. It seems to be pulled from within something else…but it’s a comic-sized print version of the #0 issue that until I found the first copy I’d come across, I thought was only available by assembling the complete trading card set with the binder. Micronauts #1 is a nifty find, and ditto the Gizmo and the Fugitoid.

Given that pless than an hour earlier I thought just under $2 was a good price for the Prime vs. The Incredible Hulk issue…I certainly grabbed it for 25-ish cents! Similar for the mail-away “exclusive” Ultraverse Premiere #0.

Maybe best of all…the Black September preview book, actually a brand-new, I didn’t already have in my Ultraverse collection issue.

Ash by Quesada was–as I recall–at one point quite a “hot” book (no pun intended). Finding the first two issues was a nice bit here. As I’ve consolidated and gone through my various comic boxes, I’ve become rather fascinated with these ashcan or “mini comics,” basically the size of an 8.5″ x 11″ paper folded in half. I’d had a few from back in the mid-90s, wound up with several more over the years, and then the various Halloween Comics Fest ones…but lately I’ve had an eye out for plenty of others, and ones like this that I never even knew of before are quite cool.

I’ve gotten so used to The Savage Dragon simply being that I didn’t even recall Highbrow Entertainment…

These were just some “shiny issues,” and figured it wouldn’t hurt to snag an extra Unity Chapter One issue.

…and here some promo/giveaway things. Several publications originally bagged with issues of Wizard Magazine (as opposed to the mail-away/send-in #1/2 issues they also did for awhile). And here’s the Acclaim Comics Valiant Free-View that was tucked in with the Magic: The Gathering issue I pictured earlier in this post.

I’m a sucker for Ultraverse stuff, and especially complete mini-series. I’m also hoping to eventually get several titles, at least–like Prime, Mantra, and Rune bound in their entirety…so I’m certainly all for completing a second copy of those runs. And from what I recall, the Ultraverse Unlimited #1 was basically the culmination of the Black September/post-Black September stuff for the main/ongoing Rune title, wrapping up all of the stuff involving Adam Warlock’s presence in the Ultraverse.

Given the integral part that the Break-Thru event played with a number of the Ultraverse titles, I’m pretty sure I’ll want to include it in any particular title’s “binding project,” so I’m all for extra copies of that series; to say nothing of possibly a binding project for that story (and all the tie-ins) as its own thing! Plus, that’s some gorgeous art by George Perez, so really can’t beat that!

The “painted cover” variant of Prime: Infinity is one not to be passed up…though unfortunately, I mixed this with the post-Black September reboot of Prime #1…I’m missing the painted version of that one, not this one. Still, not at all a bad find for the price!

Ditto the Avengers/Ultraforce issue. This is another that’s been relatively “rare” for me in bargain bins, so I tend to grab it when I find it.

And into the final cluster of issues…I grabbed what I’d thought was a whole bunch of Starship Troopers comics…that basically amounted to a movie adaptation, two 4-issue mini-series, and 2 issues of an ongoing series. Above are the two issues adapting the first film; published by Dark Horse Comics.

Then, here, we have an excellent “case study” for WHY I tend to hate variants in general: Flipping quickly through bins of comics, “keying” on the TITLE, and in a position where one is rapidly going through numerous boxes and not interested in analyzing single issues in particular detail…it’s often a case of “grab ’em all to sort out later and hope for completeness.”

Eight issues that turned out to be a mere Four-issue mini-series, with one variant each for #s 2 & 4, and 3 variants for #3!

Two variants apiece for #s 1 & 2 of the next mini-series…

…same for issues 3 & 4.

Finally, a Previews #0 issue promoting stuff apparently, and the first two issues of some supposedly ongoing series (no clue how long it lasted).

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All in all, a huge haul with some great stuff, for a surprisingly small amount of money. And for not making it to several other conventions this year, and the disaster that the one was for me several months ago…this more than made up for it!

Of course, having gone to this con, and spent what I did (despite not being as much as I might have if life conditions were different at the moment)…it’s enough that I really cannot presently justify going to the Akron Comicon…not with that one having a $15 admission for maybe one creator whose signature I’d be interested in. Also, even these small shows are not fun to attend by myself.

Conversely, I had a great time at this one, for the obvious (the finds above) as well as simply having some serious quality time with a friend as we wandered the dealer tables and pointed stuff out to each other, and acted as an extra set of eyes for some of the more random one-off issues and such for the other, to say nothing of the casual chatting WHILE perusing the various bins, making for a far better situation and comfort level than I would have on my own.

Filed under: 2016 Non-Review posts, 2016 posts, NON-REVIEW CONTENT, The Weekly Haul | Tagged: Aquaman, bargain bins, cheap comics, comic books, conventions, Gen13, Halloween Comic Con, Image, One Million, Reavers, Starship Troopers, Ultimatum, Ultraverse Revisited, Wild Dog, Wizard |