Comic Reviews by Walt

Last week was a mixed sorta week. Not huge, not tiny, with some bargain-bin stuff but not a huge stack!

GI Joe: A Real American Hero hits #255–which marks the 100th issue of this IDW run! It’ll be great to see if this can make it to #309/310 and/or beyond–matching or surpassing the original Marvel run!

The second issue of X-Men: Grand Design: Second Genesis is the latest in these series of hyper-dense X-men issues.

I’d missed out on the Astonishing X-Men annual weeks ago, but I’m a sucker for "reunion" issues, with these original X-Men, so went ahead and got it, even though I’ve little to no intention of much else X-Men-related.

And a dose of TMNT with the latest ongoing issue ,and the conclusion to the 5-issue/weekly Bebop & Rocksteady mini.

Bargain bins yielded four Marvelman hardcovers, each for less than the price of "cheap" contemporary Marvel comics (these hardcovers about $3.50/ea vs. comics’ $3.99 cheap and too-plentiful $4.99/$5.99+)

The rest of these bargain-bin issues were a 50-cent bin (rather than my preferred 25-cent bin)…but even at 50 cents, lots of great stuff! Unfortunately, mostly #1s with little in the way of "runs."

The Mighty Magnor, which seems to be a "newsstand edition"…I’m not sure offhand if this is the same contents as the pop-up cover issue, or a different series entirely. Zorro #1, Radioactive Man #1 (I would have loved to have gotten the #1000 issue they did), and a Marvel Action Hour: Fantastic Four issue for the goodies included in the bag.

This 4-issue TaleSpin mini was an excellent find! Firstly, for having all four issues (at 50 cents apiece, that’s still only $2 for the entire series compared to $3.99/issue for contemporary Marvel stuff!) and secondly for having just watched an episode of the new DuckTales series that involved Don Karnage and the sky-pirates!

Some mixed Archie-published stuff. Street Sharks was a mid/late-’90s thing; I believe they had a cartoon and know they had a toy line. I’m not sure off the top of my head if I had any of the comics, but finding these in-person, wasn’t going to pass on ’em! Then there’s the Conservation Corps issues. I knew them specifically through a TMNT Meet the Conservation Corps special (which I’m sure is what the intent was). I’m really not keen on these now, but there’s still a bit of nostalgia for the property in me regardless, thanks to that TMNT issue. And long before I was aware of it being any sort of older black-and-white-comics property from another publisher, I recall the Zen: Intergalactic Ninja comics, and though I think I have the first issue, I never remember if I have the others.

A couple of Uncle $crooge comics because they were there, and especially the 250th issue!

A couple of Disney movie adaptations. I’m not certain off the top of my head if there are issues like this for Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King, though I know there’s a more recent squarebound adaptation of The Lion King that I got just last year. Whether new material or re-purposed, I’m not sure. I like these "iconic" covers…though Aladdin is missing Rajah, the tiger…which seems a bit out of place.

More Aladdin issues…

A Little Mermaid issue and two spin-off Sebastian (the crab) issues. I am pretty sure I have Sebastian #2 somewhere, but not sure about #1…and this way, I have them, and together!

A couple of Beauty and the Beast issues…

Several random issues; these three are "squarebound"/prestige, so a bit more stand-out to me on the 50-cent price point; worthwhile for "bulk" alone, at minimum. The Chillers issue is basically a prose story with illustrations…I got it more for the potential of the poster than the product itself otherwise.

…and an excellent "diamond in the rough" is the first issue of Disney Adventures! I had a copy of this back in the day, but it was lost to Time. I received it as some sort of "replacement" for something ordered through one of those Scholastic Book Group catalogs they’d give out in grade-school to order books. I hadn’t expected it, but remember enjoying it well enough…and then long being amazed at how long the magazine lasted…with the fact that I’d gotten in at the very first issue. Having a copy of that again made it the #1 thing of all of these, for me. Though I’m not 100% sure exactly what I remembered the cover image being–it’s different from the actuality–I still recognized this at a glance!

Filed under: 2018 Non-Review Posts, 2018 posts, NON-REVIEW CONTENT, The Weekly Haul | Tagged: A Real American Hero, astonishing x-men, bebop, Disney, Disney Comics, G.I. Joe, Grand Design, Hit the Road, IDW, MARVEL, rocksteady, TMNT Ninja Turtles, x-men |