Or DC already lost my weekly allowance

"In the beginning there was only one... a single black infinitude."

These are the first words in issue #1 of Crisis on Infinite Earths or for the rest of this journal, Crisis. I was twelve for the majority of 1984, the year Jim Shooter pulled me into a Secret War. Characters such as Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and Captain America of which I've known about helped introduce the X-Men, The Beyonder and Galactus to me. My first comic book was purchased for me when I was five, it was the oversized Star Wars and I believe it was given to me by my Pop-pop. It was the New Mutants that began my collection but it was Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars that gripped me in the folds of the Marvel Universe.

I believe the oldest Batman I have is issue 313. The cover had me stare and stare at the book more times than I ever read it. I was mystified and intrigued by the cover split in half, the neat and the dirty or the good and the bad. I had a Detective comics too, issue 503. Then there was the multitude of Action Comics and Adventures of Superman I owned all before the first comic I collected. I do believe there is a difference between buying and collecting so by the time Crisis was published by DC, it was too late, I was already a Marvelite.

The titles that became my collection were formed by The New Mutants, The Uncanny X-Men, Invincible Iron Man, Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man (when the local 7-11 wasn't sold out) and Star Wars, of which I was a huge fan of, subsequently I was probably the only five year old to go see Star Wars 13 weeks in a row while my father took a nap, more on that another time. My first LCS, called ComiCards, took the majority of my allowance. They never cheated me out of my money; they always let me purchase what I wanted and only gave recommendations if asked, with a few exceptions. Crisis was such an exception.

I shook off the recommendation knowing it was Marvel my loyalty laid with. I didn't care about the Multiverse or how many Superman and Batman's there were. I didn't realize who Marv Wolfman was or appreciate how great George Perez was.

Regardless of the story telling prowess of Marv or the detailed talents of Perez I have only just picked up DC's attempt to fight off Marvel in the twelve issue maxi series Crisis. I never read it before, never attempted to collect it, but it was part of the 5302 comics I just purchased. Currently they are sitting on my kitchen asking to be read.

I bought this collection primarily to sell. I am allowing myself to keep five and five only. Some I'm taking with me to get graded at the Emerald City comic con, after which I will sell. And I know a twelve issue maxi series signed by this legend of an artist would sell very well... if they retained a high grade. I don't think they will. The whole series at first glance looks to be between an eight and a nine, for this series that's nothing to write home about.

I'm not going to keep them. But, I am going to read them before I sell them on eBay. It's the Wolverine one through four I plan on getting signed by Chris Claremont before having CGC grade them.

Thanks for Reading

And for something different, my rant.

http://tnerb-myfirstblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/sit-as-long-as-you-like.html

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