You don't like the Creature do you?

On 7/16/2021 at 3:12 PM, Falcon760 said:

You don't like the Creature do you?

Well...

Now with the new year here and all of the assemblage of the holidays behind, I felt that I would try and approach this new year with a better plan. My new job was slowing down a bit, as was expected, but I wanted to be able to use this upcoming down time to secure some finances.  At this time, I had no idea what happened in the world of comics and collectibles but was just going about my normal routine while looking for interesting things to buy and sell. I had purchased some cheap comics here and there and then one Sunday, while at our local flea market, I found a collection of pipes that I couldn't take my eyes off of.  Now it had been many years since I had smoked a pipe as I had more or less replaced that with cigars. I still had my own small collection of pipes and accompanying tools but this small collection contained some unique pieces that I wanted for myself and thought that maybe I would pick up pipe smoking again. The more I looked at these, the more I thought that I could actually sell the majority of them at some point down the road and hope to double the money I was tempted to spend and still be able to keep the ones I really liked for myself.

So I did just that and for the next few weeks, I immersed myself in learning and relearning all about the various pipes, styles and manufacturers.  It was certainly fun and kept me busy.  I did go down to a local tobacconist to buy a few ounces of an aromatic blend of smoking tobacco but I never did pick it back up on a consistent basis.

Shortly after this, I was at my LCS and saw that the owner had purchased a small collection of comics and I'm not sure if it was an impulse buy or simply having sympathy for these 'forgotten books', as I called them, but I bought the collection of Classics Illustrated / Comics. Now aside from the select horror books in the series, I never really got into these but on this day something hit me and changed my perception. I think at first I was just feeling that I could keep the handful of ones that I wanted (the Sherlock Holmes issue was included which was a book I had never seen in hand before) and sell the rest, much like the pipe collection I purchased. However, after I got them home, re-bagged them and flipped through the pages, as well as reading a few, I quickly began to get attached to them.  To me it was something new and so many of these books had shown signs of such wear that I thought that these books were either well loved and read or so neglected, that they were simply cast aside.  I decided that maybe this would be a new focus for me and I would start hunting down Classics at the various antique stores around the area. I kind of got hooked on that for a while and felt such a feeling of victory when finding early prints of the horror issues or like this Matt Baker, Lorna Doone copy.

Despite this purchase though, it still had not occurred to me what was taking place around me, both in this hobby as well as others. I think the first hint for me that there was something different transpiring in the collectible market came about when my daughter asked me if I had any 'top loaders' used for sports card and collectible cards. She has these photo-cards of pop stars that she needed them for and so I went to a gaming / sports card shop to pick some up. It was here where I first heard that supplies were so scarce and apparently the reason behind this was because, "Eveyone dug out their baseball cards during the lockdown."

Hm. 

Ok... well, prior to this encounter, I hadn't heard of that before.

Coincidently though, during 'the lockdown', I had been assembling a collection of older Los Angeles Rams football cards when and where I found them so I felt that there was certainly some truth to that. Even now, I'm still hunting for these.

So on that day, I was introduced to the fact for the first time that there was a rekindled interest in trading cards.  I thought that was nice as I had a bunch of Football, Baseball and Hockey cards so maybe I could sell some.  I never did get fully back into that hobby aside from gathering cards from the teams that I like...

This discovery kind of led me down the path of looking into what was new and happening and what was going on in the world of collectibles.  It was around this time that I found that the new 'Mego' had introduced a Creature from the Black Lagoon figure and so of course I had to get that and I had to send my friend, Rob a shrunken Stan Lee figure as well!

Then, (seemingly) out of the blue, it happened... for me it was like a shot or an alarm that sounded which informed me that I was way behind in this new (post shutdown) reality. I needed to schedule a meeting with Rob where we could discuss this, over beers of course!

There was just one problem...

I scheduled to meet Rob at our local, coastal pub... The Brokered Grill.  He had just arrived looking like he stepped out of a Gorton's Fish Sticks commercial. The weather outside wasn't being kind to say the least as with this time of the year, heavy rainfall enveloped the island. I had already ordered my Scotch and a Stout for him. Within the time-frame that it took for him to pull up a stool at the bar and grab the stout, I could sense that something was drastically wrong. He told me that the local fisherman had been spooked the night before by some strange lights that seemed to drift slightly below the water's surface... almost as if they were waiting. This island has been known to inhabit numerous 'tall tales' and local lore but this was something different, You could feel it permeate the village. It's part of the reason why we were assigned to this area by our local newspaper employer.

"Find out what the hell is happening over there!" ... our last directive.

I didn't even get a chance to finish off half of my Scotch before Rob stood right up and said he had to show me what he had found, outside.  He slammed his pint down and headed to the door as I grabbed my jacket to follow. Once I got outside, all I could see was the rain through the lamplight with the fog swirling throughout.

"Rob?"

He was gone.

His funny yellow fisherman hat lay upon the rain pelted dirt of the walkway...

Ok.

So in our last meetup, Rob joked that I was mere seconds away from writing him out of the -script...

(I think that was between our 2nd and 3rd beers)

SUCCESS! 

I just realized that there wasn't a random musical intermission on that last post.

Let's go with this favorite of mine as it relates to where I was in January and February.

Best stated by Johnny Rotten...

"I could be wrong - I could be right".

Thanks once again to my phone... history is restored.

No, Rob is not dead.

Maybe he's my subconscious.  Regardless, it was right in the beginning of the new year of 2021 that I texted him with two or three bits of pieces of news.  The first was that I had found a complete mint set of 1984 Topps Baseball cards at a Goodwill for $5 and the second was that I had just found out that DC was (had) creating (created) a new Batman title... BATMAN : FUTURE STATE.

It wasn't that DC was introducing a new title that piqued my interest, rather it was what had happened in the past.

This new Batman of the future would be Tim Fox.

Who was this 'Tim Fox'?

Well he was introduced in an issue of BATMAN. Issue number 313 to be precise, from 1979.

And for me, this is where comic collecting in this post shutdown era started, or rather, this marked the point where this 'new era' began again.

So in a way, this journal has come full circle, or has now connected (reconnected?), back to Rusty Staples and Sunken Treasure.

I had talked about my thoughts about Miles Morales and a new Spider-Man and how that must've felt to us (my age group) as it must've felt like for those fans in the 1940's who saw their Flash (Jay Garrick) with the Mercury WW1 helmet, transform to the 1960's streamlined speedster featuring Barry Allen.

Times change.

But as it relates to our hobby, the price increase that accompanied the interest on that Batman issue from 1979 was something I didn't expect at all. And now, seemingly and suddenly, ALL comic prices in this new (post pandemic) world had sky rocketed! Actually, comic prices had already jumped up but this was the eye opening moment for me.

So, is this simply hyperbole?

Well...

I guess this is where I somehow equate comic collecting to drugs

.

How is comic collecting like drugs and why the George Michael video?

Well, to me it kind of visualizes how I felt upon discovering that so many of the books that I had owned, actually all of them, had shot up in price. It kind of felt like it happened overnight... these books had become like drugs and people were addicted to them.  The prices people were spending on comics reflected this as I discovered when I looked on eBay for a copy of that Batman 313.

I thought it would be a good idea to secure a copy but I certainly didn't expect to see this!

Had I been asleep?

How did this happen?

This was a dollar bin book just a year ago... I thought.

From there, I went on to look at other books.  Maybe it was just an isolated jump in price where collectors were speculating that this could be the next Ultimate Fallout #4 which introduced the world to Spider-Man as Miles Morales.

It wasn't.

I went on to look at Batman books in general and ultimately found a copy of issue #4 on Comiclink. The book was a lower grade than the one I had sold some years ago but the current bid had me in shock...

I couldn't believe it!

Upon discovering this, I learned that it wasn't just Batman... all books, across the board, had absolutely soared in price.

Any thoughts I had about reacquiring any of the keys that I had sold all those years ago, quickly diminished. 

This was a book that I loved and regretted selling.

I bought it for $750 and it was 3 grades higher than this one that was sitting at $1700... I didn't bother to follow the closing of this auction in late January.

I was too depressed.

At the end of January I had run straight into the reality that something had changed in the world of collecting comics, especially key comics and issues.  Pretty much everything that I once had in my personal collection was now far out of reach to reacquire if I wanted to. It was a sobering experience and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. In a way, this kind of acted like a motivator of sorts to me and yes, I was starting to feel like I actually did have this "Monkey on my back". If the books that I really liked were now mostly out of reach, what would I do to feed this addiction?

I guess comics can be like Crack

I've written in previous posts about how I was slowly getting back in to actively collecting comics as I was passively rebuilding my collection but this was the actual beginning of making a concerted effort to pick up the pace a bit.  I didn't have much in terms of 'comic fodder' where I could just simply sell off a bunch of books to purchase other books, as I had done countless times over the years. I had a few books that I could sell, which I did both here and on eBay but it wasn't anything that would allow me to turn those gains into anything substantial.

So I didn't have a road map or a plan of where I was going with this but I certainly had the desire back again.  I wanted to know what happened, what changed... what I could do, if anything, to tap into that.  My collection of books was small but it was growing. Seeing how most key books were jumping up in value, I was pleased that I had acquired my 'Covid book' last April...

So I had a few 'key books' to go along with the remnants of my Underwater collection and this was what my small collection of graded books looked like at the end of January of this year.

Now something else happened in January that would have a profound effect on me but I certainly didn't realize it at the time or even sense the ramifications of it.  I had heard about this new series that was starting on Disney+ and was kind of intrigued by it but it wasn't at the top of my list of things I needed to get to right away.  I didn't hear any specifics about this show other than some mention that it was going to be a sitcom.  The only opinion I had of this show at this time was that it was an interesting idea... it might be something worth watching

The series, of course, is WandaVision.

I didn't watch it right away when it started in mid January, actually I didn't start watching it until a few days after the 2nd episode aired.  I told my wife and daughter that I wanted to see it and so they agreed to sit down with me and we watched the first 2 episodes. My daughter seemed to like it, my wife was kind of unimpressed but I really, really liked the feel, charm and nostalgia of the first 2 episodes. It was a throw back to early TV that I vaguely remembered still being aired in the early 70's.

For me, it was refreshing and it made me very happy to watch

At this point, I felt like this series was going to remain just like these first 2 episodes and I quickly had an immediate attraction to Elisabeth Olsen's portrayal of Wanda Maximoff... it was just so good and so outside of what I was used to seeing from her in all of the Avengers movies. I felt like I was going to enjoy this as a nice weekly diversion... I had no idea what was in store for me and ultimately, what this show would do to me.

It was right around this time, as I was just getting into the WandaVision series that I started thinking (rather, rethinking) about something that I started and wanted to get into a number of years ago but didn't.

Now this next part I never talked about because at the time, I was looking for a passion... something to kick start me back into the comics.  One of the aspects of this hobby that I've grown to have a great deal of respect and admiration for is in the field of comic restoration.  I've dealt with people who do that as a profession and I mostly feel that it's true artwork and skill to be able to do what they do and do it well.  There was a time, a number of years ago, that I felt that I wanted to try to get started learning about that and actively pursuing it.

Well, needless to say, that never happened.

I just kind of let comics slip away for a bit but it wasn't before I made one initial push and felt like I could try to at least cross that threshold.

Back in the summer of 2016 (5 years ago), with these thoughts in my head, I decided that in order to dip my foot into these 'Restorative Waters' , I would need to make a somewhat big purchase and commitment. And so I did some research, actually a lot of research and came to a decision of what I wanted to get.

The immediate problem was going to be where to get this item.

Well, as luck would have it, and with a little assistance from Craig's List, I found exactly what I was looking for.  I contacted this individual and set up a time to meet. It was going to cost $175 but he told me that if I bought it at his asking price, he would throw in a bunch of extra items to go with it. I looked it over and it was beautiful... I handed over the $175 he was asking for and on this night, I became the owner of a vintage Seal Standard 120 Dry Mount Press.

The other items he threw in were Teflon Sheets, Brayers, Mounting Tissue, Foam Core Boards and a very nice Sealector Tacking Iron such as this one here...

He was a photographer and used all of this exclusively for his photographs. After purchasing this, I spent the entire summer immersed in learning about and practicing pressing techniques.  The unfortunate subjects of this mad experiment were lowly copies of comics, obtained at my local flea market at a cost of fifty cents to a dollar each. There were many casualties of this newfound endeavor but slowly (and with much help through some members here on this board) I started to have some success.

So towards the end of that summer of 2016, I decided to test what I had learned and practiced... and actually press a book and send it in to CGC to get graded.

I had just the right book in mind... the problem was, it didn't belong to me!

...

...

When I met my wife, 31 years ago, she had 2 young kids, a son and a daughter. I met her at the University where we worked at the time (actually, it was a year prior at a mutual friend's house) and she would sometimes bring her son in who was 10 years old at the time  The idea was that he would just hang out for the day as it was something he liked to do. It didn't take long for me to form a relationship with her son, in part because we shared the same name, but also because I quickly learned that he liked (loved) Marvel Comics and loved video games as well.  So I would work but he ended up spending more time during the day following me around than his mother.  We would talk comics and superheroes and then, on occasion, I would take him to the nearby arcade over my lunch where we'd spend some quarters.

Some years later, as his mother and I were now actively seeing each other, those excursions to the arcade over lunch became weekly excursions to the local comic store for new comic book day. I would get him some books but the one thing we really got involved with, were non-sports trading cards and mostly Marvel. 

I spent so much money on those things for us!

So over these years, my stepson continues to love Marvel and is a true comic fan if there ever was one. He's not into the monetary aspect of comic collecting, rather he collects comics because he loves the heroes and the stories. A number of years ago he lost a bunch of his favorite comics as he let a friend borrow them and ultimately never saw them again. His favorite character of all time is Deadpool (followed by Venom, Spider-Man and Wolverine, I believe).

So one year, I bought him a copy of New Mutants #98 to replace the copy of his that was stolen.  It was a nice looking book but it had some small issues, regardless, it didn't matter to him. He wasn't much about grades and such, he just loved the story!

Fast forward many years to 2016 and this was the book I had in mind to see if I could improve it any and get the book graded for him. He knew about graded books from me constantly talking to him about them and how it was a good idea to have it done if you had a book or books of significant value.  So I talked to him about it and promised him that if I ruined the book, I would buy him a new one. He ultimately agreed and so that copy of New Mutants #98 was the first book (and only book) that I officially pressed prior to submitting to CGC.  I honestly believe that as it was raw, prior to pressing, it was a VF/NM or a 9.0.

These are the only pictures that I could still find of the book prior to pressing it...

I pressed the book and felt that it was "as good as it was going to get".  I submitted it to CGC and when it came back, I was pleased with the results. It wasn't perfect, but it was now a nice, solid book. When I gave it back to my stepson, he was thrilled with it. I told him what its approximate FMV (Fair Market Value) was and he was impressed... again, this was 2016.

Well, to this day, he still has this book hanging up on his wall...

...

In the kitchen.

(But away from direct light.)

I needed to tell this story as it sets the stage for what would happen next right around the conclusion of the 2nd episode of WandaVision from this past January / February. 

I remembered something from many years ago, almost 10 years to be precise.  Things were lining up in a peculiar manner and I had another idea, however, this one would involve dragging out the press that had been stored away for the past 5 years and it would also involve asking my stepson about a (nearly, long-forgotten) book. 

Thinking back for a moment about this story in its entirety, I can't help but use this word...

When I first bought the press in 2016, through numerous attempts and basic trial and error, I was able to get a fairly consistent process down that I was pleased with but there were two types of books that I stayed away from. The first type were square bound books and the second type were books with a spine roll. Those were two issues that I didn't research or practice with back then before I put the press away in storage.  When I got the idea earlier this year to bring it back out and start up again, I felt like those were the two groups of books that I wanted to focus in on. And so, again though trial and error, I was able to figure out a method I was pleased with in regards to square bound books. I still find them very tricky, especially if you don't have a solid, supported spine to begin with.

One day, on the way back home from dropping my daughter off at college, I decided to pop in to a local comic store and browsed around for a bit. I was searching for that Batman 313 but from what was in the bins at this shop, I could tell that I was a week or more late.  It seemed like they had a solid run of Batman in the 300's except no  issue 313.  I picked out a few books that I had thought that I could stash away in hopes that maybe something might 'pop' in this new, speculative environment we were in.  Then right before I left, I was flipping through the Spider-Man books and saw this one issue that was priced just right and it was priced as such because I could see that it was water damaged. It's a great cover and a book that I'll be looking to get in a 'collectible' state some time soon... although as I write this, I better not wait too long!

Anyways, the issue that I found looked like it was perfect for me to practice on and if it came out nice, one that I wouldn't mind keeping in my collection as a reader.  The book was King Size Spider-Man #9 from 1973 featuring a redraw of the awesome cover by John Romita from the Spectacular Spider-Man #2 magazine from 1968.

I purchased this square bound book for $10 and later that week, researched a little into pressing these types and finally decided to take a shot at it. I was actually pleased with these results but unfortunately I didn't document it as much as I should have. These were the only pictures I had taken of this process, before and after.

Before:

After:

So as I stated, I was pleased with the results here and actually gained a bit of confidence. I knew then, as I know now, that I still have so much more practice to perform and so much more to learn as well, but I felt like it was a solid start. The next thing I wanted to try and tackle was spine roll and this brings us back to WandaVision, the story I just told in the previous post and to one certain forgotten book!

And here's the funny thing, well... for me at least, I've already posted a picture of this book a few times now.

I'm actually not quite sure where to start this next post...

I think I have to take this back a number of years, almost back to the beginning. Back to when I first joined these boards and was assembling my dream collection. I suppose I can call it that now as it would only be in a dream to be able to reacquire all of those key books that I had back then. So if time travel were possible and to go back to this picture, this would be a good starting point!

I apologize for the quality but it's the only group picture I could find to document this point in time.

This was one of the earliest visual assembly of the books that I had obtained and displayed on my initial 'Wall of Fame'. I remember wanting to get a key graded book of every numerical value from .5 to 9.8 (9.9 and 10.0 were not in my interest back then and the CGC designations of PG / CVR / NG were not in use at that time... Well, as far as I know.)

And so with this picture you can see five grades - the middle row features a 4.0 Amazing Spider-Man #40 and then a 4.5 X-Men #94 and then the bottom row features a 6.0 House of Secrets #92, a 7.0 Green Lantern #29 and a 7.0 Tales of Suspense #63.

And the top row... three loved books in my early collection with the respective grades of 2.0, 2.0 and 2.5.

And so, we'll begin here!

As we spin back in time, it was around my birthday in 2010... 11 years ago and a CGC board member by the name of @Marvelfangirl had a sales thread.

Up for offer was a nice copy of X-Men #4 and this is how that sales thread went, thanks to the CGC time machine!

If you would rather not go back and read through the thread, ultimately it ended like this...

So what was I upgrading in this sales thread?

It was my 2.0 copy of X-Men #4 with a nasty spine roll! That 4.5 was nice... as a matter of fact many people, including myself,  felt that it was under-graded!

It was certainly a sharp looking copy.

Here are the original pictures of the 2.0 from that sales thread...

Once I received that gorgeous X-Men 4 from @Marvelfangirl , I decided to give my 2.0 copy to my Stepson.  He thought it was a cool book but as I stated before, the stories and characters were a big part of his interest and this issue was primarily the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and the Scarlet Witch.

From 11 years ago, that wasn't exactly the equivalent of a Mike Tyson knockout!

As this story winds down, as they all have... it's the same story.

"Unfortunately that book was sold..."

So yes, that X-Men #4 was sold.

A long time ago.

The X-Men #4 (2.0)... ?

I forgot about that book.

Until WandaVision.

As I was seeing how speculation was in overdrive, it was in-between the 2nd and 3rd episode of WandaVision that I asked my Stepson if he still had that X-Men #4  book.  I told him that because of this new series, it might be worth seeing if there was something I could do about that spine roll and maybe have it regraded. He agreed and on the day that I went over to his apartment to get the book that he had stashed away in this bookcase,  he said something that I didn't at all expect.  He told me that I could have the book back and do with it what I wanted.  His reason given was that I had done so much for him over the years.

Well I took the book, as I was prepared to do, but the last thing I said to him was that "We'll see..."

And so, on that late afternoon, I departed with a book that I had owned and pretty much forgotten about from 11 years ago.

Wanda Maximoff had me believing in magic!

 "Intermission"

What a roller coaster of a day.

I finished up work this morning around 8:30am... I got in the car, turned on Sirius/XM and was instantly reliving the moments from 20 years ago. 

It was a somber ride home.

I got home, slept, got up and my wife and I went out to a few stores. 

I had to stop by my LCS to pickup this item that I felt I absolutely needed. (Of course the price was right.)

My wife was patient enough for me to go to a second LCS in which I probably got the best deal of the year in terms of what I've bought.

I was thrilled... it was a good day.

But it wasn't.

At times I get surprised at just how emotional I can get when talking "off the cuff" and this was what happened when the owner of the first LCS I went to and myself got into a brief conversation about what today signified. We didn't differ in opinion to say the least.

20 years.

It has been 20 years and so much has happened to me personally in that time.

Both good and bad.

I often talk about time travel in these posts and revisiting the past but today was different for the most part. 

There was an added sadness...

2001 - 2021

This picture here kind of represents how I'm feeling at the moment and I can't blame the Scotch on this one.

This picture was taken in 2011... 10 years ago. Ten years after 9/11 and once again, I find myself in NYC where I always seem to end up. We're at one of my all time favorite churches, Saint John the Divine at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue (Started in 1892 and completed in 1911).

Yes, this was on my frequent lists of sites to attend while in NJ.

View the debauchery of the city from atop the WTC and then cleanse the palate from within this Romanesque / Gothic stronghold.

Just as I described the WTC as my Fortress of Solitude while dreaming of being a comic artist and living in NJ in the late 80's... this cathedral was a secondary option.

So in this picture, it's 2011 and as I'm taking in the beautiful artwork, architecture and religious symbolism of the moment, my daughter rushes through the frame almost to accentuate the passing of time... the crossing time streams.  Here I was, caught up in the beauty of a magnificent place that I had come to know and love and my daughter, new to this world... this plane, was rushing though.

She wanted to get to Macy's and that we did!

Ten years ago.

My wife and my daughter (excitedly) taking the Macy's escalator...

I'm truly blessed.

But today, I heard countless recollections from family members who were not blessed.

To those... today was a terrible day.

A terrible date.

A date that will live in infamy.

...

...

I fully intended to continue on my WandaVision post that I started prior to this but I'll get back to that soon enough. This was the direction I needed to go tonight. 

So WandaVision brilliantly started in the 50's in the first episode only to transform to the 60's in episode 2. And then here in episode 3, which would coincide with the 1970's (or as I refer to them as my Golden Years), I came face to face with the moment that would throw me straight into the maelstrom of the current collectible market.

Now in color!

So this is where I have to admit that I was not aware of anything relating to this show prior to watching the first episode. I wasn't aware of rumors or leaks or discussions from actors and actresses related to this show. I hadn't even seen Captain Marvel yet and that would've been the biggest hint to me in terms of what was going on!

I was going into this blind and I was loving every minute of it. Well, that was until episode 3 when a simple enjoyable 'sitcom' became a job!

I think this is part of the reason why I hold WandaVision so dear to my heart.

It reset me.

My interest in comics... the stories and lore behind them.  The creators, the writers... the artists.  This was my great comic reset and it would be amazing to hear that this had the same effect on others as well!

I'll get to the details soon enough but at this point I would just like to mark when this all hit me like a Mack Truck...

Prior to this moment, all I had heard was that the comic speculation market was saying not to sleep on Monica Rambeau.

Now why would they say that... I would think to myself.

Minutes after this scene I was scouring the internet like a madman!

To be continued...

But before that can happen, I have to take a post break and link that which I mentioned before... the "Golden Years".

It's half Rob's fault as he linked an original art piece to me earlier this evening and that has stuck in my creative process...

Only 2 people know why I'm posting this...

Well.

This is where I desperately try to get my head right after almost 2 weeks of... something. 

Between some wise words from Rob and some observations of "RL" (Real Life), perhaps everything will be ok. 

I know this makes absolutely zero sense to those reading this... these are strictly my thoughts to remind me and to guide me forward.

Apologies.

So...

I've been trying to prolong this next part as long as possible but it appears that CCS/CGC isn't going to cooperate with my time frame here.

Let's go back to this point in WandaVision where Monica Rambeau was revealed!  Back in March, as my wife and I watched this series, the moment when this was revealed marked a change in everything that I thought I knew about comic collecting speculation.  Like I stated before, I had heard speculation whispers about Monica Rambeau / Captain Marvel / Spectrum, but I hadn't paid attention to them in the least bit. 

HOWEVER; once I saw this scene in WandaVision... it all clicked in place.

We were watching the newest installment when suddenly it hit me what happened.  The new Captain Marvel had just been introduced! With that Batman 313 still fresh in my mind, I told my wife what had just occurred in this series as it related to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). I instantly remembered the tips and recommendations on not sleeping on this certain Amazing Spider-Man Annual! I excused myself temporarily as we paused the WandaVision show so I could do some quick 'research'.  I was attacking all of the online sights I knew of in desperate search for that copy of Amazing Spider-Man Annual #16 which featured the first appearance of Monica Rambeau as Captain Marvel!

Within 15 minutes, I found just the right deal on eBay!

I hit the 'Buy It Now' and then returned to the series to enjoy the rest of the episode and to also celebrate the fact that for once... I won!

I shall get to this win soon enough but for the moment, I'll post this solemn video that more accurately represents here, where I truly am at this point.

"The same deep water as you."

Well... maybe not all of you.

...

...

Such a good song.