Ken Aldred

That’s a good one. At least with the effort to use different figures in the same postures.

Oh, brings back memories.

I did know about Starlin and Marvel UK. Always a big fan of his BA work. Great example.

I’ve found some dealers, shop owners and employees to have treated me well and looked after me, but there’s also been a lot of contempt and disrespect. Very rude and aggressive behaviour, the implication that you’re a dependent cash cow and they can say or do anything, get away with it, and still have you return each week for more. Attempting to boss you into buying expensive books that you’ve never actually expressed any interest in whatsoever, and then having screaming, infantile hissy fits when you don’t comply. One of my most disheartening experiences over here was a dealer making ignorant comments about the severity of my autism the first second he spoke to me. ‘You have mild autism.’, when it’s actually been diagnosed as disabling. But, I suppose a comics dealer knows more about assessing that than does a GP or psychiatrist. In addition, one of his partners and their wife had an irritating habit of talking to me all the time in a tone which would insult someone with the IQ of a 3-year-old. This abusive or condescending behaviour and enablement from both persisted throughout every subsequent interaction, and little wonder that I distanced myself and bought very, very little from them. They seemed a bit frustrated at that, but surely individuals so intellectually and socially superior to me should be able to at least predict the possibility of a negative outcome. I’ve also posted previously about my experiences in a local store, especially quite a bit of obnoxious staff contempt, and the manager facing me down, physically assaulting me, and, in effect, applying extortion-like behaviour because I hadn’t been spending enough, or ‘anything’, in their opinion. I also recall my last visit to central London in 2014, where I bought a nice range of books from a shop there, Orbital Comics; an EC Weird Science Archive Vol 4, Moebius’ Incal, and a modern Harbinger collection. I was really impressed with the store, phoned them up to compliment them, and while talking to their employee about my purchases, and while mentioning the Harbinger volume, I could hear him sniggering away. After the call, I thought to myself, why do I even bother wasting my time, putting myself out travelling, and buying from people like you? So, the stores I was happy with for years, staffed with helpful, thoughtful, respectful people, have shut up shop, and, cumulatively, these many other negative experiences, and the emergence of digital comics, have led me to distance myself comfortably from the various physical sources and from having to put up with any of this. I agree with you, from my many observations over the last four-or-so decades, that there’s been an awful lot of socially handicapped behaviour inflicted by the neurotypical population in our hobby, and perhaps there should be less contempt and condescension and more respect shown to neurodivergent individuals like myself. It’s possible that you might encounter the extremes of antisocial behaviour disorder, but, at the very least, some of these perpetrators are flattering themselves that they’re social paradigms. I hope my descriptions have been sufficiently articulate, despite my shortcomings. After all, one well-known British dealer once said to me… ’Only mental defectives like you collect comic books.’ As a collector himself, that was really intelligent, and sad.

I’d be interested in seeing more of these if you’ve found any. Just to show how unobservant I was as a kid back in the 70s.

Great pick. You can’t go wrong there.

The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman First time I’ve read this since the 80s. That said, not quite as emotive for me this time around, I suspect because there have been many documentaries and many other personal, survivor accounts of the Holocaust since then, and exposure to quite a lot of material on British TV in recent times. Nonetheless, still very powerful, from my viewpoint with my interest in understanding antisocial behaviour disorder, and here, literally illustrated, the destructive consequences of the actions of some apex examples of this spectrum. One of the most significant works of our comic book medium, and essential reading for all. 2023 total = 564

Couldn’t agree more. Got him to sign a couple of Flash issues and a copy of Archives Vol 1 (can’t afford a Showcase 4). Very lonely-looking at his table, a pity for such an iconic creator, and a missed opportunity for many as he was great to chat with.

There’s also a 60fps performance mode as well? Something I prefer.

The remaster is supposed to be excellent. The PS3 versions themselves looked superb and ran well without glitching on that console.

The trades are nice little books. For me, the way to go.

I just found it to be very tame, and not really representative of an horrendous, brutal conflict.

Sweet Tooth 1 to 12 A sad story about a sheltered, naive mutant kid forced to go out into a brutal, post-apocalyptic world. Good indie comic stuff from Jeff Lemire. 2023 total = 563

Good pick. I’m after that when I find it at the £20-or-less price point. I have the PS3 trilogy. Classic survival horror.

No Black Friday sale pickups, but I did finally buy Stray for PS5 at a reasonable £17.

I was actually quite disappointed by it. Surprisingly lightweight for a film about World War 1.

Must be really terrible. His virtuoso acting talent was a highlight of the classic Plan 9.

One of the boardies here mentioned that his kids enjoyed reading Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes. I’m a bit out of touch, but to the best of my knowledge they aren’t quite as easily available as are many other SA DC titles, only complete as pricey Archive Editions and with only the earliest issues reprinted as a cheap trade collection. I’d agree, as some of the first comics I read as a kid before I started buying regularly from the newsstand were several of the Jim Shooter issues from a British reprint album I was given, around 6 years old or so, including the all-time classic Death of Ferro Lad / Sun Eater story.

Parallel universes, one where vampires won out, the other the werewolves. Vampironica 1 to 5 Quite old school, Gothic horror. A fairly tame start to the extended storyline. Nice art from Greg Smallwood, who went on to do the Human Target mini-series with Tom King. Jughead The Hunger 1 to 13 For an Archie comic, surprisingly gory. Frank Tieri’s story is really a quite engaging page turner. Nice art from the Kennedy brothers. Jughead The Hunger vs Vampironica 1 to 5 The two parallel universes collide after a spell is cast by Riverdale’s Antichrist. That is, the saga becomes even more mental, and continues to be entertaining. Vampironica New Blood 1 to 4 Back home, the story concludes with a return to a little more tame, old school vampire horror. 27 comics together 2023 total = 551

I read it as an offshoot of Waid’s classic Flash run, but you’re right, a good pick.

I’m more liberal. There’s room for both tech nerds and newsprint sniffers.

A bit straw man to claim and impose universal solipsism on the practitioners. Also, a lack of theory of mind in not accepting that there can, naturally, be a range of perceptions and motivations driving the interest or obsession, that the evolution is underpinned by a more complex spectrum. I don’t expect anyone here to be the same as me when it comes to collecting, and many unique journeys might have been taken, none absolutely identical. I don’t assume simplistic homogeneity and predictability. In group therapy, you may have been congregated together on the basis of sharing a certain psychiatric or neurological, syndromic complex of symptoms, but the range of personalities you interact with and the experiences and worldviews voiced can still seem quite astonishingly diverse, and a bit confusing and paradoxical, considering that we’re supposed to be there for fundamentally the same diagnostic reason.

It’s an absolute classic RPG.