BuraddoRun

Image and Valiant.

HPB finds. Star Wars and Simpsons.

It wasn't bagged & boarded. I had grabbed it as a maybe-buy and put it with the rest of my maybes. Then later when I was sorting and deciding, I flipped through it and of course that's when I noticed, and it became a for-sure buy!

Collect what you want and try not to let OCD get the best of you. If you really love the book and want both versions in higher grades, then go for it! But if it's just a nagging feeling that bothers you for some reason and isn't based on your actual collecting wants and what you enjoy, let it go. Don't let the hobby control you. You control it. So again, collect what you WANT. Don't let the idea of, "I have this so now I have to get that too" mindset infect your collecting. It sucks the fun out.

DC. I'll post the indies a little later so I don't have too many posts in the same topic in a row.

More recent HPB finds. Starting with Marvel. It's weird how the Marvel Unlimited and Punisher don't have issue numbers on the covers.

Very awesome collection! I love collecting video game comics as well, but I'm not going for a 9.8 collection like you are. Here's a fun one I found earlier this week (my copy is very far from a 9.8) that you may find interesting. The comic is basically a beat 'em up comic, clearly homaging Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and more. But check out this unofficial appearance on the inside.

Found this at Half Price Books for 1/2 of cover price.

I'd be screaming like Tony, too, if my upper half expanded like a balloon inside a metal suit and my legs crumpled under me.

Got a couple more of Issue 2.

I'm cheating a little because I paid $2 for this. It was at Half Price Books and it was lying on top of the other books with a few other comics. So someone pulled it out, presumably considering buying it. My guess is they either didn't see Amanda Conner's autograph, or thought it was part of the actual art. Anyhow, I was happy to find it!

It's possible. I dunno. A lot of pics I see on, say mycomicshop show the direct versions. Also on the program I use to catalog my books (Comic Collector). That is pretty cool! The Disney Movie Club just did an exclusive cover Blu-Ray release of Snow White and used that very artwork for it.

Sometimes you may find an outward facing book that's a good one. Those are no-brainers. Other times you're able to see edges and maybe even the corner box of some of the inside books, which can give indications of what's inside. Or you can at least see the tops and sides of the pages of each book, and maybe tell if they're modern or older. But often, you just have no idea except the 2 outer-facing books, and it's a complete crapshoot. With that Hulk pack, I bought it for one of the outer books and just got a pleasant surprise inside as well. But that definitely doesn't always happen!

Who else has read this one from 1989? It's by Walt Simonson and Mike Mignola. I read it as a kid and loved it, though the ending battle felt like a cop-out. Anyhow, am I misreading things, or did Wolvie totally leave a woman behind with his b*****d son (or maybe daughter)? There's another spawn of Wolverine out there that no one has used in a subsequent story. I'm sure of it!

Other publishers. I feel weird calling Dark Horse and Archie "indies."

DC

These are all Half Price Books finds over the last few months. I'll split them by publisher since there are a bunch of pics. Here's Marvel.

I got 5 more of Issue 1, and 4 of Issue 2. Issue 2 has alternate art versions of the 2 characters they highlight, so the covers are a bit more diverse as far as main art is concerned.

Sometimes, you just get lucky. Grab bags from comic book shops almost assuredly have nothing of value inside, unless they've been sitting for years and the owner forgot what's in them. But grab bags from Half Price Books are often packed by people with no knowledge of the books. Some are terrible, but some are great. I've gotten big hits before. Here's one I got last week. I bought a pack that looked like it was all Hulk comics (turned out to be so). One of the outside facing books was a modern annual, no big value. The other was Hulk/Pitt, which I wanted. $7 for 14 books means I paid 50 cents for each book. I figured it was worth it for the book I wanted. The other books turned out to be all modern Hulks, including -1 and multiple books around the 450 range. 456 & 457 were there, which are pretty good. But there was also...

This is mostly random fun stuff I found from a local comic shop I recently discovered. The Atomic Revolution book is really cool, but unfortunately has a page that has a big panel cut out. The Bad Idea stuff came from Movie Trading Company. How far they've fallen, huh? These comics were all $1 each.

They got a little carried away with Sue's...

Roid Rage