Your greatest comic story

[Joanna]

In the early 90's, I was in my local comic shop and saw a young girl running around the store, not quite sure what she wanted to buy. Her father asked my friend and me about several titles for himself, and at the time, Batman and Superman were hot books, so we both agreed those would be good reads (although I was just buying my books -- I didn't work there -- the guys who did run the place were semi-doltish in the customer service arena. That's why my friend and I were being consulted).

 

My attention shifted back to the girl who had grabbed a Catwoman #1 and was gleefully paging through it, telling her Daddy that she had to have it. I explained a little of the background of Catwoman, and she got really excited.

 

She was remarkably personable for such a young girl, and I congratulated her folks for their obvious parenting skills. As the girl and I looked at the comics, I spied the stack of back issue Wonder Woman comics and led her to them. After explaining that it was about a female superhero, she began grabbing issues off the shelf.

 

"Look, she's in space!" she said, apparently willing to buy the entire run. Not thinking Mom and Dad would look kindly on a stranger's influence if it meant spending too much money, I set her up with the five latest issues.

 

"I got Wonder Woman!" she screamed, dancing away to show her Dad.

 

Having been concentrating on finding books for her, I hadn't been looking at the girl with the impartial eye of my friend. "You know who that is?" he said, after the family had left the store. "That's Raven Symone, from The Cosby Show."

 

I think I should've known that, especially when, after I'd asked, she'd told me her name was Raven. All I said was, "That's a pretty and unusual name. And there's a character in The New Teen Titans called Raven. If you ever see the back issues, you should look into those."

 

Yes, I was truly a comic geek. However, I wrote the story up and it became my very first published letter.

 

-- Joanna

[supapimp]

banner,

 

post a scan of the hulkie 1 and how much did you pay for the book? i've bought a book from major_comics before, but i never rec'd it, it got lost in the mail.

 

ultimatevenom,

 

best story, back in 1991 my friend stumbled into some early HG SA in a furniture store in san luis obispo. where he bought for cheap (sorry CI/JC) ASM 2-15 (of course the ASM 1 was gone) annual 1, FF's and some others. i ended up buying from him ASM 5VF/NM , 15NM , annual 1 VF/NM and FF 12 VF+ & 28NM-. all for under 1K, those were the days.

 

bests,

 

pimpy

[drbanner]

post a scan of the hulkie 1 and how much did you pay for the book? i've bought a book from major_comics before, but i never rec'd it, it got lost in the mail.

 

Lost in the mail!?!? I feel lucky...here's a scan (yes, I've shared this b4!), I paid $xxxx for the book.

 

[supapimp]

thanks for the scan, you want play please grade my hulkie 1?

[drbanner]

you want play please grade my hulkie 1?

 

Okay...spine stress as seen in the scan, a small V-shaped tear around banner's waste, clean back cover, WHITE pages, no marvel chipping or pre-marvel chipping tears. Top, right, and bottom edges pretty much impeccable, although there are a couple tiny (<1/16") edge tears along the top edge where the cover overhangs the interior. Whatcha got for me?

[supapimp]

it's a beautiful book, but with the colour breaking spine stress on the dark blue cover and the V shape tear i'd give it a VF+8.5, if not for the V shaped tear it would be a VF/NM 9.0 easily. the corners are tight and sharp!

[murph0]

Based on the mid-grade copies I've seen of this book (very ugly F+'s), they'll probably give this one a gift grade of something like 8.5-9.0

On a straight scale it'd probably be a 7.5-8.0, but we all know they're not graded on a straight scale.

 

Brian

[garthgantu]

Based on the mid-grade copies I've seen of this book (very ugly F+'s), they'll probably give this one a gift grade of something like 8.5-9.0

On a straight scale it'd probably be a 7.5-8.0, but we all know they're not graded on a straight scale.

 

...Not to mention the fact that *that scan's been TRIMMED* !!

[Whodunit-migration]

Sometime near the late 1960's or early 1970's, a friend and I were at

a White Elephant store checking to see if they had any old comics for sale.

Nothing much was there at the time but the clerk mentioned he was

expecting a comic collection to come in that day. We waited a bit then

went home and sat on the front porch and every half hour called the poor

guy and bugged him to see if the comics had come in. Maybe on the 5th

or 6th call he suprised us and said the comics were in. We rode our

bikes 3 miles or so back to the store where a childhood memory to be

awaited us.

 

On a table laid stacks and stacks and stacks of old comic books. We

thought anything older than 1968 was old back then. Anyway, it was

amazing to say the least to go through all those slices of Heaven. I

remember saying to my friend, "Hey, Reed and Sue marry in this one!".

Fantastic Four annual #3 was and still is the one book that can blast me

back to my childhood faster than any other comic book. And I remember

being freaked out by Spider-man #39- Spider-Man/Peter Parker appeared

to be in a tough situation! Any DC comic I flew past as I was Marvel only

back then. My friend was mostly a DC reader and that took a little pressure

off my search to first secure the neatest old comics I could find before going

back over the stacks to see what else I could afford to purchase at the time.

 

The comics were priced somewhere around cover price- either a little bit

more than that or a little bit less. I was feeding off those books for weeks.

If I went bowling with my friends, I wanted to skip playing an extra game so

I could go back to White Elephant and pick up some more goodies.

Sometime after my High School years I had sold all my comics but in the

late 1980's I did buy another FF annual #3 and I still have it and always will.

 

[EggsAckley]

My best mainstream comic book story:.

 

I began collecting comics in earnest about 1963/64, starting around FF #20. I subscribed to Rocket's Blast/Comic Collector at that time(along with 300 or 400 hundred other comic book nuts). I kept buying every Marvel issue that came out and was accumulating complete runs. Sometime in 1965, I saw an ad in RBCC offering FF #1 through 20 in "mint" condition for $10 postpaid. I got a money order and bought those comics at the tender age of 15. When my parents found out, I got in major trouble for spending so much on comic books. I still have about 5/6 issues(including the #1) from that buy, grading from 5.5 to 8.5. Later that year I bought a Spiderman #1 from a RBCC classified ad for 50 cents. I still have it and it graded a 6.5.

 

My best non mainstream comic book story has to do with my search to meet Robert Crumb in 1980 in San Francisco, but we'll save that for another day.

 

 

[ninanina]

Well, I'll keep it brief because many of the (actually, probably all) long-time forum members have heard this in detail. To make a long story short,

 

I found my holy-grail of a collection about 3 years ago. I was able to get first dibs (before the dealers) on silver/bronze age runs of Thor, Captain America, Fantastic Four, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales, Green Lantern, Incredible Hulk, Brave & Bold, World's Finest, Batman, Gold Key Star Trek, Turok, Eerie, Creepy... well you get the idea. Cost me thousands, but to buy them the normal way would have cost thousands more. When I first heard about the collection, I really believed (like many) it would be another one of those 80's / 90's collection so prevalent out there.

 

I'll never re-experience the feeling I had looking through the piles of comics and discovering just about everything I've ever wanted and more. And all because my wife casually mentioned to this lady who goes to our church many years ago I was a collector. She remembered and after her son (whose collection this was) passed away she gave me a call and the rest is history.

 

Amazingly, the collection was so huge, that I only got about 1/3 of it.

 

About 20 years ago, I had a lot of these comics already, but had to sell them due to a financial emergency. I never believed I'd not only have the opportunity to own them again, but for the most part they were in better condition than the ones I sold those many years ago. Big reason why I'll never sell them and for the most part ignore some of the negativity about the hobby in this forum. Because I believed 20 years ago when I sold those comics, they'd never be worth more. It made parting with them a bit easier to take, but many times over the years I regretted it, until this collection came along.