First Comic Haul of 2019 c/o McKay's Knoxville, TN

My wife and I spent our New Year's visiting family stationed at Fort Knox in Kentucky. It was about an 8 hour trip for us so we decided to break up our trip to and from with overnight stops in Knoxville, TN. 

On the way up my wife told me there was a McKay's in Knoxville, something I had forgotten. My wife's first exposure to the massive used book/movie/music/video game chain was last summer when my family went w/ me to Greensboro, NC on a work trip. My wife was floored by the sheer volume of books and how cheap they were. She's a school teacher so she was in paradise. Both my young daughters also love to read so they too had a blast.

When we pulled up to the McKay's in Knoxville all of us were floored by the size of the place. I didn't take pictures of the store as I was to eager to "dive in" to see what I could find. A fellow blogger friend of mine, A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts has visited this same location in the past and blogged about his trip and findings.

On my initial trip, the first thing I looked at were the video games, but it was so crowded on the Sunday before New Year's that I didn't get a good look at everything. I then decided to go straight to the comics located on the second floor. I initially looked through the cheap books, then made my way down to the more organized boxes. Here is a quick recap of my purchases on this first trip through. 

Since I had my daughters with me I flipped through the kids books and we found the first two issues of Marvel Comics' Barbie. Funny to see Romita's name on a cover of a Barbie comic book! She really wanted these two issues and since we were on vacation I caved and bought them for her. I do love how she keeps them in the bag and board after reading them.

I'll admit this issue of Amazing Fantasy puzzled me as to what it exactly was as I couldn't find it in my CLZ Comics app. The X-Men: Kingbreaker issue was part of the awesome Realm of Kings cosmic story Marvel did a few years back after Annihilation breathed some life in their cosmic stories. Kingbreaker was a 4 part mini-series revolving around Cyclops and Havok's brother, Vulcan. I somehow missed one of the issues so this filled a gaping hole in the collection.

The Fantastic Four were never high on my list of favorite Marvel characters, but as I've gotten older I've come to appreciate the first family of Marvel and their history. Finding bronze age books for a buck? Yes please! Plus John Byrne wrote and drew these two issues so that was another win in my book.

I started my 2099 collection w/ X-Men, then branched out to Spider-Man. Now I've decided to go full on board with buying the 2099 books before sitting down and reading the whole epic story. Doom's title ran close to 50 issues and some of them are getting hard to find. Glad to knock off two more from the want list.

The Captain America book on the left is from volume 3 and was the only issue I needed to complete that run. The book on the right is from the series where Bucky Barnes ultimately took the Captain America mantle after Steve's (botched) assassination.

Both this Defenders and Amazing X-Men books filled small holes in their respective titles collection.

Any day I can find issues of Amazing Spider-Man that I don't have is a good day in my book. I had both of these issues at one time, but sold them in a downsizing move. Good to have them again.

There was a time I would find issues of John Byrne's Sensation She-Hulk in the dollar bins (or less), but now they don't seem to be showing up all that often. Still have a long way to go on this run.

Another $1 bronze book and the first issue of Punisher 2099.

The last book from my first trip through was the lone DC Comics book, issue #17 of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. This series looks so good and I can't wait to finish the run so I can read it from beginning to end.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, we broke up the return trip home and again stayed in Knoxville. Even though I wanted to go back a second time, I wasn't sure if I'd make it as we were all tired and ready to get home. We did however squeeze in another visit Friday morning on the way home. This time the store wasn't nearly as packed so I had more time to go through just about everything in the store.

I don't know how I missed the comic related magazine boxes before, but they were full of great stuff. I grabbed these two issues of Wizard as both had stories/interviews inside that looked interesting. I believe the issue w/ Deadpool & Sabretooth on the cover had a well written issue on Religion in Comics. Both issues will probably be passed on to my older brother once I'm done reading them.

Another Amazing Spider-Man. This one I almost purchased on my first visit so this time I decided to toss it in my basket.

Thor has been one of those characters that I've only passively read in the past. I knew they had changed up Thor and given the mantle of the character to Jane Foster, but I've never read her title. Back during Halloween some young girls were going around my neighborhood and giving out comics and I got the 2nd issue of Mighty Thor. It took awhile before I read the book, but I was intrigued enough to see where they were going with the book, especially after I heard Jane was fighting cancer. When I found a few books of her title on this 2nd trip I decided to grab them. May have to keep my eyes open for more of this title this winter at the local Heroes' Mini-Con.

Walmart stores have been selling 3 packs of DC comics for awhile now, but recently they've started carrying Marvel titles...and the issues aren't that old. I grabbed a 3 pack on a side trip to Walmart while we were gone, mainly for the Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse issue. The 2nd book in the bundle was Mighty Thor #706...how appropriate! The last book was an issue of Ben Reilly: Scarlet Spider. I gifted the issue to my nephew we were visiting as I already owned it.

McKay's wasn't as busy on this visit so I was better able to look through the video games and accessories. I saw some pretty cool things in the glass cases, but didn't make my way back before getting into the checkout line. I did however find a $.95 PS3 camera. I've had an itch to play some light gun games (Time Crisis 3) so I've toyed w/ the idea of buying Sony's Move accessories. At least I'm off to a great (cheap) start. The MIB Alien Crisis game obviously goes hand in hand w/ buying the camera.

The last section I browsed was their music section. Here the prices seemed to be all over the place, much more so than w/ their books, movies and games. I was able to find a few CDs that appealed to me, but I won't be surprised if no one else reading this has ever even heard of these artists/bands!

The Bride CD was still new, shrink wrapped and only priced at $3. I loved their music when I was in high school, but never listen to any of their stuff after Nirvana effectively killed off metal. Precious Death was another band I listened to a bit in HS, but never owned an album of theirs. I believe If You Must is their sophomore release.

I grabbed the Ashley Cleveland CD for just $.59 and it's terrific. Bluesy, soulful voice. She has a pretty cool cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground". Superchick was really purchased for my wife and she likes them, but I do as well. Regeneration is full of new remixes of older songs. One of these albums may eventually show up on my music blog.

If you've never visited a McKay's store you're really missing out. I swear it's like a big indoor garage sale of media. This Knoxville store was easily double the size of the Greensboro, NC store...which still amazes me. I hate to say it, but this was probably the highlight of my whole vacation. Seeing family was cool and all, but if you've never stayed on a military base before...well...it's creepy. At least it was to me.

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time...