Vacation Road Trip Media Haul

I recently returned from a roadtrip to Fort Knox, KY to visit my brother-in-law and his family who live on base. This is the second time I've made this trip with my family and each time we've decided to break up the 8 hour drive over two days, opting to stay in Knoxville, TN which is about the half way point.

Located in Knoxville is one of the largest McKay stores I've visited. If you're not familiar with this store, it's basically a media lover's heaven. My whole family enjoys visiting, but probably not as much as me! I don't recall how long we spent there on our trip up...maybe 1 1/2 hours? I know I could have stayed longer as there is just so much to look at, however it was getting late and we still needed to grab dinner. I didn't walk away empty handed though...

The comics are stored on the second floor and I only had a little time to browse as my family was waiting for me in the car at this point during our visit. I was happy to find the issue of Marvel Premiere, but in my haste I realized after I got to my hotel room that there was a small rip on the cover. The other issues I picked up fill holes in those respective runs.

Who still buys CDs these days? Well me! The top three discs I found in their bargain section. The Waiting's self titled debut as well as Cindy Morgan set me back just a $.25 each while the classic Michael W. Smith album was just $.95. All three are classics in my book and I was happy to have something "new" to listen to in the car.

The final two albums were real treats to find. First we have Children 18:3's third album. I'm listening to it as I type this post and I'm loving every minute of it - a great purchase at $2.95. The other is Family Force 5's "Time Stands Still". This was one still sealed so I didn't mind their asking price of $3.95. I usually search for FF5 CDs when I'm browsing, but never find anything. This was the first album I popped into the player once we got back in the car much to my family's chagrin.

We ended up stopping back at McKays on the way back home and on both visits I spent more time in the movie section than I have on any previous visits. GI Joe Retaliation was a guilty pleasure purchase for myself. Spider-Man: Far From Home was one of the last MCU movies I needed to purchase. My daughters have been begging me to pick this one up.

I found Daddy Day Camp and Invincible in the $.95 bins and decided to pick those up for family movie night. My girls loved Daddy Day Care so we'll see if this one lives up to that...which I doubt it will. My family has surprisingly enjoyed watching sports movies so I hope Invincible will be enjoyed by all.

Most of my time spent browsing movies was looking for horror movies. While I'm not planning on upgrading all of my horror DVDs to Blu-Ray, there are a few movies I've been casually looking for. I was shocked that not only did I find The Hills Have Eyes, but I also found the sequel. For whatever reason these two movies aren't that easy to find on Blu-Ray, especially the first. These are both great remakes and dare I say better than the originals? Sorry Wes...

While I was looking for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, I came across this FYE exclusive steelbook of the original on my second visit. This is the 40th Anniversary edition and is loaded with extras. I've yet to compare it to my DVD copy to see how the versions stack up against each other. The Hitcher is also an upgrade, though never in a million years would I have expected to find the HD DVD version! At just $.95 how could I pass it up? Funny thing was when I opened the case to inspect the disc the original Best Buy receipt was tucked inside. Someone from Fairfax, VA paid $29.99 back on 2007 for this movie...wow.

During our stay at Fort Knox, I had a little free time to get out and explore the small town of Radcliff, KY just outside the Army base. The first store I visited was TF games, a small video game store. I was really impressed by the store's layout, selection, prices and service. The store had a little bit of everything to chose from. I used a little birthday money I had left over and grabbed two horror UMDs for $2.99 each, Alice: Madness Returns on the PS3 and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves on the NES. The latter two games were priced below current eBay listings, something that I didn't expect of Alice as that game has been rather pricey the few times I've found it out in the wild.

I left from TF Games and went down the street a little ways to visit a shop I saw on my way in called Comics Vault. The store was very small, had LOTS of inventory and at times smelled of cigarette smoke thanks to a side door being left open while an employee took a smoke break. I didn't stay here long, but I did take advantage of their 25% sale which even applied to new books! I grabbed the latest issues of Something is Killing the Children, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Everglade Angels and Batman. I also found the last issue I needed to complete the run from the 3rd volume of Captain America.

My final stop before heading back to base was at the local Walmart. While their trading card section was ravaged and offered me nothing, I did hit the clearance in the electronics department and found the gold edition of Resident Evil: Biohazard for $15. While I already own the base game on the PS4 and have beaten it, all of the included DLC was just too tempting for me to leave behind.

Just outside the electronics department was a huge bin of $5 Blu-Rays. Instead of just being thrown in, these were stored spine up making it easy to browse the titles. I walked away with two classics in The Sandlot and The NeverEnding Story and Pixels, a movie probably not that good, but one I wanted to watch anyways.

If you haven't been able to tell by now I'm a huge fan of physical media. When moving day comes I may regret my love of media, but for now I'll still embrace it. I hope to spend this weekend along with the weeks ahead enjoying some of these latest acquisitions.

McKay's Comic Haul

This first month of the new year has proven to be a busy month for me and with that comes some travel. While I've visited the McKay's store in Greensboro, NC on multiple occasions, I haven't visited their location in near by Winston-Salem, NC in years. Since then they have moved to a new, larger location and I finally worked in a visit this week.

I was immediately impressed by the sheer size of the store and all of the goodies to browse through. I stopped on my way home so I really didn't have much time to look. I was there on a mission to find and bring home a Taylor Swift CD for my 10 year old daughter. While I did succeed in finding a CD (for $2 to boot!) I did browse through a few short boxes of Marvel comics that were labeled as "new arrival". The previous day I did visit the Greensboro location and grabbed a few cheap comics so I'm tossing those into this post as well.

I'll start with this issue of Ghost Rider #80. I've been on a Ghost Rider kick of sorts lately so I've been specifically on the look out for his books. While I found several, I didn't feel like paying $1.25 an issue so I settled on this one. It's from late in this volume's run, plus it features the Valkyrie and some awesome artwork by Salvador Larroca.

I also found a few issues of the 2nd volume of the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider series. I've not read any of his series before, only familiar with the character as he was shown on the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series. It's a small run with like 6 issues so since I found half of them and they were cheap, I figured why not.

I'm not much of a speculator when it comes to comics, however my Key Collector comics app said this book may be a lead in of sorts to the big, upcoming Empyre story. $.50 plus art by Geraldo Sandoval made this an easy purchase.

I'm slowing filling some holes in a Daredevil run and I don't see the later issues in volume 1 in the cheap boxes that often. 

The Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty series may have been short lived, but I liked it. I don't see the issues that often, probably because the series didn't last long and or sell well. Both were priced decently.

Now that the Morbius movie trailer has dropped, I figured finding his stuff in cheap boxes would start to get tougher. Thankfully I've put together most of his first series, but I was lacking this issue that was part of the larger "Siege" storyline. I almost didn't buy this one because there is a small stain on the cover just below the UPC box...but it was just $.90 and an issue I've had on my want list for some time.

If it wasn't for the CLZ Comics app on my phone I could never keep track of all the different Spider-Man titles...especially from the 90's. This issue of Spectacular Spider-Man happens to be the last issue in this volume...which don't see to show up that often...at least for cheap that is!

I believe I had at least the main cover to this Marvel/Image Comics cross over back when I was in high school. I found the variant cover (the one on the right) back to back with the main cover. While I was more a fan of the Generation X team during this time, I was always intrigued by the Gen 13 team and comic. This was the perfect gateway of sorts for me to be introduced to the Image characters.

I believe I just lack one part now of the Phalanx Covenant storyline after finding this issue of X-Force. Gotta love the 90's cover gimmick with the strip of holofoil. If the cover art looks familiar, it's by Tony Daniel...the current artist on DC's Batman title.

I've never been the biggest fan of the X-Men and various mutant characters/titles, but I loved the Age of Apocalypse storyline from the mid-90's. Surprisingly my app said I didn't already own X-Men Omega. Love John Romita, Jr.'s cover art and the chrome cover still looks great to this very day.

After the big Age of Apocalypse storyline came Onslaught. I'm still piecing together issues that tie-in to the over arching story so I was glad to find this issue of Wolverine.

The Uncanny X-Men was a very pleasant find, especially for $.75. Not only does this issue feature the beautiful manga-esque pencils of Joe Madueira, but it features one of the best gatefold covers I've ever seen...check it out!

Pretty nifty, ain't it? I was/am a big fan of Joe's art from this time period. I would have bought this issue for the cover/interior even if I didn't care for the X-Men.

It's always a good day when I find more 2099 books I don't have. I'm slowing closing in on completing the Doom 2099 run. That series has been the easiest 2099 series for me to complete it seems.

Ghost Rider 2099 and Punisher 2099 books don't seem to show up as often in the $.50 boxes or even the dollar boxes, so I quickly snatched these two up. Love the foil cover on the Ghost Rider book too. I was surprised I didn't have the 1st issue.

The 2099 Unlimited books are thicker and contain multiple stories. Just about have all of these after picking up these two issues.

The last two books I have to share set me back a total of $.40. I originally started picking up some of Malibu Comic's books during their crossover with the Marvel Universe in the mid-90's with the Godwheel mini-series. I've since started working my way backwards and picking up the earlier Malibu books from the time prior to the Marvel purchase. Malibu had some interesting characters and it's pretty obvious Marvel has no intentions on doing anything with these characters. No reprints, no collections, no digital books...so why not pick them up? They are dirt cheap and it's been fun to piece together certain Malibu titles. These two books are from different periods within the company and offers up some good info...especially since I'm still learning who some of these characters are.

All in all I spent very little money and came away with more great books. Once I finish up the big organization project I'm working on with my trading card collection, I need to do the same thing with my comics. That will be a bigger task and one that is still unfortunately a little further down the road before I can tackle it.

Until next time, "make mine Marvel!"