Heroes Aren't Hard to Find: Charlotte Mini-Con 2018 Haul (part 2)

If you stopped by the blog yesterday then you would've seen the first part of my Charlotte Mini-Con haul from this past weekend. One of the things I noticed with this show is that there were more "modern" comics in the $.50 boxes than I normally see. I assume this is because dealers over ordered on certain titles. Sucks for them, hooray for me! Because of this, I grabbed several books that I may not have messed with before.

This is the only copy of Super-Villain Team-Up that I own. It's a series that I've often thought about picking up, but rarely do I find issues in the boxes I comb through. I paid $1 for this book. Overall it's in pretty good condition for it's age.

A-Force is one of those titles that I picked up 1) because they were $.50 each and 2) because I found all but two of the issues. This is the 2nd volume of the title. It started as a Secret Wars mini-series, one that I didn't buy/read. I sat down this morning before I jumped into my work and I worked the Civil War II issues into my stack of books I'm currently reading. Yes, I'm that far behind on my reading...I'm about half way through reading CW II and most of the accompanying issues.

I'm glad I did sit down to read the pre-CW issues of A-Force as I greatly enjoyed the story and the art. I hate that I'm missing two issues, but I went ahead and read #1-7. I'm a big fan of Captain Marvel and I've enjoyed reading She-Hulk in the past. Good stuff.

I got back into the Avengers stuff last summer after finding all but one issue of the Avengers Standoff story at HeroesCon. This has led me back to reading more Avengers related titles, especially after looking over what's happening currently in the Avengers family of titles. Since I'm still behind in my reading, it was fun finding a few books I needed to fill holes. It'll make my reading that much more enjoyable once I get to these titles now that I have the majority of the issues.

I read the first volume of Uncanny Avengers for awhile and I enjoyed seeing mutant characters interact with long time Avengers. I picked up the Secret Empire crossover issues of Uncanny Avengers and shortly after I started finding back issues for cheap. I figured if I go back to at least issue #15 and fill in the holes that should make for a fun read.

I have to be honest. Secret Empire got me back into reading Captain America. I really hadn't read a Cap title since he was "killed" in the first Civil War event. When I heard what they were doing with him, I was intrigued. In a way it reminded me of what they did w/ Peter Parker and Doctor Octopus in Superior Spider-Man, a series that I LOVED. I was able to piece together all of the issues off the rack from various comic shops until I got caught up with the current issue at that time. 

Of course this means I didn't have any of Sam's Captain America title. I still don't have many, so I was glad to find these. All but the Steranko variant were found in the $.50 boxes. Flipping through a few of these issues I saw that the former New Warriors character, Rage, played a part in the story with the AmeriCops. His appearance alone made me want to read this title.

I found all but this one issue of Captain Marvel's title that crossed over w/ CW II at a comic show last fall, so the timing of finding issue 10 was pretty perfect. I've already got it qued to read as I'm getting close to finishing this event.

My brother has asked me on more than one occassion as to why I wasn't buying/reading Champions. I love Humberto Ramo's art and I'm already reading Nova and Spider-Man (Miles Morales). It makes sense that I should. I was tempted to pick up the Champions issues that crossed over w/ Avengers, but there is only so much money to go around. Having found several issues for $.50 however now has me looking to fill in the holes.

I found the first 7 issues of Contest of Champions last fall, but the last issue was nowhere to be found. I was glad to find #8...now I just gotta find where I put the other 7 so I can sit down and read them!

I can't get enough of the 80's/90's stuff from Marvel. The Siege of Darkness story I first learned about through the old Marvel Universe trading cards. I've slowly been picking up the various issues of this storyline and I just happened to find this issue of Marvel Comics Presents.

Speaking of 90's Marvel, I found the last 3 issues I lacked to complete Nightwatch's title. Very happy about these 3!

Amazing X-Men is a title I never would have thought to look for. I'm not a huge fan of the mutant titles, but I grabbed these solely because Firestar was part of the team/story. I guess you could say I have a soft spot for former New Warriors characters.

The only non-Marvel books of my haul (well technically I guess you could say these are Marvel titles) was Rune. My first exposure to Malibu Comics came with an issue of Godwheel #0 packaged inside Wizard magazine. As I learned more about the characters I became more intrigued and started to pick up select issues, mainly of UltraForce and Rune. Being a fan of Marvel's cosmic books, it was fun seeing the Infinity Stones, Adam Warlock and other Marvel characters interacting with the Ultraverse characters. It's a shame that Marvel really can't do anything with these characters these days.

Well, that wraps it up! I was surprised at just how much I found. I didn't expect to find so many books from recent years, but I'm glad I did as I have begun to expand my reading horizons a little bit more lately. Had I had more time, more money and my back and hip not been bothering me, I'm sure I could have brought more home with me. That's OK though, time for me to get back to reading and gearing up for the next local show in the spring.

Uncanny Avengers

I've been removed from comics now for a couple of years.  It was hard to walk away from all the great stories and characters that I had grown to love over 10+ years, but for several reasons I had to walk.  My brother got me into reading (Marvel) comics back in 1991.  He introduced me to two new comics at that time, New Warriors and the Guardians of the Galaxy.  I went on for several years reading both books until my interest eventually waned.  Even though my brother kept reading, I moved onto other things - like collecting baseball cards (apparent by my other blog - see side bar) and of course toys.

One of my first jobs was working at a local drug store.  Remember when you could walk into a drug store and buy comics of the magazine rack?  The store didn't carry a lot of comics, but we did carry the old Wizard magazine.  Any magazines that didn't sell I got to have in exchange for returning the covers of the unsold mags.  One of these Wizard magazines I kept contained a copy of Uncanny X-Men #320.  This was the first part of the Legion Quest story which would eventually lead into the whole Onslaught story with Professor X wiping Magneto's mind clean and as a result creating the epic entity known as Onslaught.  Marvel Comics would go on to end a lot of their core titles at the time including the Avengers, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four and Captain America.  These characters would end up in a pocket universe created by Franklin Richards, son of Reed Richards and Sue Storm of FF fame.  I mention all of this because this one story is what brought me back into comics.

While I enjoyed reading the various X-Men related titles, I jumped on board with Captain America and the Avengers at those titles originally ended.  I enjoyed the whole Heroes Return stuff, but as I grew older and I was working on graduating college I eventually strayed again from comics.  As the 3rd volume of the Avengers was collected by Marvel and released in oversized hardcovers I started my entry back into comics for a 3rd time.  Again it took a big storyline to draw me back in - this time it being Avengers Disassembled.  This time around though I wasn't just reading a few books, I was reading just about all of the non-mutant titles Marvel released.  Over the years I have really enjoyed a lot of the summer blockbuster stories such as Secret Invasion, Civil War and Siege.  However as Siege was wrapping up and the Fear Itself story was on the horizon my family life was changing yet again.  I bought a larger house and moved to South Carolina.  I was now a daddy.  My wife quit her job to be a stay at home mom and raise my new daughter.  I was laid off.  Money was tight.  This brings me full circle to where I began this post.

I didn't completely walk away from comics this time, though I had to really scale things back.  I was reading so many Marvel books some titles had to be cut in order to get down to my now much lower comic book budget.  One of the books I had started to read was the new Guardians of the Galaxy.  I mentioned this title was one of the first books I ever read so I was intrigued about this new cast of Guardians.  I was already a minor fan of Marvel's cosmic characters (thanks in large part of the New Warriors' Nova character) and this new GotG book just took my interest in the cosmic stuff to a new level.  I loved the whole War of Kings and Realm of Kings stories.  However I wasn't able to maintain my comic budget for much longer and I decided to quit cold turkey.

As with my previous hibernation from comics my older brother continued to read.  He would be my source of updates and information about what was happening in the Marvel Universe.  When he told me about the Avengers vs. X-Men event I was so intrigued.  Part of me wanted to pick up the series, but I was already barely affording one book a month (that being the excellent Thunderbolts).  So I passed on buying the books or really seeking out what was happening.  Several months ago I was kind brought up to speed about the AvX events thanks in part to my brother and the Facebook Avengers Alliance social media game.  I was told all about the new Uncanny Avengers book that would be spinning out of the AvX events.  My brother has been using a online comic book service for awhile now and they offer all sorts of discounts, especially on new books.  I got the first issue of Uncanny Avengers for something like 99 cents.  It's been sitting in my office at work for several weeks now, but I took some time at lunch the other day and finally sat down to read the first issue.  I enjoyed it so much that I stopped by this little shop down the road from work and picked up issue 2.

If you don't follow Marvel Comics I can sum up this new Avengers book pretty easily.  After the events of AvX the mutant population is without a leader.  Scott Summers (Cyclops) killed Professor Charles Xavier in a fit of rage let's call it after being consumed by the Phoenix force.  Captain America realizes that he and his non-mutant heroes haven't done enough to protect Xavier's dream of peaceful co-exhistance between homosapien and homosuperior.  In response to this Captain America decides to build a new team consisting of both Avengers and X-Men and asks Cyclops' younger brother, Havok to lead the team.

All the while Rogue and the Scarlet Witch are about to have it out at the foot of Xavier's tomb when they are attacked by a unknown group of individuals.  Both are taken hostage along w/ the body of Xavier.  It is revealed at the end of issue one that the culprit behind all of this is none other than the Red Skull.  His intentions are to remove the brain of Charles Xavier and meld it with his own to eradicate the mutant population.  Sounds eerily similar to Hitler and his dislike of the Jews.

The new book is written by Rick Remender with art by John Cassaday.  With only 2 issues in I'm already hooked and I feel that I'll be contacting my brother to order future issues for me.  While I'm still in the dark about a lot of things, I've kept up with enough to have a pretty good grasp on the overall story.  Marvel also has done a good job with their new Augmented Reality (AR) thing they have implemented.  Now that I have a smart phone I can scan the pages that feature the AR logo and I'm given all sorts of cool little nuggets of info.  I guess this is kind of the new footnote thing in comics.  I can't wait to see how this story continues to develop as it has really caught my attention with just two issues.  While I may not be "back into comics" per se, Marvel will be getting a few bucks from me each month assuming this title continues to captivate me and hold my attention.