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!"

Charlotte Comicon Haul - 03/23/19

This past Sunday I took my oldest daughter (9) and drove up to Concord, NC for the Charlotte ComicCon spring show. I wasn't planning on taking my daughter, but due to some last minute changes off the two of us went.

I've been to this show for years and it's always a great show. It's family friendly and the variety of dealers that come are always great. The size of the dealer's room is a pretty large, with the dealers set up around the perimeter and the guests set up in a row down the middle of the room.

Usually I like to walk the room first to get a lay of the land. I'm always on the look out for the $.50 boxes for starters so I'm looking to see who has what. After I've walked the room at least once, then I'll dive into the boxes with my CLZ Comics app on my phone.

This time however we stopped at the first table w/ $.50 boxes. My daughter knelt down on the floor with me and thumb through the boxes herself. I did have to show her and remind her how to safely look through the box without bending the books, especially since not all of the cheap books were bagged and or boarded. We went through about 7 short boxes at the first dealer. I ended up finding about couple of bucks worth of books. As I was paying, the elderly lady helping run the booth handed my daughter an old Disney Scamp comic book (that was amazingly in good condition) as she noticed how well behaved and patient she was!

Eventually my daughter put the breaks on me and wanted to find something for herself. She was upset that we hadn't walked the entire room so off we went. I've had to teach her that at shows like this you can't always buy the first thing you see because you may see something else that you want more. Surprisingly she did an awesome job showing her patience as she turned down several items that interested her. Later in the day she settled on a large plush Pokemon of Vulpix, but this was the "winter" version. After that she was happy and just wanted to find something for her sister...which ended up being a Hot Topic exclusive Mary Poppins Returns POP! figure.

Now that the kiddo was happy I could return to my $.50 boxes...which I found plenty. I didn't even get to all of the various dealers that had cheap boxes before it was time to go. Did I mention my daughter was my vocal conscience about how much money I had to spend?! I had a blast that day. It was fun spending time with my daughter and the show was great as usual.

Enough small talk, let's get to some of the stack of books I brought home with me!

This is a (mostly) toy blog so here are a few books based on 80's toy properties. I now have issues 1-3 of Air Raiders, only two more to go. I often wonder why this appeared as Marvel title and not a Star Comics title since that's where other toy properties like Inhumanoids and Thundercats were.

I had forgotten DC had a series based on the C.O.P.S. cartoon/toy line. I wish I had found more, but I was happy with this one.

I've been picking up books of different storylines, such as Siege of Darkness. My list is getting smaller and smaller as the books I needed are getting tougher to find. This issue of Darkhold was a pleasant surprise.

I'm not the biggest Doctor Strange fan, although I do like the direction of his current title. I knew this issue was later in the original run of his series, but that is all I knew. I thought it looked cool so it was one of those "hey, it's just $.50" type of purchases. Now I'm on the look out for a few more issues to finish out the series.

This issue of Crypt of Shadows is from 1974 and isn't in the best condition, but again it was $.50 and looked interesting. I love horror stuff so this purchase was just for kicks.

Last summer I was able to pick up several great issues of Gen 13 from early in the run. I didn't have issue 7 so this was an easy purchase. Flipping through the issue last night I'm starting to wonder if Jim Lee's art style has changed a bit. I don't really follow him anymore since I'm more of a Marvel fan, but I do appreciate his style none the less.

Long before my older brother got me into comics, he was reading most of the mutant titles. I've heard great things about some of their bigger stories, like Inferno, but have never read them myself. When I started seeing several of these issues in the $.50 boxes I decided to see how many I could find. I added them to my want list in the CLZ Comics app and kept looking. I'm really looking forward to sitting down and reading some of these older stories for the first time.

I worked in a drug store during my high school years so I was able to basically get any magazine I wanted for free...including Wizard! The only cavaet was I had to rip off the cover to return to the magazine vendor. I really didn't care as I got to keep the magazine and anything included in the polybag...like this issue of Uncanny X-Men. This was the issue that kicked up my reading of X-Men, the first issue of the Legion Quest story that would eventually lead into the Age of Apocalypse.

I loved that story as well as the follow up storyline with Onslaught. I've toyed with the idea of picking up these books (again) for awhile...well as you can see I'm on my way of reclaiming some of those great memories. I really loved the art and the stories from this era of the X-Men.

John Romita, Jr. has a very distinct art style and while he isn't my favorite artist, I did love his run on Iron Man. I felt his style was well matched with Tony Stark and his various suits of armor. Plus the Armor Wars II storyline is great. I don't often find issues form this story so I was more than happy to grab these.

Another goal of mine is to complete all of Marvel's 2099 series' and while I only pictured Ravage 2099, I was also able to find several issues of Doom 2009, Ghost Rider 2099 and Punisher 2099. Several of these Ravage 2099 issues are at the tail end of his run which have proven hard to find in the past.

Back in January I picked up a few books from Marvel's New Universe imprint, including Star Brand and an associated one shot called The Pitt. My brother told me about a four issue mini series called The War that also fit in and he found three of the four books for me. These were square bound books and while I don't know much about them, they do look interesting.

Let me start off by saying I'm NOT a Rob Liefeld fan. Actually I can't stand his art...but I kinda like most of the books that Awesome released. I don't often see these books in any boxes period so I was surprised to see several, especially this "comicon edition" and the gold foil version of the 1st issue.

Not shown, but I also found two issues of the follow up mini series that featured Ed McGuiness' talent.

The last book featured is one that I still can't believe I found in a discount box, especially a $.50 box! This issue of The Incredible Hulk features the first appearance of Devil Hulk. It is rumored that this character will re-appear in the pages of Immortal Hulk, the current Hulk book. I only knew about this book thanks to the awesome Key Collector Comics app and Comic Tom from Instagram. I don't usually buy books because they are "hot" or whatever, but I couldn't pass this one up. Sometimes it pays to be cheap!

I didn't bother to show everything I purchased, but I thought these were some of the more interesting books. So, how do you think I did overall? Every book purchased was $.50...that I feel good about. The last dealer we hit up also gave my daughter a comic, but they let her pick any $1 book she wanted. She grabbed an issue of Spider-Girl (the old M2 title from Marvel) to go along with two other books I let her buy. I may have indirectly started her own comics collection after this ComicCon trip!

New Comic Wednesday - 02/06/19

I haven't kept up with these New Comic Wednesday posts like I would have liked, but between with my work and travel schedule and home life I fell behind. However fear not as I'm back w/ some new books!

Only 3 new books for me this week - would've been 4, but my LCS didn't have one of them. None the less, I still left with some nice books.

I started reading Daredevil (again) during Marvel's Legacy campaign...which I missed a few issues along the way. I was curious to see what was going to end up to Matt since I heard they were killing off his character...then he immediately came back and of course that led to another #1 issue. I do admit I was on the fence, but this beautiful Humberto Ramos variant reeled me in. Normally I don't go for the variants that have nothing to do w/ the book, but this one was too sweet to pass up.

Finally the weekly Uncanny X-Men issues are over! I'm a few issues behind on this title, but it's been fun reading something other than Spider-Man or Avengers related characters again. I went for another one of the Skrulls variants just because I thought it was the best cover I had to choose from. My LCS has the Rob Liefeld Wolverine variant...but it's Liefeld!

During my heyday of reading the X titles I got to witness the epic Age of Apocalypse and Onslaught stories. I loved both and kept reading the X-Man title for awhile after the big crossover stories. I've missed A LOT of stories and stuff since then so I'm really out of the loop, but this Age of X-Man story was enough to keep me reading. This variant of Storm seems to be pretty popular at the moment so I'm glad I was able to grab it.

I also flipped through a box or two of their dollar stock and I was psyched to find 4 books from the the first volume of Captain America. Check out these awesome Mike Zeck covers too.

That's it for now. Until next time...

New Comic Wednesday - 11/14/18

The last few weeks at the local comic shop have been rather light for me (i.e. non-existent) since the bulk of my books are coming from Discount Comic Book Service in a monthly shipment. However this week a few books that weren't originally on my radar were released.

I understand that some may not understand how a book like Uncanny X-Men #1 wasn't on my radar. I haven't really picked up a mutant book (minus Domino) in quite sometime, but I've been reading up on the story in this issue and I decided to go ahead and grab the first issue. My LCS, Nikelspot Comics doesn't usually mark up variants and they had a good many of the non J. Scott Campbell covers to choose from so I went w/ this Skottie Young variant. 

Buying a title from a series that I don't normally read does have it's advantages as I was able to sit down this afternoon and read the book...even though I'm still woefully behind with most of my current books. While I may not understand all of the back stories going on, I really enjoyed the stories despite some of the negative reviews I've already read online. It's going to be a weekly title for the first 10 issues, similar to the Avengers No Surrender story...but that just means I at least have one new reason to look forward to Wednesdays for the next 9 weeks!

Speaking of J. Scott Campbell and variants, there was one left of Venom #8. I don't normally pick up variants to issues I've already bought, but I caved with this 90's esque throwback cover.

Originally I didn't buy any of the Infinity Warp issues so it made sense to add this one to the stack. Mister Invisible and Hot Rocks? Green Widow? Moon Squirrel and Tippysaur? Marvel already warped other Marvel heroes so why not a few more?

I picked up several issues of Daredevil back during Marvel's Legacy period and while I missed a few new issues here and there, this one came up on the Key Comics app as the first appearance of a new villain. Plus I absolutely love Phil Noto's art so this was an easy pick up on a relatively light week.

I'm still in the midst of reading the Witching Hour story that ran through Wonder Woman's book so I may be taking a gamble continuing to pick up her book. I really wanted the Jenny Frison variant, but the regular Terry Dodson cover was all that was left to choose from.

Now that things seem to be slowing down a little both at work and around the house, I'm going to try to dig into my backlog of new books and see if I can't make a dent between now and the end of the year. Lots of great books that I've been waiting to get to...wish me luck!