There are few things that could be more dangerous to my bank account or credit card limit than Vintage Stock deciding that the month’s buy-one-get-one back issue theme/franchise is the X-Men. And yet, because for some reason the Vintage Stock staff (at both Joplin locations, in fact) aren’t checked out on how exactly the buy-one-get-one discount gets rung up I finished my run having spent just a smidge over fifty-three bucks between the two locations despite the utterly mad pile of comics I’m about to describe to you. Here’s hoping there isn’t any kind of audit that gets someone written-up or fired; I told the nice girl at the counter at the Rangeline location that the total she gave me seemed awfully low, but she didn’t seem too bothered. Oh well, I tried!
This was the week that I decided to partake of the Vintage Stock buy-one-get-one Batman back issue sale — but by the time I was digging in, I’d already amassed a sizable pile of other books, so I didn’t exactly go nuts on them, nor was I doing a targeted haul the way my pal David did two weeks ago. Mostly my decision-making process was, “oh, this is a Batman issue I could’ve grabbed off a grocery store spinner rack. Let’s toss it in the stack.”
Let’s look at what I got.
It takes a while to feel like a new year is finally happening — that, oh, right, we’re into this year. And sadly, I think the arrival of the first big, shiny, corporate IP tentpole flick is one of those signs that the year has finally arrived. Now, of course, I do love me some corporate IP-driven entertainment, but there’s a continuum these things ride, with one end being “this is film-shaped content,” with all the negative connotations that cursed word brings, and the other being, “oh wow, some poor fools poured their soul into this thing they don’t own.” Having just gotten a Marvel flick that fits more-or-less into the latter category, I guess — and yes, I suppose I’m tipping my hand here — the former was due.
So, this week I may have overdone things a bit. Funny thing, February’s buy-one-get-one back issue at Vintage Stock is Batman, but did I buy a single Caped Crusader-starring comic? No, actually how they got me this week is that after pal David grabbed all the Grant Morrison Bat-books he could find for himself, he pointed out to me, “hey, this box I found all those Morrison Batman comics in had a whole bunch of …”
Well, let’s just use that to segue into the list.
So, as has tended to happen with my efforts over the past decade or so, this is exceedingly late — but I didn’t want to miss one of these and turn this into yet another failed effort to get back on the regular writing train, no-sir. I figure at least getting this knocked out before I’ve had a chance to hit the longboxes again will work, and hopefully this coming Saturday we don’t wind up driving back to town super-late, I don’t buy another daunting stack of books, and I don’t crash early from sheer exhaustion. At least, that’s how I remember the night of the 28th, and I think as we go through the stack here, you’ll see at least one of those points is correct.
Let’s look through some comics.