Little Series part 2

Here is the second part of how my collection is doing at the moment, things are coming to a close, that much is sure,my want list is ever decreasing and if I hadn't recently included Hulk 102 - 199 then it would have fit on a single page. The last series I'm collecting/completing are Batman, and a really small series/run called Weird War Tales.

Let's start with the big one, Batman. Most of you out there know that I'm a hardcore Marvel fan and only occasionally dip into the DC pool, in fact Legion of Superheroes and Batman are the only "core" titles I collect.
Batman is probably the most iconic figure in Superhero-dom, even surpassing Superman and Spider-man, everybody loves Batman, alas like I mentioned in a previous entry not all decades have treated Batman with the deserved respect and some runs are sloppy seconds.
Now when I set out to collect Batman, I decided to collect #200 through to #400 and started in the Summer of 2006, about 14 months or so later I'm almost finished. The Batman run took a little longer to collect than I anticipated due to the fact that I never managed to score a run larger than 10 books and mostly bought book per book.At the moment I need 6 more issues, and none are really expensive or hard to find, I just have to stumble on someone that has more than one for sale, as I'm not going buy these book per book and end up paying $11.00 shipping everytime I find a $5.00 book or something.
Now, in the Spring of this year I also decided to extend the Batman collection a bit as well, I'm still unsure if I'll collect Batman from issue #1 onwards to #199 as that would mean spending anywhere in the region of $75.000 to get all these books. But what I did decide was to go and collect all Joker covers, if I do decide to collect the entire series, I'll already have these and if I don't then I'll have some of the coolest Batman covers from the Golden, Silver and Brozen Age to spruce up my collection.

Here are the three latest Joker covers I bought this month




Now the other DC series I'm collecting is the much less heralded Weird War Tales. This horror-war themed series ran the entire Bronze Age up till 1982 and was one of the series I read as a kid because when I managed to find a store that sold comics, these were always left over...yeah it wasn't a very popular series. But I kinda like it, warts and all. Strange really as I don't care for horror or war comics, but somehow this title does entertain me. Now I'm only collecting a small run this time. I'm going for #75 through to #125, the last 50 books of the series. Mainly because I think the later stories are better and because of the Creature Commandos. Now issue #114 isn't a very good issue at all, art is run of the mill and the script has so much holes you could drive an 18-wheeler through it...but when I bought this book new it was the most coveted book in my possession. Probably because of the totally out of this world cover featuring Adolf Hitler getting freaked out by the Creature Commandos.

After re-reading it as an adult I came to the conclusion that the writer had no idea what he was doing and just tried using shock value to sell books. The books actually feature the CCs performing as circus freaks in a concentration camp (and then liberating it)
But when you are 13 years old, this is a cover that screams "forbidden fruit" and you feel guilty just reading it. And for that very reason all my friends wanted this book, I could have gotten any book in trade for it, even my friend J's Iron Man #150 (classic Dr Doom vs. Iron Man cover) which was our group's "got-to-have-book" (and only J had it). But I didn't cave and held on to my Weird War Tales, and I still have it.
I'm now 9 issues short of getting the run complete, I'm not going after them like I do my other books, but when I run into them I gladly pick them up for a buck or two a piece