The Summer of the Lay-over.

I should have called this "San Diego Comic Con 2013" or maybe "This Summer's comic adventures" would have been more apt but after spending so much time at airports all over the world this Summer I'm officially burying the word "layover" with this entry. To give you an idea I spent over 24 hours waiting in various airports...not boarding, or sitting in planes...but waiting. It was awful, tedious and mind-numbing..but to be honest it was all worth it.

 I was lucky enough to get my same job back at San Diego Comic Con, being a signature witness for CGC. I had a lot of fun again, interacting with all the creators, watching them sign people's comics and trying to keep a straight face when some fanboy was so nervous he dropped all his comics and then kicked them while they were on the ground. 
A nice bonus was that I had to witness the David Duchovny/Gillian Anderson signing, the Ex X-files stars were reunited and were doing a limited signing at SDCC. Duchovny was a little surly, although I did talk to him a little and Gillian Anderson was radiant as a blond and very friendly. 

A personal highlight was the Sam Kieth signing..although the "MAXX" creator looked like he would have rather been on the beach, he was a delight to talk to and made a lot of time for the fans...It was truly wonderful to see how he graciously answered every single question even after he was asked for the 5th or 6th time. 

But of course, it wasn't all work...I was there as a fanboy as well and spent hours and hours digging through comic boxes and looking at portfolios filled with orinal art. O picked up about 100 comics, nothing really earth-shattering, as my comic collection has been complete for a few years and I just go for upgrades these days. 

But I did manage to get some really nice pages of original art that have been on my want list for years. I made a few videos of some of the stuff I brought back... click on the vids twice to go to my Youtube channel so you can see them in High Def. 





San Diego Comic Con 2013 Comics Haul Part 1
San Diego Comic Con 2013 Comics Haul Part 2

San Diego Comic Con 2013 Comics Haul Part 3
 

And this year I did something I swore I would never do...I actually stood in line for some San Diego Exclusive Toys, my wait wasn't that bad, but I know some people stood in line for 4-5 hours to get a My Little Pony toy or an Angry Birds Star Wars action figure set. It was an interesting experience, but I'm not sure I would do it again.

Reader copy

With all this collecting who has time to read anymore ? Well I must admit that the collecting/searching/buying/cataloging/grading/bagging/boarding part of the hobby sucks a lot of time away from the actual reading. Ad to this the hours a day I spend online, talking about..well comic books and you might think I don't read at all. Even though I don't get to read as much as I'd like I do try my best...which isn't always good enough.

When (non-comic) people visit me and see my collection the first question always is "Have you read everything" (the second question is invariably : "how much i this worth"). And then I have to shamefully admit I might have read about 20% of my books...but hey 20% of 10.000 comics is still no mean feat and I know plenty of collectors who have huge collection and have hardly read a book.
When I started collecting comic books about 6 years ago I got slapped around with two old adages...one was that I wouldn't continue buying new comics AND back issues at the same time (this turned out to be true) and the other one was that the more you turned into a collector the less you became a reader.
Alas the second one looked to be true as well, it's a lot easier to buy 100 comics online than it is to sit down and find the time to read them...and after all the 12 -15 hours you would spend (remember backissues take more time to read than modern books...because of the (better?) words-to-picture ratio) reading them, could very well be used to search for some more books (and then discussing these books with fellow collectors who haven't read them either)

But a few years ago I decided to try and fight the power and rediscover my inner-reader. I set myself a task of reading about 10 comics a week, or 500 a year. I will take me the better part of 10 years to read everything, but it's a start and I have managed to stick to it. Now there are weeks when I don't reach the magical number, but that only means that I need to take it up a notch the next week. The best part is that due to my manic collecting of complete series I now get to read entire Marvel runs from start to finish and last month I finished reading Avengers #1 - #503.

Now I did cheat a little as I started reading Avengers in the Summer of 2005...but that was just the Silver Age and I stopped at #40 or something.
You can read my reviews in the archives section in the right column (July/September/November of 2005). So about two years later I picked up where I left off and this time I didn't throw the towel. It was a very eventful ride, read a lot of great books, skimmed through some crap and generally had a good time.
No way that I'll review all 450+ books I read, but I do have a few observations...

• Observation #1 : Things really picked up for the SA books with the arrival of The Vision in #57...stories got a lot more involved and layered.


• Observation #2 : Runs which had Captain America AND Hawkeye in the lineup were alsmost all excellent


• Observation #3 : Hank Pym was a sucky little suck in any of his incarnations all throughout the series


• Observation #4 : Splitting the team in the middle to creat the West Coast Avengers killed the book for a long time


• Observation #5 : The George Perez/Kurt Busiek modern Ultron run is as good as *any* of the classis Bronze Age and Silver Age arcs

In short I loved this series.pure superhero fun all the way, maybe not as brilliant or complicated as the Fantastic Four and maybe less intense and moving than Amazing Spider-man...but pure comic book fun.

One is the magic number

Short and sweet entry this time. Just wanted to share this picture with you. Last week I pulled my Silver Age number 1s for a photo op.
Why I did it I'll explain later, but at the moment I just want you to take a look at the pic and look at the number 1s...and think about when #1 isn't #1. Confused ? Read on.

I put my nine most important (Silver Age) first issues in the picture, but only 6 of them have a #1 on the cover...but I assure you they are all "first issues". So what's up .
Well Fantastic Four #1, Avengers #1 Amazing Spider-man #1, Iron Man #1, X-men #1 and Silver Surfer #1 are self explanatory, but what about Amazing Fantasy #15...why does this Marvel Uber key carry the number #15 ? Well because it was the 15th issue in the series that spotlighted various new heroes/concepts and nobody had any idea that this Spider-man character would stick. Well he did and because of this we are stuck with this strangely numbered issue as the first Spider-man issue.

And what about Hulk #102...In 1964 the Hulk became the backup feature in Tales to Astonish (sharing the book with Giant-Man) and when in 1968 Marvel finally was able to renegotiate their distribution deal they seized the opportunity to expand their monthly titles and gave the Hulk his own book.
Tales to Astonish had run tot #101, so it seemed logical to continue the numbering on the first Hulk issue and so it came to be that the first issue of Hulk V2 was issue #102

Same thing with Captain America. Tales of Suspense had run to issue #99 when in 1968 Marvel could finally give both heroes (Cap and Iron Man) their own books. Cap continued the TOS numbering and started at #100. For some reason they didn't follow this logic with Iron Man and the first Iron Man issue got a #1 on its cover. But it could have easily (and logically) been #100 as well.

But why did I pull the issues and take the pic ? Why now ? Well mainly because this is the last time these books were all in my possession Two of the books in the pic have left my collection. I no longer own Amazing Fantasy #15 or X-men #1. I didn't sell them, I didn't lose them and they didn't get stolen. Nothing like that...I traded them.
To find out why I was prepared to do away with these two super keys, and more importantly what I got in trade...tune in next week