Nova #19

 

Comic: Nova #19

Where Purchased: Jeremiah's Antiques & Collectibles in Putnam, Connecticut

When Purchased: November 22, 2023

When Read: November 21, 2024

Nova is one of those characters that I've been aware of but never made any effort to collect.  Heck, for the longest time I only had one copy of this series in my entire collection and it has been a part of the collection for so long, I don't have any details on why it is in my collection.  I suspect it was part of a gift pack from Sears that I got one Christmas.

I can't really recall any significant story he was in or impact he made in the roughly two dozen appearances he has made throughout the 14,141 comics in my collection. 

I've now got 4 issues of this series which is still low enough that I am not feeling a need to complete the 25 issue run but it is an easy title to look for if I am in a store and need a sympathy buy.

The funny thing is that I had thought this issue was in my collection.  Blackout was one of the first villains to fight the Avengers when I first started collecting.  I was sure I had grabbed it at some point.  But I was wrong.

It is a decent little origin story.  Solid writing for the era and I like the combination of Carmine Infantino's pencils with Tom Palmer's inks.

This issue can also count as an unofficial Marvel/DC crossover based on the conversation on the left of this panel:

The implication is that is Wally West (Kid Flash) talking about Barry Allen (The Flash).  It is doubly fun given that Carmine Infantino is the long time artist for DC's Flash comic, including "Flash of Two Worlds," the story that introduced Earth-Two to DC Comics!

I bought this comic almost exactly one year prior to reading it in the nearby town of Putnam at J&S Collectibles inside Jeremiah's Antique & Collectable Shoppes.  It is worth a stop but give yourself some time.  The selection is mostly organized but requires some patience and a keen eye.

A.X.E.: Starfox

 

Comic: A.X.E.: Starfox

Where Purchased: Comic Hunter in Montreal, Quebec

When Purchased: October 23, 2022

When Read: November 12, 2024

Starfox is another one of those characters who joined the Avengers when I started collecting.  I didn't know ANYTHING about him.  He was introduced with a little bit of a mystery that was fun to see get explored at the time.

To non-comic readers, he is the character that Harry Styles was playing in one of the post-credit scenes in The Eternals.  

Another fun thing about Starfox was when Smacky discovered a little resemblance back in 2016...

All of which leads to me seeing this particular book on the shelf with a variant cover.  It is a one shot from another event that I did not follow.

This issue was...impenetrable.  I know the mantra of "every issue is somebody's first" no longer applies at Marvel but criminy this was just too much to process.  I don't know why it wouldn't have been a part of the main event series.  Why a one-shot?

Perhaps I have been away from this character for too long.  I did find a copy of the She-Hulk issue pictured above.  Perhaps when I give that series a read I will come back to this because I did not recognize this character at all.

I bought this variant covered A.X.E.: Starfox at one of my top three favorite comic shops, Comic Hunter in Montreal.  It is such a great place to spend some time scouring the back issue boxes for great comics.  The exchange rate always helps and they offer some cool promotions during your birthday month.

They have a neat shelving system for back issues, a dollar section, action figures, and so much more.

They were able to obtain a copy of Conan #1 for me during the height of my pursuit of birthday month comics.  Knowing why I was looking for the book, they got me a good deal on a decent copy.

Looking at the stats of my collection, I have purchased exactly 100 comics from them.  I grabbed this during the last time I visited.  Before we moved, it took me a little over an hour to reach Montreal.  Now Google Maps says it is more than a five hour trip.  C'est la vie.

My only caveat for visiting is that parking is a BEAR.  But it is a great shop with the friendliest of staffs!

She-Hulk #11

 

Comic: She-Hulk #11

Where Purchased: Earth Prime Comics in Burlington, Vermont

When Purchased: May 6, 2023

When Read: October 27, 2024

When I first started reading comics, She-Hulk was new to the Avengers.  I didn't know much about her but she fit into the group well.  I was intrigued when she joined the Fantastic Four and thought Byrne did a great job using her in that group's dynamic.  Her second solo series by Byrne was a delight.

She was on the Avengers again when I started collecting again in 2002 but her solo books didn't hit my radar again until a few years ago.

I am pretty far behind on a lot of books, hence this one sitting on my shelf for over a year.  Which is a shame because it looks like I was really enjoying this series when life got a little out of hand and reading new comics wasn't a priority. 

Which is a bummer because this issue reminded me of how much I've missed it.  Rainbow Rowell has a good grasp on this character and the supporting cast.  It is a lot of fun, there is a little bit of mystery, some romance, some fighting.  I gave it an 8 out of 10 and will be back before too long!

I have more comics in my collection that were purchased at Earth Prime Comics in Burlington, Vermont than any other store.  About 1 out of every 6 comics I won came from Earth Prime.  It was the first comic store I ever visited, shortly after they opened in 1983.  When I was growing up, the folks at Earth Prime would hold direct sales only books (like Dark Knight and Watchmen) for me and my two best friends that my grandfather, who lived in Burlington, would pick up and hold on to until I visited.

I had a pull list once I moved to Burlington to attend college but when the two owners had a falling out, I followed one to their new venture (Crisis Comics) across town.

I stopped collecting for a while even before Crisis closed down in the late 90s.  When Nan convinced me to start getting books again in 2002, I went back to Earth Prime and started back in.

Early on, Earth Prime was great for back issues.  When I went back in 2002, it was for new books.  Back issues weren't their thing.

And there were some rough years.  It wasn't always inviting to "others"...especially women and kids which was...odd.  But through a host of managers and employees, I always liked shopping there.

The last year before we moved was harder, as employee turnover and changes to the business made me start to feel like an outsider.  But the place is ingrained in my DNA...even if I'll probably never visit it again.

The post script for this story is that Chris Farrell, one of the two original founders, passed away recently.  It was a poorly kept secret that she had a complete collection of every DC Comic ever published.

I wrote her a letter before we moved and I hope the employee I gave it to sent it to her.  While she would have no idea who I was, she was a very important person in my life.  From the kindness she showed my grandfather all those years ago up to providing me a place to keep up with my love of comics, I will forever be indebted to her.

Here are a few links about the store (https://sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture/origin-story-how-burlingtons-earth-prime-comics-helped-unite-vermonts-comics-lovers-35006000), about Chris (https://vtdigger.org/2024/10/11/with-a-massive-comic-book-collection-up-for-sale-fans-remember-the-woman-behind-it/), and about her collection (https://www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture/a-look-inside-christine-farrells-rare-comics-collection-42069251)

Mock Squid Soup - May 8, 2015: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Could it be anything else?

Nan and I had grand plans to watch movies and tease trivia, but, alas, it was not meant to be!

Currently, it stands as my favorite Marvel movie and it cracks the top ten of all my movies on Flickchart.

I saw it during previews with Nan and our son, then saw most of it at the drive-in the next night with a large group of friends (including my son, my daughter and her boyfriend) and then again on Saturday with my two cousins in Rutland.

There are stories behind each viewing, but the clock on the wall says I have to head to school.  I might find my placement for next year today.  And then I have a big presentation tonight for my Masters project so it will all have to wait.

I hope you are all well.

Happy 2015!

Happy New Year!

To celebrate 2015, here are the covers of two comics from my collection cover dated 50 years ago this month!

These two covers give you a sense of the length each company had been publishing their books.  Superman was already at issue 174 in 1965, whereas The Avengers were celebrating their first year in print!

Happy December 2014!

Back to school and normalcy after the long Thanksgiving Break.  Here are some comics I own with a December cover date!

Millie the Model 133
December 1965

One of the romance comics I was given from Nan's grandparent's house last year.

Avengers 83
December 1970

One of the comics I own that takes place in my hometown of Rutland, Vermont.

Batman 237
December 1971

 And another Rutland issue!

The Cephalopod Coffeehouse: September 2014: Marvel Comics Collected Editions

I have been collecting comic books for a very long time.  When I first started, comics struggled for legitimacy in terms of mainstream acceptance.  They were still considered for children.

The term "graphic novel" was held for longer length, special format stories.  Collections of individual stories bound together were trade paperbacks.  It is still the term I use today.

I was alerted to the existence of these trades at WalMart via a story on the comic gossip site "Bleeding Cool".

WalMart is starting to stock a variety of Marvel trades at $5.00 each.  Each book also has a code for a free digital download (a realm I have yet to investigate.)

Here is a picture of the books at my WalMart that I posted on the Bleeding Cool site:

It is an impressive display.  I picked up the Spider-Man, Avengers and Guardians.  I had read the issues in the Cap collection and looking it over didn't think my son would enjoy it as much as the others.  Both my son and I devoured the other collections.

I give high marks to the Spider-Man and Avengers collections.  The Guardians was a bit more of a mish-mash, suffering from changing art styles, Brian Michael Bendis' habit of having each character sound exactly the same, and  having just seen the INCREDIBLE movie for a second time...

these stories were pale in comparison.

Our favorite was the Spider-Man collection.  He is a character I have never collected or read regularly.  The story line, regarding a new Hobgoblin, was intriguing enough that we are on the lookout for the next wave of these books.

The Avengers presented a nice time travel mystery that we want to see finished, too.

All in all, if you have a mild interest in comic books or these characters (who more and more read like their big screen counterparts), five bucks and a WalMart...you're in for a good time.

This Month In History

This has been a CRAZY week!  I had a HUGE project due for my Masters Class which required me staying at school each night this past week until 10:00.  Progress Reports went out on Friday.  Our students started our final end of the year project, which is my baby, so I had to go to each of the fifth grade classrooms to introduce it...and I still had to teach my regular classes.

That being said, I missed my May 1st comic cover post.  So, 3 days late but here are some comics I own with May cover dates.

May 1964

My oldest issue of "The Avengers".  I'm fairly certain I got it at a convention held on UVM's campus in the mid-1980s.  If memory serves, it was in the same building the majority of my classes were held when I eventually attended UVM in the early 1990s.

May 1965

My oldest X-Men comic.  This I got so very cheap when I first started buying back issues.

May 1973

This is the storyline where Doctor Doom stiffs Luke Cage out of a $200 payment, leading to Cage going on a mission of revenge to Latveria. You can read more about it here.  The payoff issue includes one of my favorite panels of all time.

"Where's my money, honey?"

And that's all I can do today...

Cinema Sunday: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Currently #25 on my flickchart list

My son was a little bugged that he hadn't seen a movie when it opened at midnight.  He good-naturedly ribs me occasionally that I took The Armchair Squid to see The Avengers midnight opening....neglecting to recall that at the time, my son was 8 and not up to a midnight showing.

Our original plan to see this movie on opening night was derailed by my current quest to obtain my master's degree...I had class last Thursday, Friday and Saturday making it impossible to fit in a screening.

So we made plans to go to the latest showing possible this past Friday night.  We had so much fun on our Father-Son Night Out.  The previews rocked.  During one, I said we needed to see the movie advertised in the theater...Logan replied "On another night like this!".  He was easily the youngest member of the audience and reveled in that fact.

When the movie was over, we both started babbling about the Easter Eggs we caught and were eager to see it again.  Logan pegged it as his second favorite movie in the Marvel Universe.  I put it third behind Captain America: The First Avenger.  We both have The Avengers first.

I sometimes have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that we live in a world where the SEQUEL to a Captain America movie holds the box office record for April releases.  Where I would get a SEQUEL to a Thor movie and enjoy it even more than the first Thor movie.  Where I would have THREE Iron Man movies to rank and be okay with not liking some of them!!

Someone recently posted on-line that they could imagine themselves as an old man lecturing kids on the days when there were so few good superhero flicks growing up.  I remember the days of having to hang my hat on the first Superman movie and some of the second Superman movie.  I remember convincing myself that the first few Batman movies were enough to hold me over until...some day.

Now I'm waiting for Guardians of the Galaxy, a second Avengers movie, an Ant-Man movie....

Happy March!

I spent some time last month reading some comics and working in my comic book database.  It turns out that I purchased far fewer comics last year than in any year since I've been collecting.  Of the 97 comics I bought last year, only 68 were new issues, the remaining 29 were back issues.

I've set aside a number to donate shortly, which puts my current total of comics at 8785.

Here are some March cover comics!

Avengers 26 (1966)

My oldest March comic.  Cover pencils by Don Heck and inks by Frank Giacoia.  I've come to appreciate Heck's work as I've grown older.  He penciled 9 covers in my collection inked by others and 7 in which he inked himself.

Avengers 145 (1976)

One of my all time favorite covers!  Rated #80 in Wizard Magazine's Top 100 Covers of All Time (Issue 127).

Action Comics 469 (1977)

Just included to make Nan laugh...

Avengers 181 (1979)

Another on the Wizard list.  This one came in at 99.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns 1 (1986)

One of my all time favorites, for a variety of reasons.  Also on the Wizard list at #44.

In one of the art classes I had to take in college, I "reinterpreted" this and was quite proud of it.  However, it was one of the items that got "lost" during the dark times.

Fables 33 (2005)

Fables is one of three books on my pull list right now.  It is scheduled to end early next year with issue 150.  When it does, it will be the longest string of uninterrupted issues of any title I started collecting with its first issue.  It has some gorgeous covers.  This one was done by James Jean.

Green Arrow 46 (2005)

Also by James Jean!  In the same month! The diversity is impressive.

Saga 1 (2012)

Another comic on my pull list.  Vulgar, sweet, profane, heartwarming, hilarious, epic, intimate....the best comic book I have read in a long time.

Shoulda saved these for Thursday....

I'm trying to put together a unit on division with decimals.  While searching the interwebs for information, I stumbled across these two pics...

Happy February!

I was up for about two hours this morning before I realized it was a new month!  What a nightmare January seems to have been!  It ended nicely though....despite the cancellation of recess, my teaching partner and I threw on our jackets and got our students outside for twenty minutes.  We secured a bus in the afternoon and went to the high school to see a wonderful performance of "Guys and Dolls" (co-directed by The Armchair Squid) with all of the fifth grades.  And I ended the day with Nan, our boy, and a dozen friends at an impromptu gathering at our local Buffalo Wild Wings.

So here are some of my favorite comic book covers with February dates:

February 1963

My oldest February comic.  I found this on my desk last year but with no recollection of where it came from.  I am meticulous with my records and couldn't find any invoice or any indication as to where it came from.  It should probably bug me more than it does...

February 1966

Another issue from "The Riley Collection"...I probably should read it just to find out what's the deal with Susan!

February 1978

One of the best Batman/Joker stories of all time.  The writer, Steve Englehart, once wrote that the comics from this run "define the modern Batman franchise, and from that, the modern superhero film franchise."  

February 1981

One of the last great self-contained stories in the X-Men franchise.  The entire story that will be the basis of the next X-Men film was completed in two issues.  Today it would be a twelve issue mini-series with numerous spin-offs and no lasting repercussions...

February 1983

My comic book collecting software assigns numbers to everything.  If I had been thinking long term when I started using it, this comic would be number 1.  This is the one that started it all.  Not a terribly remarkable cover but this is the one that started my obsessi....hobby!  

I just mentioned to Nan this morning that someday it might be fun to get a piece of original art from this issue!  While looking to see what was out there, I found this image of the original cover choice:

I remember once seeing an image of the two covers combined but I thought it was done purely as a goof...I had no idea they had messed up originally and someone blended the two covers together!

Happy January!

January starts with me still having 8,781 total comic books tracked in my software.  While I have made a few purchases, I haven't had time to sit down and enter them into the computer.

Here are a selection of comic books I own with January cover dates.  Two I purchased when they were published, one was a back issue find and one holds special distinction in my collection.

1961

This is currently the oldest comic book in my collection.  We recently cleaned out Nan's grandparent's house.  There were some comic books involved.  After the cousins took what they wanted (I believe only one of her cousins took any comics), I thumbed through the remainders and ended up with 26 books that are tagged in my software as "The Riley Collection."

1976

My most recent "Holy Grail" comic.  It took me nearly 30 years to track down an affordable copy.  This one features the first appearance of Superman's alternate Earth cousin Power Girl and usually commands a hefty price.  I try to avoid paying more than $5.00 for any individual comic book.  In my whole collection, there are only 66 individual comics that cost more than this book. (I've only paid more than $10 for a comic 26 times).  I snagged this in March at my favorite comic shop, That's Entertainment in Worcester, MA.  I had won a $10 gift certificate for answering a trivia question, so snatching this up at $6.95 was a no-brainer!

1983

I was raised Catholic and have a strong Polish heritage.  Picking this up back-in-the-day was another no-brainer.  I mean, what 12 year old boy wouldn't be excited to find this on the stands!

1984

Two of my favorite things in the same comic!  And one of the first issues I got via subscription.

A is for The Avengers

The Avengers is currently #3 on my flickchart list.  It was the culmination of nearly 30 years of my geekiness coming to fruition.  I also got to see it with one of my closest friends, The Armchair Squid, who has become a recent comic book convert, at a midnight showing opening night.

It is sometimes interesting  to me that my love of comic books doesn't always translate to their movie counterparts.  Leading up to this movie, the only one I saw with these characters, in the theater, was Captain America: The First Avenger.  Nan and I saw X-Men on our honeymoon and did go to the two sequels.  Then I didn't go to X-Men Origins: Wolverine nor X-Men: First Class, but I'm pumped for The Wolverine.

And don't even get me started on the DC Comics movies!!!

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Why not jump around the Blogging from A to Z Challenge and find some new blogs to read!

Top Ten Movie Blogfest!

Are we friends on FLICKCHART?  If not, click HERE and let's be friends!!

There is SOOOOOO much to say about these movies....alas, I have no time.


According to flickchart, my top ten favorite movies are....

10.  Ghostbusters

9.  The Hunt For Red October

8. 12 Monkeys

7.  Raiders of the Lost Ark

6.  It's A Wonderful Life

5.  Fight Club

4.  The Fugitive

3.  The Avengers

2.  Black Hawk Down

1.  Die Hard