It’s monday night and I just came up to the fire – some of us are down on the dock, just star-watching. Jeff and Anna are at the fire. I am just thinking of making a little mini-site that contains pictures and a short bio of our family members. I had planed on coming up and reading a few comics but instead I got a little sidetracked and decided that I was going to type up a few notes on my comics that I have read and gotten this summer. While I was in canada the first day I went back across to detroit with my brother in law Jeff – he had some stuff put away there and I found a copy of Daredevil 168 – I have been trying to collect a full Frank Miller run on DD (158-181 and some stuff in the 220’s) – and the two big issues that are hard to find are 158 (first Miller) and 168 (First appearance of Elektra).

I found a decent 158 at WonderCon this year, and they had two copies of 168 – one was $64.95, one $70. The 64.95 one was in a bit worse condition than $5 would normally indicate, but I took that well – I used it to bargain him down to $40. I also bought a few other things, the Spiderman/Black Cat mini by Kevin Smith, Captain America, blah blah. A couple days later, Jeff and I had a few hours to kill so we sat around and were going to do some comics related stuff – He was going to clean the 3 new Batman Black & White statues he had bought and I was going to read some stuff. I start with DD 168 and when I get to near the end, there’s a big chunk ripped out of a page. At first I’m in shock, then I’m mad. Then I’m way worse. I hold it up and Jeff can’t believe it. “No…” Basically I have him call the store since I’m so mad. They however are very sorry and will make it up to me in any way they can. I, however am leaving the next day for Ohio and can’t make it back to the store for a couple weeks. No problem, they say. They’d be happy to put away the other issue of 168 and save it for me. When I got back I went in and exchanged it and everyone is happy. I ended up with the one in much better shape and all it cost me was $8CDN in bridge tolls and an ulcer.
Also while I was in Marietta, Kelly was insistent that I go and visit the new comic book/video store that had apparently opened up there. I go in and it’s mostly videos, with one wall of new comics, one rack of graphic novels and maybe 6 long boxes of back issues. (As a comparison, my personal collection is around 9-10 long boxes). I’m looking through and leafing past mostly junk and then I hit JLA, and they have issue #1 for $10. I’m like ‘cool’ – since I got turned onto Grant Morrison a couple years ago and he wrote the first 3 or 4 years of JLA. I flip past and see issue #2. then 3. All the way up to where Mark Waid starts (around 43). So I go to the counter and talk to the guy a bit and see if he’ll make a deal. He goes over to the box, flips through them and does some mental arithmetic and we make a deal for $75 for the first 40 issues. That’s less than cover price, for stuff that I want and was unlikely to find. That made my day. Thanks hun :).