Comments on: The Comic Book Shop

By: Felneymike

Felneymike — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 12:45:21 +0000

I can’t even remember my actual first comic :( it would have been Thunderbirds (1960′s-vintage reprints from TV21, most likely) or Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (US strips reprinted, probably chopped about into halves so it could be released weekly). I can remember getting my first Beano in about 1991, though. It became my weekly must-read until about 1998

By: Torsten Adair

Torsten Adair — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:53:09 +0000

My comic shop surprise? Discovering they shipped three weeks ahead of the newsstands.

So when I finally walked uphill, both ways (there was a big hill between my house and the shop) in the snow (January in Nebraska) to visit Dragon’s Lair for the first time, I left with a huge bag of comics.

My first issue of MAD (July 1979) I read until the covers fell off. A few years later, my mother discovered a huge box at a garage sale dating back to 1974! And then, one day, I walk into the comics shop, and see copies from the 1950s and 1960s priced at $1!

I started collecting comics in 1984, with Amazing Spider-Man #254. I was 15.

By: Two tales of the comics shop | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:01:02 +0000

[...] Butcher has a nice reminiscence of how he discovered comics that shows up both the advantage the newsstand had and its fatal shortcoming. Little Christopher [...]

By: Matt K

Matt K — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 12:56:45 +0000

Ah, so much that is familiar in this story; only the pieces have been slightly rearranged.

I got onboard this series about, hm, two and a half years after you I guess. So I had even more to track down, but didn’t discover “the comic book shop” until a few years further on.

Instead I ordered from catalogs. Who remembers those days? Listing a range of acceptable grades, plus “alternate choices” because by the time your order reached the store it would be long after the stock-taking which informed the printed catalog (assuming there was one). Fun, fun.

And I also vividly remember the moment when, after years of its eluding me, I finally held Transformers #1 in my shaking adolescent hands. The cover really does make it worthwhile. That may still be the most excited I’ve ever been about any single comic acquisition in my life.