Last month was weird. Since my last Showing Off The Shelves, things avalanched. I mean, they avalanched personally, but so did my collection. Three different jobs landed in my lap, all of which can lead to a lot more. My initial acceptance letter to one of them, (before I re-drafted it) was “Wow, I’m happy to do that, but how the fuck did I trick you into saying yes?”
I’m going to start this post off by giving a special thanks to The Nostalgia Zone, the comic book store I frequent most (this is not the mob store I have mentioned in other posts, if you go in there to ask a question the owner won’t say “Who’s asking?”). Thanks to them, I was able to find some remarkable deals. Some of them were things I’d been looking for already, some of them on the edge of my radar, and one big ticket item that I never thought I’d get my hands on.
As it happens, they were having a sale on Groundhog Day. I know I said Don Rosa in Review was in hibernation, but while I won’t be digging into the story in that article, I will discuss what I found: The Don Rosa Artist’s Edition.
I’d wanted this ever since it came out, but it seemed frivolous without some sort of reason behind it. As it turns out, I’ll have the opportunity to see Don Rosa at a convention later this year. It’s been something like seven years since he was in Minnesota (at least as far as I can tell). Having the chance to get his autograph on it, maybe even a sketch on the inside cover? That’s something special. And by the time the convention rolls around, volume two will be out, collecting the entirety of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (there will be a Volume 3 with the bonus chapters, but I don’t know when that’s coming out.)
The last time I made a post like this, I had 784 items in my collection. That, uh, expanded, because as of 2/27, I have 805.
Even for me, this was an odd month. Part of it was that The Nostalgia Zone has a sale – $10 per trade, or 3 for $20, or 10 for $50; part of it was a weird confluence of pre-orders; finally, finding rare items at ridiculously cheap prices. How else do you think I got three omnibuses over the span of a month? None of it went to the publisher, they’re all out of print. How’s that working out for you, Marvel?
Some of this is stuff I found from The Nostalgia Zone, some of them were sales, a few others from eBay, Half Price Books, and Amazon, while Luke Cage: Power Man Volume 2 was a gift from my girlfriend. She was responsible for my 700th book, The Incredible Hulk Visionaries by Peter David: Volume 5, while this was my 800th. There’s something very special about that, having people you love contribute to your collection. Shopping with my dad is a big reason this collection exists at all, but he wasn’t so much a part of determining what I might want to collect. I was often the one exposing him to new things. Mostly it was spending time together that felt good, talking about what we were finding, and seeing what treasures we could unearth.
Enjoy spending time with the people you love, because their memories will matter in ways you don’t know yet. It could be a moment, an afternoon, or something of theirs that’s with you now.
This was a weird month. I had an avalanche of books. I was picked up as a freelancer by GeekDad. I’ll continue doing editorials and reviews with K. Tilden Frost. Two magazine articles we pitched were picked up. It’s a good start.
What’s next?
Mathias DeRider