c/comic-book-fans

Vent: comic book fans who say 'first appearance' but mean the wrong issue

At a con in Phoenix last month, some guy held up a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #252 and swore it was Venom's first appearance because it had the black suit on the cover. I had to explain that the symbiote showed up in Secret Wars #8, about 70 issues before that, and he just shrugged and said 'close enough.' How do you handle fans who mix up milestone issues when you're trying to trade or buy back issues?

TIL a $3 back issue at a flea market in Ohio changed my whole pull list

I was digging through a dollar bin at a flea market outside Columbus last Saturday and grabbed a random issue of The Question from 1987 just because the cover looked cool. Read it that night and realized I'd been sleeping on Denny O'Neil's whole run, so now I'm hunting down every back issue I can find online. Has anyone else had a random cheap book completely redirect what you collect, or am I just late to this party?

TIL my 'key issue' grading rule was killing my long box value

I always bagged anything with a big first appearance or death issue and left everything else loose in short boxes. A dealer at the Charlotte show flipped through my trade pile and pointed out a $40 Book of Death 2 that I had crammed in with dollar books. He said condition drops fast when they rub against each other, and now I'm checking every spine for stress marks. Has anyone else realized their sorting system was wrecking their collection's worth?

When a fan called out my bag-and-board method at a con, I made one switch and my books stopped curling

A guy at the Portland show last October pointed out I was storing my slabs upright in a plastic tote without any backing boards, and after I moved everything to acid-free boards with the flap facing down, my older issues from 2016 look flat as the day I bought them, how do you guys store your pricier books at home?

The local comic shop's back issue wall looked totally different after 2 years

I was in Austin last week and hit up the same shop I used to go to back in 2022. Back then the back issue wall was all random 90s X-Men and half of the bins were filler. Now it's got graded slabs on display and the cheap bins are organized by publisher. I asked the owner what happened and he said he started buying collections from estate sales after the pandemic slowed things down. Has anyone else seen their local shop pivot like that? Do you like the change or does it feel less fun to dig through?

Finally finished my 400 issue run of a series, and the cover numbering thing bugs me less now

Ive been collecting this indie book from 2003 for like 6 years, and I finally got issue #1 last week from a guy in Portland. But what I kept noticing is people online always call it a volume 1 issue 2 when its actually a numbered ongoing that reset after issue 50. I checked the indicia on 12 different copies just to be sure, and the official numbering has never matched what fans say. Its not a big deal but it made me wonder if half the people talking about it even read the thing or just look at the cover. Anyone else ever get weirdly fixated on a cataloging detail like this and then feel like a total nerd about it?

The dollar bin trick that rebuilt my silver age run

I spent about 6 months hunting for Silver Age X-Men issues one at a time at shops around Portland, and kept overpaying for beat up copies. Then I noticed a shop near Powell's had a dollar bin where the keys were mixed in with junk, so I started going every Thursday when they restocked. In 3 visits I found 5 issues I needed, including a #32 that just needed a press and a new bag. It's not glamorous, but has anyone else had luck with organized dollar bins over online auctions?

The day my pull list got misplaced and a stranger handed it back to me

Last Saturday at Hastings Comics in Austin, I watched a kid about 12 pick up my bag of pulled issues sitting on the counter by mistake. He flipped through it, looked at me, and said 'you've got good taste in Batman runs, man.' We ended up talking for 20 minutes about the Knightfall arc. Has anyone else ever had a random interaction with a stranger that made a bad day better?

The omnibus I ignored for 5 years finally hooked me

Back in 2019 a buddy loaned me his copy of a big deluxe hardcover, told me it was 'peak comics.' I flipped through it at a party, saw a page with 12 panels and tiny word balloons, and wrote it off as homework. I gave it back the next day without reading it. Fast forward to last month, found the same book at a library sale for 8 bucks. Got stuck on a bus from Detroit to Ann Arbor with nothing else, so I cracked it open. The pacing clicked, the art made sense once I slowed down. I went from 'collector who only reads floppies' to ordering two more volumes online. Anyone else have a format or era they swore off for years, then one specific read flipped the switch?

Hit 500 long boxes in my basement today, did not plan on that

Was moving stuff around to make room for a workbench and counted all my short and long boxes out of curiosity. 500 exactly. That's like 30k comics if I averaged it out. Has anyone else hit a number that made them stop and think about selling half of it?

The comic shop clerk who said my pull list was too big, he had a point

This guy at my local shop in Portland told me last spring that I was adding too many new #1s every month and I'd burn out. I laughed it off and kept my pull list at like 22 titles. By August I was reading maybe 3 of them and the rest just piled up in a box, I felt guilty every time I walked past it. I finally cut it down to 8 books and dropped the ones I only grabbed out of habit, and now I actually look forward to Wednesday again. Has anyone else hit that point where the hobby turns into homework, and how many titles do you keep on your pull list now?

Back issue bins got weird after the movie stuff

I used to spend Saturdays at a shop on 6th and Main digging through long boxes for 50 cent issues. Now stores put every key book behind glass with a price tag that looks like rent. I went in last month for a run of old Defenders and the guy asked if I was looking to flip them. I just wanted to read the darn things. Is there still a shop out there that treats comics like comics instead of stock tips?

Overheard a librarian rant about people folding comics, now I get it

I was at the main branch downtown last Saturday and this older guy was telling the clerk that he sees kids crease their books down the middle like paperbacks, and it made me realize my own habit of bagging everything in Mylar might be a lost cause anyway. Has anyone else stopped caring about grading condition after seeing how the hobby actually treats physical copies now?

My longbox lid cracked right before a con, disaster

I was packing for the weekend show in Portland and the plastic hinge on my old longbox just snapped when I lifted it, comics spilled everywhere in the hallway. That box held my first 50 issues of X-Men, some with bags and boards but a few loose ones got corner dings on the carpet. I ended up grabbing a cheap cardboard banker's box from the office supply store down the street and transferring everything that night, took about 2 hours. Has anyone else had a storage solution fail at the worst possible time, or am I just cursed with flimsy plastic?

A stranger at a flea market corrected my Superman read and he was right

Down in Charlotte about 2 years back, this older guy saw me holding a Bronze Age Superman issue. He nodded and said "that one's the lie, the real story is in the backup." I almost ignored him. But he was patient and showed me the filler tale about a kid who finds Clark's glasses. I'd read that issue 5 times and never noticed the backup. We talked for 20 minutes. He didn't preach, just pointed. Ever had a random person flip your whole take on a comic?

Just hit issue #1000 in my collection and I think that's actually a bad benchmark

Everyone acts like hitting a big round number means you've made it, but I've got 300 crappy 90s variants I never should have bought in there. Anyone else think milestone counts just encourage hoarding filler instead of curating what you actually like?

Took me 10 hours to sort a single short box by numbering

I picked up a long box of 90s X-Men books at a garage sale last weekend. Figured I'd organize them by issue number like I always do. Got halfway through issue 50 before I realized the seller had stuffed them in totally random order with no rhyme or reason. Took me from 8 PM to 6 AM to get 250 comics sorted right. Has anyone else had a box that bad?

I think gatekeeping comic shops are actually fine

Idk maybe it's just me but I used to get annoyed when the guy at Cosmic Comics in Denver would grill new readers on what they've read before recommending stuff. Now after 5 years of watching people walk in and ask for 'that Batman movie stuff' I kinda get it. He's not trying to be mean, he just wants to match people with runs that actually make sense. Has anyone else come around on the shop owners who push back a little?

Ran into the dude who got me into collecting comics at a laundromat in Austin

I was folding my kids' shirts at this place on 6th Street and this guy walks in with a trash bag full of longboxes. He recognized me and reminded me how he insisted I read the original Secret Wars run back in 2015. He said he still stands by the Beyonder being the most overpowered character ever introduced. Any of you ever have an old comic buddy pop up out of nowhere like that?

Why does nobody talk about reading 90s X-Men issues in order instead of jumping story to story

I was tired of missing context so I spent 3 months reading from issue 1 of the 1991 series straight through, and it actually made the whole Krakoa era make sense. Has anyone else tried a chronological read for a specific era to avoid getting lost?

Tried reading Silver Age X-Men for the first time. Found it almost unreadable.

A long-time collector told me my bagging technique was ruining my comics

So I've been bagging and boarding my collection for like 15 years using the same method. Fold the flap over the back, tape it down tight. Guy at my local shop in Portland saw me doing it last Saturday and just shook his head. He said tight tape like that can warp the board over time and leave pressure dents in the cover. Had me switch to those resealable Mylites with no tape and a slightly looser fit. Already noticed some older issues I had bagged tight have a subtle curve to them. Has anyone else gotten bad news about their storage habits?

Just saw a guy at my local shop drop $400 on a graded copy of X-Men 1 and it was a total scam

I was at Golden Apple Comics last Saturday and watched this dude pay $400 for a CGC 9.2 X-Men 1 (the 1991 one, not the real one). He was bragging to the clerk about how it was an investment. Then I looked closer and the serial number on the slab didn't match any record on the CGC site. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to start a fight, but has anyone else noticed more fake slabs popping up at conventions lately?

The day I tried to organize my pull list with a color coding system

So I got this idea last month to sort my weekly comic stack using those little colored dot stickers for each publisher. Red for Marvel, blue for DC, green for Image, you get the picture. I spent like 2 hours at my kitchen table in Portland putting dots on every single bag and board. First trip to the shop, the guy at the counter looked at my stack and just said "you know we alphabetize these by title, right?" Turns out my system was completely useless because I still had to flip through everything to find what I wanted. Ended up with sticker residue all over half my collection and had to rebag everything. Has anyone else wasted an afternoon on a storage system that made zero difference?

That one Saturday where every customer argued about variant covers

Last weekend I had four people in a row get mad because I wouldn't order the 1:100 incentive variant for a book they saw on eBay. Has anyone else noticed how collecting turned into a stock market thing instead of just reading?