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Comics: Sweaty men and thin plots
Fri, 15 Jul 2005

Comics are cool, and then not cool - like skateboards and Def Leppard. (pause for applause) (ducking thrown tomatos) Thankfully with movies like Spiderman, X-Men and Batman making inroads to the public ethermind, comics and graphic novels are cool again. (And with Lord of the Rings being enormously popular, maybe a few people will learn to read again. Books I mean, and not just magazines with hot goth artwork girls by Neil Gaiman :) Regardless of what was cool or not back in the day, I collected a ragged assortment of comic books when I was a kid -- some nifty ones (since I was the sort of punk who liked things no one else did), and some uncool books (just because they were the kind a kid liked -- by which I mean inexpensive!) The result - my little library included some great to not-so-great stuff, like the original black and white packaged-in-baggies-with-cardboard-backing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issue #1. And the infamous Dr. Fate sex-change issues.

Anyway, once in awhile I get a moment and pop by the Silver Snail comic shop out on Queen West. The shop features the finest in action figures (you've got to have a Mars Attacks or Futurama Bender figure on your desk, right?) as well as the latest in comics and graphic novels and anime -- and a cool assortment of used stuff. I've not a lot of free time, but I do read quite a bit (novels mostly), but once a year I clear out the schedule and try and catch up on my beloved Robotech. Really, I wish you could subscribe and have issues shipped right to your door like regular magazines.. I've not the time to shop (and not the time to read), but I'd still pay to receive them so I could read them once in awhile or on vacation..

Last year they started a new (reprint?) series of Robotech stuff, and theres always piles of Transformers stuff. More recently I had the fetish to re-read the Batman - Dark Knight stuff so re-picked up some of that, while consulting prices to see if it was worth selling my rare Ronin or Wolverine collections.. but this months quest is to collect up some Savage Sword of Conan -- I remember it being really great when I read my brothers issues way back in the mid-1980's and for some reason the retro-Conan urge was raging strong of late. (I even used to gamemaster a Conan tabletop role-playing-game back in the day, so I did appreciate my Hyborean heroes.) Still, I managed to hold off until a BBQ with my family back home the other day when my brother brought up the Savage Sword.. and that was it. I had to get some, and, well, ebay isn't fast enough sometimes ;)

Well, now I've got issues 26, 44, and 45. Not a striking collection, but pretty early on (the series began in the late 1970's I think..). I'm arranging a deal for a big lot on ebay, too, at a great price. Thankfully, retro often means inexpensive.. but not always :)

I hope to sit out and bake in the sun a bit soon, so I'll post a review-20-years-late. Then I can start in on some Popular Science and Popular Mechanics issues I picked up a couple months ago, and some Retro Gamer thats been piling up..

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