Great guest star.

Favorite bit: The awkward silence when Shag revealed he liked Sovereign 7.

Like Rob, I never lacked for comics and books even though we were relatively poor, and it was all down to my forsaking sports equipment, even including a bike.

I read and collected all of Power of the Atom, he was one of the characters I followed out of loyalty to the concept (I like miniature heroes).

My favorite bargain bin (well, flea market) comic is probably Avengers 174, which is basically underdog Hawkeye saving every Avenger ever by defeating the Collector. Love that book to pieces and is the #1 reason I like Hawkeye to this day.

Sadly, bargain bins today are so full of 90s crap, I don’t like to brave the fingertip eczema by flipping through them.

I think Frank’s point here is spot on: “As it is, we are comparable to collectors of 78rpm blues albums and Coca-Cola tin signs. We grew up in an era where we caught a niche bug that keeps us in its grip as the world has moved on.” It is a niche bug, no doubt about it. As I’m digging furiously through quarter or fifty cent or dollar bins, I am cognizant of how few people out there would actually find that sort of activity fun, let alone a good use of time! But for the rest of us, that strange tribe of collectors who find joy in not only reading dusty, floppy old comics, but in hunting for the damn things, it’s a helluva lot of fun and an enjoyable way to spend some of our leisure time. Find your joy, right Shag?

Now, with regards to specific quarter bin finds, I’ve had several over the years, too many to mention (and too many that I’ve likely forgotten as well). But I thought you guys would enjoy this one–just the other day I was at my LCS, which has about a dozen stuffed quarter bins filled mostly with issues from the 1990s onward, but with about 25-30% bronze age books mixed in there as well. So I was flipping through the quarter bins and came across a five issue run of Micronauts, first volume, #44-48, with art from Gil Kane and Luke McDonnell. Gorgeous stuff!! I snapped them up. I bought a few issues of Micronauts in the ’80s and have wanted to read more ever since, plus I’ve heard Shag wax rhapsodic about the book several times, so I was thrilled to find a little mini-run in the bins. See, it’s finds like that which make all the time spent digging through the bins worthwhile.

As always, keep up the great work, fellas. Fan the flame and ride the wave.

I adored Power of the Atom, it was great to have Ray back in civilisation using his shrinking powers – extended ones to boot – rather than fannying about with a bunch of barbarians in a jungle, with a loincloth over his tights. Sheesh, what’s the point of a hero who can shrink when everyone he meets is the same size? And it reflected badly on Ray that having been betrayed by the super-smart Jean – which made zero sense, given how madly she was in love with him – he starts dating a simpleton. Give me superheroics and that Norman Mailer analogue any day.

(There’s a nice nod to Sword of the Atom in this week’s Futures End.)

And speaking of Mike Grell having his wife write Warlord, didn’t PotA writer Roger Stern’s wife Carmelo write some of his Legion books, with her getting a ‘special thanks’ credit, or something?

I’ve never read a Warlord comic, barbarians, ugh. Even though I’m normally partial to a loincloth (didn’t work for Ray, either).

Kyle, it may have simply been a slip of the pronoun, but Jan Duursema is a woman.

We don’t seem to have cheap back issue bins in the UK. Sob.

I agree 100% Frank! Maybe modern comics would take more than 5 minutes to read if they were filled up with double page spreads with little to no text. I love double page splashes as much as the next guy, but when you have multiple in an issue that is already light on story, it makes swallowing that $4 to $5 price tag even harder. The mark-ups on those splash pages are ridiculous, yet people pay them. Todd Nauck has made an appearance at my local LCS, some kid I’ve never seen walked in, grabbed a double page splash Nauck had, asked how much, and then immediately pulled out his credit card and paid the $1500 asking price on it and walked out. It’s a fairly small shop, and I’ve never seen that dude again.

Count, I’m confident what I paid for my Creature King comic would have covered half if not all of your books. How many $2 copies of Brigade and Plasmer did you leave in the wake of your steals?

What I do believe, however, is that a portion of the price increase is to compensate for these monies to pay the creator royalties. In other words, the publisher corporations, rather than share their profit margin, have been more likely passing some if not all these costs onto the consumer.

I also believe, and have stated, that there is no single reason for the price increases (costs of paper and shipping, for example, are other factors, and I am sure there are many more), but it is an interesting observation that the price increases really started to skyrocket right after the first royalty and other creator compensation systems were initiated.

My apologies for the misunderstanding.

Best,
Xum

But amidst the truly bizarre “collection” of different books were a handful of gems like All-Star Squadron, Doom Patrol, House of Mystery, Marvel Team-Up, and Shag’s most favoritest title, Sovereign Seven! They even had Warlord issue #58. None of them were in great condition so I had no idea how much the storeowner would expect for them.

I ended up grabbing six books: THE AMAZING SPDIER-MAN ANNUAL #2 from 1965 featuring “the Wondrous Worlds of Doctor Strange” by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; ALL-STAR SQUADRON ANNUAL #1 from 1982; ALL-STAR SQUADRON #41 from ’85 featuring the origin of Starman by Thomas and Kupperberg and a JSA portrait by Joe Kubert; HOUSE OF MYSTERY #152 featuring the Martian Manhunter vs. The Creature King; GIANT SUPERMAN ANNUAL#7 “celebrating Superman’s Silver Anniversary”; and for Rob–AQUAMAN#14 featuring a Nick Cardy cover barely clinging on by one staple.

I brought the books to the counter and the guy told me the comics in the basket are all two dollars each, but when he counted up my six comics and looked them over he said, “Make it an even ten.” So they weren’t technically quarter-bin comics. More like $1.66 comics.

That said, modern writers suck. They think they’re auditioning for screenplays when they’re supposed to be doing satisfying comic books. Modern artists also suck. They want you to pay them to produce two page spreads that make more money in the aftermarket than sequential storytelling, which are harder to produce besides. They’re graphic novels, not portfolios/original art preorder catalogs.

I myself have been reading comics since 1973, and have been buying fewer and fewer titles as of late. This is mainly because the $3.99 price point combined with this trend of “decompressed storytelling” made me feel I was getting a lot less “bang for my buck”, as it were. It’s hard to buy a $3.99-comic which takes 5 to 6 22-page issues to tell a story that would have been told in 17 pages back in the 1970s … for 35 to 40 cents.

I was mostly a DC reader, and this trend had reached the point where “The New 52″ became a major “jumping-off point” to my DC Comics reading, having been very disappointed to buy the first issue of the New 52 “Justice League” where very little happened plotwise. Later I had borrowed the trade paperback of the first Justice League 6-part story from a friend, and I still felt cheated by how fast I breezed through it — even though I didn’t buy it.

(Of course, having read a lot of Japanese manga that is very rich in story plot and detail — in both the weekly serials and the “trade” book versions — I may have unrealistic expectations.)

Also, I think one of the major factors (and there are multiple factors) behind the dramatic comic book price increases has to do with creator royalty and exclusivity agreements. These were non-existent in the 1960s and most of the 1970s — which may explain why comic book prices stayed relatively in line with the rates of inflation. While I would gladly pay a little extra to be sure a creator receives their due, I also want to get my money’s worth.

Cheers, Gentlemen… and thank you for placing additional comic book podcasts of interest within my radar.

Best,
“Professor Xum”
Self-appointed Agent of F.O.A.M.