Comic Haul 3/1

I've had a decent week or two of hauls here. Well, decent might not be the right word. Decent would mean that I actually got a lot of good stuff. No, that probably won't start until comic convention season in a few months. Until then, you get comic haul entries like this one here.


This comic haul ended up being a lot longer than I was expecting. At first I didn't know if I would have enough to fill a whole article. It would seem that concern was unwarranted.

As has become the norm at this point, here is the latest Frank Cho Harley Quinn variant cover I picked up this weekend. I'm running out of things to say about these because I pick them up so often. This is a nice cover with Harley and Killer Croc, but I almost feel like this doesn't really look like his art style unless you look at it really closely. I still like it, make no mistake.

I really need to pick up the few issues of this series I don't own that predate these Cho variants.

I also got this Black, White, and Red Harley Quinn statue at my local comic shop Campus Comics. It's based off of Stanley "Artgerm" Lau art which I like a lot. I actually made a wallpaper for my phone out of the art this statue is based on.

As has been the case with the past two of these statues I've bought, the final product doesn't quite look like the product shown on the box. The head on the statue looks longer than the head on the box, and the clear red diamond in her hand doesn't look as good, either. Regardless of that, I do like the statue. Seems like I'm doing a bit of complaining in this comic haul and I don't mean to.

I should mention that I would have bought this statue last week, but it arrived at the shop defective. The peg on her foot wouldn't fit into the base and her right ankle was snapped. DC Collectibles has been losing a bit of their quality control, it would seem.

So I ordered this Red Sonja comic from My Comic Shop earlier in the week. I believe this is the first issue of her series that appeared from Dynamite Entertainment. She has had many different series from Dynamite, but I mean to say is I think this is the first one they did. There is a #0 issue, but this seems to be considered the real first issue. I don't know what happened in #0 that makes it a $1 book and this one a $10 book.

I felt like I should own this.

I also had the owner of Campus Comics and my friend Mike order this Red Sonja statue based off of Amanda Conner art. It's based off of her art from the first issue of the Black Tower mini series, which is what I used as the pano image for this article. I should probably pick that book up to go with my statue.

I really don't know anything about the character Red Sonja. I have looked into her history a bit, but I'm largely ignorant when it comes to her. I just liked the statue and I'm on board with almost anything Amanda Conner does.

A while back I decided I wanted to get the Marvel Universe series 2 and 3 trading cards to replace the ones I had when I was a kid. I still had series 1, but I gave the others away to a kid who lived down the street from my grandparents house growing up. I also decided I wanted to get the Fleer X-Men cards again, which I was big into before I got into Magic: The Gathering. Well, from that same time period I also used to have cards from this set of Spider-Man trading cards. I don't think I had the entire set, but I found a seller on Amazon who was selling the entire set for very cheap.

Also from Amazon was this set of Todd McFarlane Spider-Man cards I used to have. I never thought I'd be able to find these again, because they weren't common even back in the day. I'm actually not sure where I originally got them. They might have been a Christmas present one year. I know I didn't get packs of it. I was given the entire set all at once.

Found this issue of X-Factor online with a great cover by Jim Lee. I'm always in the market for 90s Jim Lee X-Men stuff, so this was a definite buy. Super cheap, too. A random issue of 90s X-Factor isn't going to cost much, you know.

I guess I'm always in the market for anything Jim Lee. I think his art is really great. His X-Men stuff is very nostalgic to me.

So recently I had a birthday (I turned 87), and I had some friends come over to my house a few days after it. One of them brought me these two old issues of X-Men. The first one is issue #19. It's the first appearance of the Mimic. On My Comic Shop, this comic runs at over $30 for a 1.8 copy, which this copy might be slightly better than. The other comic is issue #93, which is also a pretty beat up, but I'm definitely not going to complain about it with it being a free gift. Thank you to Chris for these two issues. They're in a good home.

I was going though my comics the other day and I realized I only had issues #0 and #1 of Gen 13. I figured I might as well own the rest of the original run, so I picked up these four issues online. Gen 13 was huge back in the day. Not so much now.

When Image Comics first started they had a tendency to do like five issues of a series and then start over with a new number one rather than continue on. It would usually take some time for a series at Image to get an ongoing. Not Image, but Lady Death comics do that, too. I think I talked about that a little in the last comic haul.

Now we get into the questionable 90s junkers. I've been looking at a lot of old Wizard magazines lately, and I've been looking at the climate of comics from the time period. Back then, there was a super popular trope called "bad girl comics," which were female characters who were assassins, vampires, demons, or all of the above. I grabbed these because I had never heard of any of them before, but they all fit the mold. I'm actually trying to put together a little mini collection of bad girl comics. They're just so 90s. A sign of the times, indeed.

Couple more here. The issue of Evil Ernie is the first appearance of Chastity. The Lady Death comic has an embossed hologram cover, which Lady Death + hologram cover = pure 90s. And the issue of Glory, well... I didn't have any Glory comics.

Here's some more garbage. The first three issues of Warrior Nun Areala and the first three issues of Chastity. The art in the Chastity book is surprisingly good, but the Warrior Nun stuff... yikes.

Most of the art from comics like these are pretty terrible. Irredeemably bad in some cases. I was actually surprised at the art quality in Chastity. I was also surprised at the art quality in Warrior Nun Areala, but not for the same reasons.

I also ordered a few more issues of Wizard. My Wizard collection is going quite well at the moment. I probably have almost every issue I used to have as a kid. I definitely have issues I didn't have back then. They're fun to read. They help give me ideas for comics to buy. Things which back then were worth decent money, but now cost a few bucks at the most.

It's fun to see things I forgot about, too. Because I used to read this magazine all the time back then. There would be things that I would see and think, "Man, I wish I had that." Now I can have pretty much everything I see in them.

So a few weeks ago I said I forgot to take pictures of my newest comics before folding them into my collection. Well, apparently I did take pictures of some of them, so here they are. First up are these three issues of Street Fighter comics from Malibu. They're really something. This is something that I didn't even have back in the day because I knew they were terrible. Like, what is that on the right? E. Honda vs The Ferret? Who?

Over the summer I grabbed almost every issue from the Death of Superman story. I randomly remembered the Funeral for a Friend story that came after it, so I thought I'd pick all of those up, too. None of these were expensive in the least. It's funny how so much stuff from the 90s that everyone used to think would be worth so much money can now be had for like $1 to $2 each.

Also from the 90s was this issue of X-Men. This is the wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. This issue was a big deal according to Wizard Magazine around that time. A good investment. I bought it for $3.40.

And finally, here's the entire run of Dawn/Vampirella, all with fantastic Joseph Michael Linser covers. They've got Dawn. They've got Vampirella. They've got my money.

And that's all! I'm really looking forward to the spring and summer comic conventions. It's a lot of fun to see what all you can find at them. Better stuff than what I featured in this comic haul, that's for sure. I think the first one I go to is late April, so that's really not too far off.

Until next time, friends.