Comic Haul 10/13 - Galaxy of Heroes Con

A week ago yesterday was the inaugural year for the Galaxy of Heroes Con in Paducah, KY. I went to it not knowing what to expect, but I ended up being relatively surprised by it. Check out the haul from the final comic convention of 2018.


The Galaxy of Heroes Con was held in the Trader's Mall, a sprawling indoor flea market complete with its own restaurant. I attended with two of my friends who have been joining me this year at various cons.

The con itself was broken up into two totally different sections of the Trader's Mall. When we arrived, we stumbled upon the first area and thought, "Is this it?" It was a relatively small room with about two vendors selling comics. Everyone else was selling toys, knick-knacks, or the ever present and joked about by this point custom light switch covers. I knew this was at least part of the con because I recognized one of the vendors from other conventions I've gone to. We knew it couldn't be all the convention had to offer though because we didn't see our friends Mike from Campus Comics or Scott Reed [Facebook | Website] set up anywhere.

We eventually found the second part of the con after passing by a variety of... um... we'll call it "Southern pride memorabilia." I feel like the room my friends were set up in was big enough for everyone from the first room we went inside to fit into, but clearly I wasn't calling the shots. I think it would have been better and less confusing to have everyone in the same room instead of totally different sections of the dirt mall.

In addition to the con, we also visited two comic book stores. More on that later, though.

I'm not going to do this haul in the same way I usually do. Normally I post the comics in the order I bought them. Because of the way the day went and the way I took the pictures, however, I'm not going to be able to do it that way. Also I bought so much from so many different sources it's hard for me to remember anyway.

To begin, it was a good day for X-Men comics. I found a lot of stuff that was on my online wishlist from various vendors and comic shops we visited. Unfortunately, I bought several of these issues for between $6 to $10 each at the con and then immediately found them all at the comic shop we went to afterwards for about $2 each. Oh well.

I picked up Uncanny X-Men #155, #173, #175, #182, #184, #185, #207, #212, #234, #236, and #251. #155 is the first appearance of the Brood and #184 is the first appearance of Forge. The others I just bought because they either have iconic covers or I just thought they looked cool. Especially that weird one in the center bottom row of Wolverine.

There's a brief Gambit cameo in this Uncanny X-Men Annual #14, which actually predates his first appearance. This comic isn't worth nearly as much as that one, but I still felt it was important enough to grab. The Uncanny X-Men Annual #17 is the first appearance of the X-Cutioner, which is a set I assembled over the summer. Neither of these are books that will hurt your wallet. I don't recall what I paid for #14 but it wasn't much, and #17 was only $4. Affordable keys, you could say.

All of these books, now that I look at them, came from the same source. I found out about a comic shop in Paducah, KY called Infinite Collectibles a while back but hadn't gone to their shop. They were set up at the con (and apparently sponsored part of it) and I bought a few books from them for $1 each with the exception of the Thor comic which was $4. Before I left the con, I went back to their table and asked them if their shop was open or if they were closed because they were set up at the con. The guy told me that their store was open, so we checked it out right after we left. I'm really glad we did, because I bought a ton of stuff from them.

The X-23: Target X comics I picked up for about $3 each at the shop. They were the most expensive books I bought there, which isn't bad if that's the most I spent on a single issue. Their prices were crazy good, and I bought quite a bit from them for really cheap. Iron Man #225, #227, and #231 are all part of the Armor Wars story I'm putting together, and they were all $1 or $2 each. The Punisher War Zone #61 has a blinding silver foil cover, so I grabbed that for the 90s nostalgia along with the holographic Superman #100 for $1 each. The Catwoman comic came from the con, and it too was $1. Finally, the Vampirella/Shadowhawk comic set me back $2.

Most importantly, however, was the stack of Spider-Woman comics I grabbed from the shop for $2 each. A lot of these issues are $6 or more online, so I definitely grabbed everything I could. All of these with the exception of the last issue #50 came from Infinite Collectibles. #50 came from the con, and I bought it from our good friend Scott Reed for about $4. The Uncanny X-Men #155 and #173, along with the Uncanny X-Men Annual #14 came from him as well.

I've also been putting together a run of Marvel Comics Presents but only the Wolverine issues. I started getting those at the beginning of the month at the Saluki Con. Every one of these issues was $1 at the shop. It took a while to find all of these because the $1 books weren't really in any order. I'm sure there are more there I can get at a later date, though.

On the way out of the con I saw a guy set up with a table full of action figures. I don't know if he's always set up in the Trader's Mall or if he was just there for the con, but he had this Witchblade figure on the wall and I had to have her to go with the boxed Lady Death, Lady Demon, and Purgatori figures I have on my wall. He asked $20 for it, which I hesitated a bit to pay, but I ended up getting it anyway. I probably should have talked him down to $15.

So Infinite Collectibles also carries video games, and I found an NES game I don't own. The last time I found an NES game I don't own was back in July at the ToyMan Show. This game isn't as good as the one I found there, but still. The guy knocked a few bucks off of it because the plastic film is a little wavy on the label. Honestly, the plastic film had me hesitating to buy it because I only get games that are in immaculate condition, but I bought it anyway.

After the shop we went to Rafferty's and ate, as per tradition. Then we headed to Crash Comics. When we got there we were greeted by a note on the door saying that they were having to close early at 4:30, which only gave us about 15 minutes to shop. That was mildly irritating, and it would have been more so had we gone to Paducah specifically to go to Crash, but it's fine.

I didn't go through many boxes, but I did grab this Spider-Gwen #4 variant. I have so many Spider-Gwen variant covers at this point. This was only about $6, which sounds pretty good to me for a variant I might not ever encounter again. Plus, she's not wearing her mask on the cover, which is something I typically seek out with Spider-Gwen merchandise.

I've seen this little figurine at Crash every time I've gone to the shop. It hasn't moved at all and it had a layer of dust on the top of it. I kept putting it off because her face looks a little silly on the actual sculpt, but I figured I'd just go ahead and buy it. You don't see much Power Girl merchandise. The face sculpt is pretty bad, though. I haven't decided if I'm going to open it yet or not. The box is a little smashed, and the figure is so small in the box it's hard to display and get anything out of it.

On the way out of Crash I picked up this Spider-Woman magnet based off of the artwork from the cover of the first issue of her ongoing series. I thought it would be fitting since I bought so many Spider-Woman comics that day. These magnets are hit or miss for me. They're rubber, and sometimes they're warped pretty bad in the package and I'm afraid they wouldn't straighten out on the fridge. If the magnet was stronger it probably wouldn't be a problem, but it's so weak.

Before leaving Paducah, we stopped by Books-a-Million and I got these Fried Pie variants. Pretty sure, though not 100% sure, these comics are only sold in Books-a-Million. It's not like your local shop can get these in, as far as I know. They were running a sale of buy three get two free, so I got these books. Definitely had to grab anything with Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel on it.

And finally, though this didn't happen at the con or even on Saturday at all, but I went by my local comic shop Campus Comics and was given all these issues of Wizard for free! Yeah, they're mostly less than $2 each on My Comic Shop, but they were free! I was originally only going to get the first 50 issues of Wizard, so now I guess I'll get the first 100. I definitely wasn't reading it that long back in the day, however.

So that was my haul from the Galaxy of Heroes Con weekend! I got some pretty good things on the trip, but nothing extraordinary. I'm most pleased with the Spider-Woman books, and the Uncanny X-Men comics are also pretty great. This is the final comic convention of the year, so that means this will be it for my con hauls until April when the season kicks off with Cape Con. I considered doing my regular comic hauls like I used to do that weren't con related, but I think they just clog the site with too much filler.

An aside, I understand people might not dig these haul articles. I said this back in June, but I feel like I should get back to doing more game related stuff, as that's what this site was built upon. I've also mentioned before that I literally have about 20 posts drafted up that are all about gaming, but for one reason or another I haven't finished them or even began really working on them in some cases. I'm not saying I'm going to stop posting comic related articles or anything, because honestly that's what I'm really into right now. But I am aware that this site has lost its way a bit, so I'm going to try to get it back on track relatively soon.

Until next time.