It's something I've done for years, in all its variations.
The very first comics bought for me were discovered "in the wild" - random titles stocked in a small rural grocery store. They'd sat on particle board shelves there for unknown days, weeks, or months before a kid tagging along with his Grandma Sophie begged for something to bring home, and made the always-reliable pitch for reading material.
That kid became a comic book fanatic, and he browsed for and bought them whenever and wherever he could. There didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to what titles were stocked at Gust Asp, Ben Franklin, and Wilbee's Pharmacy. Every visit was like unwrapping gifts, wire spinner racks subbing for paper and boxes.
When I was 12, I discovered a random short box in a Chicago O'Hare convenience shop, and in it, Captain America #300 for dimes. Having gotten just about everything else I'd asked for from my dad on our Walt Disney World trip, I left empty-handed.
After decades of being spread haphazardly among boxes and bags, my collection's been organized over the past several years, starting when we settled into our current home. Holes in series were noted, and then gradually filled with purposeful hours of browsing boxes at Grand Rapids Comic-Con and some local shops. (This also starts new series collections; last year, noticing that one booth had a bunch of different issues of Wonder Man spread among its many $0.50 boxes, I picked up every one they had.)
The expected (but still sad) news of GRCC's cancellation for this year prompted me to make a retail therapy trip to The Comic Signal yesterday - not my usual shop, which has been The Outer Limits for almost 15 years, but still a place with a vast and well-organized collection of back issues. After around 90 minutes of hunting while referencing my list of missing books, I scored a load of them, including oddballs like the two issues of Fallen Angels I was missing, and the final one of Speedball: The Masked Marvel. Persistence pays off; on my way to the register, a box labeled "New Comics" had a full run of the 2007 New Warriors Volume 4, and so I picked up the eight issues I was missing from it.
There's another form of comic-hunting, and maybe my favorite: visiting a shop and looking for new titles.
In the days when The Outer Limits stocked the weekly Comic Shop News, some things featured would catch my eye, and I'd then watch for them to hit the shelves.
Without CSN as a guide, it's now just a matter of browsing - the same sort of mostly-aimless exploration I love to do in libraries and book stores, too.
I've intentionally picked up more #1s than usual lately, maybe because so much of life is rote and repetitive now. They stacked up for awhile, and this week, I decided to read one new title each day. Like always, treasures were found.
Here they are, ranked in order from "meh" to "added to pull."
After decades of being spread haphazardly among boxes and bags, my collection's been organized over the past several years, starting when we settled into our current home. Holes in series were noted, and then gradually filled with purposeful hours of browsing boxes at Grand Rapids Comic-Con and some local shops. (This also starts new series collections; last year, noticing that one booth had a bunch of different issues of Wonder Man spread among its many $0.50 boxes, I picked up every one they had.)
The expected (but still sad) news of GRCC's cancellation for this year prompted me to make a retail therapy trip to The Comic Signal yesterday - not my usual shop, which has been The Outer Limits for almost 15 years, but still a place with a vast and well-organized collection of back issues. After around 90 minutes of hunting while referencing my list of missing books, I scored a load of them, including oddballs like the two issues of Fallen Angels I was missing, and the final one of Speedball: The Masked Marvel. Persistence pays off; on my way to the register, a box labeled "New Comics" had a full run of the 2007 New Warriors Volume 4, and so I picked up the eight issues I was missing from it.
In the days when The Outer Limits stocked the weekly Comic Shop News, some things featured would catch my eye, and I'd then watch for them to hit the shelves.
Without CSN as a guide, it's now just a matter of browsing - the same sort of mostly-aimless exploration I love to do in libraries and book stores, too.
I've intentionally picked up more #1s than usual lately, maybe because so much of life is rote and repetitive now. They stacked up for awhile, and this week, I decided to read one new title each day. Like always, treasures were found.
Here they are, ranked in order from "meh" to "added to pull."
