#comics price guide

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comicspriceguide.com . https://comicspriceguide.com/

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Weekly Cosplay Gallery for the week of September 5, 2015

View our 2015 Wizard World galleries. The Big Bang Life captured some great shots of cosplay at Wizard World in Nashville, TN. Wizard World is massive multi-fandom convention with show all across the United States. For more information about Wizard World go to www.wizardworld.com.

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Spin City

Posted By: Leeland Dugger on: July 29, 2015 In: Editorials

I’m not a big fan of grocery shopping. Considering how much I enjoy eating, this is a bit sad. But I find the whole process to be a bit of an ordeal. It’s not so much actually shopping for the food itself. In fact, budget notwithstanding, there’s a lot on the shelves that I think would be tasty. It’s the other people in the store.

The oblivious woman blathering away on the cell phone to her bestie about the rudeness of men, the irony completely escaping her as she weaves down the center of the aisle like Tony Stark after last call – meaning there’s no possible way you can navigate around her. The cute older couple who – bless their hearts (because that’s how we here in the South justify talking bad about someone) – don’t work or do anything all day except watch that “crazy Judge Judy,” but wait until 5:00 rush hour to take a nice leisurely stroll through the store and do their grocery shopping. The guy pushing his cart around as though it’s the Indy 500, his kids inside shrieking gleefully at a volume that would make even Black Bolt ask them to dial it back.

Yeah, it’s a treat.

Even as a kid, I never much cared for the experience. It’s one of those relatively boring tasks that kids just get drug along on. But there was one thing that could salvage it. Although for that to happen, it meant that Mom (or Dad or Grandma) had to visit just the right grocery store.

And a lot of you know exactly which one I’m talking about. It wasn’t necessarily a particular chain. Nor was it one found in a particular region of the county.

It was the one with the spinner rack!

Yes, those of you at least old enough to have grown up seeing animated commercials for the GI Joe comic book and know that in the REAL Secret Wars, Spider-Man got a cool new black costume – you’ll most definitely remember the spinner rack. That wobbly, squeaky wire rack that – for years – populated groceries, drugstores, and quickie markets around the nation. The rack that had signs sitting atop it calling kids with its siren song,

Or on the adjacent sides calling out, “Hey, kids – Comics!”

My childhood home wasn’t in a subdivision or near a nice little shopping center or a 7-Eleven. Now we certainly didn’t have to come down out of the hills after making a few pigs squeal. We just happened to live far enough out that my brother and I couldn’t ride bikes to the store or anything. Meaning that to get comic books, you needed a ride.

And that ride had to be going somewhere that carried comics.

And that meant a visit to certain groceries, drugstores, or quickie markets.

The visit couldn’t be one of those “Now this is a really fast trip and I’m in a hurry so stay with me and you two don’t roam off.” (“But Mom, I just need to run and look at something REALLY fast!”) It had to be one where Mom was getting several days’ worth of food. One of those trips where you knew it would take her a few minutes, leaving you with ample time to carefully peruse the racks. I suppose it made it easier for my mom; she could shop in peace and quiet and always knew where I would be in the store.

Once you were finally in front of the rack? Oh, that was bliss!

Tier after tier of new books.

Spinning the rack. Finding the comics that looked the most enjoyable or exciting or entertaining, those you faithfully read or that continued what you were reading last month. Or seeing those occasional covers boldly emblazoned with “Collector’s Item! 1st Issue!” and – in the way that only a kid or a rabid speculator can – thinking that one day this, too, could be as valuable as Action Comics #1.

Of course part of the challenge was finding copies of these issues that didn’t look like a herd of wild Banthas had trampled it.

The final hurdle was deciding what to buy. Nowadays it’s not that big of a concern, well… outside of a reasonable budget. Most shopkeepers either have enough copies on hand that you’re not too worried it’ll be sold out the next time you come in, or they’re nice enough to just put it in your hold box for you. But the spinner rack… oooohhhhh. You might have found the only copy. Or the only copy that wasn’t bent up!

It was a delicate balance to be sure. “How much of my allowance do I still have left? Flash is .75 cents; Amazing Spider-Man is .60 cents. If I wait on Flash, I’ll still have just enough left that I can get Fantastic Four, but Flash has the trial of the Barry Allen, and I can’t put G.I. Joe back ‘cause that’s Snake Eyes VS Destro and Spider-Man is in Transformers this month and so I HAVE to get that, but Fantastic Four has She-Hulk and I like her but I don’t remember seeing it on the rack last week so maybe it’s new and I can wait on it and hope Mom needs more stuff from Red Food next week, and this is too freakin’ much pressure on a kid!”

Yes, Heaven forbid you didn’t have enough money because that meant one of your carefully selected titles was headed back to the shelf. And on the spinner rack, that could mean sudden death. Someone else might grab it, it could get bent up, or it could be packed up and shipped off before you made it back to the store! Had I been smarter as a child, I probably would have just taken things out of Mom’s cart and returned them to the shelf when she wasn’t looking, forcing a return visit to the store a few days later. Instead, I (and many others of you) opted for a different strategy: hide the comic!

If it was at a quickie market, your options were pretty limited. Your best bet was to put it in the middle of a stack of crap like Archie’s R/C Racers and put those all in one of the very top racks where some little kid couldn’t reach them, making sure nothing else of interest was anywhere close to them. But if you were at a grocery, spinner rack be damned! You had options! All you had to do was find a nice thick stack of magazines, a title that obviously no one read, and put the issue(s) you needed to wait on right in the middle of those. (Thank you, Byte magazine, and Knoxville – for your complete disinterest in computers.)

And every once in a while, Mom would be really cool and you’d hear those magic words: “Here, put those up on the counter.”

Happy dance!!!!

The only downside?   Your greedy little brain is thinking, “Crap. Wish I’d grabbed that issue of Fantastic Four, too.”

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Have you been so busy wishing your question to a comic book hero would be answered that it’s caused you to miss a previous post?  Don’t worry; you can catch up right HERE.  Otherwise, join me right back here next Wednesday morning-ish for another non-Eisner winning look at our favorite hobby – or something closely related! Don’t forget: you can always find the most accurate and up-to-date pricing for all of your comic books right here at the ever-evolving www.ComicsPriceGuide.com!