As luck would have it, last week my wife had a conference out of town, and I got to crash in her hotel room. It was really quite the swank resort and not the sort of place we'd ever stay in if it were our own dollars on the line. Anyway, I was in a bona fide city albeit one with an inferior college football team (you heard me) and I made a point of finding a purveyor of comic books and purchasing a few choice titles for myself. Here's what I got:
I don't know why but I thought it would be a good idea to start my collection with Alpha Flight. This is a comic that has been dead 3 times already, but I like Canadians.
Anyway, the store I was in had practically nothing in the way of back issues. If it looks like I just bought everything they had in the way of Alpha Flight, that is correct. I cleaned 'em out.
That particular comic book store also features a door that looks exactly like an entrance to the store, and it happens to be right next to the entrance to the store, but it's really a room with nothing but folding tables and chairs and guys playing Magic: The Gathering who have been instructed to look at you disdainfully. Nerd bullies.
I'm pretty excited to read these, but I'm planning on starting to read Alpha Flight starting with volume 1 issue 1 and I'll just pull these out when I get to 'em. One of the reasons I didn't get into comics earlier is that it would be financially impossible for me to start reading something like X-Men from the first issue onward, and I like to start things at the beginning. It's the way I was raised.
One of the underrated reasons for collecting comic books is that the ads get more hilariously awesome the older they are. On the back cover of this issue is an ad for the Star Wars video game on Atari and Commodore home computers. Awesome.
This is the last of the volume 1 Alpha Flight comics I bought. Something tells me it won't be hard to collect all the Alpha Flight there ever was. There were only 130 issues in the first volume 20 in the second and 12 in the third. That's really not too bad as far as comic books go.
Now here's something I'm really excited about: brand new Alpha Flight. The series has been re-launched. Let's hope it lasts longer than 12 issues this time. I already read this issue and loved it. From all the comics I've read so far, Alpha Flight always seems to face underratedly awesome foes, and this issue is no exception. I won't give any spoilers because this issue is still fairly new, but suffice it to say that I'm super excited for the newest incarnation of Alpha Flight.
I pretty much had to buy this one. I used to have a roommate who constantly hounded me, trying to get me to read comic books. I successfully fought off all his attempts, but now that I've succumbed to the temptation I thought it only fitting that I buy Infinite Crisis because he tried to get me to read it several times.
I haven't read it yet, but I'm almost ready to. I've already read Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, and many pre and post-crisis comics that have helped me understand the significance of everything that's gone on. Now I'm making my way through the multi-story Countdown to Infinite Crisis. I'll probably hit this thing by the end of the week. It looks good. Also, all these crises are the first DC comics I've ever read. Of course the only Marvel I've ever read is X-Men. I'll work to change that...eventually.
All in all I think this is a pretty good haul for my first time ever buying actual ink and paper comic books. I'm sure there will be many more to follow. Bless my wife for being so understanding. She has to put up with a lot.
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