May the 4th Be With You
First, I need to offer up the obligatory: Happy Star Wars day! I probably won't end up celebrating today by watching the movies or anything, but I do hope to get them in when Mom is in town, so it might be a belated Star Wars day on my end.
So, my ultimate question is: Is it Revenge of the Fifth or Sixth? I've heard both. And when I googled, I came across this little gem. While it doesn't clear it up at all, it makes it highly more entertaining. Especially the Tweety Bird reference.
To Comic or Not to Comic?
So, growing up I never really got into comic books. Collecting them, anyway. I enjoyed listening to people re-tell stories of the latest comic they'd read, and I especially loved watching the Original X-Men TV show from the 90s. I had considered purchasing the comics after watching the TV show because I loved the characters so much, but I didn't because (1) there's only so much you can get with "allowance" money, and (2) even at a young age I was one of those completionist types where I had to start from the beginning. (It's a blessing and a curse--I do it with podcasts, too.)
So instead, I got into manga. They were easier to keep on a bookshelf and were generally only ten bucks a pop for more pages than a comic book. More bang for the buck, right? Besides, I'd always been obsessed with my mother's Asian dolls and china sets, and was loving Sailor Moon and DBZ on TV. It just made sense.
My First Comic Book
Yesterday, before going to a pre-Graduation party for Chaide with some of his classmates (they won't be able to attend each others' parties, so they had a celebration together), we stopped at one of the downtown squares near the location and took a walk. We ended up stumbling upon an Antique/Collectible store, and they had a large comics section in the back. I'm sure you can see where I'm going, here. We ended up looking through the boxes, and most of the stuff in there was older Marvel and DC things, such as X-Men, Wolverine, Thor, etc.Chaide picked out three of the comics he had as a kid that got stolen from a storage area he had (all of his Warhammer and comics and other geeky paraphernalia got stolen much before we met) and insisted that I get a comic or two as well.
I couldn't really find anything I wanted. I have three Comic Collection Volumes at home. Two for Season 8 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Volumes 1 and 2, and I have the other six on a Wish List), and the other one is Volume 1 of Rat Queens which Chaide got me for Christmas at the suggestion of one of our lovely guildies, Yak. Volume 2 Collection for Rat Queens comes out later this month, and I'm greatly looking forward to it--even though I've only really read a few pages of the first volume.
Admittedly, I still haven't finished the Buffy books, either. I get partway through and then put it down to game or read something else. But still, Chaide insisted since I've never had a comic book in my life that I pick something out. So I searched through the boxes and stumbled upon Serenity: Leaves on the Wind. I had to have it. But, being the completionist I am, I didn't want to get it because they didn't have Issue 1 at the shop I was at. And I won't read it if I don't start with the first issue.
Chaide just kind of rolled his eyes and picked it out of the box and added it to the bottom of his pile so I couldn't grab it and put it back. So now, I own my first ever comic--Issue 2 of Leaves on the Wind. And I really really want the first one so I can read the one I just got. But it has to be the Dos Santos cover, to match the current cover I have. (Yes, I'm that hardcore completionist (or OCD)--all of my Harry Potter books have the embossed year on the spine. ALL of them.)
Expanding My New Collection
So now I need to find a comic shop near me to pick up Issues 1 and 3-6. I'd also like to collect the other mini-series written as a part of the Firefly universe. Now I just need to figure out a way to store them. I think I'm going to get binders per whatever series I end up purchasing that are loose (not Volume Collections) and keep the board/bag and put the board/bag into plastic sleeves in a binder. I know it's not "optimal", but I'm a reader, not just a collector. I get books because I love reading them. Comic books should be no different.
I also stumbled upon a comic called Ruse in the boxes which looked interesting (but they only had Issue 6 through 18). It looks to be out-of-print and rebooted by Marvel later on. But I'm very interested in checking out the Original. I wonder if there's a Volume Collection or two for all of them?
Are there any other comics (that aren't Superheros, per se) that people would suggest picking up to a new collector? Please keep in mind that as a completionist, I'd prefer something older that's a short-stint and easy to acquire, or something newer that's still being published/doesn't have an overwhelming number of issues.
