This is what I get at the comic shows now

I do feel really sorry for the poor vendors at the tiny comic market which one of my local stores does every few months, with four or five tables of dudes just selling comics. I go pawing through all their stuff and only buy the bare minimum.

I'm a parent now and have other responsibilities, and while going to things like that is all I really want in life, I do feel bad, because I'm not paying hundreds of dollars for their key issues, I'm buying their most beat-ups Batman comics for a few bucks.

It's not like they don't have good stuff, but it's either things I already own - I've completed several comic runs that had been bugging me for half my life in the past decade - or a lot of comics I owned when I was 16, and I'm just strong enough not to go that far

So what do I get now? I get seven comics for $40, and they're all Marvel and DC There was not a hell of a lot of non-mainstream comics on offer anyway, and I take what I can get. They're just the random few that happened to end up all the way over here in New Zealand, far from their American origins.

But I get some. For a couple of bucks each, I get

• The first issue of Cable's own comic, because I desperately wanted to read it in 1992, and never got around to it. I bought it in 2023, even though any interest in Cable I have has long since evaporated, because I never get sick of John Romita Jr, especially when he's at his chunkiest. Also I really like the use of pink on the cover. More covers full of carnage should have a neon pink background.
  
• The 19th issue of Orion from 2001 had my attention with the fact it's Walt Simonson doing a Joker infestation of the Fourth World, but what really got my interest was this cover blurb: 'Tales of the New Gods by Eddie Campbell'.
• A New Teen Titans that I don't think I've ever read before, an early issue in the direct market volume. I got it because I had never seen that beautifully cheesy George Perez painting before, and sometimes that's all you need. I still miss you, George.
  
• A Booster Gold #1,000,000, because I have a terrible feeling I'm going to try and collect all the DC 1M issues, in a futile attempt to grasp onto my youth.
  

And for ten bucks each, I got these tiny slices of comic gold, in the form of:

• The Demon #5, because you always gotta get some Kirby.
• An issue of Not Brand Ecch, which I'm still surprised to discover is an actual comic book
• Batman #215. I got this for the cover, which has Barbara Godon declare that Batman is unfair to Batgirl - well, he is! - but I've been scared to crack it open, because I don;t wanna know what 1969 creators thought about the hot topic of womnen's lib, especiually when it all looks like it's getting mixed up with 'girls just need marriage to sort themselves out' bullshit

My funds were limited, but that was all I got, but that's where my tastes are right now, a little stuck in the 60s and 90s, and in the weird things off to the side, rather than the big important runs that everybody likes. That's just the way it is right now.

(I really got to stop watching the videos Youtube shoves at me that are full of dealers opening up massive, massive collections of interesting and amazing comics, and seeing the buyer write off most of it as disappointing because they don't have any keys. Fuck yo' keys, man. That run of Superboy by Karl Kesel and Tim Grummet was dope.)