Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Bob Temuka's top five moments of remaindered comics bliss #4: At the corner dairy with the Atomic Knights







When I only had a few years of school left, and starting to seriously consider going out into the world and getting a job instead of doing something stupid like entering higher education, I can't have ben that serious, because my ability to buy comic books was a major factor.

And when I was wondering what I was going to do with my life, what was really on my mind was how  once I got my first paycheque, I could buy all the $1 comics I could buy from the box in the front of the dairy down the main street of Temuka.

These were pure pre-Crisis DC comics at their finest, adventures in the final years of Earth-1. Most prominently, there were a lot of DC Comics Presents and Brave and Bold. It's no surprise that those are the only old Superman and Batman comics I still collect to this team, because they're full of random heroes drawn by the likes of García López and Aparo, and all that stuff is still the gold standard in my brain for simple superheroics

It's a few years ago now, and the only other things I remember getting was the Justice League of America comics where the Martians invaded, (the flashpoint event for JL Detroit), and falling for Gil Kane's art on some Action Comics issues and one of the Sword of the Atom specials.

So I figured that if I made the impossible sum of $100 a week, I could buy five of these comics every week, and I thought that would be heaven.

By the time I did get my first paycheque, that box was gone, and I didn't have remaindered comics to get, but I still put that first payment to good use - buying a TV aerial so I could pick up the transmission signal from Christchurch and I wouldn't miss season 3 of Star Trek The Next Generation. It was a different time, man. 

And since those days, most of the money I've earned has gone on boring things like rent and food, but if I could still get five $1 comics a week, I'd still be happy.

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