I only wish I had one gross of Howard the Duck #1, much less two.

§ November 12th, 2014 § Filed under zines § 5 Comments

So let me take a break from constantly yapping about my comic book store to show you a recent addition to my collection that I’m not selling in my shop:


Collectors Dream #4, from Spring 1978, featuring a great Don Rosa cover. Just picture my face in the place of that blank question-marked fellow in the center, torn between two funnybook seller extremes. (Click on the pic for the bigification of that image.)

Sadly, I was hoping the cover-blurbed article “Consumer’s Guide to Comic Dealers” would be like an illustrated version of this, with cartoony caricatures detailing varying degrees of the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy, identifying characteristics listed beneath. Alas, but perhaps even more shockingly, it’s a tell-all column in which orders were placed with multiple mail-order comic houses and the results were lovingly reported. Haven’t had too much time to read through it too closely, but I’ll see if I can’t pick up some tips for my own mail order business. But first, I need to spend some time restocking my boxes of Esoteric Comics.

5 Responses to “I only wish I had one gross of Howard the Duck #1, much less two.”

  • Jim Kosmicki says:

    that was a good fanzine. I have only ever found one issue, but it was a good ‘un. There’s such a treasure trove out there in the old fanzines that just seems to have slipped down the old memory hole. They hardly ever come up for sale, and nobody seems to be digitizing them (at least not that I’ve found).

    I’ve long felt that somebody’s leaving money on the table not publishing a collection of the old Hero Histories from Amazing Heroes. Sure, they’re all well out of date, but so what? Old interviews are out of date and people still publish collections of those!

  • Patrick Joseph says:

    Great to see more Rosa art from his semi-pro days.

    I think Drew Friedman has a comic strip that matches your premise. It was even sold as a t-shirt, and I almost bought it when I worked in a comic shop during the Summer of Batman.

    http://www.comicbookbrain.com/_imagery/2014-02-10/drew-friedman-comic-shop-clerks-of-america.jpg

  • Mikester says:

    Patrick – I remember having that shirt at the shop, way back when, and former employee Rob and I trying to decide which ones we were.

  • Snark Shark says:

    “Amazing Heroes”

    best comic zine EVER!

  • Sir A1! says:

    I like how the cover implies the Gambino crime family controlled the late-70s funny book market, but then I remember the time Jim Shooter had the entire staff of Pacific Comics brutally murdered in a gangland execution.