Okay, I know I’ve been bringing up our auctions an awful lot lately…I don’t mean to turn this site into a commercial for our store. Well, not much, anyway. But I thought you might be interested to know that I just listed a bunch of undergrounds, including the two comics I featured on this site recently, as well as a couple rarities (like Jim Franklin’s Armadillo #3). Even if you don’t want to buy anything, maybe you’ll get a kick out of some of the scans.
As long as I’m thinking about store stuff, I was reminiscing about a couple things in the distant past, lo in those pre-internet days, even in those pre-pal Dorian days…not really anything warranting a post on their own, but just a couple observations about how things used to be…
- …like having a huge line outside the store of people waiting to buy their copy of Superman #75, the infamous “Death of Superman.” We had doubled our orders on Superman for this issue, but this was of course before all the crazy publicity that issue received. We realized right away that there was no way we’d have enough to meet demand, so we ended up having to limit the comic to one per customer (which had the end result of really profoundly angering one or two people who were insisting on buying dozens of copies). I remember one woman in particular who was pretty irate about only being able to get one copy (despite my explaining to everyone so angered that if I hadn’t limited sales, they wouldn’t even be buying their one), and who also had brought her two-year-old along to the store, and she was too busy complaining to keep an eye on him…so of course on top of managing a store full of customers, we had to keep Junior out of trouble as well. And when the newspaper article on the event came out the next day, whose face was in full color on the cover? Yup, that woman. Sigh.
Also, people seemed generally concerned that Superman was going to be dead and gone forever, so I put together a display of dead Superman covers from years past to show that this was nothing new. I did have a reporter ask me how I thought DC was going to bring Superman back, and I half-jokingly said that since Superman was essentially like a big solar battery, absorbing our sun’s radiation to fuel his powers, they should probably just lay him out on the beach and let him recharge. As it turned out, that’s kinda what ended up happening (the recharging part, not the beach part).
- As you may recall, Rob Liefeld’s X-Force #1 was polybagged with one each of an assortment of trading cards. We ended up sorting out the comics by which card was in the package, and setting up a table with the different piles displayed, thus making it easier for people to get one of each card if they so desired. We’re not proud.
- The only thing, the only thing, I have been ashamed of selling in the store is pogs. Yes, this is coming from someone who has also sold Horny Biker Sluts. At least Horny Biker Sluts has artistic merit.
Pogs. Feh.
- Another time we had a huge line of people snaking around the store to buy the current hot comic was when Youngblood #1 came out. Liefeld was on, I think, The Dennis Miller Show or Arsenio or some darn thing, and that brought the people out in droves. Again, we had to limit to one per customer or three people would have bought all the copies we ordered.
Of all the comics for people to get all worked up about….
- When Star Trek: Voyager came out, our local newspaper once again sent out their intrepid reporters to our shop to get the dope on what the area cognoscenti had to say about (gasp) a female Starfleet captain! I was the only person at the shop at the time (er, well, still, come to think of it) who had much interest in Star Trek, but that was the day I was doing some heavy work in the back…I was unshaved, disheveled, and wearing downright ratty clothing*, and there was going to be pictures taken for the article. Despite my former coworker Rob’s pleadings, I declined to be interviewed…even at my best, I have a face made for radio, so I certainly wasn’t going to be pictured lookin’ like this. So, yeah, I stuck poor Rob with speaking for the store on this important subject. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he tried to be fair and even-handed on the topic….especially given that I knew darn well he absolutely hated Trek.
- Occasionally I remember a comic we used to have tons of, and now we’re completely bereft of them. I’ve mentioned the Star Wars treasury before (the one we were selling for a quarter just to unload the stupid things), but just recently I was reminded of 1968’s Iron Man and Sub-Mariner #1…a one-shot that continued their stories from Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, just prior to each character starting its own series. Now, we had a pile of these things. Couldn’t give them away. They were a dime a dozen. We were stuck with these things forever…and then, eventually, we were run right out of them, without me even noticing. It’s one of those comics that I always assume we have plenty of, but now they’re few and far-between (and $200 in NM in Overstreet).
- Once the store was filled with women wrestlers. In costume. As customers. Sometimes, these things happen.