The legend returns.

So one of the things about providing content to this site is that it is often sourced from material at my store, rather than comics in my own personal collection. I’ll be processing comics, something will catch my eye, and the next thing you know a post like this shows up.

Before I had my own shop, when I was the manager at the previous place of employment, I often found inspiration in the many comics I’d process and handle there as well. And, occasionally, I’d take advantage of the store scanner to copy an image or fourteen and email them to myself for incorporation into Progressive Ruin.

One of the comics at the old shop, from which I had purloined some digital pics, has long since become an intrinsic part of this site’s DNA. I did not keep the comic, only scanned images from it and put it back in the stacks, and it was sold long ago to unremembered parties. Did they appreciate it as much as I had? As my readers had? It’s hard to say.

Thus, that comic had long since departed from my life, while my scans and posts remained. Notably, readers like YOU would still occasionally bring it up here on the site and on social media…why, it turned up in the comments just yesterday.

I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before this, but I decided the other week that I should in fact own a copy of this monumental comic, one that has inextricably embedded itself into this site’s history.

Which is how, one eBay purchase later, I am now the owner of Battle Stories #5, published in 1952:

…containing the most important comics page of all time:

…the one that holds the “THEN…KOREA” panel.

I’ve since re-scanned said panel at a nigh-Lichtenstein-esque size and resolution for future use, as seen in this fan-favorite detail:

Now that it’s part of the actual Vast Mikester Comics Archive forever and all time (or at least the next couple of decades or so), maybe that will encourage me to dip into the “THEN…KOREA” well a little more often than I had. Like so: