Acquisitions: Free Comic Book Day 2008

Acquisitions and Event Report: Free Comic Book Day 2008

Well kids, its that time of year again. The time when comic book geeks rush out to their local stores for free swag...oh and some new people get introduced to the hobby through the free books.

I went up to Greenville for the weekend to visit fellow blogger Luke and non-blogger Joe. The first place we ended up was Borderlands, a comic/gaming store nearby. They had a big display full of the free books. I picked up most of the ones I was interested in, plus few more. I won't bore you by listing everything, but the only thing I missed out on was the TwoMorrows free book, but I can live with that.
Other than the free books, Borderlands didn't have much else going on. But that didn't stop Luke, Joe and I from going to town on the back issue bins! I'll give details on that later on.

The second store we tried was just down the street, at a place called "Richard's." That store had made a huge event out of the whole thing. There were people dressed up as Spiderman and various Star Wars characters, a tent outside with all the books, and a couple artists signing books inside. The place is really small, so I wasn't able to see who the artists were, but the whole thing was really cool. I didn't get any comics from here, but I did get a couple action figures.

In addition to the comic shops, we also made our way over to Toys-R-Us, where I picked up more action figs and Luke got his fill of Iron Man movie tie in merch.

The finale came after we'd finished with Toys-R-Us and lunch. I'm speaking of course of the Iron Man movie. If you haven't seen this flick, DO SO IMMEDIATELY. I don't care if you're performing life saving surgery at the moment, you owe it to yourself to buy a ticket. I haven't liked a comic book movie this much since X2, and since that's my favorite modern comic movie, that's saying something.

Now, on to what I got:

Doctor Strange: Gold mine at Borderlands! I found a BUNCH of issues of Strange Tales during the Doc run, plus a couple issues of Doc's first series when it continued the numbering from Strange Tales. In fact, one of the issues I got, 168, is th last Strange Tales before the switch. Issues: Strange Tales 145 and 148. Doctor Strange vol. 1 #168.

Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth: That's right folks, I've picked up a new fanboy category! I found about 8 issues of this series at Borderlands for a VERY reasonable price. I even found issue 11 in the dollar bins, in great shape! I ended up with issues 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 22, 24, and 33.

Defenders: Not much this time, just issue 121 from Borderlands' back issue bins.

Firestorm: Just one issue this time, #2 of the second series, courtesy of Borderlands' dollar bins.

Blue Beetle: Issue #9 of his 80's series

and finally

Green Arrow!

Oh man, I could have spent some serious cash on this one. Richard's had a nice copy of Green Lantern/Green Arrow #87, the first appearance of John Stewart. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite nice enough for my tastes. Most of the time I'm no high grade snob, but this run is an exception.

I did however get issue #1 of Green Arrow vol.1! This was the mini that marked Green Arrow's first appearance in his own mag, so its practically a major historical event!

I also picked up some action figures, but those will be detailed in a later post.