A
couple of weeks ago I got the much-anticipated email from Herring and
Robinson Bookbinders out in California that my most recent batch of
library-bound comics were ready, and about a week after that I
received the books. The turnaround from shipping the books out to
getting them back this time was about seven weeks, I think, which
pleased me mightily. It also pleased a colleague of mine who dipped
his toe into the wild world of comic-book binding by sending along
three volumes of his own comics, to whom I had high-balled the
estimated turnaround so he had a nice surprise. This post is, of
course, only about my own books, but it sounds like he will do at
least some more volumes, when he can piggy-back onto one of my
orders.
Anyway,
jumping right on into sharing a few pictures and descriptions of what
I got back, first up I finally did it … I had long hesitated
binding the very oldest comics in my collection, some I've had since
I was just a tyke, with some later purchases made when I was only
about a ten-years-older tyke filling in the run of Adventure
Comics finishing out tenure of
Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes
in its first “permanent” home, during the glory days of the
latter two-thirds or so of another
almost-a-tyke comic-book writer Jim Shooter (he was just
fifteen-seventeen years old
when he was writing these books! [LINK])
– Adventure Comics
#360-380, from September 1967 through May 1969. My long hesitation
was because these are sentimentally the most valuable comics in my
collection, and were
(until binding, of course) pretty much the same (cumulatively worth a
“replacement value” of somewhere around $1700 at NM 9.6 condition
[which these were not, but they were hardly low-grade comics
either]). The Legion has been, from my early childhood and enduring
right up until today when, sadly, they are not even being published,
my favorite group of characters. And it was these very comics that
hooked me. For whatever reason – the Superman
connection?; the bright Star Trek-type
vision of the future? (but I wasn't watching Star Trek
that early); the fact that although I knew it not these comics were
being written by a kid only about ten years older than me when most
others (which I liked almost as well, don't get me wrong) were
written by men my father's age or older?; the fact that they are just
damn good stories? –
the Legion stories
during this period resonated with me. The fact is, although the
stories are available in reprint – I have
some of them in reprint form – I do not envision a time when I
would ever consider parting with these comics even were I to sell off
the rest of my collection. So why not put them into a form I can
enjoy as simply as pulling off the shelf and opening like a “real”
book? This is the fourth volume from the left above – maintaining
my longstanding conceit of “dating” the volume a thousand years
in the future just like the Legion
stories inside. Here are three shots of the interior, including the
title page:
Bringing
my library-bound Legion
comics up to present – or rather up to when DC pulled the plug last year on the
2011-2013 New 52 series, first the tales of a small, time-lost group
in the 21st
century at #16 and then the main team in the 31st
century at #23 – I present Legion of Super-Heroes, New
52: Legion Lost and New
52: Shattered Dreams (how could
I name it otherwise?) at third and second from left above, with
several shots of the title pages and interiors here:
 |
| ... into the sunset ... Long Live the Legion! |
When
I was doing my issue-by-issue or monthly-round-up DC Comics blog
posts, I discussed pretty much all of these stories in depth, and
don't feel like making any extensive commentary beyond what I wrote
when the final issues of the respective series came out [LINK
and LINK
– actually, I wrote hardly anything for Legion Lost,
which is about what that series was worth – its presence here is
pretty much due to my obsessive-compulsive nature). Both New-52
series were disappointing to this forty-plus-year Legion
fan – really, Legion Lost
hardly felt like a Legion of Super-Heroes
comic at all, especially with the big crossover with Superboy
and Teen Titans (both
included here) right in the middle of the run, and even in the main
title the double-whammy of a loss in page count followed by the
Flashpoint/New-52
reboot crippled Mister Legion Paul Levitz's story-telling to the
point that although it limped on for a couple of years hemorrhaging
sales spelled its doom. I do miss my Legion,
but the last few issues were pretty painful.
Next
up, at extreme right, the New-52 series I've had the most love-hate
relationship with, Wonder Woman.
You may remember my growing irritation at some really ridiculous and
improbable punning that pervades Brian Azarello's story-telling had
me dropping the series in disgust about a year in – at which time I
put together a fairly long post taking him to task both for the
feeble “humor” and a meandering, seemingly going-nowhere story
[LINK],
only to find myself in the rereading to do so appreciating the
overall series quite a bit more, enough not to pick up the issues any
more but to pick up the hard-cover collections continuing the story
as they came out. Partly because of my aforementioned
obsessive-compulsive nature, partly because I have ultimately enjoyed
the story far more in those larger, periodic multi-issue chunks, I
decided to have the first dozen issues, the equivalent of DC's
volumes one and two, library-bound to as closely as possible match
DC's presentation of subsequent volumes three and four. I think it
came out nicely:
And
here are a couple of interiors, including the title page:
Finally,
at extreme left, my favorite single
comic-book character from childhood, Aquaman
[see my commentary here: LINK],
in a volume to match one I did about five years ago with my original
binder, Library Binding Company of Waco, Texas. That greatly missed
company bound a dozen comics almost as old and as dear to me as my
Adventure Comics
described above, Aquaman
#37-48: The Search for Mera,
containing the first really extended story-line that I remember, from
1968 and 1969. But it had bugged me ever since then that I had not
taken the time to acquire the eight further issues that ran out that
series until it was canceled in 1971. So in the last couple of years
I set about doing so, mainly through MyComicShop.com and their
wonderful “Want List” function that let me know whenever one of
the issues I needed came available. In the meantime I also
discovered that I had, in a 1980s reprint, an issue of The
Brave and the Bold with a
Batman-Aquaman team-up and art by Neal Adams (my first favorite
comic-book artist when I was a kid, although now that status of
favorite goes to Nick Cardy, who still provided the covers for
Aquaman through the
end of his run), as well as that the unfinished story interrupted by
the cancellation of Aquaman
with #56 was amazingly “finished” a few years later as a
Sub-Mariner story for
Marvel Comics! (You
can read about that strange
and incredible story here: LINK.)
Especially with those latter additions, a second volume of Aquaman
#49-56: The World in the Ring
makes a fine companion to The Search for Mera.
I think Herring and Robinson did a fine job matching Library Binding
Company's work:
A note regarding that last picture. Several of these issues when Aquaman was mysteriously lost in a submicronic universe inside Mera's ring had a back-up story starring Deadman by Neal Adams (see my comment above) that ended up tying directly into the main story ... and here we have a page of Deadman drawn by Neal Adams witnessing the climax of the Aquaman story drawn by Jim Aparo! Cool!
Finally,
you may notice second from the right, even though a year had passed
since H&R typo'd the spine [LINK], they came through for me
fixing my volume of Grant Morrison's New-52 run on Action
Comics to correctly read
Superman.
I
am once again very pleased. I hope I don't let another
year pass before sending them some more business. I have plenty of
projects in mind, mainly comics from the 1970s and 1980s (mostly
Marvel, as it happens – X-Men,
John Byrne's Fantastic Four,
Walt Simonson's Thor).
And binding the end of the Legion
in Adventure Comics as
I did means I now have a gap between the first two volumes of my bound Legion
of Super-Heroes run, mainly
comprising the “Wilderness Years” (oohh … I think I have my
title!) when they were relegated to back-up feature status first in
Action Comics then
intermittently in Superboy
before finally taking that latter title over completely shortly after
the advent of Cary Bates writing and Dave Cockrum drawing, which is
where my bound collection previously began. I have a few issues that
I must acquire to complete that volume, however. MyComicShop.com,
here I come!
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