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Thomas Fels
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: Sweden
Posts: 135
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 8:50am | IP Logged | 1
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In the New Teen Titans thread, James wrote about how he hunted down certain issues of NTT. Interesting story, so why not a thread about finding those special books?
Books that meant something to you and you had to search for a little extra.
I'll start. Living in Sweden it was very hard to find american comic books during the beginning of the 80's. But in central Linköping there was a small tobacco shop. They sometimes had Superman and DC Comics Presents! Those were my first american comic books. I was especially delighted with DCCP, since it featured a guest hero. I thought the more heroes, the better.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 134724
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 9:41am | IP Logged | 2
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The thrill of the hunt! In my youth, long before specialty shops and reliable distribution, a big part of the fun of collecting comics was hopping on my bike and ranging far and wide in search of venues that carried different titles. Sometimes there would even be unexpected surprises, like finding an issue of BATMAN on the newsstand at the train station, or an early FF at the barbershop.
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Craig Earl
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1533
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 10:16am | IP Logged | 3
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Ah, yes!
I can still remember cycling with my brother to the nearest town (Otford, Kent UK), only to discover a newsagents who stocked Marvel comics. Distribution was spotty to say the least, so there was no guarantee that you could get what you wanted on a regular basis. I often wonder if there was some other kid that was getting there after me, wondering why there was never an FF, DD, Alpha Flight or Iron Man on the shelf.
So that was the newsagent side of things. True joy was finding a stack of older comics at a jumble sale (that someone's mum had no doubt decided to throw out)!
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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 8224
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | 4
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I loved the hunt!
The utter surprise when finding something that was a few months old, in the
most unexpected place.
I didn’t step foot in a ‘proper’ comics shop until September 1986 - the
month Classic X-Men issue 1 came out. I was 17 years old!
I went for a signing in Manchester - Chris Claremont, Art Adams and John
Bolton.
I was shocked at the price of the comics as they were coming over air
freight and not the three months later ship ballast version.
So, although I started to use a comic shop (train journey from Huddersfield
to Leeds for a year, and then train from Wolverhampton to Birmingham once
I had moved down there for uni), I still bought most of my comics from the
shop at Huddersfield bus station, with a hunt around the Rymans.
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Larry Gil
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 09 November 2005
Location: Canada
Posts: 775
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | 5
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Aww yes the thrill of the hunt. In my early years my Dad used to drive me to a few places (pharmacy, gas stations , convenience stores) I still remember the smell of new comics and magazines. Miss you Dad !
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Mark Haslett
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 19 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6989
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | 6
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I loved the hunt too- walking all over Baker OR to hit every drug store and
supermarket- discovering treasure!
It’s funny, I just realized how completely out of bounds it felt for me to ask
about ordering what comics I wanted. I was only going to buy one, so I
guess I felt it wasn’t my place. It literally never occurred to me to ask
anyone- I simply had no idea what forces controlled where comics went
until I moved to the big city and its comic shops.
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Jason Ladwig
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2020
Location: United States
Posts: 241
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | 7
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Like many I started at the barbershop and the pharmacy spinner rack next door. When they started carrying and I first went to a dedicated comic shop...mind blowing. But it was the back issues boxes I always enjoyed hunting in. My folks were very accommodating to cart me around on a Saturday to the 2-3 stores in our area so that my father could watching squander my lawn mowing money. But every time found several issues I needed.
Ahh the memories!
Ebay killed the hunt. Suddenly you could find anything and everything in a second. |
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | 8
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I think comic shops killed the hunt—as they killed/transformed much of traditional collecting.
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Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11399
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | 9
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I cycled miles between different newsagents to get
distributed Marvel comics as a kid. Like James, i then
travelled by train from Wolverhampton to Birmingham. Once i
had a car i drove down the M6 to Birmingham weekly. For a
short time in the mid-80's there was a small comic shop in
wolverhampton called The Place, which saved me going to
Birmingham, but it didn't last long.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | 10
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Wolverhampton… Birmingham….If only you’d found a reason to stop in West Bromwich, you’d have the Byrne family trifecta!
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Edward Aycock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 July 2024
Location: United States
Posts: 58
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| Posted: 08 July 2025 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | 11
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The comic I sought out the longest was, of all things, "Super Friends" issue 2. I started looking when I was in 6th grade, in 1983. The book had already been canceled a few years prior and back then, you couldn't give back issues of it away. I seemed to locate every issue except for that one.
Life went on, time flew by and when I was a senior in college, in 1993, I found it. It was only ten years but a decade feels a lot longer from 11 to 21.
As Jason Ladwig mentioned above, I can find it in less than a minute online now.
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