Inspired by my visit to TCAF (Toronto Comics Art Festival) today, I thought I’d start a thread for comic book hauls. Appropriate for everything from convention hauls to regular old visits to your local comic book shop.
Here is my mini haul from TCAF 2024:
New Graham Annable books!
I’ve been reading Annable since he was freelance and posting things like Grickle on the web. One of my favourite artists, it was a pleasure to see him at TCAF. I learned he just moved back to Canada, so Portland’s loss is our gain 
New Jason Loo books!
Every time I run into Jason Loo I end up buying everything he’s got on hand. Loo is the writer/illustrator of The Pitiful Human-Lizard, “Toronto’s Official Superhero”. He’s also worked with Chip Zdarsky on Afterlife. Last time I saw Loo was on Free Comic Book day years ago, and I bought all of the Human Lizard from him. This year at TCAF I grabbed his new series, The AllNighter that he collaborated with Zdarsky on once again. Excited to dig into it.
Books by Sunshine Gao
for the first time and ACAB are two semi-autobiographical books by Sunshine Gao. We chatted for a while and I learned that Sunshine worked for a time as a line cook in Chicago, so we briefly bonded over a love for the city and our past lives in kitchens. GAO’s books are slice-of-life stories, which are always a favourite of mine.
Heartwood
Heartwood is subtitled Non-binary tales of Sylvan Fantasy. I’m a huge sucker for short stories and anthology comics and I usually grab one whenever I hit up comic stores or festivals. I love the variety of storytelling and illustrative styles that anthologies offer up and Heartwood looks to be no exception.
I also picked up this year’s TCAF t-shirt for my collection 
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My hauls general come from cons or when I allow myself to splurge on back issues.
My latest haul was actually while in Australia visiting family; I picked up l of 2023’s and Jan-March 2024’s Aussie printed The Phantom comics (actually, most of them, I didn’t buy issues that reprinted stories I already had). 28 glorious issues! 
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This is my kinda thread!
May 4 was Free Comic Book Day (at least here in the US), so my brother gave me a lift to my favorite shop for back issues, which was having a 25% sale.
I bought about 30 comics, some random pick-ups from their dollar bin (which became a 75-cent bin, thanks to the sale). No group photo since they’ve already scattered themselves into bins, my reading pile and my spinner rack… but I was most excited to complete my run of Darwyn Cooke’s “Anodyne” story that kicked off a new volume of Catwoman in the early aughts:
I also can’t stop looking at this Mark Schultz cover to Topps’ Cadillacs & Dinosaurs series from the 90s. I’ve been low-key obsessed with Schultz’s work after devouring the Xenozoic Tales collection that Flesk put out a few years ago (the hardcover I have is sold out now, but the paperback is now available):
More recently…
I live in a suburb that can’t sustain a local comic book store for more than a year or two (apparently), so for the past ten years I’ve used a mail-order service for my new pickups. I don’t normally get too excited for licensed comics, but I have a mini-collection of Space Ghost comics, so I was excited to get this one in the mail yesterday:
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We missed out because we were at a wedding on the 4th. I love free comic book day. We have our regular haunts like The Beguiling and The Silver Snail be we try to hit up other places too. Back when my partner was living in Chicago I used to time a trip down around free comic book day so I could hit up places like AlleyCats.
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Those all look like awesome shops!!
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The only LCS in my town is owned by a racist wanker, so I go to one two towns over. I’ve only been in the store once, but it was lovely. Since starting my mailing order earlier this year the guys there have been so understanding in answering all my stupid questions. It’s a smaller business, they have three stores in different towns, which is wonderful.
I really miss my old comic store back in Australia very much. I went there for 10 years. Here’s an interview with the ex-owner on YouTube which gives a good idea of what the store was like
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Nice haul that you have there!!!
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Happy you still have a comic book store to go to. All my local shops have closed mostly.
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I recently decided - simply out of curiosity - to see what my collection is worth. While no particular issue is incredibly valuable, my most valuable is Marvel Premiere #10 at £250 (first appearance of Shuma-Gorath).
It got me thinking though; what is the value of the original printing of a comic in this age of trade collected editions and high quality hardcovers? Wouldn’t you rather read those stories in a nice collection with clean blacks, vibrant colours and quality paper? Most comics from the 70s back are faded, yellowed, curled, and on paper that cracks under a stiff breeze.
Of course I’m saying this as someone who buys heaps of back issues, although it’s generally to fill holes in a collection rather than perceived value. Thus the question stands; now we have umpteen reprints of these stories, why does the original, lesser-quality printing still hold so much value, at least monetarily?
I think it’s at least partially due to the historical cache those original copies have. They are connected to the history of the work in a way that a reprint isn’t.
But it’s all a social construct, we as a society have largely assigned greater value to those items, partially due to history, partially due to rarity, and somewhat arbitrarily determined they are worth more than reproductions. Rarity is key too, speaking of which. If everyone can have a reprint, but only a handful can have an original, the perceived value of the original increases.
I think it’s part of how our society has developed that we place greater worth on owning things others cannot, and thus a limited original run of a comic is more valuable than a reprint purely because only one, or a few, of us can own that original copy. It makes us feel like we have greater personal worth because we have something others don’t. I mean, that’s a large tenant of wealth, and it transfers over to value within our social paradigm. If I can have it and you can’t, it’s worth more and also makes me “better than” you.
If we as a society decided these things had social value yet no monetary value, the entire system of worth that it’s built on would collapse. If no one cared about original versus copy, originals would only be as valuable as the copies are currently treated.
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My proudest comic book hauls were of getting Star wars comics weekly at Borders back in the early 2000s.
It is a very strange thing, isn’t it. If it were the original art pages then I can understand it. I can understand why an artwork might go for millions as there is only one person in the world who can make that artwork, and even if they make multiples there are going to be differences (unless you’re Warhol).
Yet it strikes me that an original printing in and of itself isn’t valuable. As you say, the import we have chosen to put on it makes it valuable, but that’s kind of separate; the idea is valuable, not the item itself. By owning the item you own the idea.
It’s an interesting thing to think about. I find many things we place great value on in society aren’t actually that valuable. Sadly, for the most part society only considers something is of value if it costs a lot, which the most valuable things often do not.
P.S. I’m talking about monetary value here. Obviously comics, games, film, etc have huge value culturally, sentimentally and historically.
P.P.S. I wish I had your words, BMO. Love the way you explain/elucidate things.
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Agreed. And where possible, if people can find a way to exploit something that is culturally valuable to manipulate it into being monetarily valuable, they certainly tend to do that. I think one of the most valuable things is experiences, and that’s hard to commodify. So what people who wish to commodify everything in our society do is snap up the things related to the experiences we cherish and try to sell us the idea that the objects are what hold value, rather than the experience of those objects. Did you love your experience playing this original Sega game? Well this rare cart is now $500. They can’t commodify the emotions, memories and experiences you hold close, so they try to convince you that those things are intrinsic to the object. And then they try to make that object both rare and valuable.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying objects, but because they know we seek experiences through the objects associated with the original experience, people perpetually seeking value try to convert those objects into something more than they are. And that’s both through intentional and unintentional processes. But if anyone who just wants to make money or own something valuable for the sake of it’s value can, they’ll try to influence that process to increase value. Furthermore, I think people who often trade in valuable objects care less about the object than the they do the pure value, while the people who cherish the experience and the object for its meaning increasingly find it difficult to obtain that object because it’s been so grossly overvalued.
Lol, you might not say that after that rambling paragraph above
I appreciate that. Lately I’ve found it hard to write down my thoughts on individual games and my tendency to write reviews, or reflections on games has reduced. So I appreciate the conversations people have on Grouvee because it’s an opportunity to share my thoughts with people who are excited for discussion. And discussion seems easier because the discussion itself prompts ideas that feel simpler to respond to via writing than the act of sitting down to write a review feels at the moment. I also appreciate that you say that because my writing was called impenetrable by someone a while back (I’m paraphrasing but that was the implication made), and I’m glad that doesn’t seem to actually be the case.
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Anyone here have pictures of some of there Star Wars comics! I will try to post some nice photos of my collection this weekend possibly.
Sorry mate, I don’t read Star Wars. I’ve a few photos floating around of piles of comics from my collection, but for the most part I catalogue them in a specific programme so don’t really need photos.
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