The Thrill of the Hunt / In Lieu of a Newsletter

I've written at length in WHY I LOVE HORROR (available here) about my love of comic books, and the joy I experienced as a kid in the 1970s every time I was able to buy some. We didn't have comic book stores. Those were still a very rare thing. I would see ads for a few in the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, but they were in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, and nowhere near Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. (Once a year, my folks would take us to Baltimore for an Orioles game, and I'd get them to take me to Geppi's comic shop, which for me was like an annual trip tp Disneyworld).

Collecting in the 1970s and 1980s, for me, was done in two ways. For new comics, I'd purchase them weekly -- riding my BMX Mongoose into town, and buying them at the newsstand for .25 cents each, and then .35, then .50, etc. I bought four a week. I always grabbed the monthly issues of Defenders, Captain America and the Falcon, Kamandi: Last Boy on Earth, Incredible Hulk, and Spider-Man. So those were always five our of my monthly sixteen. The others were whatever else looked cool -- everything from Beetle Bailey to Phantom to The Witching Hour to Fantastic Four.

But the thing I particularly loved as a collector back then was how I bought back issues. Again, without access to a comic book store, this was done at flea markets and yard sales. Our local flea market was open on Sundays, and I'd ride my bike there and go to a lady who ALWAYS had a box of Golden and Silver Age comics out. They were 25 cents each or five for one dollar. Every week, she'd replenish the box with more back issues. And I can't tell you what an absolute fucking joy it was to hit that thing Sunday after Sunday and snag issues of Avengers and Spider-Man that were published the year I was born, or old Golden Age DC titles or Classics Illustrated.

I miss those Sundays. Unfortunately, these days, everyone knows what those old comic books are worth, so you're not finding them for that price. More likely, when you run across them at the flea market, the vendor has them OVERpriced, rather than fairly priced. And honestly, the chances of finding anything good at a flea market are also winnowing. For that, you'll need to go on eBay or a comic shop.

So, you can imagine my excitement when Mary and I stopped at a little place in West virginia on Friday and I scored this stack for a total of $70.

That's right. A load of Silver Age DC and Marvel, along with three Bronze Age. And while $70 may not be the flea market prices of old, the comic collectors reading this right now are gasping because $70 is the current market price alone for more than one of these books!

It was a double dose of nostalgia for me -- finding old comics out in the wild, and getting them for a good price, and then spending the evening reading them. A rare thing to experience these days, and in 2025, you've got to take your joy wherever you can find it.

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Currently Reading: King Sorrow by Joe Hill and The Fisherman by John Langan (a reread)
Currently Listening: “This Time” by Waylon Jennings

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No newsletter today, as Mary and I have been away all weekend to celebrate my grandmother’s 100th birthday. Had a nice time with her yesterday, with family and friends and neighbors stopping in to wish her well and have a piece of cake. At 100, Grandma still lives on her own and does pretty well at it. Her biggest struggle is the fact that she can’t read much anymore, even when it comes to large print. She was a voracious reader, all her life — everything from Zane Grey to Amish romances. She still reads her Bible daily, but in truth, she has it memorized, so it’s more reading from memory than it is scanning the words.

Last night, we left Grandma and my parents and a few of their high school friends to socialize while myself, mary, my sister, her husband, and one of my favorite cousins all went out to the bar. My sis took this pic of me and Mary, which I like.

Mary and I also took my uncle some chili and a slice of cake, as he doesn’t do large crowds at all, and opted to stay home. I am envious of my uncle and aspire to get to the stage where I can just refuse to attend anything because I want to stay home and write (or in his case, go out in the woods for 8 hours and hunt).

I suspect, even at his advanced age, he gets the same thrill from that hunt as I do from the comic book hunt.

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Some early data from this experiment that is Algorithm Zero:

Posting a link to this Blog on Bluesky or Facebook results in clicks and reads.

Posting a link to it on Twitter/X results in much fewer clicks and reads.

Posting a link to it on Instagram is useless, because people just look at the accompanying picture and comment on that, rather than whatever the topic of the Blog was. Seriously. I could write an essay here about children dying in diamond mines, and post a link to it on Instagram with an accompanying photo of a diamond, and the comments would all be “Oooooh! What a pretty diamond!”

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New Wasteworld story/vignette up on Patreon this morning. I literally woke up at 4:07am with the idea, snuck out of bed without waking Mary, and wrote it in one draft while the sun came up over the mountains.

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Have a great day!