Monday 17 March 2008

Mouldering Old Tat

So to the monthly London mart...


I love my comics, but when I find myself in a room full of maladjusted men discussing weighty matters such as the rarity of the set of plastic vampire fangs that came free with issue #1 of Scream, I start to wonder what I'm doing with my life.

Wading through rain soaked crowds of sweaty geeks to get to old boxes of yellowing comics can certainly make a chap question whether he's on the right path. Yet there are moments when I forget how embarrassing it all is and just enjoy the buzz that finding stuff gives me...

Yes, tipped out of the nerd sack and onto the floor, that's a picture of six issues (including #1) of The Crunch my friends. Sweet, sweet comic joy! Obviously this was my most exciting purchase yesterday, but I also managed to pick up progs 50 and 55 of 2000AD for 50p a piece, the missing issue in my run of Night Force and this...


which at 50p was probably around 49p more expensive than it should have been, but which features a page that I happen to think is rather wonderful...

Click the pic to enjoy personality on a grand scale

Total spend for the day: £11.75. Not bad. It could have been a lot worse had I given in to the comic demons on my shoulder telling me to buy this...

Starlord #1 WITH free gift (£15 to you son)

Or these...

Very expensive 50s MarvelMan comics.

Or indeed the Marvel Heroclix of Devil Dinosaur...

which, while bearing some resemblance to a bloody red dog poo, is quite special and, (so I was told by the cash hungry Heroclix vendor), very rare.

Maybe next time.

4 comments:

mr wheatley said...

aha thats not the free gift i was thinking of.. i seem to remember a really pikey 'space calculator' i think that must have been issue 2

Anonymous said...

You know, I've lived in London a good few years now and I've never once been to one of these marts - I only realised they were still going on when you blogged about them. Years before when I still lived in the Midlands I'd occasionally get a flyer for it, but it never occurred to me that it'd still be going on now, almost 10 years later.

Of course, reading your updates on each one only leaves me even more torn on the matter. On the one hand, you get decent hauls, but on the other, it seems like it's taking a psychological toll that I'm not sure I'm ready for!

Anonymous said...

In a way e-bay has made attending pointless. You certainly wouldn't want to be paying the huge prices that some of the stallholders are charging for the more collectible comics when you can get them so much cheaper online. However there are still lots of nice things in the 50p bins.

Some of the people at the mart are unbelievable. My worst fear is that I am turning into one of them!

Dom

mr wheatley said...

hehe cut to 1986 Dom and Ben Snigger at fat stinking man(probably 28) in comic shop.

Oh Yeah... We are more grotesque than even we could have imagined!