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Five For Friday #74—Money Money Money
posted May 5, 2006

Five For Friday #74 -- Name:

(1) the first comic book you remember reading and its price
(2) the first comic book you remember buying yourself and its price
(3) the most recent comic book you bought and the price
(4) any particular big-time bargain you've stumbled across and the price
(5) the most you ever spent on a comic or comics-content book and its price.

For the sake of this exercise, "free" is not a price.

1. Flintstones #12, $.20. I think it was this one. I go back and forth.
2. Defenders #14, $.25. I got confused when they needed a penny for tax.
3. Infinite Crisis #6, $3.99. It was for work!
4. Cherry copy of original Smithsonian collection, $2 at a church book sale
5. X-Men #1, $100. It completed my collection!

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This category is now closed. Thanks to all that participated!
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Jim Kingman

1. Justice League of America #82. 15 cents. 1970. First superhero comic I ever read.
2. World's Finest Comics #211. 25 cents. 1972. The first superhero comic in my collection.
3. Infinite Crisis #7. $3.99. 2006. The latest superhero comic in my collection.
4. House of Secrets #92. First appearance of Swamp Thing. $20.00 at a swap meet. Originally priced at $24.00. 1992.
5. Crisis On Infinite Earths Slipcase Hardcover edition. $99.95. 1999.

Worth of drawing all this information from memory: Priceless.

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Aaron Ragan-Fore

1. Spidey Super Stories #56 (Jan. '82), $0.60. Between Spider-Man, Jack-o-Lantern as the featured villain, and guest star Iron Man, this comic freaked me out because none of the characters had actual human features. It gave the stories a weird, detached feeling for my six-year-old self.
2. Probably a copy of the Christian-themed Archie's Date Book ('81), probably around $0.50 circa '85.
3. Infinite Crisis #7, $3.99.
4. A tie. Secret Origins of the Super DC Heroes ('75) for about $5.00 at a swap meet, and a first print copy of Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes ('65) for about $10.00 at a used bookstore.
5. The early 2000s reprint of the O'Neil/Adams The Green Lantern/Green Arrow Collection, $75.00. Yes, I'm a lightweight.

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Michael May

(1) Master of Kung Fu #17 (20 cents)
(2) Alpha Flight, Vol. 1 #1 ($1, but it was double-sized. The next issue was 60 cents.)
(3) B.P.R.D.: Universal Machine #2 ($2.99)
(4) Giant Sized X-Men #1 ($50)
(5) See #4.

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Alan David Doane

You know, it's bizarre to me to think that anyone could answer all five of these, but maybe that's because I started reading comics at the age of six. I'll be damned if I know the answer to #1, in other words, except to say that I think the price of the earliest comics I read was 20 cents. God knows I bought a lot of stacks of five comics every time I got a dollar from my parents...

(5) the most you ever spent on a comic or comics-content book and its price.

This is the only one I actually can accurately answer -- The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, with a substantial discount from Amazon.com, weighed in at $95.00.

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Dean Milburn

1. Superman Family #167, $0.60 (although I'm certain my mom bought it for a fraction of that amount at the local paperback exchange.)
2. Batman #316 $0.40 (If I remember correctly there is an add for The New Teen Titans #1 in this, which was the first comic I ever intentionally sought out)
3. Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #136 $0.98 (cover price $0.60) just this afternoon. (Because of the their appearance in the Superboy reprint in Superman Family #167, I've always been a sucker for the LSH)
4. A stack of DC and Marvel oversized treasury editions for $.25 each because the dealer had no racks big enough to place them on. I think I sold them about 10 years later for about the same price because I had nowhere to store them.
5. I'm sure one of those ridiculously weak painted Batman hardcovers from the early-mid 1990s was priced at $24.95 if not $29.95, but I doubt I've paid more than that for any single book.

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Bill Beechler, MD

1) the first comic book you remember reading and its price

It was either Mickey Mouse #151 or Donald Duck #158 in 1974â€¦they were both 25 cents

(2) the first comic book you remember buying yourself and its price

Batman #330 (Batman choosing Talia over Robin? Well, I get it now) in 1980â€¦50 cents

(3) the most recent comic book you bought and the price

Slave Labor Graphicsâ€™ Haunted Mansion anthology (good stuff!)â€¦$2.99

(4) any particular big-time bargain you've stumbled across and the price

A slightly worn copy of Batman: From the 30s to the 70s at www.abebooks.com for around $30. I love this book and must have checked it out of the local public library a hundred times as a kid.

(5) the most you ever spent on a comic or comics-content book and its price.

I paid $50 for Miracleman #15 a few years agoâ€¦it completed my run. A paid around $60 for the recent Fantastic Four Omnibus onlineâ€¦but since it contains the first 30 issues of the series plus the first annual plus the letters pagesâ€¦itâ€™s a bargain!

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brian2060@aol.com

(1) the first comic book you remember reading and its price
A sealed bag of three Whitman comics - all 3 for $1.00

(2) the first comic book you remember buying yourself and its price
Uncanny X-Men #195 - cover price of 65 cent and before you laugh go online and check out the cover -- Wolverine vs Power Pack? game on I says.

(3) the most recent comic book you bought and the price
Sould I be honest and admit the first thing I picked up at the comic shop this week was Marvel's Civil War for 3.99 or just put down Love and Rockets #14 at 4.50?

(4) any particular big-time bargain you've stumbled across and the price
Several volumes of Fanta's Popeye repints (both sundays and dailys) for 5.00 each

(5) the most you ever spent on a comic or comics-content book and its price.
Two Fisted Tales #35 (Special Issue:Civil War!) $55.00 and its even signed by Kurtzman to boot!

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Dave Ziegler

1. Batman #288. $.35. A Penguin story.
2. Superman #334. $.40. Superman gets his eyes stolen! Yowza!
3. Infinite Crisis #7. $3.99. No apologies! No regrets!
4. Robert Mayer's SuperFolks in hardcover. $3.00. I'd spent years looking for this after Neil Gaiman mentioned it in a Comics Journal interview. Looked for it at SDCC for 3 years before finding it on a table in a used bookstore in Bakersfield, CA.
5. If we include deluxe editions, like DC's Absolute Editions, then $100.00 for Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths. Otherwise, about $60.00 for both volumes of Steranko's History of Comics.

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Rick Phillips

1. Flying Saucers Comics #5 $.15 from Dell there was probably earlier ones but this is the earliest one I can recall.
2. The Spectacular Spider-Man #1 Marvel Treasury Edition $1.50 I ask my Mom and Dad to go to the store to get it when my Aunt and Uncle told me what store they saw it at.
3. It's a tie with Justice #5 for $3.50 and Captain Atom Armageddon #7 for $2.99 I bought them both yesterday.
4. Incredible Hulk #181 $15 the first apperance of Wolverine. I filled up a card at my local comic book store and they let me buy this for just $15 more.
5. I am abit embarressed to admit that I bought Bone #1 for $100 but it was signed by Jeff Smith with a drawing of Bone inside.

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Michael J. Grabowski

1) Yogi Bear #25 or 26, spring 1975, $.25. Favorite daily cartoon character at the time--how could I pass up the comic?
2) Yogi Bear #25 or 26. My folks or grandmother had given me the quarter.
3) Crickets #1, $3.95. Worth every virtual penny (ordered online).
4) At one convention in the mid-80s I stumbled across a dealer with a ton of Strange Tales, about half of all the Dr. Strange issues, for $3-5 apiece. Not in fantastic condition, but not falling apart either. It was pretty cool to pick up the classic Ditko in its original packagings for what I thought was a great price. Overstreet might have disagreed but getting around 20 classic comics like that for around $80 seemed like a bargain to me, and still does.
5) I expect this one to win this category: Little Nemo, So Many Splendid Sundays for $120. Even Amazon didn't discount it!

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Christopher Duffy

(1) FIRST READ: either a Richie Rich or an Archie or a Dennis the Menace. 20 cents for sure.
(2) FIRST BOUGHT: A Marvel Tales reprinting Spidey meeting the Kangaroo. 25 cents. I still have it, though it's been restapled a few times.
(3) LATEST: the latest Hulk (Planet Hulk part 3). I think it was $2.99. Um, me and my son are reading them together...it wasn't my idea. Okay, yes it was.
(4) BARGAIN: Got the Dark Knight Returns for a buck at a library sale. (I had given away the indiv. issues)
(5) MOST: I think I spent 80 bucks (including shipping) on an ebay sale of a jack cole issue of Smash. I've since been able to win them for much less by being patient and buying crappy copies.

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Ralf Haring

1. Elfenwelt #10 (German ElfQuest) for 4.00 DM. I remember being young enough so that I was asking adults to help me read it.
2. Thor #432 for $1.50 or Flash #50 for $1.75
3. Nextwave #4 for $2.99
4. Flex Mentallo #1-4 for $30
5. P. Craig Russell's Ring of the Nibelung hardcover for $80.00, since I think I got the Complete Calvin & Hobbes for less than that somewhere else.

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Tony Collett

Tony Collett

1) Smokey The Bear (Gold Key) 15 cents. Tie-in to the Saturday morning cartoon at the time.
2) Little Audrey and Melvin (Harvey) 15 cents.
3) Civil War #1 2.80 (picked one of 6 in this week's books, unusual in that there's nothing from big two in there)
4) Captain Marvel vs. Monster Society of Evil limited hardcover $35
5) Crisis on Infinite Earths HC $90

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