This being said, you have good tastes sir!
Bronze Age is my favorite period, expecially the DC stuff.
The 100-pagers were cool, but I also liked the 48 pages format. That’s how, in Kirby’s Fourth World titles I discovered all his great DC Golden Age stuff like Boy Commandos, Newsboy Legion, Sandman, Manhunter…

I recently bought a huge run of Bronze Age Julius Schwartz-edited SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS with the gorgeous art of Curt Sawan (with those great Neal Adams or Nick Cardy covers) that included all of the 100-pagers. My favorite reprints in them were the couple of SEA DEVILS by Russ Heath. Great art that needs to get archived or something!

Bronze Age BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS are next on my list. The Archie Goodwin’s are among my favorite issues too (with the too short Manhunter saga) but my top most favorite is the one with the cool Neal Adams’ Werewolf story (can’t remember the exact issue). I found it at a very good price many years ago and was happy to have recovered a childhood favorite of mine.

Nice haul of books you got. You are right that if you want some reall good reading copies of older stuff, Randy’s Readers is the place to go. That our favorite dealer at the show. I even picked up some nice ones from Randy, including Daredevil #150 (the intro of Paladin), Silver Surfer (vol. 1) #10 (classic John Buscema artistic goodness), What If? (vol. 1) #24 (What if Gwen Stacy had lived) and Werewolf By Night #42 (Werewolf and Iron Man team-up). So, I think I made out pretty good, as well.

Hope to see you and your kids at the next show.

Even without Big Celebrity Creators or spending a bunch of money, I’d call it a really successful convention. Certainly I had a better time than I did the last time I tried fighting the crowds at CCI in San Diego. Sometimes smaller is better.

Sometimes? Can you explain how a larger show is ever better, for anyone?

It’s not better for the fans, who are often overwhelmed and seldom get to experience the whole of the show for all the stuff going on.

It’s not better for retailers, publishers, or the creators, who have way too much competition amongst each other vying for attention and the dollars from the crowds. Not to mention the video games, hollywood invasion, and the other crap that has absolutely NO BUSINESS being at that particular show (SDCC). If there weren’t umpteen video game and movie conventions for people to attend everywhere you look, I could understand it. But there are, and so there’s no need for any of them to be there, horning in on a territory that is already too small of a pond.

How could you pass on Dingbats of Danger Street?

Well, I got a bunch of other stuff too… and I was TRYING to stay on a budget. I wanted the Premieres more, is what it came down to. Basically I ended up with Marvel Premiere 33 to 42, the four First Issue Specials shown above, and Detective 444. I didn’t write about every single one of them but I was delighted with all of them.

I’m annoyed with myself on another count though. I was sure I had Woodgod in that pile and I didn’t. When I got home I realized I must have set it off to one side or something while I was sorting through the other stuff and counting up the dollar amounts. The moral of the story is to not get so excited that you rush through it… always check ONE LAST TIME before you hand the stack of books to the dealer to total out for you. Once I’d paid for them I jammed the lot in my book bag and didn’t look at them again till I was home.

I also have a fond, nostalgic memory for Torpedo, but mine stems from his ROM appearances.

AND E. Nelson Bridwell cherry picked reprints in the middle….

Oh, absolutely. That stuff was an education in comics history.

The DC 100-pagers are a fun series of books to hunt for, too (if you’re a nut like me that enjoys the challenge of back-issue collecting.) I like to have a sort of quest, an overall goal that I can chip away at, when I’m going through dealer boxes. These books are rare enough that it’s a challenge but not completely out of reach like a Golden Age run or something. I’m a reader more than a collector but I do have that slight OCD acquisitive twitch.

Of course I keep shooting myself in the foot by writing about my favorite runs and thus prompting other people to go out and hunt them too. Thankfully it doesn’t seem to affect prices.

Of all the format and price experiments comic books went through in the 1970’s, far and away my favorite was DC’s “100-Page Super-Spectacular.” 20 pages of new stuff — usually a 12-page lead feature and an 8-page backup story — and 80 pages of reprints in between from DC’s huge library. And of those 100-page books, my favorite was Detective. For the first part of that period, you had Archie Goodwin doing Batman in the front and Manhunter in the back, and then when Goodwin left you had Len Wein and Jim Aparo’s awesome “Bat-Murderer” epic.

AND E. Nelson Bridwell cherry picked reprints in the middle. I like both of the “new” feautures, Manhunter especially… But I *love* Star Hawkins and Golden Age Alfred stories.