What comics did you buy today?

[Phoenix]

I am now chasing No 29 Braddock of Bomber Command and it is getting to a price that even I hesitate to go for.

How much did it go for, Col? I decided about twenty minutes ago that I'd track it, but I was too late. There are currently no Red Daggers on eBay. Instead, I got offered some Czech glass craft beads, a ninja warrior vest and a Harley Davidson decal Heart Dagger Banner Red. I mean, please! I can just imagine having to explain those away to my next door neighbours. A search for Braddock only brought up a very ordinary copy of the I Flew With Braddock book at a £14.99 start price, and it doesn't even have a dustwrapper!!!!!!!!

[stevezodiac]

In London on Sunday there was an ephemera fair and the comic mart and I managed to spend £750. Most of it - £400, went on over 130 sheets of Wally Robertson Film Fun pencil roughs (mainly Max Miller and Sidney Howard) most are double sided so a good buy. I'll scan a few more on here when i get a whole story together as they are all mixed up at the moment. Also got two bound volumes of The Jester both from 1906 covering the whole of that year. Also picked up some single issues including a Merry & Bright on nice yellow paper.

[colcool007]

I am now chasing No 29 Braddock of Bomber Command and it is getting to a price that even I hesitate to go for.

How much did it go for, Col? I decided about twenty minutes ago that I'd track it, but I was too late. There are currently no Red Daggers on eBay. Instead, I got offered some Czech glass craft beads, a ninja warrior vest and a Harley Davidson decal Heart Dagger Banner Red. I mean, please! I can just imagine having to explain those away to my next door neighbours. A search for Braddock only brought up a very ordinary copy of the I Flew With Braddock book at a £14.99 start price, and it doesn't even have a dustwrapper!!!!!!!!

Ended up at just under the £12 mark. Considering that I have seen some of them hit £20, I'll not complain...too much! On the subject of what you get in searches, most of my Red Dagger searches comes up with a book on WW2 German daggers/bayonets. Err, not what I am looking for, but thanks all the same. I am looking forward to getting this one as my brother didn't get it first time round and my Victor collection from that year is still spotty.

Regarding Braddock, I was lucky to get my copy for a steal of £1.99 last year or was it the year before? Either way, I started reading it and just did not want to put it down until I had finished the book. The only problem that I found with the book was that it was too short!

[steelclaw]

Picked up this Annual for £3 in near mint condition this morning, cheap compared to the new Battle comic at £3.99 I know what one I prefer although it's still good to see Battle back in Smiths.

[Kashgar]

Just bought 170 issues of the Thomson/Leng pocket-size nursery title 'Fairyland Tales' for £80. A real bargain especially as it includes all of the final year (1939), all issues of which are missing from the Thomson files.

[Digifiend]

Missing? You should loan them to DCT then so they can put fascimiles in their archives. I assume it was a wartime casualty if it closed in 1939.

[colcool007]

I got my monster batch of Bullet today and I have been reading through them at a rate of knots. I am now up to issue 106 and looking forward to reading the remaining 20 odd issues that I now own! Plus clearing up a few mysteries about stories that people have been asking about that featured in Bullet. However, my posts will be few and far between for the next few days as home internet has fallen over and I don't expect to get online again much before Thurs!

[Steve Henderson]

I found a bookshop in Morcambe had a walk in and found loads of old annuals so treated myself to a couple of Buster annuals and the big fat slags book in which only two of the stories havnt been re printed ha ha! Nice shop though books in quite good condition they had tonnes of other titles too cor, beezer, dandy, whizzer and chips, tv21, eagle. There was also a morgyn the mighty book from ' the pages of victor' couldn't find a date on it it was a novel though no illustrations except on the dust jacket

[Peter Gray]

I've been there...when I had a weekend holiday in Blackpool.wanted to go to the Stan Laurel birth town...with my friend who is also a big Laurel and Hardy fan..

I bought an old Beano annula there..its the only good thing in Morcambe except for the Eric Morcambe statue which I posed with for a photo.and the Polo tower..

[Phoenix]

I found a bookshop in Morcambe had a walk in and found loads of old annuals so treated myself to a couple of Buster annuals and the big fat slags book in which only two of the stories havnt been re printed ha ha! Nice shop though books in quite good condition they had tonnes of other titles too cor, beezer, dandy, whizzer and chips, tv21, eagle. There was also a morgyn the mighty book from ' the pages of victor' couldn't find a date on it it was a novel though no illustrations except on the dust jacket

its the only good thing in Morcambe except for the Eric Morcambe statue which I posed with for a photo.and the Polo tower.

Just a short weekend was it, Peter? If you'd hung around a bit longer, you'd have found a brilliant antiques centre on the promenade near Regent Road, and you could also have visited Happy Mount Park. The Art Deco Midland Hotel, refurbished at huge cost and recently reopened, is well worth a visit, as is Brucciani's ice cream parlour, family run since the early 1900s and with thousands of returning customers from all over the world who will vouch for the taste of its products. Not to mention the Winter Gardens, currently being restored to its original splendour, the excellent hotels and cafes, Heysham Head and the bay itself with its view across to Grange and Barrow. Also, a few miles up the road in Carnforth there is another superb secondhand bookshop. Oh, and by the way, it is spelt Morecambe. I do agree with you and Steve, though, about the bookshop, although it probably does require a weekend to do it justice. There's a huge number of books, some precariously balanced, narrow corridors, it goes a fair way back and there are rather a lot of nooks and crannies. Every time I go I expect to discover that Health and Safety have shut it down.

[colcool007]

The postman was kind today and delivered my long awaited Red Dagger Issue 29. It was a shock for me to find that I do not like one painting of my all-time favourite artist!! That being the cover for issue 29, done by Ian Kennedy. The bit that makes me dislike the art is minor but at the same time fairly major to the cover. And that is the face of Matt Braddock. It looks more like the Hulk getting ready for a major tantrum rather than Britain's greatest pilot walking away from a successful raid.

Has anyone else had this sort of trauma in finding that there is one piece done by their favourite artist that jars against their sensibilities?

[Digifiend]

So we're talking antiques shops eh? If you ever go to Norwich, try The Treasure Chest, on Magdalen Street in Norwich city centre. It's not far from Anglia Square. Got myself three Bash Street annuals last week (1980, 1982 and 1986 - could have got 1984 as well, but I already had a copy). I also saw a 1956 Dandy annual (only £2, but it was badly damaged, which is why I didn't buy it), a box of comics including several 2000ADs, a couple of Bullets, and an 80s Beano, plus plenty of Marvel (both US and UK); also there was an undated Beezer annual (so pre-1967), and two more Dandy annuals (these were in a glass cabinet, and too expensive for me, also, I couldn't buy too much, as I only in Norwich on holiday visiting family). There was also a very early Eagle annual, in excellent condition. Not in a glass cabinet though, so most likely a fascimile rather than the original - I didn't check.

[steelclaw]

Got this delivered today bought on ebay 99p + £2.75 for p&p
for a soft back light weight book.
I just need 1971 & 1972 Buster Annual. because Buster had merged with Jet and their might be some Jet stories in them, does anyone else do this when collection?

[Phoenix]

Got this delivered today bought on ebay 99p + £2.75 for p&p
for a soft back light weight book.

I think you've hit on an issue of genuine concern here, steelclaw. Like most people, I suppose, I am constantly tracking items of interest and, in the process, I have noticed a upward trend in p&p charges since eBay made £2.75 the permitted maximum. It's a kind of adapted Parkinson's Law where prices rise to match the maximum allowed. It is difficult to see what can be done about it. Personally, I do not bid if I know that £2.75 is an obvious rip-off, although I have no objection, of course, to sellers factoring in reasonable amounts for their packaging, time and eBay/PayPal fees. In the end it comes down to how badly you want the advertised item. If, as in your case, the item can be acquired for 99p and the buyer is perfectly happy with its condition, the overall cost may well be seen as reasonable.

[Phoenix]

Has anyone else had this sort of trauma in finding that there is one piece done by their favourite artist that jars against their sensibilities?

In my case, where the text stories are concerned, it isn't 'one piece' nor is it by any particular artist, but rather those occasions when a different artist was drafted in for some illustrations during the course of a serial or a series of serials about the same character(s), presumably when the usual artist was unavailable. These always jarred with me because the usual illustrator had clearly established how I should always see his perception of the writer's creations. In a way, I could have done without any illustrations at all because my imagination is quite capable of creating its own pictures but, since they were provided, I accepted them and my imagination worked with them. One aspect of this relates to the reading of novels, of course, because illustrations are rarely provided. I remember immersing myself so deeply in E M Forster's A Passage To India, one of my 'A' level English Literature set books, that I have carried with me ever since my impressions of the physical appearance of the characters. Then the film came out. For years I refused to watch it, either in the cinema or on DVD because I didn't want my versions interfered with. One evening fairly recently it was on TV and I gave in. It really was a strange experience because I found myself trying to impose my characters onto the actors' versions. The two positives to come out of it were that my versions remain intact in my head and the film opened my eyes to aspects of India that Forster had experienced but I had not, such as the sheer volume of people on the quayside in Bombay, the heat, and the bleakness and sheer isolation of the Marabar hills and caves.