Rare Treasures Found In A Digital Comics Bin
The Ghosts Of Christmas Past
One of the real treats of digging into a bin of comics, is even if the long box you’re looting is clearly labeled, there’s a decent chance that the contents are literally from different universes.
It’s something digital readers will never have to put up with, and it’s kind of a shame. It took me years to collect Miracle Man before I could read it, and it’s not like I think like should be hard, and that because I had to make it a journey that everyone should.
It’s just that journeys can take you into unexpected encounters. So imagine my surprise when digging through a hard drive of comics that has most of the 20th Century’s comic books on it - that there was a folder of ancient Sears Catalogs that had been scanned and included. Just the kind of treat that would interrupt a search through a long box of comics. Every big collection that’s ever come into a shop had a couple of magazines or catalogs. Below, a few items that caught my eye.
The finest in sleep attire for kids who were told to stay in their rooms, while their parents were downstairs Eyes Wide Shutting the whole neighborhood. The catalog is over six hundred pages, approximately half the book is selling something to wear to a key party.
There were toys, of course. The Vietnam War was a terrible national tragedy and nobody was talking about it. I think that’s why this is the weirdest collection of G.I. Joes I’ve ever seen.
The nerdy toys weren’t even printed in color. Both the Trek and Apes lines probably only existed because of the animated shows. Trek’s would have just gone off the air when the catalog hit.
These were the kind of toys that started to show up at Sci-Fi cons for a couple of bucks in the mid-eighties when I started attending cons.
I only had the ones you shoved your eyeballs in, like some loser serf. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen the slide projector or TV model. Easy to see why Yakov Smirnov would spend the next 10 years doing the same joke.
The drive also contained a few relics that were comics adjacent, like the 1976 Mighty Marvel Calendar celebrating America’s bicentennial. The calendar observed a lot of Marvel characters and creator birthdays.
Stan Lee splurged for a costume budget. He played both Lincoln and Washington in February, a particular chaotic month in this calendar.
The 1976 calendar is identical to the one one 2032. Let me know who needs a download link.
Have a great weekend. More comics next week
GD