Just before lunchtime on Sunday, I got a call from my friend at MR Book stall. The RTC Crossroads exhibition has now moved to a place near Paradise Circle, and quite a bit of new books had come in. I went there in the evening and picked up Batman: A Death in the Family for 40 Rs, bwahahahaha. And it turned out to be a first printing, at that. Also found a copy of Batman: Strange Apparitions, a reprint of the classic Steve Englehart-Marshall Rogers-Walt Simonson run of the 1970’s for 100 Rs.

Yesterday, a colleague returned from the States, carrying with him four issues of Fables. Issues 5,6,8 and 9, and that brings me closer to completing my Fables run. I had picked up the first five issues at Bookworm for 20 Rs each, and issues 6-46, missing a couple of issues, for 31$ off ebay. These four issues my colleague brought, I had picked up seperately along with 2 Charlie Adlard original art pages – one of them from Marvel’s Hellfire Club, and the other from DC’s The Establishment. Now I had seen scans of the pages when I bought them, but nothing had prepared me for the vibrant art. The black and white inks leap at you from the page – it’s so flawlessly done that quite a few people from my office who saw the pages were unable to believe that these were not “printed” material. I had picked up these pages for quite cheap really – 16$ for one, and 12$ for the other. Charlie Adlard, by the way, is the current artist on the hugely-popular zombie series The Walking Dead.

Recent eBay buys:

1) Grant Morrison’s complete run on Doom Patrol ( issues 19-63). I had stray issues of this, notably issues between 41 and 50. These will have to be disposed of, I guess.

2) Planetary 1-12

3) Miracleman 20-24, Miracleman Apocrypha TPB, Volume 4 TPB. Mighty rare items.

5) Quite a few of Will Eisner’s Spirit magazines from the 1970’s, reprinting Eisner’s early work. The Spirit: The first 99 Dailies, a reprint book from 1977. A couple of other Spirit comics from 1988 and thereabouts.

6) First edition softcover of Will Eisner’s book A Contract With God. This was the book, by the way, which popularised the term “graphic novel”, and is generally considered to be the First graphic novel, which it’s not.

7) American Flagg 19-30 ( which includes the Alan Moore issues 21-27) and Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg 1-12, which is volume two of the series. I had a few stray copies of American Flagg, notably issues 1, 2 and 10. This lot also had issue 5 and 11. Since the creator Howard Chaykin was involved only with the first 27 issues, I am not really too interested in the later stories.

8) Quite a bit of TPBs and stray runs of good titles like Animal Man, JLA, New X-Men (Yes, from the Grant Morrison run, heh heh).

9) A limited edition of a book by Warren Ellis called Come in Alone, signed and numbered by the writer, which is a series of writings on comic-books.

10) Supreme Power 1-18, by J Michael Straczynski and Gary Frank.

In case you get the feeling that I am spending too much money, let me tell you that these buys were part of two lots which I picked up for quite cheap. 151 comics and 8 trade paperbacks for 103$, including US shipping. Besides, just picking up the Miracleman issues makes up for it all. ( I think I need to put up a seperate Miracleman post sometime.)

Mega eBay misses:

-Somebody bought Moore’s complete run on Supreme, which is issues 41-56 and two issues of Supreme: The Return, for FIFTEEN DOLLARS. I forgot to bid on it, even though I was watching the item. That lucky, lucky bastard.

-Someone else bid on the Sandman Arabian Nights statue ( what am I doing watching statues, you ask. Nothing at all, just looking, guv’nor. I can look, can’t I?), which is 11 and a half inches tall, and has 7000 copies made, sculpted by Randy Bowen based on P Craig Russell’s classic Sandman design from issue 50. The auction ended at 19.99$, waaaaaaaaaah! Look at the statue, just look at it! I believe it retailed for 150$ or so, when it came out.

The week was made by an SMS from al_lude, which said that the Annotated Sherlock Holmes will be in Premier, and ergo, mine, in just a day or two. This courtesy the earnings from the last KQA quiz ( which was dedicated to Premier Book Shop). I am glad I never bought any of the Sherlock Holmes books in my life before ( even though I had wanted to buy a copy of the Baring-Gould annotated edition that was available at Best sometime ago. Didn’t because there was only one volume available, thankfully). This edition has the complete short stories, along with loads of essays and writeups on subjects Sherlockian and Victorian. Quite looking forward to rereading Holmes.