Thrift Store Finds: HPB quarter bins

I did a little digging in my Half-Price Books’ quarter bins recently and pulled out about $6 dollars worth of DC Comics from the recent past.

Thrift Store Finds: August’s Half-Off Sale

On the first Monday of every month, our thrift store marks everything in the store down to half off. During summer vacation, Ellen and I make a point to go to the store first thing on these Monday mornings, so as to have full range of choice in whatever secondhand wares that strike our fancy. Although we’re about out of August now, I thought I’d rundown our last half-off sale of summer 2013.

BOOKS –  Lover Boy by Stan and Jan Berenstain was one I grabbed because I had already talked about the sequel to this book, Office Lover Boy, in a previous post. Seeing the husband/wife duo behind the wholesome Berenstain Bears work blue was something of a shock back when I wrote that post… and it’s still a little strange to see now! This book’s falling apart but for a quarter, I figured it was worth it. I also found The A-Team 5: Ten Percent of Trouble, the fifth in a series of novelizations adapting episodes of NBC’s 1980’s action series. I collect novelizations when the mood seizes me and… c’mon! Mr. T! George Peppard! The guy who originally played Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica!

VIDEO GAMES – I picked up four GameBoy cartridges for $2 bucks apiece: Terminator 2: Judgement Day (LJN), Top Gun: Guts & Glory (Konami), Bugs Bunny – Crazy Castle 3 (Kemco), and Pokemon Pinball (Nintendo). This was a mixed bag of carts. I don’t know why I picked up Top Gun; the Nintendo game was awful and this just seems to follow suit. Crazy Castle 3 is fine; it’s just an incredibly boring game. Terminator 2 is (quite surprisingly considering it was published by LJN, purveyors of the worst licensed games ever) the most fun out of all these, however it’s wicked hard. They only give you one life and I can barely make it to the second board without dying. Pokemon Pinball… I haven’t tried yet. I want to wait until I can scrounge a AAA battery for the Rumble Pak.

COMICS – Paul Dini’s run on Detective Comics yielded some fun Batman stories but his work was  overshadowed at the time by Grant Morrison’s Batman work. I’ve been going back and checking Dini’s Detective Comics’ work and it’s about as solid as you’d expect from one of the main architects of Batman: The Animated Series. The best of these are a two-parter featuring Scarface as the main baddie and a team-up with Zatanna (one of Dini’s favorite DC characters). The next few issues dovetail with Grant Morrison’s Batman R.I.P. storyline. Dini’s stories are aided by Dustin Nguyen’s capable artwork. I got these for fifty cents apiece.

VIDEO CASSETTE – I have the first ten seasons of The Simpsons on DVD and watch them on an endless loop. I probably don’t need a VHS cassette collecting the first two episodes of the first season of the series, which is lucky because despite what the colorful box says, that’s not what I got here. The Best of The Simpsons Volume 1 includes “There’s No Disgrase Like Home” and “Life on the Fast Lane” but the cassette here includes “Bart the General” and “Moaning Lisa.” It’s a weird mistake and a little Googling reveals that the cassette I have is The Best of the Simpsons, Volume 2.

odds and ends: detective comics, the twelve

In general, I haven’t been a great fan of DC Comics’ recent “New 52” relaunch of their superhero titles. I don’t think this was a very well thought-out relaunch, I don’t believe the talent attached to a great many of these books has been up to the task… and I’ve been reading DC Comics my whole life, so I’m somewhat attached to the old version of these characters.

That being said, I did try to give a lot of these books a fair shake, only to find many lacking. Currently, I’m only buying two of DC’s superhero books regularly.

Well, I may just have to up that to three, because I picked up Detective Comics #13 last week and it’s a nice start.

I already have an affection for the character but there have been PLENTY of Batman titles in the New 52 lineup I have passed up entirely because I didn’t feel the creative team was up to snuff. I’m happy to report this issue addresses those concerns by employing writer John Layman; I’ve enjoyed his work on Image Comics’ Chew and he didn’t disappoint. Further, the art is a step above a lot of what I’ve seen from DC lately. The main story, pencilled by Jason Fabok is, while not exactly to my personal tastes, detailed and exciting in the way I believe most young comics readers are looking for in this genre. The backup tale with art from Andy Clarke is similarly satisfying, although I liked Clarke’s work more than Fabok’s.

Up to this point, the only DCU books I’ve been buying have been written by Scott Snyder, but I may just be adding Detective Comics to my pull list, if this creative team can keep up the pace.

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Haven’t been reading a lot of novels lately. Things have been busy and I haven’t had the time to lose myself in a book. That being said, please know I am anxiously counting the days until October 16th, when The Twelve by Justin Cronin is in stores.

The second book in Cronin’s planned post-apocalyptic vampire trilogy, the first book in the series was a great favorite of mine. The Passage has its’ problem, but a more engrossing read I did not have in 2010. I liked The Passage so much, I listened to the audiobook in the spring as a sort of refresher in preparation for The Twelve. Cronin’s prose is occasionally overwrought and some of his conclusions about a world moved on are a little silly (as with most writer’s tales of the apocalypse, gas is still plentiful and unspoiled, despite how quickly we know it would corrode) but I enjoyed the book and look forward to jumping back into this world with Peter, Amy, Lish and the rest.