Sunday, May 6, 2012

Free Comic Book Day report

Had a great time at the Free Comic Book Day celebration at Kansas City's Clint's Comics.  The store has been in business since 1967 (!) -- amazingly early for a comic book shop.  I wish I'd taken my camera along, so as to get some pics.  I was especially taken with the displays of owner Jim Cavanaugh's Western toy collection.  A glass cabinet chock full of Hartland figures of TV Western characters, complete with tags and boxes, knocked me for a loop!  

There was a great turn out -- and the store was busy for hours.  I enjoyed hanging around with my old pals Steve Lightle and Rick Stasi, both of whom were very popular with the crowd.  We met a lot of interesting folks, including Rudy Reyes of HBO's Generation Kill -- a very enthusiastic comic book fan.

Turns out store owner Jim is a big Phantom fan, and wanted some Phantom original art for his collection.  We made a trade, and I came home with the batch of books shown in the picture below.  I'd given up thinking I'd ever get a copy of 75 Years of DC Comics -- as it has a rather hefty price tag -- heck, it's rather hefty in every sense!  Anyhow -- I'm thrilled to add it to my "big book" collection.


 But the biggest thrill for me, is shown below.  I saw this boxed Roy Rogers toy on a shelf in the back room and remarked to Jim that this toy had ben a particular childhood favorite of mine -- but that, except for the figures, which I'd somehow managed to hold on to (and were missing from this set), it was long gone.  Jim took it off the shelf and handed it to me and told me to take it home!  I told him that was too generous, and I wasn't sure I could do that.  He then showed me his complete near mint version on display in a glass case in the store!  This was a lesser condition extra -- so, okay, it came home with me.






Here are the Pat Brady and Roy Rogers figures from my childhood version of this toy.  They've been sitting atop some books on my "cowboy" shelf for some time....


And here they are, reunited with Nellybelle the jeep!  Now to find a replacement steering wheel and Trigger!  Thanks, Jim!  Pat and Roy look mighty happy.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, any chance you might be able to post a bit of a review/look inside the 75 Years of DC book? The only copies I've ever come across are shrink-wrapped like the one you show here and I'm curious to get a sense of how it looks since, as you say, it's a pretty expensive book. I abandoned DC with the New 52 nonsense, but I'm still interested in this book as a celebration of what once was. (Fantastic blog, by the way!)

jimm said...

Too cool, getting your old pals a new jeep!