Back Issue Bin Bonanza Home Page

BACK ISSUE BIN BONANZA

by Aaron Severson

Past columns:

Maybe you’ve been there.

It’s Wednesday night, or Saturday afternoon, or whatever day you head out in search of new comics. Thanks to the usual scheduling errors, shipping delays, and artists who can’t meet a deadline to save their lives, you’ve ended up with what my friend Adam sardonically calls “a lame stash week.” You’re in the mood for comics, but you’ve struck out. So you start to wander the aisles of the store in search of Something To Read. You survey the new comics to see if there’s something you’re willing to take a chance on: nothing. You scan rows of graphic novels, now desperate enough to consider things that you’d never usually bother with (Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars, for instance), but either nothing looks good or it’s too expensive for an impulse buy (“$24.95 for Secret Wars? You’ve got to be kidding...”).

Now you’re eyeing the back issue bins. Thousands of comics, but where to start? Comics being what they are, self-contained issues are rare (you don’t want to end up with Part 12 of 37) and the covers don’t necessarily tell you what you’re in for. You begin to rummage aimlessly. The clerk, eager to close up shop and get home in time for The Simpsons, checks her watch and sighs meaningfully. What to do?

The raison d’etre of BACK ISSUE BIN BONANZA is to present a sampling of interesting older comics that are worth a look when you need something to read and don’t know where to look. The parameters are simple: interesting, accessible, and relatively cheap. By “accessible,” I mean that these will be comics you have some hope in hell of finding; really cool $300 Golden Age comics or rare Spanish imports need not apply. “Relatively cheap” is a judgment call; in general we’re talking around $10. I realize that for some people ten bucks is not necessarily cheap, but the truth is that’s now the price of three or four regular current books, and certainly more feasible than say, laying down $50 and change for an Archives volume.

Each column contains an overview of the comic or comics in question and some comments on how the story fits into the grand scheme of comicdom (e.g., what else the creators have done, where the characters or plot have been seen before). If I can, I’ll also include a cover scan or some other illustration.

The column also includes my Quick Fix Entertainment Rating System: the Kitsch/Art Factor™. This is a subjective judgment of the balance of the story between frothy entertainment and artistic/literary merit (or at least pretension thereto). It’s not a value judgment — I’m all for pulp entertainment, and sometimes it can be far more satisfying than stories that try to enrich your life in some meaningful way. A high K/A Factor (8/2, for example) is a story with few, if any, artistic pretensions, one that’s aiming solely to divert and entertain. A low K/A factor (e.g., 2/8) is a story that stresses thematic significance or artistic elegance more than giant exploding lizards. An even K/A factor (e.g., 5/5) strikes a balance between the two. No rating is qualitatively better than another; it’s just a guide to help you decide whether it will suit your current mood.

If you’d like to suggest something for Back Issue Bin Bonanza, drop me a line. I’d be happy to host the occasional Guest BIBB column.

Enjoy.

Aaron Severson