Tom Brevoort, Executive Editor at Marvel Comics, has been trading comics with fans on his blog. He hopes to acquire a copy of Fantastic Four #1, which he will then donate to the Hero Initiative to be auctioned off. Aside from being a wonderfully charitable thing to do, this trading experiment is a great way to reach out to the fans. I know I was eager to find a comic in my collection that I could trade to Tom. Not only to have personal correspondence with one of Marvel’s bigwigs, but also to get my hands on the Certificate of Meaninglessness that accompanies each trade.
But what could I trade to Tom? He was aiming for Fantastic Four #1. I didn’t start collecting comics seriously until about 10 years ago, and I’ve never had much money to spend on the classics. The best my longboxes offer is a beat up early Defenders issue, a full run of Spider-Man 2099, and Secret Wars #4, but I didn’t want to trade any of those. So, I scoured Tom’s trade pile, looking for something I could possibly hope to match.
And I found it. The NFL Superpro Special. Superpro is a sentimental favorite of mine. I know he’s lame, but his comics were some of the first I collected. No one else is gonna take that stinker of Tom’s hands. I had my target. Now, what to trade? The answer was beautiful in its irony.
I would trade him Fantastic Four 2099 #1.
I know. It’s a horrible, obvious joke, but I couldn’t resist. Besides, I’ve hated Fantastic Four 2099 since it first came out. The 2099 characters were a cool re-imagining of the Marvel heroes (well, Spider-Man 2099 was), but the Fantastic Four 2099 were… just the regular Fantastic Four? Lame. And now I had the perfect avenue to rid myself of it. I fired off an e-mail to Tom offering him Fantastic Four 2099 #1 (and #3 for good measure and to get rid of it), and to my great surprise he accepted! And so, after a quick stop at the post office, my comics are now headed to Tom Brevoort’s trade pile, where they will hopefully find someone who can tolerate them. Now all I can do is wait eagerly for my comic and my certificate. Look forward to an update when they arrive.
Speaking of trades, my local comic shop, Conquest Comics, has a small pile of trade paperbacks that they sell for $5. Being a sucker for cheap comics, I regularly raid this pile for anything of value. So far I’ve picked up Michael Allred’s Madman and the Atomics, Doom by Chuck Dixon and Leonardo Manco, Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl? by Bendis and Oeming, and a Thunderbolts trade by Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, et al. Look for reviews of all these trades in a new feature, coming soon.
And, finally, speaking of reviews, in the coming week I plan on finally continuing my Indy 100 series with The Demolution Engine, the comic so bad it killed my desire to read comics for a solid month. I plan on putting that unpleasantness behind me and continuing with my reviews. After The Demolution Engine, I should be able to handle anything that pile of comics can throw at me.
As you can see, there’s a lot of big things on the horizon here at The Rampage, so keep checking back. The long winter is over.
