Author Archives: Phil

About Phil

With 40 years of experience in comic reading, collecting and reviewing, English Professor Phil Mateer has an encyclopedic mind for comics. Feel free to ask Phil about storylines, characters, artists or for that matter, any comic book trivia. He will post your questions and answers on the AABC blog. His knowledge is unparalleled! He is also our warehouse manager, so if you are looking for that hard to find comic book, ask Phil!

It Came From the Back Room #31

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Phil

Standard recap: I’m slowly going through AABC’s one-million-plus back-issue room, restocking the boxes on the sales floor and pulling stuff to sell as discount/overstock/special items. I’m going through the alphabet backwards (don’t ask), and at my speed (especially with the school semester in full gear), this amounts to a two-year project.  This week, the focus continues to be on the letter “F,” and on discount comics featuring the Fastest Man Alive: The Flash Volume One Discounted issues from Volume One of the comic don’t come up a lot here — there are a few dozen lower-condition books below issue #300, … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #204

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Phil

Batman Incorporated #8 — Writer: Grant Morrison;  Art: Scott Clark with Dave Beaty Bruce Wayne is showing off his “Internet 3.0” to a bunch of super-rich investors via virtual reality, and cyberterrorists attack, so he and Oracle team up to kick their digital butts. Very very cool graphics, typically dense Morrison concepts (sample dialog from page two: “The city of numbers is on fire! All must kneel to the worm captain!“), a striking cover, and a comic that delivers an actual beginning, middle and conclusion, all in one issue. I’m sorry, but there’s something wrong with you if you don’t … Continue reading →

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It Came From the Back Room #30

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Phil

Standard recap: I’m slowly going through AABC’s one-million-plus back-issue room, restocking the boxes on the sales floor and pulling stuff to sell as discount/overstock/special items. I’m going through the alphabet backwards (don’t ask), and at my speed, this amounts to a two-year project. Something different this week: I’m working on the letter “F” now — specifically, back issues of Flash — but I’ll cover the discount stuff from that in my next posting, once it’s all finished and available on the cover price racks. Instead, since it turned out that we had so many cool (and key) Silver Age issues of … Continue reading →

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Phil’s Reviews: Stuff I Bought #203

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Phil

Sergio Aragones Funnies #2 — Writer/Artist: Guess who Just as entertaining, wide-ranging and well-produced as the first issue, with a combination of the one-page gags that Mad readers are so familiar with, plus a trio of longer (five and seven pages) stories, including a fascinating autobiographical piece about the first time the schoolchild Sergio ever got paid for his drawing; like the other longer works, it’s colored by Groo‘s Tom Luth, and looks wonderful. Throw in a couple of puzzle pages, and this continues to be one of the best comics on the stands. DMZ #68 — Writer: Brian Wood; … Continue reading →

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It Came From the Back Room #29

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Phil

Standard recap: I’m slowly going through AABC’s one-million-plus back-issue room, restocking the boxes on the sales floor and pulling stuff to sell as discount/overstock/special items. I’m going through the alphabet backwards (don’t ask), and at my speed, this amounts to a two-year project. This week, we’re nearing the end of the letter “G,” and that means one of Marvel’s weirder creations: Ghost Rider This was part of the early-’70s horror boom, which saw vampires, zombies, werewolves and other creatures of the night all suddenly popular, and all jostling for comics-rack space (not to mention magazine-rack exposure, as Marvel’s black-and-white horror … Continue reading →

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