Comics History

Best of Phoenix 2013!

Thank you New Times for naming All About Books and Comics the 2013 Winner of Best Vintage Comic Book Store! Whether you’re looking to buy or consign vintage comics, All About Books and Comics is the place for you. This Central Phoenix shop has a great selection of back issues of vintage comics, including Captain America, Thor, Avengers, X-Men, Dr. Strange, Superman, Flash, Mr. Miracle, Spider-Man, and Iron Man. Can’t find what you’re looking for? A helpful clerk will check the backroom for the issue. Looking for vintage on the cheap? Check the dollar room. Want to play? AAB&C sells … Continue reading

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It Came From the Back Room #54

I knew it had been a while since we did one of these back-room-special posts, but when I checked the archives I was surprised that the last one was way back in early October. It’s not that I haven’t been working on backstock; it’s that Batman comics took a long time to sort, and then while we put them out in early December I never did a post on them, and now for the last month and a half or more I’ve been working on Avengers comics. It turned out that we had 17 long boxes (or almost 6,000 comics’ … Continue reading

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CBG:RIP

When the magazine The Comics Buyer’s Guide announced that it had ceased publication this week, few comics fans blinked. Some might have noted that its last issue was #1699, indicating a long history, but it hadn’t stood out on the newstand for years. It fell to writers like Heidi MacDonald at The Beat to explain what The Comics Buyer’s Guide had meant to fans in the ’70s and ’80s, in a eulogy here; former editor John Jackson Miller offers a more detailed history here, while longtime comics and TV writer mark Evanier adds a few thoughts here. I know how … Continue reading

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Walt Kelly Original Art!

For your viewing pleasure: a piece of original art I bought on eBay last week, a Pogo Sunday page from 1965 by the great, great Mr. Walt Kelly: All collectors have a “grail list,” of the items they dream of finding. I started collecting original art early enough to be able to own a few of mine — a Jack Kirby Thor page I got over a decade ago, a Gene Colan Tomb of Dracula page, a Jim Aparo Batman Brave and the Bold cover, and some others — but lately I’ve despaired of getting any more, especially by the … Continue reading

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It Came From the Back Room #53

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 now that school’s started again), this amounts to a three-year project.  This week, we’ve restocked the west-end discount racks (nearest the parking lot) with one Marvel and one DC “B” title. Marvel first: Black Panther Marvel’s African king (and Avenger) wasn’t the first black character or hero in comics, but he was the first with actual superpowers, and by far the most … Continue reading

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