One Wrestler's Comic Trade Gone Wrong (or, D**n it, Sister Mary, Gimme That Back!)
|
Dec 18 2009, 7:12 PM
Greetings, GeekWeek Readers!!
For those of you who don't know the guy with no shirt on in the picture, my name is Christopher Daniels, and I've been a professional wrestler now for 17 years. It's how I've made my living, and it's how many of you may know me. But a little known fact about me that always elicits surprise when revealed: I'm also a big comic book geek. How big? Well, not as big as I was as a younger man, but I can still answer trivia from any Wizard magazine staffer that happens by. But any man can claim such, yes? Well then, says I, allow me to tell you a tale of woe from my past that will clue you in on how far back my love of comics goes.
The year is 1982, and I was a full-head-of-haired 8th grader in St. Patrick's School in Fayetteville, NC, where I traded comics with my two best friends, Joe Dunn and Henry Carmichael. And we were fans of what many comic fans were fans of in those days: X-Men!! Dave Cockrum had just finished his second run on the Uncanny X-Men, followed closely by artist Paul Smith. But the stuff we loved was the stuff that immediately preceded those guys: The Claremont/Byrne run.
Around that same time, over in the DC Universe, Marv Wolfman and George Perez were working magic of their own on a title called New Teen Titans, and we loved that stuff as well. Which is where the following trade was born: Henry was a proud owner of DC Comics Presents #26, which was a Superman team-up book guest-starring Green Lantern that issue, but was also famous (and very valuable) for an insert which was the debut of the New Teen Titans as witten and drawn by the Wolfman/Perez team. Meanwhile, I had in my possession a copy of Uncanny X-Men #130, created by the Calremont/Byrne team, and famous (and also quite valuable) for the first appearance of Dazzler (a mutant disco queen? REALLY, Marvel?!? I digress...) The trade was to be as follows: My X-Men #130 for Henry's DC Comics Presents #26, PLUS another DC Comics Presents starring Superman and Black Lightning (The number escapes me, but I do remember trying in vain to have a complete collection of DC Comics Presents back in the day. I liked team up comics.... What can I say?)
Henry and I agreed to terms, wigh Joe being the intermediary, and the trade happened without incident between classes. Little did I know that this story would have no happy ending for me. For as I was leafing through my newly acquired DC Comics Presents #26 at my desk, Sister Mary, our English teacher and a famous ball-buster (even though I had never used that phrase to describe her at the time, I can easily look back to those days and use that term without pause), calmly walked up behind me, grabbed my near mint treasure from my hands and placed it ever-so-gently in the nearest trash receptacle. HORROR!!!! My mind raced as I tried to comprehend what my teacher had done. What was I to do?!?
I asked very politely why she would do that, and she replied that I wasn't allowed to read comics during classtime, and therefore my property had become hers, and she did with it as she pleased!! HORRORS!!!! I sat as calmly as I could at my desk, while inside my mind I was screaming profanities and flailing about wildly (if any of you attended Catholic school, you know that inside the mind was the only place to scream profanities at a nun, unless you desired to spend an eternity burning in Perdition, or paddled with a board, one or the other). As our English class progressed, I silently plotted to find our janitor after class to gain his aid in retrieving my comic from the trash in as good condition as I could hope for. And as soon as class was over, I did exactly that, hunting down Mr. Smits and asking him for the contents to Sister Mary's trashbins as soon as humanly possible. For my troubles, I got balled up loose leaf paper, an apple core, and the plastic baggies that once held Sister Mary's lunch, but no comic.
And that, my friends, was the last time I owned a copy of DC Comics Presents #26. I also never got another copy of Uncanny X-Men #130 either, so double woe is me. I did however, keep my DC Comics Presents with Superman and Black Lightning.
Does anyone have a copy of X-Men #130 they'd like to trade for it?
Greetings, GeekWeek Readers!!
For those of you who don't know the guy with no shirt on in the picture, my name is Christopher Daniels, and I've been a professional wrestler now for 17 years. It's how I've made my living, and it's how many of you may know me. But a little known fact about me that always elicits surprise when revealed: I'm also a big comic book geek. How big? Well, not as big as I was as a younger man, but I can still answer trivia from any Wizard magazine staffer that happens by. But any man can claim such, yes? Well then, says I, allow me to tell you a tale of woe from my past that will clue you in on how far back my love of comics goes.
The year is 1982, and I was a full-head-of-haired 8th grader in St. Patrick's School in Fayetteville, NC, where I traded comics with my two best friends, Joe Dunn and Henry Carmichael. And we were fans of what many comic fans were fans of in those days: X-Men!! Dave Cockrum had just finished his second run on the Uncanny X-Men, followed closely by artist Paul Smith. But the stuff we loved was the stuff that immediately preceded those guys: The Claremont/Byrne run.
Around that same time, over in the DC Universe, Marv Wolfman and George Perez were working magic of their own on a title called New Teen Titans, and we loved that stuff as well. Which is where the following trade was born: Henry was a proud owner of DC Comics Presents #26, which was a Superman team-up book guest-starring Green Lantern that issue, but was also famous (and very valuable) for an insert which was the debut of the New Teen Titans as witten and drawn by the Wolfman/Perez team. Meanwhile, I had in my possession a copy of Uncanny X-Men #130, created by the Calremont/Byrne team, and famous (and also quite valuable) for the first appearance of Dazzler (a mutant disco queen? REALLY, Marvel?!? I digress...) The trade was to be as follows: My X-Men #130 for Henry's DC Comics Presents #26, PLUS another DC Comics Presents starring Superman and Black Lightning (The number escapes me, but I do remember trying in vain to have a complete collection of DC Comics Presents back in the day. I liked team up comics.... What can I say?)
Henry and I agreed to terms, wigh Joe being the intermediary, and the trade happened without incident between classes. Little did I know that this story would have no happy ending for me. For as I was leafing through my newly acquired DC Comics Presents #26 at my desk, Sister Mary, our English teacher and a famous ball-buster (even though I had never used that phrase to describe her at the time, I can easily look back to those days and use that term without pause), calmly walked up behind me, grabbed my near mint treasure from my hands and placed it ever-so-gently in the nearest trash receptacle. HORROR!!!! My mind raced as I tried to comprehend what my teacher had done. What was I to do?!?
I asked very politely why she would do that, and she replied that I wasn't allowed to read comics during classtime, and therefore my property had become hers, and she did with it as she pleased!! HORRORS!!!! I sat as calmly as I could at my desk, while inside my mind I was screaming profanities and flailing about wildly (if any of you attended Catholic school, you know that inside the mind was the only place to scream profanities at a nun, unless you desired to spend an eternity burning in Perdition, or paddled with a board, one or the other). As our English class progressed, I silently plotted to find our janitor after class to gain his aid in retrieving my comic from the trash in as good condition as I could hope for. And as soon as class was over, I did exactly that, hunting down Mr. Smits and asking him for the contents to Sister Mary's trashbins as soon as humanly possible. For my troubles, I got balled up loose leaf paper, an apple core, and the plastic baggies that once held Sister Mary's lunch, but no comic.
And that, my friends, was the last time I owned a copy of DC Comics Presents #26. I also never got another copy of Uncanny X-Men #130 either, so double woe is me. I did however, keep my DC Comics Presents with Superman and Black Lightning.
Does anyone have a copy of X-Men #130 they'd like to trade for it?
Comments
Sign in to comment with your TypePad, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo or OpenID.