2016 Comic Challenge 108 Popeye:King Educational Comics Giveaway E-12

TITLE-Popeye:King Educational Comics Giveaway E-12
PUBLISHER-King Features

Another giveaway comic I had no idea existed until sometime in 2008.For right at 5 years the first Thursday of the month was an auction in a town about 10 minutes from my home. Normally it was full of old tools,furniture and other stuff I have no interest in. I would usually show up 30 minutes before the auction started. Would go look at all the stuff the dealers had set out to auction. And if I found something I liked I would stay until it came up for auction. So I walk in and see a box that contained at least 40 copies of this comic. All of them still in the polybag they came in. I asked which dealer's table they were on. Found out it was a guy I had dealt with a few times. "Yeah I doubt you would want to buy them all. But as long you agree to buy 5 of them I can let them go at a buck a copy." I agreed and he ended up being the first person to auction stuff.

Written by Joe Gill and with Frank Roberge doing the interior art,George R Wildmon handles the cover art. This was part of a series that was given out at schools. In this one Popeye educates us on various personal service careers. Stuff like being a barber. The comic is pretty much crap. Missing even the stuff that is common in Popeye stories.

So I ended up spending $5 for 5 copies of a crappy comic. Sounds like a bad deal. Then one night in 2010 I was looking at Lonestar Comics online site. And saw that they were offering money or store credit for this comic.I contacted them and asked how much they offered for copies still in the polybag. Turns out they had never seen any copies in the polybag. And ended up offering me $10 a copy each in cash or $15 in store credit. I ended up sending them 4 copies and got store credit. Which was quickly used to get more comics.

Popeye:King Educational Comics Giveaway E-12 gets a PASS!

2016 Comic Challenge 107 Amazing Spider-man NACME #02

TITLE-Amazing Spider-Man NACME #02
PUBLISHER-Marvel Comics

Before I got this issue in the summer of 2008 I had never heard of it. NACME is the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering. And they put out two of these comics starring Spidey.

So how did I end up with this oddball comic? Well right before my birthday in 2008 I started a job doing home health care. I would goto this old man's house at 8pm. And from 8pm until 8am I was there to help him. He could barely walk and had a few other issues. Most nights he was asleep by 10pm. And since he slept until 5am I had right at 7 hours a night where all I had to do was be there. Right after starting this job I had a death in my family. I went down to the coast for the services. And had two different cousins give me a few longboxes of comics. In one of those boxes was 2 copies of this comic. Which unlike most of the others in the box,was bagged and boarded and appeared to be mint.

We got the usually damn good Dwayne McDuffie writing it. And Alex Saviuk handling the pencils.Chris Ivy handles the inks.

The comics is your standard Spidey story for this timeframe. Full of Spidey wise cracking a bunch while fighting crime.Since the cover mentions a Riot at Robotworld. And which major Marvel supervillain works best with Robotworld? Ultron of course. I have always liked Ultron,and prefer the wise cracking Spidey to any other version of Spidey.

A few years back my cousin's two boys were getting into comics. So I wen through my collection and made them a longbox full of stuff I either didn't want or stuff I had more than one copy of. I had 2 copies of this comic. So threw one into their longbox. Recently both the boys kind of got out of comics. And trying to make a few extra bucks my cousin looked the comics up. Seems there is a decent amount of demand for this comic. She ended up getting $5 for it. Not bad for what I am sure was a giveaway comic.

Amazing Spider-Man NACME #02 gets a borrow.