DC comics buyout at Ollie's part 2

In part one of this series, I mentioned that if all went as planned, I would be going to the Nashville Ollie's (as well as back to the Cookeville location) to see what might still be available from this sale that has been going on for six weeks and counting, and even though mother nature seemingly tried to dissuade me from doing so, I did end up going last Saturday... and thankfully there was still plenty to be had.

The forecast was calling for 2-4" of rain to fall throughout the day (and it did), being from the Pacific Northwest I am quite comfortable driving in any adverse weather conditions, but the people here are a different story, so I do have some mild concerns about sharing the roadways with them during inclement weather.

About 30 minutes into the drive there, it started dumping, so the next hour or so was spent traveling through a whiteout. Thankfully though, the traffic kept moving at a decent pace (75-85 mph), so my time table was effected in any way. I actually ended up getting there early, and was the first person through the doors that morning.

Once again I'm starting off with a couple of Showcase "phone books". I wasn't familiar with Strange Adventures in the least, but with a cover and synopsis like that, how could I not give it a try?

This series sounds like it was pretty hokey, but for $3.99 it's worth the risk.

This was by far the biggest, both in price and in sheer size, purchase of the day. I had seen this book being shown in some of the YouTube videos that were made right after the sale started, but I figured that after almost a month and a half later that there was going to be no chance of my still being able to find one. The comic book gods must have been with me that day, as it was the last copy that they had. Also, within just couple of minutes after I put it in my basket... another fellow showed up, and by the way he was checking the prices of everything on his phone I could tell that he was buying for resale purposes, and had I not gotten there before him, this book would have been listed on eBay by day's end.

See how big this honker is, I would be very surprised if it weighed in at less than five pounds.

The retail price of this book was $60, and it's currently $40 on Amazon, so even though the $12.99 price tag seems like a lot, it really isn't. Considering that this was the book that I was most hoping to acquire, I would have been happy even if that was all that I ended up getting, but it wasn't... so let's get back to it.

I believe that there are three different Tales of the Batman books out there, all three of which were done by a different artist, on this particular day I able to pick up two of the three (the other one is a couple of books down).

More Batman of course. This is the third book of a three-part series, so I'm going to have to try and find the first two at some point.

For such a relatively thin book, this one has got a lot going on!

This is the one book that I have a little bit of buyer's remorse on, as I didn't read the back as carefully as I should have, but maybe The Outsiders teaming up with John Walsh won't be as bas as it sounds.

This Shazam hardback didn't have a synopsis, and with it still being sealed and all, I just have to hope that it will be good. Me thinks that Billy might have some choice words in regards to this particular title.

I suspect that this will be the better of the two Tales of the Batman books that I ended up getting. I was surprised to find that the Nashville location still had so many different hardbacks available, not that I'm complaining mind you, I'm just sayin'.

No one should be too surprised to hear that I had to make a quick perusal of the toy aisle before leaving, or that I ended up finding something of interest either. They also had the Arnim Zola figure from this series, but it is a very unattractive figure, so he had stay behind.

The Nashville Ollie's also has a fairly decent DVD section as well, and not surprisingly, I found a couple more things of interest, including this boxed series of BBC's Life. This was another great production from the BBC, my only complaint was them having Oprah narrate it for the American audience, while the great David Attenborough narrated the version meant for European audiences. David always narrates the BBC nature programs, so I still don't know why they changed it up for this particular series. I mean if you were going to change it up for the American crowd, you could have at least gotten someone with a more distinguished voice to the job... and someone who wouldn't mispronounce as many words as Oprah did throughout the series!

No, this isn't Manbo, it's the surprisingly enjoyable Manborg.

I hadn't seen this before, and had no idea what to expect, but I ended up really liking it. It's cheesy as all get out, and the budget for this picture had to be like $5, but they made it work. I really can't put into words why I liked it, but I would recommend giving it a chance, especially if you come across it for $1.99.

So as I mentioned at the beginning, I took an oh so slight detour before heading home in order to hit up the Cookeville store again. I was most curious to see if anything new had been put out in the week since my previous visit. It's about 75 miles between stores and it was of course, still raining... now I was driving right into the storm, so for the next hour and change it was like driving straight into a monsoon. The highways here were not designed to accommodate a lot of rain, so they tend to acquire standing water pretty quickly, which made the drive a little more interesting as well. I saw one car that, judging by the angle of it's resting place, had hydroplaned off the road on the opposite side of the highway. And a car in front me hit a pool of water and almost lost it, as the driver obviously panicked when he/she started to slide and almost over corrected right into a concrete divider, which obviously would have been bad for them... and for me, as I probably wouldn't have been able to avoid hitting them, especially since there was a semi on my right, so was no where else for me to go.

Anyway, I made it to Cookeville in one piece (not that I thought I wouldn't), and ended up finding a few more things:

Without even trying I seem to have acquired a mini-collection of these Showcase books. This was yet another title that I wasn't familiar with, but since sounds sort of Thundarrish, I am looking forward to reading it.

I'm expecting this to be really good too, and how great is that cover?

There was quite a few different titles that hadn't been out the week before, but the above three were the only one's that jumped out at me. I thought it was kind of interesting too, that all three of the copies that I got, appeared to be the only copy of each title available.

All in all, I would say that it was another successful outing, and certainly worth all the driving. After making the trek to the Knoxville location a couple of days ago, I now have at least one more entry for this series, but I'll probably get a few card posts in before I get around to the haul that was brought home from that trip.


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