Some of you have already decided whether to buy this bundle of ten random, recent Marvel comics. You’re the ones who have a favorite Captain Marvel. You’re the type who took sides in the Kree-Skrull War. You’re the kind who use “retcon” as if it were a real word. And you’ve made your minds up already, sure as Foggy Nelson likes a danish.

But what about normal, decent people? If you don’t know your Beyonder from your Galactus, let us explain. Along with Pibb-stained carpet and semi-nude statuettes of superheroines, every comic store worth its salt contains a quarter bin. These wondrous cauldrons (or cardboard boxes) of mystery hold the misfires and overruns and flops nobody wanted at three bucks apiece. Rather than do the decent thing and pay somebody to haul all that garbage away, store owners offer these comics for a pittance to customers whose appetite for heroic fantasy is greater than their discretionary income.

So why drop six bucks postpaid on this bundle when you could just go to a comic store and grab a handful of quarter-bin mags? For one thing, that would require you to enter a comic store. Even worse, you may have to interact with the menacing life-forms you encounter within – an especially daunting prospect if you happen to be female.

More importantly, though, once you start digging through the quarter bin, you have to possess the willpower of Daredevil to stop. It’s nigh-unto impossible to walk away from those tantalizing rows of unknown comics, holding the promise of a cheap, misplaced copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 or the complete Squadron Supreme maxi-series. Entire afternoons can be lost in such vainglorious quests.

Better to avoid the temptation. Better to let the hand of fate pluck ten, or twenty, or thirty random Marvels from the morass. We won’t stare at your chest, or make you smell our underwashed bodies, or mock you for not knowing the difference between the X-Men and the Ultimate X-Men. And you need not fear the lure of the quarter bin.

Back to top