MARVEL'S HOWARD The DUCK The COMPLETE COLLECTION Volume Four...

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

I finally managed to obtain volume four of Howard The Duck The Complete Collection at far more than it has a right to cost, but it was bugging me that I only had the first three.  Why's it so difficult to obtain at a reasonable price?  Was it a small print run, was it withdrawn from circulation for some reason, or is it due to other circumstances entirely?  On Amazon it's priced at £784.99 and I've seen it at not much less elsewhere.  Fortunately, I managed to get my copy for nowhere near those extreme prices, though it was still a bit more than I'd have preferred to pay.  However, I felt compelled to complete the quartet so stumped up what the seller was asking for, then had to pay p&p charges from the States.  The preceding three books can be purchased for around their original price (or less), so why this one commands such huge sums is a mystery.

Anyway, just in case you've been looking for this volume but couldn't find or afford it, I thought I'd share the front and back covers with you.  If you ever manage to track down a copy at a reasonable price, consider yourself very lucky and snap it up right away.  In fact, I wish I'd bought this when I first saw it several months back, as it was around £20-£25 cheaper from the same seller.  Ach, well - you win some, you lose some.

I'VE CRACKED THE CODE AT LAST...

Copyright relevant owner

I remember the event well, even after more than 60 years.  I was standing in our primary school playground and my older brother came over and handed me TV Century 21 #1 to take home with me at 3 o'clock as he didn't get out until 4.  Over the previous couple of days or so, he'd searched around various newsagents looking for a copy but without success (sold out), so I assume he'd obtained his new acquisition from a classmate.  This would've been a few days before the second issue hit the shelves, so we were in on the ground floor (by a whisker) when the iconic comic for boys first hit the scene.  Curiously, I became a regular buyer of the comic, whereas I don't think my brother ever bought another copy again.  (He read mine though.)

Although we now had the actual comic, we never owned (or even saw) the free gift.  I assume the original owner had kept it for himself, which meant the coded messages at the end of each story were a mystery to me when I started buying the comic every week.  Not that it much bothered me to be honest, and when I think about it now, it seems a needlessly contrived way of telling readers not to miss the next issue as some of these messages seemed quite long.  Over the passing decades though, I've often felt it would be rather nice to have an 'Identicode' to insert within one of my two copies of the first issue.  And guess what - now I've got one!

A tad expensive (don't ask) but great to finally have, it's probably one of the very finest examples of this free gift in existence - unfolded and unused.  (Might even be the finest example.)  Anyway, having turned the clock back 60 years for a short time and before I insert it into my #1 (why does that sound suggestive?), I thought I'd post it on the blog for all you Crivvies to see.  I'll be living on beans for a few months, but what the hey?!  A guy's got to get his priorities right and I just couldn't let this one get away.  If any of you have (or had) this gift back in the day, share your memories of it in our captivating comments section.

My next task is to use it to decode a few messages in the comic.  Hardly something to get excited over, but a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do.