Well it's taken nineteen years four months seventeen days, some hours and a few minutes but I finally have Amazing Spider-Man #400 in my grasp.......although not quite in my grasp i still have to wait a further couple of days for the guy to post it to me but still that's a trivial matter after the length of time it's taken to finally acquire the book.
Now i'm sure some reading this will wonder why it's taken my so long to buy this particular issue. after all its not that rare a book to find should you know where to look. but when your priorities for the last five years have been to geared towards raising a child then comic book hunting takes a bit of a back seat. although snagging an issue here and there that i didn't already own now gets celebrated as a huge victory, especially considering the lack of a job and funds and disposable income that should probably be better spent elsewhere........wait....what.... scratch that.
As it is, the hunt, or rather extremely long wait for this issue began back in April 1995 i have a memory of walking into my LCS (Local Comic Shop) and spying the landmark issue bagged behind the counter with a price tag of £15.00 now i know milestone issues usually get a bit of a price hike due to the celebratory nature of a book making it's way to that many issue's but even so £15.00 for an Issue was a price I wasn't willing to pay, especially as at the time i was unemployed and looking for a job not to mention that Spider-Man comics for me back then were more of a guilty pleasure rather than the must have die hard attitude i have today.
Although a landmark centenary issue the price hike was partially driven by the issue being billed as the "Death" of Aunt May. It appeared on the face of it that Peter Parker's long suffering aunt was indeed being written out of the series in a touching and emotional issue. Death's of long serving character's within comic book will always drive price under the guise of "Key" issue. It would however later transpire that the "Death" was actually a ploy by Norman Osborne who had apparently masterminded all that would happen during the subsequent next two years of Spider-Man books.
My next opportunity to introduce this issue to my collection was during the early 2000's. I'd taken to making monthly trips to comic shops around London to fill gaps in my Spider-Man comic book collection. incidentally having a disposable income at this time helped.
Being aware that by 2003 it had been revealed that Aunt May was alive and hadn't died within the pages of issue #400 i started looking intently once again for a copy to fill the gap in my running order. Unfortunately by the time i'd located a copy of the issue, it coincided with a time when Aunt May's "Fake Death" had garnered a bit of a cult status and once again i entered a store to see the issue bagged behind a counter though this time with a price tag of £50.
I couldn't understand how or even why an Issue that had, in my mind at least had had it's "Key" status reduced due to the lack of actual May being dead. and so i once again found myself unwilling to part with a significant sum of money for a Spider-Man book whatever way i looked at it i just couldn't justify the outlay even as an investment. It is after all the old adage that a comic book is only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it.
So eleven years after that last encounter i finally earlier this week found a copy of issue #400 that met all criteria as I found on e-bay a reasonably priced copy of an Issue i still needed to have to fill a gap that had been there for quite some time. and though i still have a couple of days till it's in my collection my mind is already turning to the next significant issue that i need to find. I hope that you readers continue with me on my quest to get all, if not as many Amazing Spider-Man issues as i possibly can.
please leave a comment as feedback is good and the quest also continues on Twitter which you can follow me @TelFirth
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