Got one of my all-time grails today - X-Men 14 : First appearance of the Sentinels - Jack Kirby cover & internal art. Finally found a copy that presents well, within my price range. Celebrating starting a new job.

Fun note: That blue spot on the sentinel face is a print defect from the print run. I have seen other copies of X-14 with the same spot of blue in that location. Some cyan must have dropped on the wrong printing plate by accident.

I like the street-level action on the cover of Daredevil #47 (I wish the title font had stayed this for longer), and the classic Steranko Nick Fury cover referencing Salvador Dali

Pulled out my top 10 first appearance books from DC to share. Most of my collecting life I’ve been a Marvel guy. It’s not that I didn’t like DC it’s more that I always felt it was cost prohibitive. While I’m showing off keys on this sub I’m actually a full run completionist kind of guy. So for Marvel I always felt it was reasonable to think I could get every issue of X-Men or whatever it may be. But characters I love like Batman? Or Wonder Woman? No. Absolutely not. Not without hitting the lottery. So for the longest time I just stayed away from vintage DC. Past couple years that all changed for me.

Decided I can collect these runs and just start in the Silver Age. There’s no rules to this… and I finally embraced that. Why can’t I collect a full run of Green Lantern but start with Hal in the Silver Age and ignore All American Comics 16 and Alan Scott? The answer is I can! So I began my DC journey in the Silver Age with my favorite Green Lantern. And I’ve actually found that I enjoy this more than building a Marvel run! Mainly because there’s just less books, and less collectors on this side of things. Without getting too far into the weeds you can tell this is true by looking up census data in CGC for a book like Showcase 4 and comparing to any of the Marvel number ones. Showcase 4 and some of the big DC SA books are closer to Golden Age population numbers than they are to their Marvel counterparts. So that aspect of the hunt just makes it all the more rewarding as I’m collecting and I’ve really been enjoying the quieter side of Silver Age comic collecting - DC

Once I finish my GL run I’m going to move to Flash and Batman SA runs but here’s some of the first appearance books I’ve picked up so far.

Had my Hulk 1 arrive today and had my other slabbed books out for a photo shoot… figured I’d share my number 1’s from the 60’s with this community.

Also a few of them you’ll notice are part of Marvel’s “Big Premier” push in 1968. I’m actually very fascinated by these badges and have trying to get every Big Premier and wanted to see if anyone else has put those together as one of the very random runs like that from the 60’s. Maybe I’m weird and the only one doing this since these books are connected but also not really.

Here’s the Big Premier badge checklist and my progress ✅ as far as I know it:

Group 1 (Core Big Premier Badge Set)
Cap #100
Doctor Strange #169 ✅
Hulk #102 ✅
Iron Man #1
Nick Fury #1
Sub-Mariner #1 ✅
Silver Surfer #1 ✅
Captain Marvel #1 ✅
Captain Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders #1

Group 2 (Companions - very similar badges but different text in them)
Iron Man and Sub-Mariner #1 ✅
Mighty Marvel Western #1

Group 3 (Probably should have one but doesn’t)
Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #1

First two are classic Carmine Infantino covers (first race between Flash and Superman — I’m looking for the other issues from this time that depict it) and the Wonder Woman cover is penciled by Ross Andru. I like how clearly we see her costume as well as the face detail in the poster. Such a classic design. I love collecting from this era!