The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1100: The Doom Patrol #101, February 1966

Typical story today.

But the comic's interesting for another reason. It took me some time to track down all of the issues of this series. It's one of the few times I actually used eBay to track down issues. Had I not, I'd likely have found them all by now, but it would definitely have taken longer. In finding them all, I wasn't too picky about condition of the comic, as long as all of the pages were there and the cover was in decent shape. I've long been like this with older comics. Yeah, it's nice to have a crisp comic, but if you can read it, it'll do.

This comic, then, is in remarkably good condition for a 53 year old comic. I must have found this at the Silver Snail in Toronto, or at one of the comic cons in the area. I think its condition stands out to me because the majority of the rest of this run are a little more worn. Like where you have to be careful sliding the comic back in the bag because you're concerned about the spine flaking. No such worries on this issue.

I will say something about today's story, now that I think of it. As of Beast Boy's entrance into these pages, there's been a story developing in the background, concerning Gar and his guardian, Galtry, who wants to bump the young man off and claim his fortune. I don't often see continuing stories in comics of this era. They were usually self-contained, or 2-parters at most. But this is now the third issue of the Galtry story, and I've no idea how long it continues. What I hadn't thought about was how the extension of the story over numerous issues, and thus the greater detail of how this situation is affecting the characters, contributes significantly to character development. Is it possible that there's a correlation between the depth of development of a character and the length of a story arc? Better question, is it even remotely possible to measure something like that?

(I'll be posting some pre-prepared comics for the next few days. We're having an out of town guest, and it's going to be a busy visit.)

More to come...