The Most Valuable Comic in My Collection

In over 40 years of buying comic books I've sold a lot and bought a lot, of all types and values, in fact way too many to count.  And in those thousands of comics there's one that is more valuable to me than any other one: the Uncanny X-Men Annual #5 from 1981.  It was the comic that changed me from a casual comic book reader to a die hard, must-get-every-issue-and-seal-in-Mylar collector.

This comic introduced me to the Uncanny X-Men and forever changed my life, and the only reason I bought it was there weren't any interesting-looking comics at the grocery store that day in August, 1981. 

I was 13 years old, and we had just moved to a farm house in Southeast Iowa,  I had no friends, we lived out in the middle of nowhere, and I was just counting the days until I started 8th grade in a brand new middle school.  So on fateful day, I accompanied my mother to the grocery store.  As was tradition, my mom would allow me to pick out a couple of comics, in exchange for me not mentioning how bored I was walking up and down the aisles.  So as she pushed her cart around and filled it with essentials, I made my to the magazine rack.  As I looked over the latest offering from Marvel and DC, nothing was really jumping out at me.  But then, my eyes fell upon the cover of X-Men Annual #5.  What initially caught my eye was not the X-Men, but their guest stars in this issue, the Fantastic Four.  As a longtime fan of the FF, I figured since there wasn't anything else interesting, I might as well pick this one up, even though it was more expensive than a regular issue (75 cents as opposed to 50).  With the issue in tow I located my mom, and we headed for the checkout.

As we started on the 30 minute drive home, I began to read the story, and by the time we got home, I was hooked.  Part of it was the story written by Chris Claremont, as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four joined forces to aid Arkon in repelling and invasion of the Badoon, but what really gt me was the incredible art by Brent Anderson and Bob McLeod.  The panels jumped off the page, and Mr. Anderson remains one the few artists who actually draws Wolverine at his proper height.  I actually had the chance in 1998 to tell Brent Anderson what his art in that issue meant to me, and how it changed my life for the better, but that's a story for another day, an Astro City story......

The next time we went out, I made sure to pick up the issue of Uncanny X-Men that was out at the time (#151) and I didn't stop buying them until issue #500.  I also started working my way backwards and bought the last of the first 150 issues I needed in 1993, by that time I was a co-owner in a comic book shop.  Pretty much everything I have done since then was affect by that day in 1981, and I owe it all to a story titled "Ou, La La...Badoon!"

Thank you Chris, Brent, and Bob.