I usually just use this blog for reviews of various things but I wanted to post about something that I’m sure many of you can sympathise with. Let me show you a picture first.
Look at that, nice shiny, thick books with vibrant, colourful covers oh boy. What you’re looking at are three volumes of Age of Apocalypse: The Complete Epic. The Age of Apocalypse was a sprawling event in Marvel comics that showed a world where Professor X died and Magneto led the X-Men against the vile tyranny of Apocalypse. The thing is, the collection is four volumes. What you are seeing in this picture are volumes 1, 2, and….4. Yes, I am missing number 3, much to my dismay.
So a couple of years ago I was looking through Amazon and I put these on my Christmas list, figuring that they were a little expensive so if I could get them bought for me it’d free me up to buy cheaper things myself. I got volume 1, and since I was in no hurry to get the others I thought I’d wait until the next Christmas. Well, I didn’t receive any then. Then along comes X-Men: Days of Future Past and the tease for the sequel, X-Men Apocalypse. This got me in the mood to read it again but I wanted the whole thing. They were still fairly expensive on Amazon (at least for a struggling writer like me) and were only available from third-party sellers. But no matter, I could at least still get them. So I put in orders and while I waited I re-read volume 1. Then 2 arrived, and I eagerly re-read that. 4 came as well but there was a problem, 3 still wasn’t here yet. I checked my e-mail from Amazon. Oh no, the wait was a month! Quite long but I thought okay, I can wait that long, as long as it’s coming it’s not a big deal. I read a few other things in the meantime, always being taunted by 4 sitting on my shelf.
The dispatch date came and went. I received an e-mail. Amazon are having trouble with the seller and want to delay it by another few weeks, or I can cancel the transaction. Well, it’s only a few more weeks, and there aren’t many other sources so I may as well wait.
A few weeks go by. Nothing again and they don’t hold out any hope. I cancel the transaction. I check on Amazon to see if I can buy it from someone else, but now the cheapest it’s going for is about £30, with the rest closed to £40 and £50. I’ve checked on other sites but it appears out of stock.
It seems as though I have to wait far longer than the initial month I was prepared for. I can only assume that a reprint is in progress, especially as Apocalypse will be featured in the new movie, although who knows how long it will take to get the comics back out into the marketplace. It looks as though these three will have to move from my to-read pile to live in the cupboard until 3 is released, and 4 will have to remain a mystery for now.
I’d love to hear other people’s collection stories. Have you been in the midst of collecting something only to find that one part of is out of stock or print? Do you have a holy grail of something you’re searching for to complete a collection? Let me know in the comments!
