Today I am happy to share with you a newly completed collection, but isn't comics this time. This week I completed my collection of Isaac Asimov's The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction containing the original printing of Stephen King's "The Gunslinger". I have been after these books for some time, not entirely continuously, but here and there for well over a decade or more likely closer to 15 years or so.
The title of the blog is a play on the very first line of King's epic tale, "The Man in Black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed." What did follow was a nearly 30 year trek for King and his constant readers as we tried to keep up with the titular Gunslinger. The full Dark Tower cycle was completed only 5 years ago and really began when King first put that line down on paper, at age 19.
The actual story wasn't published until October 1978 in the F&Sci-Fi magazine. The Gunslinger was broken up into it's 5 chapters and released slowly in the magazine, pt.2 was in 1980 and pt. 3-5 in 1981. The full story was not collected in one book until 1982 through Grant, a small publisher that still works with King to produce limited editions of his books. A first printing of the novel can easily run you $500 to $1000+ on ebay and has been, for a very long time, my ultimate Holy Grail and White Whale. Hell, even a second printing can run for $200+.
I have first printing of all 7 Dark Tower books but the first one.
But back to the magazines:
These puppies have really become pricey since the comic books adaptions of the novels started. What I originally started collecting for $25-$30 a book sky rocketed to $50 to even $200 a book! This set me back for a bit but as I was starting to keep my eyes out again for affordable auctions for the last 2 books, I got lucky and snagged them both recently, right on budget. One I got in a lot for $34 and the other on it's own for $30, both in better shape the the older one's I had. So it was a double excellent score and a collection complete.
Now if I could just find me a First Printing of the novel on the cheap....oh well, we all need our ultimate goals to make this collecting thing fun.
See you all next time!
Congrats on post 51! Those are great covers! I'd like to see them sometime if you don't mind. Always feels good to complete a collection. Now on to the next collection.
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