I didn’t get Transformers Issue One when it was new. I turned six in 1984.
No, I had to hunt this thing down, later on.
I don’t remember the exact process, or even when I acquired it. 1990, 1991, probably? But I know what it was like to get my hands on this, and how it felt when I did.
For me, this was not only a quest years before searchable back issue catalogs on the Web. It was also a quest undertaken in a small town, years before I had even a student driver’s license. I wasn’t hunting through bins at comic book stores, or at conventions. These were the days of mail-order from catalogs.
I ordered comic books that way a number of times. I may even have tried to order Transformers #1 multiple times. These were the days when you wrote what you wanted on a form, and which grades were acceptable to you, then wrote alternate selections because what the store had at the time of printing their catalog changed, obviously, in the time that catalog traveled to you in the mail and your order traveled back to the store.
I know that I wanted this for a while, and getting it at last felt like a quest accomplished. In all seriousness it felt a bit like Bart and his friends staring with awe at Radioactive Man #1, the real thing.
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