As I'm sure it's terribly obvious, I collect lots of comics, but there are only a few that I will spend time and money hunting down. My real obsession lies with the Fantastic Four, and it's one of my goals to one day own every issue (I know...dream big!). I currently have about 470 of the 560 or so total issues, and I'm gaining - I just bought numbers 128 and 129 today (and got 'em for a good deal!). The problem now is that most of the issues remaining on my list are expensive to the point that, where once I could buy five or six issues at a time, I'm now confined to getting one or two every other month or so. I have about a dozen or so between issues 70 and 99, and a handful of earlier ones - 12, 25, 40-42, 48, 51, and the like - but there's still so many more for me to try and grab.
For whatever silly reason, I've also taken it upon myself to buy every issue of Marvel's ill-fated 2099 line of books. Since these comics were popular in the early-to-mid 1990s, it's much easier to fill in the runs of these titles, and as such I have all or most of every 2099 series save Ghost Rider (which is, apparently, never on sale).
One book that has remained elusive, though, is the issue where they closed up shop on the 2099 line: an oversized book titled 2099: Manifest Destiny. It's either impossible to find or it's impossibly expensive (relative to my desire to own it), and that always equals me not getting the capstone to this little corner of my collection.
That is, until last month when I found it on eBay for $6.99. I snatched it up with glee and waited for it to show up at my door.
And waited. And waited. And...waited.
I eventually wrote to the store from which I bought the book, and they sent back an apologetic e-mail saying they had forgotten to mail it out and would do so as soon as possible. No big deal, I thought...as long as it makes it here, I don't mind the wait. But that was nearly two weeks ago, and I'm starting to worry once again.
The thing is, when I lived/went to school in Ohio, I used to physically go to the store that ended up being the seller of the 2099 title. This isn't some faceless seller that I can rail on about; I can put faces to the listings. So what do I do? Send another e-mail? Ask for a refund? Keep waiting patiently? I have no idea.
Some books, it seems, just don't want to be found.
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