Grab bags and quarter bins: your tales of discovering comics as a clueless youth

are there good Kirby-penned "stories" I'm missing out on?

All of the 60s Marvel Comics have Kirby-penned stories - Stan Lee worked 'Marvel Method' for his entire career. Apart from a hotly disputed outline for FF 1, conveniently found in a drawer years after the fact, there is no physical evidence anywhere of Lee typing out a plot and giving it to an artist. And by all accounts, even from company loyalists like John Romita Sir, his verbal plotting sessions with artists amounted to little more than 'let's bring back Doctor Doom this month'.

Of course, Lee did have some influence over Kirby's writing - he would sometimes reject pages, write dialogue that contradicted Kirby's story notes and dialogue suggestions, and push for greater continuity between titles (something Kirby wasn't really interested in).

But if we're talking 70s DC/Marvel Comics plotted, dialogued and drawn by Kirby then I think you have to accept that his storytelling style changed - a bit like Lennon and McCartney's songwriting changed in the 70s once they were free of each other, and free of the expectations as to what a Beatles song could or couldn't be. And reading things like Kamandi now, I'm struck by how 'straightforward' Kirby's dialogue actually is - it's just not Stan Lee snappy patter dialogue (and not going to lie, I LOVED that style when I was a kid).

I loved Power Man as a kid. I got the second issue of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire in one of those comics three-packs where you could usually tell only what the top one was. There were often good surprises tucked away in those. As a seven year old, I had no idea what "blaxploitation" was; I just thought his costume was cool af, and the fact that bullets bounced off of him but left bruises felt somehow more "real."

My first ever exposure to X-Men was randomly buying Uncanny #273 off the spinner rack. It was the issue immediately following X-Tinction Agenda and featured all of the characters from all of the X-teams hanging out in the mansion and it had like eight different pencilers (double checks...no it had exactly eight different pencilers) and I had zero idea of what was happening or who anyone was but I was super intrigued. So I bought the next issue to try and learn more, and I was treated to a completely unrelated and equally baffling story about Magneto and Rogue and Nick Fury hanging out in the Savage Land. And then I couldn't find the next couple of issues but when I finally tracked down 277, the X-Men were suddenly in space and I just figured that this ADD shit was what comics were all about and leaned into it.

I genuinely love everything about Kirby's Fourth World at its peak, most definitely including the dialogue. Dude was accessing a different dimension.

Agreed. Even the Black Racer had some kind of weird appeal.

I think my favourite find in a comic bin was Farmer Fiend's Horror Harvest by Glenn Chadbourne. Rarely ever get those "what the fuck is this?!" moments in a comic shop but that was one of them. I've been out of the loop for years so maybe more surprises are coming.