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

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.