My trial is over

Feast your eyes on Nerd-vana.

One last story from HeroesCon 2008.

More than a year ago, I started reading this mini-series called "Trials of Shazam."

It didn't ship every month and the art changed wildly from issue to issue, but the story was pretty good so I stuck with it.

The comic shop I used to frequent had a deal where you could tell them the titles you want and if you bought at least five issues a month, not only would they save them for you but you could get a discount.

The shop got me the first 11 issues of the story, but then when issue #12 came out I never got a copy.

I asked the owner what happened and he said it was an oversight he would correct by reordering.

But the re-order never came in.

A few weeks later, I had to scale back my comic buying budget due to a lack of a steady job and haven't been back to the store since.

However, I still wanted to know how the story ended and complete my collection. After all, what good is following a tale and then quitting at the end?

I called the few other shops in WNC, but they were unable to help. Seems a lot of fans waited until the end to get their fix and as DC Comics was preparing to put the whole thing out in trade paperback format (where issues are collected without all the ads), I was out of luck.

I turned to EBay, where a copy was selling at a little less than twice the cover. I won the auction, but I was still thwarted. After sending payment, it was refunded because the mega seller couldn't find a copy.

It got to the point that another comic shop in Asheville, felt so bad for me the owner was calling stores in other states trying to help me out.

So, I went to HeroesCon hoping against hope I could find a copy at a reasonable price.

I bugged vendors for about two hours looking through their long boxes only to occasionally finding a #1 or #10, but no #12.

That was until I dove into the $2 bin sandwiched in the back row of a store there from Georgia.

I saw the issue and I was combing through a lot of other stuff, then couldn't find it again.

I then went issue by issue for another five minutes until Trials of Shazam #12 was mine.

It may not mean much to you, but to me it was Nerd-vana.

And it only cost $2.

Like it says on the cover, "The Trials are over."

Take that to mean what you want, it probably does.

=WL=