I was out vinyl digging with my two daughters and we stopped by an Antique Mall as the girls love to look at all the old antiques. I don’t argue as there are numerous booths with vinyls that I can check out and heck, you never know what else you are going to find. The girls didn’t find anything, but I certainly did…and it wasn’t vinyl.
It was this 3″ thick book called ‘Kiss Kompendium: the First Complete Collection’. I knew instantly what it was when I saw it…okay, I think my daughter saw it first and told me “look dad, a Kiss book”. Yes, a Kiss book. One I had been looking to find for quite some time and Wow!! There it was. I immediately grabbed and carried it around the store until I could pay for it. And let me tell you, that was a mistake. By the time we walked up and down the rest of the aisles, my arms were jelly. This book is not light in the very least.
What is the book you ask. It is the complete collection of Kiss Comic Books. Now, I don’t own a single comic book and don’t really care for them all that much. Nothing I don’t like about them other than I collect music, not comic books. But I also collect Kiss and this fits that bill nicely.
Let me tell you a little about the book. It was released in December 2009 or should I say published. The book compiles every Marvel Comics Super Special, The Marvel KissNation Comic, the Kisstory comic made for the 1995 book and all the Psycho Circus comics as well as the Dark Horse series. It sits at around 1280 pages. But that is not all. It has a bunch of exclusive Kiss photos taken backstage on the band’s Sonic Boom Tour (which was around this time. It is impressive to say the least.
Now, the header image and the last couple pictures are the book jacket and it is quite nice. But let’s look at the actual hardcover images of this book…they are freaking fantastic…
I wasn’t kidding…Impressive. And the table of contents gives you a breakdown of the book which also includes a foreward by both Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley…
Now I know one of my brothers had the first comic book at one time, I could swear I remember seeing that but no longer have. I do now as it is included here along with some photos of the band having blood taken from them so they could mix it with the printing ink so everyone could have a little of their DNA.
And the graphics and the stories are so over the top and so Kiss that any comic fan would love not just a Kiss fan. Here are a few more photos to give you an idea of what is in here…
And don’t forget there are pictures of the band as well…here’s one…
The characters in these books are based off the each of the Kiss personae including the Demon, The Starchild, The Catman and The Spaceman and you will most always see these symbols representing those characters…
Kiss never do anything half-assed and this book is solid proof of that. I am thrilled to finally get this in my collection and I just hope my bookshelf can support the wait. I hope you enjoyed this brief little view in to the book. There is no way I could do an in depth review of each comic as I am in the middle of the Kiss Review Series so I hope I’m not bringing you too much Kiss…ha, ha…like that could ever happen!!!
Love reading about these treasure hunt finds. You must have been so stoked. Decent price?
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I love finding stuff you aren’t even looking to find. I was there to hit a few record booths and this was sitting in someone else booth that sold knick-knacks and furniture. Cool find and yes decent price. On the very low end of the low quality ones on eBay and mine isn’t low quality. so very happy with it.
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Cool John.
The fact alone that the first comic in there is worth the price right there. Your right Kiss at times goes about it the right way in packaging.
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It is really cool and heavy, so you can’t read too much in it before you get tired holding it or it sitting in your lap.
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Sounds like the Touring RUSH book I got to that too is one heavy sucker
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There are so many Kiss books I want to get right now, why can’t we all have unlimited funds for this kind of stuff.
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Lol do u have the Campion Destroyer Book
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Not yet. I have 7 books on my wish list and that is one of them. One on the list is probably $300-500 depending on condition so it is a holy grail.
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If you weren’t able to find any vinyl, at least you didn’t leave empty-handed – and by the sounds of it, got a bonus upper-body workout carrying it around too!
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I actually didn’t find any vinyl at this stop. But I got another cool piece that will be coming in a week or two (I think – I forget when I scheduled it). And yes, no I’m strong!!!
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Very cool find…I love finding the unexpected items when I go hunting at antique shops or flea markets.
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Yep. Me too.
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The find is the thrill. Great story
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