Buying comic books on a lazy Sunday

On the way home from lunch today, I suggested to my wife that we stop at half-price books.  We used to make a regular habit of dropping in.  I even think that was one of the places that we went on our first weekend together.  Then we moved where there wasn't one just down the street, other ways to pass time were discovered, (including my current addiction, World of Warcraft) and life went on.
One of the first section that we hit was the graphic novel shelf.  I don't know exactly when comic books started to be collected into these larger volumes, or when longer stories were finally able to get printed in the format.  I've never researched it, much to my shame.  But damn is that a game-changer.  Books like V for Vendetta and Watchmen are seriously epic storytelling.  These days we can have story arcs that would have taken years to tell in the slimmer books, which would have lost most of their audience back then.  Even me.
When I was a kid, I used to save up my change for the weekend.  Then after sleeping until noon on Sunday, I'd walk over to the drugstore and head to the rack at the rear of the store where the treasure was, to the comic books.  I could, and did, spend hours pouring over every single one.  That's where I got some of my first tastes for horror, in House of Mystery, House of Secrets, and Weird War Tales.  They even had some of the larger-sized ones like Creepy and Eerie.  This was during the comic code time, so the illustrations weren't as gory as they might have been.  But having read some of the reprints Tales from the Crypt and others, I really think the writing was better.  This was where I first broke ground, this was where I first learned the rules and basics of what terrified people.
So this Sunday I got to grab a bit of that ancient magic, that secret, eager thrill of anticipation.  I picked up 300, which I had never read.  I also got some non-graphics like a Stephen King anthology and Battle Royale.  Can't wait to read them.