In this episode of Comic Book Men, Mike takes flight in the Bat Copter to celebrate 15 years at the Secret Stash. The boys look at one of the hottest books of the 90s.

The second episode of the season focuses first on the buying/selling segments and while it’s interesting, again the guys don’t go into enough interesting details of the segments to make it really work. The show either does really well in these types of moments, or just fails miserably. Here, it’s the latter.

What the episode is really about is Mike having worked at the shop for 15 years, and the guys giving him a gift the celebrate it. It’s nice to see the guys recognizing his hard work and dedication, and they celebrate by giving him a nice present and adventure.

With all of these types of segments, it’s hard to figure out what’s dumb luck of working out for them, or how much of it is really set up by them and the show to make interesting segments. This one is possible, but it also feels really set up, like many have in recent years. It’s also a segment which touches on nostalgia, but could have used a bit more history.

While the show takes place at a comic shop, it again is far from the reality of what working in a shop is really like, and the show still can’t quite decide if it wants to be Pawn Stars, or acting out geek fantasies. Five seasons and it’s the same old formula.

Overall rating: 6.7