Misty

i found the "first issue" of neon genesis evangelion in a comic store a couple years ago and it shook me to my very core. haunted object

I have a couple of those that I bought way back around ‘99 or so. Incredibly bad value for money. Absolutely no story arc, no meaningful plot development, no closure on anything, just a handful of pages of art that are clearly part of something that you need a dozen more issues to appreciate.

That's the worst you can say about it? How about: all those issues were numbered by storyline, like Blade of the Immortal: Dreamsong 2 of 7. Where...is Dreamsong in the broader BotI continuity? Check the tiny print on the inside cover and you'll discover it's Blade of the Immortal vol. 7 (or whatever). So the seventh BotI series. But they're arranged by storyline so each volume has a different number of issues, varying from like 2 to 12 or so. Absolute madness.

Viz was the biggest offender in that way - they wouldn't label their different volumes "1 of 8", the first issue of each was just "1" and you'll find out the volume's over when the next volume starts. Paranoid you've missed an issue of Ranma 1/2 or something? Well, you should be.

This was, by the way, not the norm in the US comics industry. Eventually Marvel and DC got reboot-happy but at the time their long-running books just had really high issue numbers and you could be fairly assured that if you got all the issues you weren't missing anything.

p.s. they weren't $5 an issue back in the day, but inflation so whatever.