I went through a brief phase as a kid where I geeked out on comic books, but in general, I wasn’t a hardcore collector. My collection consists of maybe a hundred or so comics, many from when I was younger, of varying degrees of value. I have the Spider-Man, for instance, where he loses six of his eight arms (they were bare arms, interestingly), but it’s in pretty bad shape. I have a number of Wonder Woman, Super Man, and Batman comics from the early-to-mid-80s as well. And I was also a fan of those super hero groups like JLA and Defenders of the Earth.
I remember a lunch aide in elementary school who promised me her son’s collection of 70s super hero comics. I was really stoked to potentially double or triple my collection, but unfortunately it never came through. After bugging her for several weeks after she first offered it to me, she told me her son had thrown them all out. “Damn it!,” I said in my high-pitched third grader’s voice.
Every so often, I’ll buy a comic or two if it catches my eye. A few years ago, a good comic store in my town was closing down and I stocked up on half-prize zombie comics, for instance. Just for the hell of it, I bought The World’s Greatest Team-Ups to see various super heros in action together fighting crime. It makes me happy to see that standard super hero comics are still being produced alongside more experimental works.
My admittedly small collection is taken good care of now. Everything’s in comic backs with backings and stored in a comic box from Bags Unlimited. I’ve even toyed around with the idea of cataloging my collection.
But, you know, I wouldn’t even know where to go to get comics today. Sure, I could go online, but some of my best memories are of browsing the shelves of Jim’s News Stand (still there!) or the local book store. This looks helpful, but has some out-of-date information (it still shows the aforementioned comic store in my town that closed).
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