Love for Comics

This posting is dedicated to the best aunt ever, Aunt Lois.  Please note that if you are my aunt and are not Aunt Lois, but are still reading this posting, you should ignore the first sentence, as well as this one.  Just start here:

(Aunts, Start Reading Here, Unless you are Aunt Lois.  You can read the above sentence.)

It’s been hinted at in these pages, but it’s never really come out and said in its entirety:

I dig comic books.

I love everything about them…the artwork, the running storylines, the one-off storylines in a single issue (mostly in the older comic books), the feel of them in my hands, the old advertisements that give you a chuckle over the years (Hello Charles Atlas!), the iconic characters (Spidey!)…

There is a stigma attached to collecting reading comics books (hello Geek!) but I have realized that I should set the record straight considering an opportunity almost slipped through my grasp and I would have never seen it unless Aunt Lois knew of my love for comics (even to this day).

I remember my love for comics started when I began collecting baseball cards.  From Grade 7, Charlene was into baseball cards.  I thought it would be cool to collect them.  Vero always asks me about why I love collecting things…I think it’s all about the hunt.  It’s the satisfaction in trying to find that ever-elusive card to add to the collection.  I still remember when Claude, Benoit and I were hunting down some Matrix action figures back in the day and we went out of way to find them.  I still remember buying the entire series of figures I already had to obtain the one I didn’t have only to sell my doubles to Benoit afterwards.  It wasn’t until Claude told me later that he enjoyed the hunt more than the piece of plastic sitting on his shelf.  I couldn’t agree more.  In the case of comic books, it’s different though as I do enjoy reading just as much as the hunt.

Once I realized that baseball cards weren’t of any real interest to me, I remember seeing some Marvel Comics collecting cards at Gizzy’s.  Marc and I each bought a pack and we were hooked.  There was a picture of a superhero and then in behind was a story about them, their stats (Strength, Intelligence, Endurance, etc.) and what issue they first appeared in.  This is what got me hooked on comics.  I knew I had a few comic books back home but I never realized that they contained iconic characters.  I still remember going back and reading Web of Spider-Man #36 and realizing that I was reading an inconic character.  Spider-Man.  I must have received this comic book for Christmas one year and had just thrown it onto the shelf.

A little tangent…can I first point out that my real love of comics came from Archie comics?  Maureen and I had TONS of Archie comic books.  We loved them.  I also loved the fact that there was a person along my paper route who gave me their comics for free when they were done with them.  That was the best tip I could ever receive.  If you scour our house even now, you will notice that some of them have my name in them, some of them have Maureen’s name in them, and then some of them have the word “Both” in them.  We would still read each other’s but I suppose I didn’t know the real meaning of the word ‘share’ back in the day.  But I digress…

Anyhow, Marc and I started buying comic books at Gizzy’s.  I think we just started picking up issues of what seemed interesting to us from the trading cards.  Spider-Man, X-Men, etc.  Marc was into the Fantastic Four so I got a taste of them from his comics.  Then I discovered Wizard Magazine which was a comic magazine and that let me in on the world of comic books…the new and hot comics, the upstart artists, the great storytellers of old.  They also had price guides in them which made me realize that these comics make actually be WORTH something some day.  I kept them in pristine condition.  I remember going to Toronto and buying bags and boards for my comics for the first time.  I would put stickers on the front of them and put the up-to-date price on them and each month I would adjust the price if the comic had increased/decreased in value.  I had my own little comic book store going on in my bedroom and I loved it.  Dad even built me a box one time to store my comics in because they were getting too unwieldy.  It’s quite funny to think that in hindsight, the early 90s were the WORST time to collect comics as there was a boom of investors wanting to collect so the market is saturated.

I had amassed quite a large collection in the five years that I had been collecting.  But then college came.  With college came two factors that stopped my comic collecting: 1) It was an expense that I just couldn’t handle. 2) The girls don’t really like a guy who collects comic books, do they?  With that, the comic collecting had ended.  I must admit that it wasn’t too hard of a decision to do in 1997.  The 90s had been wrought with gimmick covers and special edition this and exclusive that, that the stories just weren’t that interesting to read.  In fact, I had stopped buying the Spider-Man even before stopping altogether.  Years later, I realize that I wasn’t the only one…there were many people who had left reading Spider-Man in the late 90s because the stories had become so horrible.  It just wasn’t fun to read them anymore.  The comic book industry had tried to become a business and they crashed hard.  Marvel Comics actually declared bankruptcy back in 2001 I believe.  This was before all their blockbuster movies started coming out.

For the past decade, I had picked up an odd issue here and there.  If I saw a sale on back issues, I would go through the boxes and pull out $1 issues.  If I went to a comic book convention, I would look for any old issues that may fill the gap between the past ten years that I haven’t been collecting.  But it wasn’t anything extreme.  Maybe I would walk out with a dozen comic books and give them a read to see what was going on.

It wasn’t until a few years ago where I realized that people had been putting old issues online and that I could read comic books from the Internet.  This opened up a new world of possibilities for me.  I had only heard of the legendary issues from the Sixties when Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four were starting out.  I had never actually READ the stories before.  Nowadays, it’s a little easier to get a hold of someone’s scan of an old issue and read what happened.  It’s definitely not the same as holding the book in your hand and flipping through it and seeing the advertisements…but it was a start.

Last year, I was at a comic book convention here in Ottawa and really wasn’t feeling into it but then I stumbled upon this guy who offered a subscription service.  It was quite the savings compared to the cover price (it all has to do with the fact that legally, if you subscribe to a publication, you can get some savings, otherwise you pay the full price at the store.  I decided to jump on board and try it out.  It didn’t cost me anything to sign up and in the end, he said if I didn’t care for it, I could leave at any time.

After a few months of receiving comics, I realized that I had missed a love of my life for very long.  I enjoyed reading them.  I was bewildered at some changes they had made, but happy for others.  The artwork was great, even greater than before, the stories were once again captivating!  The comic book had come back from the dead!

Then I started thinking about rebuilding my collection from my ten year absence.  Ebay is my friend in this case.  If you search long and hard enough, you may stumble upon a really great deal.  For instance, I ordered a set of X-Men comics back in the winter which covered a good 6 of the 10 years I had given up on comics and I got them for less than a buck an issue!  This was an incredible find.  Right now, my focus is to rebuild all my collections whenever I find a really good deal (and I have some spare cash!)

This is where the story gets a little more interesting for those who had fallen asleep reading this.  I had mentioned to Vero a few days ago how I wish I could really get a hold of older issues…when the stories were really powerful and there was a lot more put into them compared to the crap you read in the late 90s.  Early Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Captain America…all the old heroes.  I remember a story of someone down in Gaspe who had thrown out a bunch of comic books they had found in the attic.  In my head danced these heroes flying into the gutters.  What stories had been lost over time?  I told Vero that it would be like winning the lottery if I randomly got a phone call saying “I heard you are interesting in comics.  I found a box of them, would you like them?”

Fate must have heard my call as Aunt Lois emailed me today and said “I understand that you are still collecting comics and are still looking for some.”.  Boy, am I ever glad that she got the hint from the blog entries over the past year.  I haven’t really come out and said “Yes, I’m back in and I’m going stronger than ever!  I’m getting new ones, I’m getting old ones, my bedroom is littered with them.  Vero is sick of it!”  Turns out that Aunt Lois has a friend who is letting some comics go and Aunt Lois wondered if I would be interested.  I don’t know what there is to be had, but I am so excited to see what there is to read.  She already mentioned some old Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Fantastic Four issues.  These are the old stories which art by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko…stories written by Stan “The Man” Lee, Chris Claremont…all the greats.  You think meeting Sean Connery is great, I think reading a comic written by Stan Lee is great!  Uncle Gary just cracked open an old Fantastic Four issue and wrote some text from the beginning of it…it sounds amazing!  Even to give these a read in person, that’s all I care about.

At this point, my long term goals are to fill up the decade I missed in collecting and then start looking into the pre-90s stuff.  Unfortunately, it’s just such a costly venture…I don’t really care if the issues are in mint condition though.  I would rather just have the issue to read so in the future I’m going to start simply looking for really good deals and if the condition is not so good, so be it.  At least I get to read the stories that developed these characters.  But even then, it’s all about the hunt…

So I just wanted to take this opportunity to point out to the masses that if you ever hear of anyone getting rid of their comic books and you can’t think of anyone who would enjoy them, think of me!  I can’t wait to peruse what these mystery boxes may have!  It’s a dream come true.  Thanks Uncle Gary and Aunt Lois for thinking of me when these boxes popped up!