Questions for Comic-Book-Collecting Dopers

Cafe Society
21

How old are you?
I’ll be 35 in two weeks.

**When did you start? **
Hmm. I started reading my uncle’s Bernard’s early-70’s Marvel stuff, MAD magazines and sneaking peeks at his VAMPIRELLA magazines when I was about four, and inheriting my cousin Teri’s various ARCHIE digests when I was about six. I started sporatically buying my own comics with my own money around age eight from the 7-11 down the street – SUPERBOY, BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS, TEEN TITANS, DC Blue Ribbon Digests and SPIDER-MAN. By the time CAPTAIN CARROT AND HIS AMAZING ZOO CREW debuted I was hooked. SWAMP THING, CRISIS and BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS got me back into comics in a big way.

I was, unsurprisingly, a big DC fan.

What titles? How have your comic-collecting habits changed?
I used to follow rotating creative team superhero titles: X-Men, JLA, Batman, etc. About four years ago I switched from following characters and titles to actively following specific creative teams of writers and writer/artists whose work I enjoyed no matter what genre they may explore or comics company they were working for. (Garth Ennis’ HITMAN led to me collecting PREACHER, HELLRAISER, DESPERADOES, DICKS, PUNISHER and his WAR STORIES one-shots.) As soon as one creative team ends, I’ll give the new creative team about two-three issues before I jump ship.

So I have pretty extensive collections of my favorite (oddly British) writers like Ennis, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, etc. I have recently begun to pick up used trades but I found myself in Border’s today buying Morrison/Quitely’s SUPERMAN # 1, instead of waiting for the trade like I promised myself. I’m trying to stop buying monthly comics; in a few years I hope I’ll make the switch to trades exclusively.

I miss visiting comics shops but they aren’t as numerous as they used to be. The online community allows me to talk to other fans.

Also – how big of a collection do you have?
I gave away/threw away a few thousand when I moved this year. I guesstimate I now own about about – what, ten thousand comics? – and maybe 300 trades. I think I’m lowballing you guys. I have no wish to catalog my collection.

How do you store/display your comics?
I throw away the Mylar bags as soon as I get them. I read my comics; they’re collectible in the sense I like entire runs. They sit in neatly on and under a folding table in my den along with shelves of trade paperbacks.

I prefer short boxes to long boxes because they’re more portable, grouped by writer or writer artist. I have a couple long boxes that say “Seventies Marvel” and “miscellaneous Superhero” and “Odds and Ends.” I have a long box that says “Alan Moore” and short boxes that say “Byrne”, “Ellis”, “Ennis”, “Aragones”, “Priest”, “Busiek”, “Millar,” etc. Individual titles are grouped by short box by writer. So sometimes a title like DC’s JLA will be split up among six creators, but that’s cool by me.

22

I’m 44. I’ve been buying comics off and on since I was 12. I bought them when I was a kid because kids read comics. I sort of drifted away from them when I was in high school. Then, my first year in college, my roommate read a lot of comics so I got back into it for awhile. I drifted out of it again but when I was around 21, I moved into a town that had a really good comic book store, and this was the early eighties when a lot of great comics were coming out, so I started up again. I’ve been a fairly steady reader since then.

At the moment, I’m not following any of the mainstream titles. I’ve been reading some of the Ultimates titles and independent superhero titles like Top 10, Astro City, and Powers. I like non-super-hero titles but they’re fairly scarce.

I have no idea how many comics I own at this point. My storage system consists of putting old comics in cardboard boxes in the basement.

23

I started collecting Legion of Super-Heroes when I was eight. I’ll be 51 next week.

I still have them all, and keep them in a large window seat that has a lid.

24
  • How old are you? *

53

  • When did you start collecting comics? *

I read and collected comics voraciously up until I was 14 or 15. Then I thought I’d outgrown them, and gave them all away, about three or four hundred of them. That is a crying shame, as I had the first issues of Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, the Avengers, Daredevil and pretty much all the Marvel classics. I started reading undergrounds when I was in my early 20’s and still have some of those. I’ve never returned to superheros. In my 30’s I came across the Gemstone reprints of the old EC titles and began collecting those. As long as I was in the comic book store, I also picked up other SF, horror and adventure titles, usually back issues.

  • What titles do you collect? *

Well, I’m not currently collecting anything. Among the titles I have are * Zap, Rip-off, Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Skull, Slow Death, * Peter Bagge’s * Hate, * Roberta Gregory’s * Naughty Bits, * Robert Crumb’s * Weirdo, * Vaughn Bode’s *Junkwaffe * and the like. I have a number of trade edition collectons of Crumb’s stuff as well as a few other underground artists such as Skip Williamson’s * The Scum Also Rises * and Vaughn Bode’s stuff. I also have several hundred reprints of the EC horror and science fiction comics and a number of other miscellaneous horror, science fiction and adventure titles. With the possible exception of Doc Savage, the Shadow and the Destroyer, I have no superhero stuff. With the possible exception of Greg Irons’ * Legion of Charlies * and Larry Todd’s adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s * From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet, * I doubt that I have any really rare or collectible stuff.

  • How have your comic-collecting habits changed much through the years? *

I think I’ve already pretty much described that. I rarely buy comics these days. I keep the old stuff around for sentimental reasons and because I enjoy re-reading them.

  • how big of a collection do you have? *

About 600, last time I counted. It may be as many as 700.

  • How do you store/display your comics? *

They’re mostly in a long box and several short boxes in my junk room. Some are just piled in an ordinary cardboard box. Most are bagged, many are not. Some are scattered around the apartment. My books are for reading, not hoarding.