My love of graded books and Doctor Who!

I think back about 6 years now. I was new to a comic message board, and had a very excited conversation with someone about grading. I wondered if it was good for the industry, and whether it did nothing but fuel the painful speculation that nearly crippled the comic industry just a few short years prior. Now, my friends and close acquaintances know that I have opinions, often times strong ones, but I'm also very willing to listed to a contradictory position to my own. Well, in this case I think I was hoping to get the reply I received to my opinion, so that I could completely decide how I felt. I don't think I was 100% on the side against, but for some reason I didn't like the idea.

Well, as you can guess, I eventually was convinced that grading was not evil. I'm glad I started the "argument" because now I have a large collection of graded books (nearly 100 at last count). However, in the beginning there was very little focus. I was mainly just picking up anything that was interesting and within my budget. This also included my growing collection of signature series books....

Now, I would one day hope to get a nice copy of the full Barry Allen Flash run. It would also be nice to have them all graded, but that is a lofty goal for someone in my tax bracket. So, I'll still look for items I can afford, but am focusing more on one of my oldest loves outside of comics, and that would be Doctor Who.

Fans of the new show will no doubt recognize the line I am paraphrasing in my title, "I wear Stetsons now. Stetsons are cool.". Doctor Who is a British television series that began in 1963, and per capita has been unmatched by anything we have I the States. No, my fellow Trek-fan, not even the group of starship captains can really compete. With as many as 16 million viewers tuning into the show the percentage of the populous is akin to the viewing figures we have had for some of the highest rated single episodes in US television history. Roughly one quarter of the people in the U.K. tune in each week. This is astounding to me to think that a sci-fi series gets those kinds of numbers. Now, the good Doctor has been around in the US since the 70's when the iconic Tom Baker became so popular that he transcended the great barrier of the Atlantic to entertain us. My love of Doctor Who began in 1989. I saw new episodes at the very end of the new series. And now I get to enjoy new episodes again. Thankfully, I'm able to extend my collection past the two dozen issues of the original Marvel series as IDW has put out a number of series with wonderful variant covers mixed in for flavor. They even have reprinted some original stories from Doctor Who Magazine that has been out since the late 70's and the Tom Baker era.

With signature series, we have a whole other world of items to strive for. One of my great desires is to have books done in SS from the actors and creators of the comic and TV series. Hopefully one day I'll acquire a few. I can only hope...