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The Comic Addict's Confessional Room

Started by djpinkpanther67,

361 posts in this topic

lookwhoitis

lookwhoitis

Posted
Posted

Hello, my name is Neil and I am addicted to comic books. :)

 

I am addicted to Ebay. :eek:

 

I am addicted to spending money. :takeit:

 

I am addicted to seeking pleasure, sometimes at the cost of responsibility. :whee:

 

In recent months I have (and will continue to) tried to act more responsibly. :preach:

 

Unfortunately, this means cutting out my spending almost all together. Right now I am focusing on some much needed (and expensive) dental work, Paying off credit cards and attempting to repair my credit, and paying off a used car I recently procured.

 

The last time I bought a comic book was Aug 3rd, 2010 (ebay)

 

The last Ebay purchase I made was Aug 8th, 2010

 

The last time I put an :takeit: on the Boards was July 31st, 2010

 

I still owe on time payments on two items, but after I get them paid off I am going to really try to keep my expenditures down to close to nothing.

 

Times are hard and I have bigger fish to fry.

 

Signed, Lookwhoitis

 

PS (please do not dog me out if you see me buy anything on the boards, or turn me down and/or chastise me for a time payment request, because I am not really trying to go cold turkey... Just trying for a modicum of control and discipline ;) )

 

 

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Comixroc

Comixroc

Posted
Posted

Well here are my confession:

 

1. Lately, the blue label has lost it's draw for me. If it's not a yellow label i'm just not interested. Often time, when i get a Universal label, i crack it and wait for a signing opp. :insane:

 

2. I've developed the urge to purchase multiple copies of a graded book. Makes no sense since i already have a copy. Yet i still get the urge..... :cry:

 

3. The most expensive book i've purchased was $425 and sometimes i feel guilty about that...... :blush:

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BroccoliDiesel

BroccoliDiesel

Posted
Posted
Well here are my confession:

 

1. Lately, the blue label has lost it's draw for me. If it's not a yellow label i'm just not interested. Often time, when i get a Universal label, i crack it and wait for a signing opp. :insane:

 

2. I've developed the urge to purchase multiple copies of a graded book. Makes no sense since i already have a copy. Yet i still get the urge..... :cry:

 

3. The most expensive book i've purchased was $425 and sometimes i feel guilty about that...... :blush:

 

I heard that!! I have so many raw HG books I am sitting on waiting for Cons to have them signed. I dont get the urge for mult. copies, but a higher grade, even 1 pt makes me wanna list my current and upgrade. And lastly, at 425 your doing good. My ASM 1 was 2K and I hope thats the most I ever pay for a book.

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djpinkpanther67

djpinkpanther67

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Dear Comic Addicts Anonymous,

It's been awhile since I posted anything significant in this thread, so I will attempt something a little off kilter of my usual ramblings...

 

Well, I'm officially back in the Hobby. :acclaim:

 

My first books have arrived and my 16 month hiatus from the hobby is over. :cool:

I have decided to not limit my collecting focus, rather just buy what my common sense (impulse) dictates.

 

My topic this time around is reflection upon my initial entry in the hobby, and the friends I had during this time.

 

How many of you out there have childhood friends that shared with you in the hobby, but you no longer communicate with?

 

The friends I grew up with that got me into comic collecting were three brothers. Earl, Howard and Poy Wong. All three collected comics and introduced me to the hobby. Poy collected nothing but Avengers. Earl changed his collecting focus more often than MutantKeys, and Howard had the best all around collection. He was the one I tried to model my collecting habits after. I distinctly remember he was a hardcore Adams fan and had a stack of 20 or more HG GL #76s. This was back in the late 70s'...

They were great friends growing up. We used to hang out, play Atari 2600, basketball, and wiffleball, but since my stepfather was a bigot, after awhile I was no longer allowed to hang out with them, being threatened with extensive beatings. By the time I was in High School, I no longer saw them, even though their house was 30 feet from mine. :sorry:

So we fell out of touch.

It took over 30 years to before I finally got back in touch with any of them. While I was stationed in Germany I was able to locate and call Howard in 2007. It was a bittersweet conversation. He said he was married and had a daughter, and that his family (Poy, Earl and Irene his sister) were all doing well. What was a little sad about the whole conversation was that he didn't really remember much about me. I don't know if it was ego, but that hurt a bit, especially since all my memories of that era were crystal clear. Anyways, I haven't spoken to any of them since.

 

Anyone else here have any memories of childhood comic collecting friends that they have fell out of touch with? If so feel free to share...

 

My name is Thomas and I'm addicted to comics.

 

 

 

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chromium

chromium

Posted
Posted

I loved reading that Thomas, it gave me the courage to try and write down my own childhood comic stories...

 

Growing up in a non-English speaking country where everyone loves Franco-Belgo comics, being a US comic (superhero) comic book fan wasn't easy and it was a very lonely existence.

 

But through the years I did manage to find two friends that shared the hobby.

Jacques was my best friend from the age of 12 through the age of 18, he was the golden boy, bright, athletic, son of a successful surgeon and when we were 13, 15-year old girls were already noticing him (not that both of us knew what the hell that was all about). We both loved America, American shows, American music and of course American comics. For us it was the promised land...somewhere where everything seemed cooler and more fun than the place we lived in.

 

I already had a few US comics (bought in the UK) and he liked them as well, his parents went to the US for a month each Summer and the year we turned 14 he brought back music tapes and..comic books. I was very jealous as he now had more of them than me...but he would let me read all of them and eventually most of them would end up in my house after we traded stuff.

 

 

This went on for a few years, in the week his parents sent him away to a very strict and elitist (Jesuit) boarding school and I remember how on Sundays when it came close to 5 PM his mood changed as he hated that place and he knew it was almost time for him to go back. But the weekends were ours, reading comic books, listening to Van Halen, Neil Young and what is now known as 'classic rock" We went to the arcades to play games and then back to his house to play more games on his Atari VCS (he was the first and only kid I knew who had one)

And every Summer he would come back with stacks of comics.

 

The Summer we turned 17 he also came back with a pot habit , and from then on a lot of time was spent with him trying to score pot and him getting high in his room, while I still listened to music and read comic books, not really knowing what to make of my friend's new lifestyle.

 

The Summer we turned 18 he left to go to the US for 9 months. His parents had decided a US college would be ideal for him. He called me once and sent two letters, all of them during the first month. After that I didn't hear from him anymore for over 6 months....I guess he made new friends and was making a new life for himself.

And then , months later, a friend told me he had seen Jacques in town. I went to his house and there he was...kicked out of school for drug-abuse.

 

He was planning to try another school in the Fall and I was busy now with my life at university and we really lost touch.

About 3 years later (when I was in my 5th year of university) his mother called me and asked me to come over.

That weekend I drove back to my home town and looked up my old friend. He was now a 250 lbs shell of a man, a recovering heroin addict and "confused".

He was mixing up past and present all the time, had a lot of irrational fears and just "zoned" out for minutes on end. His mother told me that he had been "away" for two years and now was coming back to live with them and that she was told it would do him the world of good if he saw some friends from happier times.

 

We did talk about comic books that day, he had none left and I told him mine were still at my mom's house and we could go get them. But he was scared of leaving the house so we just sat there and tried to talk about old times.

After a while I understood my friend was gone for good and all that was left of him was this shadow...

 

I had to go back to uni, but tried to see him again the next month, but the next few months when I called his mother told me it wasn't a good time and that she would call me when he was ready. She never did call me again and I never saw my friend again.

It's been almost 20 years now since I've seen him and I still think about him a lot. How it all could go so wrong for the one among us that shined the brightest and had the golden future.

I still have some of the comics he gave me, among them Iron Man #150 ...the great Iron Man - Dr Doom cover. I remember that being his favorite as well and I had to give up a lot to get him to trade it for me. I love that book and maybe, just maybe that book and this back-story made me into the Dr Doom fan I am today.

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Larryw7

Larryw7

Posted
Posted

Anyone else here have any memories of childhood comic collecting friends that they have fell out of touch with? If so feel free to share...

 

I had a friend in high school who I collected comics with. He and I used to go to the local stores and shows together. He introduced me to X-Men and some of the other Marvel books I didn't read(I was more into DC, though I always liked Spidey, Cap America, the FF and the Avengers). He had a thing for Black Canary and Catwoman, and had some nice GA Flash comics with Black Canary.

 

We both lost touch sometime in the early nineties. I went away to seminary(no, I never finished!), and we've only seen each other a couple of times since then.

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djpinkpanther67

djpinkpanther67

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I loved reading that Thomas, it gave me the courage to try and write down my own childhood comic stories...

 

Growing up in a non-English speaking country where everyone loves Franco-Belgo comics, being a US comic (superhero) comic book fan wasn't easy and it was a very lonely existence.

 

But through the years I did manage to find two friends that shared the hobby.

Jacques was my best friend from the age of 12 through the age of 18, he was the golden boy, bright, athletic, son of a successful surgeon and when we were 13, 15-year old girls were already noticing him (not that both of us knew what the hell that was all about). We both loved America, American shows, American music and of course American comics. For us it was the promised land...somewhere where everything seemed cooler and more fun than the place we lived in.

 

I already had a few US comics (bought in the UK) and he liked them as well, his parents went to the US for a month each Summer and the year we turned 14 he brought back music tapes and..comic books. I was very jealous as he now had more of them than me...but he would let me read all of them and eventually most of them would end up in my house after we traded stuff.

 

 

This went on for a few years, in the week his parents sent him away to a very strict and elitist (Jesuit) boarding school and I remember how on Sundays when it came close to 5 PM his mood changed as he hated that place and he knew it was almost time for him to go back. But the weekends were ours, reading comic books, listening to Van Halen, Neil Young and what is now known as 'classic rock" We went to the arcades to play games and then back to his house to play more games on his Atari VCS (he was the first and only kid I knew who had one)

And every Summer he would come back with stacks of comics.

 

The Summer we turned 17 he also came back with a pot habit , and from then on a lot of time was spent with him trying to score pot and him getting high in his room, while I still listened to music and read comic books, not really knowing what to make of my friend's new lifestyle.

 

The Summer we turned 18 he left to go to the US for 9 months. His parents had decided a US college would be ideal for him. He called me once and sent two letters, all of them during the first month. After that I didn't hear from him anymore for over 6 months....I guess he made new friends and was making a new life for himself.

And then , months later, a friend told me he had seen Jacques in town. I went to his house and there he was...kicked out of school for drug-abuse.

 

He was planning to try another school in the Fall and I was busy now with my life at university and we really lost touch.

About 3 years later (when I was in my 5th year of university) his mother called me and asked me to come over.

That weekend I drove back to my home town and looked up my old friend. He was now a 250 lbs shell of a man, a recovering heroin addict and "confused".

He was mixing up past and present all the time, had a lot of irrational fears and just "zoned" out for minutes on end. His mother told me that he had been "away" for two years and now was coming back to live with them and that she was told it would do him the world of good if he saw some friends from happier times.

 

We did talk about comic books that day, he had none left and I told him mine were still at my mom's house and we could go get them. But he was scared of leaving the house so we just sat there and tried to talk about old times.

After a while I understood my friend was gone for good and all that was left of him was this shadow...

 

I had to go back to uni, but tried to see him again the next month, but the next few months when I called his mother told me it wasn't a good time and that she would call me when he was ready. She never did call me again and I never saw my friend again.

It's been almost 20 years now since I've seen him and I still think about him a lot. How it all could go so wrong for the one among us that shined the brightest and had the golden future.

I still have some of the comics he gave me, among them Iron Man #150 ...the great Iron Man - Dr Doom cover. I remember that being his favorite as well and I had to give up a lot to get him to trade it for me. I love that book and maybe, just maybe that book and this back-story made me into the Dr Doom fan I am today.

Wow. That's a heartfelt and moving post. You have my utmost respect from here on out for that, as that probably took a lot of thought to write.

 

I felt I was sharing too much info and didn't want to go into too much detail, as I didn't want to bore anyone. My times with them were the absolute happiest times I had during my childhood. They also reminded me of how miserable I was.

 

I remember I would always used to plead for them to come over and hang out because my stepdad wouldnt beat me in front of them. But eventually they got tired of his racist jokes, not just to asians but to anyone, and stopped coming around and even stopped talking to me on the streets when they saw me. It disgusted me how my stepdad revelled in my misery.

I was so glad by the time I hit high school I was big enough to make him at least hesitant to try me, but he always had that psychological advantage over me. When I left home at age 14, right after my sister died, and he threw away my whole comic book collection, I knew then in my heart how truly weak he was, that I could have snuffed out his life. I chose to just leave.

 

It's funny how some things you remember like it was yesterday but other things get blocked out. My military service encompassed most of my adult life, but there are a lot of combat related memories that I have bad dreams about, yet can't recall specific details when asked about.

Anyways, life is all about adversity and the ability todeal with the cards you're dealt. I have never asked for, nor wanted sympathy for what my life has been. I have taken the bitter with the sweet, and for the time being I am still here.

 

Big thanks for sharing Chromium. (worship)

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Boozad

Boozad

Posted
Posted
Anyone else here have any memories of childhood comic collecting friends that they have fell out of touch with? If so feel free to share...

 

When I was four years old I made friends with a kid who lived just a couple of houses down from us. It was a natural friendship, we got on like a house on fire and we moved all the way through school together, enjoying the same passtimes all the way through.

We used to read comics as a kid, the typical super hero fare, MAD, Freak Brothers, we discovered TMNT and so on. Comics were just like an everyday thing really, our moms used to buy themm for us and we'd spend hours reading and swapping comics.

 

When we reched our teens we found music was the way we wanted to go and comics sort of drifted into the background. He was a drummer and I was a guitarist, and the first band we set up when we were 16 was a heavy metal band. We took on a guitarist who was probably the most talented guy I ever had the honour of playing with, and after a while we made a decision that my childhood mate wasn't 'right' for the role. It was a hard decision, and even harder to tell him, but we kicked him out of the band and we sort of went our seperate ways.

I moved out of town and made a new circle of friends.

 

Fast forward a couple of years and the band finally split, I moved back home and bumped into my old mate. It was like nothing had ever happened and we were soon back to where we were. We were still into the idea of getting a band working and we started another one up.

I discovered that in the couple of years we hadn't seen each other he'd been collecting Superman comics, and I was hooked again straight away. I dug out all of my Batman comics from my mom's house and started buying again. The new band took off, my comic collection grew and life was good. Every Saturday we drove to Walsall to Bridge Street Comics to get our fix, we read comics again, played music and generally did what guys do in their late teens/early twenties.

 

I met a girl around that time and that was the beginning of the end. I split with her a year later and she threw all of my comics in the trash. My mate had met a woman too, she had a kid with another guy, and in my eyes she was messing him about. We had many heated arguments over her as we now shared a flat together and I could see she was no good.

Eventually I moved out as things were so uncomfortable, and now 10 years later I haven't seen him since.

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TheShadowKnows

TheShadowKnows

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Posted
I loved reading that Thomas, it gave me the courage to try and write down my own childhood comic stories...

 

Growing up in a non-English speaking country where everyone loves Franco-Belgo comics, being a US comic (superhero) comic book fan wasn't easy and it was a very lonely existence.

 

But through the years I did manage to find two friends that shared the hobby.

Jacques was my best friend from the age of 12 through the age of 18, he was the golden boy, bright, athletic, son of a successful surgeon and when we were 13, 15-year old girls were already noticing him (not that both of us knew what the hell that was all about). We both loved America, American shows, American music and of course American comics. For us it was the promised land...somewhere where everything seemed cooler and more fun than the place we lived in.

 

I already had a few US comics (bought in the UK) and he liked them as well, his parents went to the US for a month each Summer and the year we turned 14 he brought back music tapes and..comic books. I was very jealous as he now had more of them than me...but he would let me read all of them and eventually most of them would end up in my house after we traded stuff.

 

 

This went on for a few years, in the week his parents sent him away to a very strict and elitist (Jesuit) boarding school and I remember how on Sundays when it came close to 5 PM his mood changed as he hated that place and he knew it was almost time for him to go back. But the weekends were ours, reading comic books, listening to Van Halen, Neil Young and what is now known as 'classic rock" We went to the arcades to play games and then back to his house to play more games on his Atari VCS (he was the first and only kid I knew who had one)

And every Summer he would come back with stacks of comics.

 

The Summer we turned 17 he also came back with a pot habit , and from then on a lot of time was spent with him trying to score pot and him getting high in his room, while I still listened to music and read comic books, not really knowing what to make of my friend's new lifestyle.

 

The Summer we turned 18 he left to go to the US for 9 months. His parents had decided a US college would be ideal for him. He called me once and sent two letters, all of them during the first month. After that I didn't hear from him anymore for over 6 months....I guess he made new friends and was making a new life for himself.

And then , months later, a friend told me he had seen Jacques in town. I went to his house and there he was...kicked out of school for drug-abuse.

 

He was planning to try another school in the Fall and I was busy now with my life at university and we really lost touch.

About 3 years later (when I was in my 5th year of university) his mother called me and asked me to come over.

That weekend I drove back to my home town and looked up my old friend. He was now a 250 lbs shell of a man, a recovering heroin addict and "confused".

He was mixing up past and present all the time, had a lot of irrational fears and just "zoned" out for minutes on end. His mother told me that he had been "away" for two years and now was coming back to live with them and that she was told it would do him the world of good if he saw some friends from happier times.

 

We did talk about comic books that day, he had none left and I told him mine were still at my mom's house and we could go get them. But he was scared of leaving the house so we just sat there and tried to talk about old times.

After a while I understood my friend was gone for good and all that was left of him was this shadow...

 

I had to go back to uni, but tried to see him again the next month, but the next few months when I called his mother told me it wasn't a good time and that she would call me when he was ready. She never did call me again and I never saw my friend again.

It's been almost 20 years now since I've seen him and I still think about him a lot. How it all could go so wrong for the one among us that shined the brightest and had the golden future.

I still have some of the comics he gave me, among them Iron Man #150 ...the great Iron Man - Dr Doom cover. I remember that being his favorite as well and I had to give up a lot to get him to trade it for me. I love that book and maybe, just maybe that book and this back-story made me into the Dr Doom fan I am today.

Wow.Nicely done.

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djpinkpanther67

djpinkpanther67

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Dear CAA

I have always been a SA/BA collector. I stopped collecting the first time, when the CA was just beginning...

 

I just read Ultimate Spider Man TPB that contained issue #'s 1-13. I am not a modern comic book reader, but wow.

 

Pretty good stuff. It has me interested in reading some more of them and considering Ultimate FF as well. Thinking about reading TWD as well.

 

Lord help me, I hope I don't start actually wanting to start BUYING modern krap doh!

 

My name is Thomas and I'm addicted to comics :blush:

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thehumantorch

thehumantorch

Posted
Posted
Dear CAA

I have always been a SA/BA collector. I stopped collecting the first time, when the CA was just beginning...

 

I just read Ultimate Spider Man TPB that contained issue #'s 1-13. I am not a modern comic book reader, but wow.

 

Pretty good stuff. It has me interested in reading some more of them and considering Ultimate FF as well. Thinking about reading TWD as well.

 

Lord help me, I hope I don't start actually wanting to start BUYING modern krap doh!

 

My name is Thomas and I'm addicted to comics :blush:

 

Thomas, give a Cap America trade a read. The Brubaker stuff is wonderful.

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