Why do you collect comics ?

[chrisco37]

Great pickup on the Bats #1 recently.

 

I'd love for my daughter to get into comcis. She's only 3, so I've got plenty of time to make the impression. But, it's working already.

 

The other day we were walking thru the mall and she wanted to see the "Fast & Furious" arcade game (standard racing game, sit in the seat and get the motion...it did look cool though). I took her up to it and someone had put a Spidey sticker on the machine. Hayden pointed at it and said, "Daddy! Daddy! Spider-Man!". I was proud.

[oakman29]

selling I think "whats to miss?" "its a ing comic book"

 

Do you miss your comics after selling them ?

Yes

Only sold one comic in my life,kinda miss it.

[ciorac]

Do you miss your comics after selling them ?

 

In many cases yes.

 

What's even more telling though, is I miss my comics when I am away from home for long periods of time. Towards the end of our month long stay in Europe recently, the thought of getting home and looking through the collection and re-reading some of my favorites was quite compelling and made me look forward very much to getting home.

 

I've always enjoyed comics, and I'm sure I always will

[sufunk]

Recently I've lost interest in slabbed comics. I now see them strictly as a commodity. I began to wonder why I collect comics. I no longer find most stories interesting. I stopped collecting moderns almost a year ago now because I wasn't even reading them. Just buying them and leaving them in the bags from the store and putting them in a closet.

 

I still love the artwork and love seeing the original comics but is it really necessary to own them all. I often find that after selling a comic I don't really miss it at all. When I own it I think I will miss it but than after selling I think "whats to miss?" "its a ing comic book"

 

Do you miss your comics after selling them ?

 

What drives you to collect ? Are you a hoarder ? hobbyist ? flipper ? investor ? or some other label I can't think of.

 

 

I was at this point in the late 90's. I would buy practically Every Marvel book each month and just put them in boards and bags and then box them up. I wasn't even reading ANY of them but just had to buy every one for fear that I would miss some book that would turn into a mega key 20 years later. I got sick of it and when CGC came on the scene, that was it for me. I didn't get the point of owning a slab that you couldn't open or read and now it was about nothing but money. I got out in 2002 until last year.

 

Now,it's completely different for me. Yeah, I LOVE buying HG slabs even though I can't read them. I realized I can still get a lot of joy out of them just by looking at them and being taken back to when I was a kid and 1st saw those books on the walls of my LCS but never dreamed I could ever afford them. Most important for me though enjoying the hobby again was getting back to what I always loved about comics, reading them!

 

I don't like moderns but I LOVE reading the old SA/BA marvels. Wether they are books I've never read or books I read a million times as a kid and know by heart, I still really enjoy it. Luckily, in addition to my slabs, I have thousands of SA/BA mid grade books that I can bust out and read. Between that and buying essentials to read, it's definitely put the joy back into the hobby for me!

[Not*Sure*]

I miss my keys they came from a special to me collection ..the prior owner had scribbled his name on every cover..

AF#15

ASM#1-40

FF#1-27

 

so on and so on..it was kind of neat

 

Paul had a lot of nice comic books sure they weren't what some here would collect but it is /was nice to have them for awhile

 

on the other hand glad they were long gone before the house burned down

 

at least Paul's comics live on in other's collections

 

I also had a lot of signed comics that got stolen I miss..

 

but you know if I ever track the dude down..I'll get revenge..BUT if I'd still had them they would be trash now so

[COI]

I bought my first slab in 2000. Since then, I've tried collecting in many different ways, and nothing stuck. I've owned many different high grade books, and kinda miss maybe 2 or 3 books. There are roughly a dozen books that really do it for me, the rest I can live without. I have the urge to collect, but I have competing minimalist tendencies, so I'll never have a large collection.

 

I'm thinking of maybe buying one book a year, this way I'll have some loose connection to the hobby for the next 10-15 years.

[Senormac]

Do you miss your comics after selling them ?

 

In many cases yes.

 

What's even more telling though, is I miss my comics when I am away from home for long periods of time. Towards the end of our month long stay in Europe recently, the thought of getting home and looking through the collection and re-reading some of my favorites was quite compelling and made me look forward very much to getting home.

 

I've always enjoyed comics, and I'm sure I always will

 

Can you remember your very first comic Bill ?

[dupont2005]

I stopped collecting when I was about 12. At some point after that I sold off a select few comics that I really regret and tossed out and lost a bunch more that I wish I didn't. In 2008 I was ready to get rid of the rest of the collection. I really didn't care about them anymore. I pulled all the boxes out of storage and started cataloging them for sale. As I started to go through them I saw so many that I didn't want to get rid of, and all my incomplete runs I wanted to finish and read in their entirety. I don't think I ever got around to selling any of my comics in 2008, but since then I have bought thousands more. I probably went a year straight of reading nothing but comics, and reading vigorously every night. I still read comics but right now not as often as I used to. My small pull list gets read every couple months and between then I read from a small stack I set aside from the longboxes for reading. So far this week besides the pull list comics that came in I have read Sin City vol. 3 and a little bit of Maus 2

[GermanFan]

1) Nostalgia reasons: when I was a kid in the early/mid 70s I spent so much time after school looking for old Marvels. In 1980 I bought my first Overstreet, the timely issue, those covers shown there were so impressive and they were worth a fortune, I never thought that.

 

2) I collect for the art, the artists (Wolverton, Cole(s), Frazetta, Ingels, Kirby etc.

 

3) I like the thrill of the hunt, getting rare books for cheap.

 

4) Investment reasons, although everybody here says comic collecting is doomed in the future b/c of

demographic reasons (mabe, maybe not).

 

5) Reading, sometimes GA are good reads but if they are lame I collect also for the nice cover art.

[lscomics]

Personally I've got a few reasons.

 

1) Art. Wrightson, Adams, Romita (such a long list), it just doesn't get better than this.

 

2) I enjoy reading. More trades /hardcovers in this category anymore but I still love it.

 

3) Signature Series. I've always been into autograph collecting and high grade comics. This provides, me at least, with the best of both worlds.

[ThreeSeas]

I collect for many reasons, most of which I have seen posted in this thread.

 

1) Stories and art. Comics to me are the best of two worlds. The world of the written word plus wonderful artwork. I could never understand how some people would look down at comics as being inferior to books or other art forms. You look at painting and you see just a picture. You read a book and see only words. With a comic book you get both.

 

2) Memories.

Remembering how I was in a hospital for 21 days on my back when I was 12 or so and my mother bought me comics to read. She wrote my name on the cover of each one so the hospital staff would know they were mine.

 

Remembering that my grandparents would always have a few in my treat bag I got every week we visited them. (Grandma would always give each of us grandkids a candy bar, comics, and a dollar or two). This went on until the summer of '81. Grandma used to buy me many Whitman comics. If they were sold in the three for whatever bags, I may have them.

 

Remembering that my mother was a voracious reader and would take me to the used book store in the next town over, where I might get to buy a comic or two. My most vivid memory is the table stacked nearly a foot deep of mostly ten cent comics, all for a nickel or dime each. How I wished I could have bought more then the one or two I was allowed.

 

Remembering going to my elementary school's carnival and using the event tickets to buy rolls of comics. Comics were bundled up with a few in each roll with a rubber band around them, then sold for a ticket each, about ten cents if I remember correctly. Two of those comics still stick out in my mind, one was coverless called the Heap I think, about a guy who fell in a chemical vat and got changed into a creature much looking a lot like the swamp thing if my memory of 35+ years ago is correct. Another was a Disney story of Donald and his nephews about some fish that ate pollution - they used them to clean up the polluted bay of Duckburg, again from memories of over 35 years ago.

 

Remembering when I was a young adult in the early 80's and my parents brought home a few hundred later golden age/early silver comics, mostly Archie's, a few DC's but no super heroes that I can recall. My neighbor's grandparents had a farm auction and dad always went to those type of auctions. Dad said that only two boxes of comics got bought by someone else. My neighbor later told me that if she had known I was still collecting comics she would just given them to me and not had them put in the auction.

 

Remembering my sister giving me three or four paper grocery bags of Marvel comics for my birthday, in 1991 I think. She had a friend that got out of collecting and he just gave them to her. I think she picked out any Archies and gave me the Marvels, which was cool as I never had really bought too many Marvels before that. Mostly late 70's and newer comics.

 

Remembering as a child, grabbing a few Disney comics and heading to the barn to sit on the straw pile and read them. I still remember my baby pets ducks sitting around me and sleeping on the straw next to me as I read Bark's duck comics .

 

3) I collect comics because they are now a part of me. I grew up trying to copy and have the intellect of Batman, the wealth of Scrooge, the ability to make things like Gyro Gearloose, and not have the temper of Donald.

 

[lizards2]

Good memories

linky

 

[The Black Hand ®]

It was a sweet spot in my youth in the 50's and sixties and the fascination with WWII and the comics back then and how they evolved. I enjoy the period between 1938 and 1945 and how the superheroes as well as characters like Archie evolved and how everyone seemed to pull together for the war effort.

There's also an obsessive compulsive aspect to it that's pretty much run it's course and of course the main reason....chicks dig comic collectors!

[sufunk]

During the auctions this week, i bought a lot of books. These 2 were by FAR the least valuable but probably the ones that will give me the most joy (thumbs u

 

I'm not positive but this book might be the 1st comic i ever purchased off the racks as a kid. I had just turned 7 and LOVED this issue and the next 184 with the Absorbing man fight. This book is what made me start to LOVE the Vision, Hawkeye and the Avengers. Wether it was 1st or not, THIS is the book that started me as a comic collector

 

 

 

This book was the 1st back issue i ever bought when i was probably 8 or so and LOVED it. Maybe its just me but i LOVED the art and stories in that run of Avengers and it only took a few issues for me to be hooked for life. I cant wait for these books to come and actually hold them. Neither of these books will ever be worth any kind of real money but i can guarantee you that when i hold them in my hands, i'll be giddy like a little schoolgirl!

 

 

 

Books like these 2 are why i still collect comics to this day (thumbs u

[ciorac]

Do you miss your comics after selling them ?

 

In many cases yes.

 

What's even more telling though, is I miss my comics when I am away from home for long periods of time. Towards the end of our month long stay in Europe recently, the thought of getting home and looking through the collection and re-reading some of my favorites was quite compelling and made me look forward very much to getting home.

 

I've always enjoyed comics, and I'm sure I always will

 

Can you remember your very first comic Bill ?

 

 

Actually yes, but you'd be surprised by it. My family was living in Japan at the time (early 1960s) and my mom bought me a Japanese comic book. Square bound with glossy paper and a cardboard stock cover. I still have it, although it is missing one cover and has lots of my scribbling on it. I was probably four years old at the time (1966). Mom kept on buying me comics, and when we came back to the States in 1967, the genre shifted to American comics and superheros, although she also bought me a lot of Richie Rich and Hot Stuff.

 

 

Here it is

 

[Senormac]

Do you miss your comics after selling them ?

 

In many cases yes.

 

What's even more telling though, is I miss my comics when I am away from home for long periods of time. Towards the end of our month long stay in Europe recently, the thought of getting home and looking through the collection and re-reading some of my favorites was quite compelling and made me look forward very much to getting home.

 

I've always enjoyed comics, and I'm sure I always will

 

Can you remember your very first comic Bill ?

 

 

Actually yes, but you'd be surprised by it. My family was living in Japan at the time (early 1960s) and my mom bought me a Japanese comic book. Square bound with glossy paper and a cardboard stock cover. I still have it, although it is missing one cover and has lots of my scribbling on it. I was probably four years old at the time (1966). Mom kept on buying me comics, and when we came back to the States in 1967, the genre shifted to American comics and superheros, although she also bought me a lot of Richie Rich and Hot Stuff.

 

 

Here it is

 

 

WOW !! Its like early anime or somethin. Its Gigantor and Speed Racer with a bit of Kimba the White Lion mixed in for good measure !!

 

I'm guessing you just looked at the pictures cuz its prob in Japanese

[goldust40]

There are negative and positive reasons for collecting old comic books, and basically there is no genuine point to the exercise. If one wants a whiff of nostalgia, a reprint will usually do. And then there is the constant searching for new books, as our perfectionism demands more - a comic collection simply cannot stay dormant, it has to change or grow to keep interest going.

 

However it isn't simply about filling a void, rampant materialism or keeping yourself off the streets. Ultimately you collect 'em 'cause you love 'em. Just as long as you don't love 'em at the expense of more important stuff....

 

Of course there are folks here who only collect to read, which is fine and proactive. I was only referring to those who collect without perusing the contents, and I include myself here - I read a lot of the GA and Atom Age stuff I purchase, but I simply don't have time for everything.

 

 

[rodan57]

If one wants a whiff of nostalgia, a reprint will usually do.

 

 

Ah, but if one truly wants a whiff of nostagia, then a reprint will not do.

[goldust40]

If one wants a whiff of nostalgia, a reprint will usually do.

 

 

Ah, but if one truly wants a whiff of nostagia, then a reprint will not do.

 

True for the most part. However I already had my collection of comics from when I was a kid (my parents never threw them out) when I got back into collecting so I have my nostalgia without the need to seek out more books. And reprints of the books in question are also fine, as I have access to those books if I need them.

 

It depends on how much you wish to re-experience the initial feeling you had when you originally got into comics.

[BaltimoreLauren]

Do you miss your comics after selling them ?

 

In many cases yes.

 

What's even more telling though, is I miss my comics when I am away from home for long periods of time. Towards the end of our month long stay in Europe recently, the thought of getting home and looking through the collection and re-reading some of my favorites was quite compelling and made me look forward very much to getting home.

 

I've always enjoyed comics, and I'm sure I always will

 

Can you remember your very first comic Bill ?

 

 

Actually yes, but you'd be surprised by it. My family was living in Japan at the time (early 1960s) and my mom bought me a Japanese comic book. Square bound with glossy paper and a cardboard stock cover. I still have it, although it is missing one cover and has lots of my scribbling on it. I was probably four years old at the time (1966). Mom kept on buying me comics, and when we came back to the States in 1967, the genre shifted to American comics and superheros, although she also bought me a lot of Richie Rich and Hot Stuff.

 

 

Here it is

 

 

WOW !! Its like early anime or somethin. Its Gigantor and Speed Racer with a bit of Kimba the White Lion mixed in for good measure !!

 

I'm guessing you just looked at the pictures cuz its prob in Japanese

 

The comic is called Insel (Inzelu) 2, by Tarou Ishimolishyou. It does look a great deal like Osamu Tezuka's art style (he created Kimba the White Lion, Astro Boy..) According to the front cover it's an interesting read.