Lost in the Fantastic Worlds of Comics: from toys, to books, to gaming, to art, and now slabs

[doxbane]

A newcomer's entry into the world of graded and slabbed books; a trip that started 30+ years ago

 

A quick origin story. Like so many other kids, the GI Joe Hasbro cartoons and toys fascinated me as a child in the early to mid 80s. A trip to the grocery store yielded the familiar results: GI JOE issue 5, 1982.

 

Then a few issues that were bagged with two super hero comics. And it begins. From there to discovering places like Now & Then Books in Kitchener. The early 90s ushered in the dual threat of a downswing in quality in the industry and the start of college and a career and I was out until I started playing Heroclix in 2004, which re-ignited my love of comics.

 

That transitioned into original art around 2010. I feel happy with that collection and needed a new fix recently this year. I've got more books than I have time to read, more games than I have time to play, and more art than I have walls to display it on.

 

I hadn't been a fan of slabbed books before but suddenly they made sense to me...I had long since sold off longbox after longbox of my singles, preferring Essentials and trades. But the idea of having some higher quality treasures back, in a preserved and highly displayable format, well, here I am!

 

See more journals by doxbane

[vsndesigns]

Welcome to the forums! I guess I started reading comics back in 1967 but kept giving, selling or losing (mom would toss most of my comic books out since I notoriously left them under my bed) my collections (much like my rock collections) until the later 80's, where I decided just to pick one new comic book character that I had the intent to complete something. I'm not sure if my dad would be proud of what I picked, but it really doesn't matter since I picked The Tick and 30 years later...I still haven't completed the collection....but I digress. Here's a pretty cool thread that I like to contribute to whenever I can. http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9591903&fpart=1. Yeah...it's The Official Tick Appreciation thread. Not everyone is a Tick fan but I thought I read your story and thought you might be interested. Vic out.

[Brandon Shepherd]

Welcome aboard doxbane!

 

I like '80s G.I. Joe myself. The thing was, I missed all the good figures, the classic characters from '82 to '86. The G.I. Joe that was on when I was a kid was the early '90s cartoons.

 

I was able to trade toys with other kids at school back then for "old school" toys like Cobra Commander, Crimson Guard and so on, but those toys had been played with quite a bit and were worn out, but I was a kid and I didn't care, I just wanted to play with the toys from the good cartoons! Years later I built a set of loose and complete figures for closure sake, several years after I collected all the figures I wanted, I sold them off to help with a special comic purchase.

 

I look forward to more entries from you.

 

Yo Joe!

[surfer99]

Glad you wrote a journal and got back into comics! Looking forward to seeing and hearing about the books you add to your collection!

 

 

 

[Professor Pecora]

Welcome doxbane!! Thanks for sharing your brief background. You've just joined a vibrant community of passionate comic collectors from all walks of life!

 

I started collecting comics when I was 11 years old up until about 16 years old...then there was the massive haitus up until the fall of 2011; that is when I got into collecting CGC graded comics and I've been hooked ever since!

 

-Professor Pecora

[doxbane]

Thanks all for the positive wishes.

 

As I said, I'm new to the slabbed world, but experienced with amassing collections.

 

One thing that I knew from the start of looking in to slabbed books is that I wanted to have a purpose to the collection, or at least a focus. It would be very easy to just start scooping up random issues that I've loved, but collecting original art taught me two very important lessons:

 

1) THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER (book, page of art, etc). Even in the art world where pages are unique, there will always be something else coming along that will excite the collector. The stress and urgency one may feel upon discovering something that's available for a limited time will always be mitigated by the knowledge that the next item won't be far off

 

2) A COLLECTION IS MORE SATISFYING THAN AN ACCUMULATION . To be fair, every collection starts as an accumulation. We're excited by getting in to something new, there's a lot of options and neat new stuff to acquire, we want to start getting stuff and getting it now!

 

Which will eventually lead to a lot of random stuff laying around. Which isn't terrible if owning it gives you pleasure. It's also easier to start a collection by getting a larger amount of more inexpensive things, to see what kind of stuff satisfies you and what kind leaves you feeling flat after awhile.

 

Right now, my collecting focus for slabbed books is pretty varied, and may not make sense to anyone that's not me but there here are some of the guidelines I want my slabbed collection to adhere to:

 

1) BOOKS TO DISPLAY NICELY TOGETHER. Through a theme. I am setting up a space at home to have some books up on the wall, and plan to rotate them in and out. Some of the themes I'm working on:

 

- Secret Wars (80s, first series) run. This was my favourite series and just a fantastic piece of work. The covers tell such a great sequential story and the gems -- the iconic first issue, the intensity of issue 4 and 10, bring back so much emotion

 

- Doctor Doom in silver age Fantastic Four - some great covers of the greatest super villain ever. In the first 100 issues alone, so many classic examples

 

- Sienkiewicz New Mutants run -- some of the great Demon Bear covers, the Slumber Party run from 18 - 21 or so, such great memories

 

So the idea is to have 3 - 4 books displayed together at one time, all within a theme or comics run, that brings me back to either my childhood or just serves as a reminder of some of the iconic events that happened

 

 

 

 

next: the issue of GRADE...how little is enough?