To me, the reading of comics is inextricably linked to the collecting of them. There’s no separating the two. Now, I understand some might find that notion ridiculous; after all, going to the movies is not linked to saving movie tickets. It is, however, linked to buying Blu-rays or DVDs or digital copies of a film you like, and I think that comes from the sense of when you like something, you want to own a part of it, to stake your claim. I would describe it as leaving your mark, in some small way, to put out your opinion and hope it mattered in the grand scheme of things. To bring some kind of internal validation to yourself and calm the worry that you spent so much time with, essentially, all these piles of paper that ain’t gonna mean anything in the grand scheme of things. As Alan Moore says in Watchmen, “No meaning other than what we attach to it,” leaving us to create our own meaning and give items totemic symbolism, more or less. So I guess with comic collecting, it becomes about: why bother? How can it possibly be worth the effort, and matter at all?
With comics, to me, the collecting is part of the fun. When I get a new issue, I gleefully add it to my collection, as I guess part of me wants to say “If it got in the collection, it met my seal of approval.” The ones in my collection matter, so if there’s a nuclear holocaust and mine are the only comics left, future societies will know which comics made the cut in some grand database of knowledge. I know that’s a silly notion, bordering on egotistical, but it keeps me young and sparks the thrill of the hunt for me. It also uses up most of my money, but hey, whatever keeps us sane! Part of it is wanting to say you were there first, like you discovered something special before everyone else. It’s like with music; same principle, everyone wants to say they liked this great band before everyone else did, but once they do, what does it matter? There is no meaning to these colored pages other than what you ascribe to them, so you have to give meaning on your own to whatever hobby you pursue.
I like two things in terms of comic collecting: getting really great single issues, and building runs for series I think are truly great. It’s not a hard and fast rule; I’m not saying that every issue of Amazing Spider-Man is a winner (Dear God, no), nor am I saying that if I dislike one issue of Donald Duck then I’m not bothering with any others. But it seems to work for me; the comics that I’m irked by owning the most are the extraneous ones I bought on a whim, the ones that have no place. You all know what I mean; that beat up copy of X-Factor that just lies in the corner, wanting to be given away to a better home that will appreciate it more. I’m not exaggerating when I suggest that many comic collectors thinks of their issues as their ‘babies,’ or their children. I know some who would grab their prized collectibles out of a burning house sooner than they’d grab their actual kids, so I know it’s true!
What it boils down to the most is the quote, “There’s beauty in the patterns of life,” which I believe was from the movie How to Make an American Quilt. That’s like, so true, man. Mind blown, yo. But besides that, I kind of do apply that in my endeavors, in that whether I’m out for a walk or getting a new comic, I’m trying to seek beauty in some form, or something that fits within the patchwork of the quilt of my life. There are comics I want (if not need) because I am still making a list, and the list will always grow, but I have to feel that I’ll finish it someday and it’ll be some grand statement on my life. I have to believe so. If I don’t, then I’m a terminator who has completed his mission; a watchmaker without a timepiece; a quilt without a purpose. I have to believe it means and stands for something I liked, represents me, because I guess it’s a way of expressing myself and pretending my opinions made a difference. “He liked Batman enough to have a full Post-Crisis run? Get this man a medal!”
Small nerdy example: there are certain comics I refuse to have in my collection, on some dumb principle, because they don’t “fit.” Mainly one. It’s a very famous comic, everyone likely has it, everybody wonders why it’s not in my box of most treasured gems already, but to me, it wouldn’t fit. It’s completely antithetical to everything I want from comics and think they should be, so it’s not going in. If it’s not there, I can pretend it didn’t exist, and go on happily. Did that make any sense? Cue the gif of Homer Simpson looking at me, “He’s crazy!”
There are two kinds of collectors I admire and hope to be; more the latter than the first. The first are those who are obviously blessed and have spectacular comic collections, full runs and priceless issues. If they enjoy them and have read them all, I hope to be lucky enough one day to share their fortune, even if owning every issue of X-Men is impossible. Hell, for me, owning X-Men 94-140 complete is a pipe dream, so I don’t make it a goal. But then, I never thought I’d have every issue from 141-544 either, so I guess nothing is truly out of reach. It’s just not good to desire things based on value alone. The collectors I pity are ones who just buy the most valuable issues of a series, and discard anything that has no possible value in the future. I mean, really? What about sentimental value? You can’t tell me that the first appearance of Spider-Gwen is a better issue than the one where Aunt May dies. I mean, sure, I’d probably run out of a house on fire with the Spider-Gwen issue than the Aunt May one, but only if it was pared down to pure monetary gain in a snap judgment. In terms of emotional value, the value we ourselves attach to things, that’s priceless. That kind of value is inherent, because it comes from within and we transfer it to the comic. And I can say it would be very, very hard for me to discard the first issue of Spider-Man I ever owned over a comic valued at $300 that was crap. You can always get $300 again, but my first issue? There will only be one copy of it, ever, and it’s irreplaceable. Heck, I had a very hard time moving it from my “special box” into my regular Spider-Man box just because there was no room for it, as if I was being unfaithful to it! So, sorry Web of Spider-Man #115, we’ll always have Facade!
The second kind of collector is the one I admire most, and the kind I wish I were. This kind of collector only gets the comics they like, and doesn’t worry about intrinsic value. They collect things they want to read, don’t worry about consecutive issues for the sake of it, and have one big box of all the stories they liked the best. They don’t need a lot, but what they have means a lot to them. Possibly they don’t even bag and board the issues (gasp!), and read them over and over. I love that. That’s the kind of collector I want to be. Some days I succeed and think I can thin the ol’ longboxes out, other days I’m the worst caricature of Mr. Pussey from Dan Clowes’, uh, “Pussey.” But I hope I’ll find that balance one day, which I guess is the balance man struggles with between his nature and his self, his desires and his actions. Wow, I went too existential there I think.
Point is, people who know me must think I dump endless money on my hobbies, but I really don’t. I only really buy comics as my nerdy vice, as opposed to too many collectibles. I got all the action figures I needed (minus one or two I look out for for old times’ sake), when I was a teenager, and outgrew the habit. I knew I did on the day I opened all of them from their original packaging (gasp!) and put them on display in my room, and had no regrets. I never think back and wish I had left them in the box, ever; I’m embarrassed I kept them in for that long. Free the figure from its plastic prison! I at one time wanted original art, and have a few pieces, but they’re too expensive to keep collecting on a regular basis. I don’t collect statues, and I never had a taste for all that weird crap like real-life Captain America shields or Anti-Venom masks. If this sounds like a long justification, you’re right! But as for my comics, I tend to them like a garden, worry about needing space and where to put them, agonize over what would happen in a fire, and feel dumb when I know I have way too many as it is. I think we all risk falling into the trap of becoming like Brainiac from the Superman cartoon series, getting too obsessive about wanting to be the only one who owns something as if it gives superiority; or feeling like a special snowflake because only you are worthy to have some great prize. As if others aren’t. It leads to smugness when you get a real coup, or jealousy when someone else does. It’s unhealthy, so I try to not compare to anybody in any regard.
To get serious on you for a second- there are emotional investments tied to our comic collections because they represent different things to us; other times and places, where and who we were when we bought each individual issue. I know I can go into a dark place when I worry about regret, attached to my collection. And if it’s just me and you don’t know what I’m talking about, I admire you greatly. But I’m talking about the regret of missing out on an issue that attained value later on, or you overpaid for. It’s what propels most collectors to get something cheap in the hopes of flipping it later on for value, and it’s exhausting, making every new release seem like a horse race, or a stock or bond you have to keep up with to avoid missing the boat. Some near-misses don’t make me feel bad. For example, I never could get into The Walking Dead. Don’t care for it, have zero desire to watch the show or read it. So while maybe, possibly, I saw #1 on the shelf back in the day, and it would be nice to own one if it fell out of the sky, I don’t regret not picking it up because I never would have considered it at the time, ever. I was a Marvel/DC guy strictly, and even now I don’t like zombies. So it wasn’t really a near-miss, it’s a never was. I don’t regret not picking it up.
On the other hand, there is one issue I had a chance to get for ten dollars that turned into something very rare, and I passed it by for silly reasons. I’m not going to say what it was, because this is not my pity party, but if you knew you’d slap me silly. I might’ve gotten it, but passed on it for petty reasons related to not wanting to support a “mean” creator’s work who I felt slighted me. For a time, I considered it the greatest regret in my life, a true Spider-Man painful lesson of, “Didn’t do something when I had a chance, bit me later on;” an ironic twist. My biggest regret. How naive. Considering what happened to me later on, I don’t know if it would now even make the top ten. Well, maybe number 11. I realized two things: although it would be NICE to own the comic, my desire was mainly due to the intrinsic “value” people subsequently assigned to it, like I would be holding on to tangible money and have bragging rights. There’s nothing special about the issue itself. It’s a dumb comic by dumb people. If it was the Aunt May Death issue (the classic Amazing Spider-Man #400), I would’ve, and did, buy it immediately, because it was a great story and intrinsically valuable to me for the emotion it generates.
Second, I realized I had to justify why I didn’t buy it, and make peace with that. In a stupid sense I “blamed” the creator, thinking if he had been nicer to me, I would’ve gotten the book, so he “hurt” me twice (He really was a dick and did something uncool, but it was no big deal). But at the end of the day, the choice to not buy it was mine and mine alone. I lived with the consequences, but my mistake was in thinking that there WERE any consequences. No one forced me to do anything, and I kept trying to not replay in my head that I had a chance and missed it due to a stupid decision. The mistake was not in deciding wrongly if it would be a part of my collection, and the regret is not in passing up what would’ve been THE crown jewel of my collection, the most valuable book by far. The mistake was in thinking I *had* to have bought something cheap that later become valuable because of how it would’ve made me feel about myself; and the regret is in wasting so much of my time worrying about such a trivial, materialistic thing in the first place. If all I had left was my collection standing between me and the street, would having this one issue make the difference? Would I part with it anyway just to get food? Who knows, who cares. Maybe I’ll buy it one day, maybe I’ll get to a place where I’m mature enough that it stops mattering. I think I’m close. I hope so. But in terms of real life regrets, no, not even close.
There was a time when I looked at my comic collection as the progression of my life. I used to get them every single week, from practically, say, when I was at least 7 until after I graduated high school. After that I had to buy them in monthly chunks at once out of necessity, and even stopped entirely for a bit, but the point is is that for that period, I had a comic for nearly every week of my life for 12 years or something like that, and I even kept them in chronological order in some boxes! To kind of chart my life, see where I’d been, see where the heroes were along with me on our respective journeys. But in that path, lies madness. Life isn’t one big rainbow of sunshine. Maybe some people look at it this way themselves, and God bless if you do, but I couldn’t any more. Probably for most people, there are some issues where you remember that it was a great week when it released, most are in between, and a few really bad. I remember the week my Grandpa died, and the old issue of Spider-Man that came out then, and how it comforted me in some way. It hurts, but the issue means the world to me. I wouldn’t want to forget it, in other words.
But as I went on, I started to realize there were less issues where I outright thought, “God, that was a great week! I remember this issue of Green Lantern came out the week I did so and so;” and more where I remembered nothing at all, or it was a bad week. Sometimes something bad happened, and I remember the issues I got at the comic book store the day it happened. Those hurt the most. And after a while it was depressing, because there were more bad weeks than good, and I just couldn’t look at it at all that way anymore. But I had to come to a place where I realized I was not special, and many people’s lives go the same way, yet they don’t look at their comics as some depressing reminder; they use them as escapism and view them at a remove. My life was so tied to my collection that I neglected to see I was tying my self worth to it too, in some way. I ended up letting the hardships define me by looking at my comics like a scoreboard and getting bitter from the sum total of which “boxes” days fit into. My life was too entwined with my comics in that sense, and it was painful, and it made me realize that at that period of my life, I ascribed so much imagined value to them because it felt like comics were all I had. So I had to change my outlook. I didn’t want to go through a box of comics in chronological order and look at it like Batman going through the cells at Arkham Asylum, grimacing and thinking to himself, “So many bad memories.”
And, full disclosure, this is not my forum to whine about my life so I will not do so, but I have faced some true hardships that I would not wish on anybody, and barely understand how I lived through them. But I’m still here, and I choose to look at my enduring collection as some small testament to that. I can read my issues and now look at them like they’re all good memories no matter when they came out, because I have them, like thousands of friends there to smile at me and help me whenever I need them. When I face times of hardship and want to come out on the other side, I turn to Daredevil, as the tragic story of Matt Murdock and all his trials and tribulations is proof to me that you can survive anything as long as you don’t give up; as long as you’re not afraid. Or Peter Parker, faced with endless tragedy after tragedy and bad luck, but able to keep his chin up and always remain endlessly optimistic, even cheerful, because he believes in the inherent goodness of people. Their struggles means something to me, and although I know these characters are not real, it doesn’t make the lessons any less true, so they’ve comforted me when I looked to their examples.
So no, while I don’t think Matt, Peter, Bruce, Clark and Barbara are real people, they are examples I strive for, and maybe in some small way it’s helped me to keep going. I don’t thank the characters. The gratitude I feel is towards Stan Lee, Grant Morrison and J.M. DeMatteis for writing these stories that helped me survive some of the worst losses I’ve ever faced by teaching me to always keep on going. I owe them in some small way, so I try to repay the debt by being true to myself, and try to get better every day by putting one foot in front of the next. I have to, not for a fictional character, but for what they made me believe in. Just because something was in a comic, doesn’t make the message meaningless. That’s why I keep collecting I guess; because I haven’t yet given up on myself, or the genuine enjoyment comics give me, or the things I felt when I read all those issues. I know that much.
I’ve had some good successes also. Some really good buys, that if I had to do my life over again, I would stop and say, wait, I need to be sure I’m at this place on this day, or I won’t have this issue! My collection is mine, and mine alone, and yes, makes me feel “special” in some sophomoric sense. But I don’t broadcast it, and I don’t go out of my way to describe every great comic I have to make others jealous. It doesn’t matter, to anyone but me. If I was Will Smith in I Am Legend and the last man alive, well, I’d still probably be trying to finish my comic collection! It’s the same principle as exercise; one wants to keep their body in decently good shape at all times for themselves, because you never know what might happen. Maybe you’ll need to run a marathon to escape the oncoming apocalypse. Never do it for someone other than yourself, and if you want to achieve any goal, I think that’s the right reason to do it for. Same goes with my collection. If all there was was me and my comics, they’d still matter to me, and that makes me happy, because the person you have to please and validate and matter most to, is yourself. The only one you should worry about mattering to, is you. Because if you believe you can be happy just by having self worth, you are free, and have conquered the secret of life, in a slightly melodramatic sense perhaps. I’m not there yet. I try, I struggle on some days, do better on others. I’m getting there.
But I guess my comic collection is an extension of that philosophy, a literal part of me. I don’t think we need to purge ourselves of all worldly possessions to be happy, but I also don’t need to own every Spider-Man comic ever made either. I know that. What it all boils down to I guess, if I may use another writer’s example, are Scott Snyder’s words at the end of Batman #50. When Jim Gordon narrates how he feels he let Batman down by not protecting Gotham in his absence, to just let him rest; Batman assures him that it’s okay, as the man he once was, who wanted to settle down and have a family and not be needed by the city anymore, died long ago. But we then see a homeless shelter Bruce Wayne worked at, where each person wrote their name on a brick and stuck it into a wall, part of a whole, like a beautiful quilt, like all the comic issues adding up to the sum total of a life, beauty in the the patterns of the individual people who put them there. There’s one brick that says, “Bruce Wayne was here.” Gordon finishes out the issue by wondering out loud as Batman leaves, “Who are you? That’s easy- you’re Batman. As for the rest of us; I guess we all just do the best we can to be able to say: I was here. I mattered.”