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This is my collection. This is the world that I
love.
It started in the '70s with weekly trips on
Thursday to a 7-11 in a Memphis neighborhood buying Richie
Rich comics, being taken by the bright colors and
TV boxed shaped vignettes along the left margin
telling me the names of the characters. The
stories stirred my imagination while I was reading
along with cherry or cola flavored Slurpees and
packs of Wacky Packages. It was me ordering Harvey
records from the comic book, wondering why Baby
Huey comics weren't being printed, and prompting
my dad to call Harvey Comics and being handed the
phone to speak to Mr. Harvey himself, and him
asking me, a young grade-schooler, what I liked
and didn't like about Harvey Comics. It's seeing
the different colors on the upper margins of comic
books to catch my eye, and seeing an alternating
color there each new week.
This is my collection. It's older comics I found
in Memphis flea markets. It's discovering that if
I can't buy old Spider-Man comics, I can buy
issues of Marvel Tales and drool over Steve
Ditko's art and Stan Lee's dialogue. It's the
wonder of discovering shops that sell only comic
books, with an odor of back issues, that showed
Betty Boop cartoons, serials and movies on Friday
nights. It's being captured by the images drawn
by C.C. Beck on "Shazam" and the countless covers
Nick Cardy drew for DC Comics. It's trying to
find, learn and get any morsel or panel about
characters I love.
This is my collection. It's a boy going into the
basement of his uncle's Detroit home, step by
careful step, smelling must, soap and other odd
odors, and finding treasures packed and carefully
stored in used grocery store cardboard boxes,
exploring for new titles and covers I've never
seen before.
It's the moment when new comic books magically
appear on racks or shelves, be it drug store,
convenience store, book store or comic shop. It's
the time you open the cover. It's the instant you
found out there's an Overstreet Price Guide and
finding that your comic books actually have (gasp)
value.
This is my collection. It's costumed men and
scantily clad women that fight crime. It's
beautiful women and garish looking men putting
your heroes and heroines in peril. It's muscular
barbarians and colored aliens. It's the photo and
painted covers of Gold Key comics and the "gag"
covers on Archie Comics. It's the curiosity of
Atlas Comics and the weird printing and characters
of Charlton Comics.
It's the frustration of waiting three long years
to read and complete the run of Camelot 3000.
It's the oddities that are Prez, Brother Power the
Geek, US 12, and Night Nurse. It's the smile when
the makers of your comics poke fun at themselves.
It's the sadness when creators spar and sue for
rights to characters. It's the surprise of seeing
your name in print in a letter column and winning
a Marvel No-Prize. It's the
feeling; like winning the lottery when I find
Daredevil #82 at an Evanston garage sale or
Superman #182 at the Kane County Fairgrounds -- an
unexpected high. It's the the hope that
characters I love and care about get out from
under horrendous writing and lousy artwork.
This is my collection. It's the embarrassment of
other parents not wanting their children to see my
collection when they visit, for fear youngsters
would get negative ideas. It's the hurt by peers
being told you have "too many" of something. It's
the agony of transporting boxes from Memphis, to
Wisconsin, to St. Louis and the Chicago 'burbs in
the span of a lifetime. It's the sorrow of seeing
water invade your basement and causing severe
damage to boxes of the collection.
This is my love. It's 2,800 comics when I was in
6th grade in 1981, to 40 long boxes when I was a
college sophmore in 1987, to 80 long boxes in
1989, to 140+ long boxes presently. My world is
my collection of books, created by talented men
and women, and worthless hacks; read, indexed and
filed with love and sweat because I'm a collector.
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