Let's Talk Comics

Going through my collection of comic books I felt pretty nostalgic for my youth.

Well, not my youth, but certainly my college days. I was reckless and ridiculously stupid, not going to class and therefore failing most of the classes and the effects of that mistake is felt to this very day. But I was also ridiculous with money. I didn't get my first credit card until I was a "sophomore" but even when I didn't have it, I was living paycheck to paycheck and if I had extra money I would find something to spend it on. A lot of times it was comic books or toys.

But toys took up too much space and comics are so easy to fall into. You can go backward and hunt down issues you don't have and put your name on the subscription sheet at the front of the shop to make sure any new issues are automatically pulled for you. It's easy for it to start off as one book and then it just slides into more and more.

And I'll tell you why. The blame lies in three places: Yourself (obviously) for buying them, the comic book company for doing any crossovers or releasing multiple variations of a particular issue (because how will you know which one will be worth more in the long run?), and finally Wizard magazine for inspiring such fanaticism. They hype up new books and it's easy to fall into it. And then there's always the hope that one day they'll make you rich.

Well, as far as my comic book collection goes, what I'm willing to sell and have put up for sale in various areas of the web, the value is 899.25. That's pretty high but not what I paid for them so obviously they go up in value. No one can really kick themselves for buying something and hoping it gets more valuable, we do it all the time. It is fun thinking that a thing that parents are always so quick to say "it'll never amount to anything" is actually gaining in value.

This is like a child's hobby that becomes an adult's portfolio.

I will say, however, that anything, anything in the world can be appraised at a certain value but is only worth what someone is willing to pay. That's kind of sad when you think about it.

Anyway, I kind of miss the old days of being reckless and stupid even if, given the opportunity to relive them again, I'd concentrate in school, attend class, get a better GPA and who knows where my life would have gone? I know that even if I still joined the military it would probably be as an officer and then I'd be making a killing financially.

Ah, life could have been so different. The funny thing is no one warned me about it. I was told throughout my life that there will be crazy sex and drunken parties at college, drugs will be so prominent you'll see the smoke rising from the cracks at the bottom of doors and it was my job to watch out for that. To not get caught up in that. Looking back, it seems so obvious not to get caught up in it. Even then, I didn't party very much at all, didn't drink until I was just about to leave college, never did drugs and fell into a trap of loving sleep way too much.

What a bummer.

But still, looking back at my comics still brings a smile to my face. I thinned down my collection from the ones I'm willing to sell and the ones I am not and the ones I am not is 18 thick. I proposed to my wife with a ring taped to the last page of a Silver Surfer comic. That one obviously stays with us. She had never in her life read a comic book so I took her to a shop when we first started dating to see if anything jumped out at her. Silver Surfer did, just because he looked cool and was an alien. The entire time we were dating (she even got a little bit into comics) she didn't read Silver Surfer so I bought her an issue for Valentine's Day and she seemed pretty pleased with it, thought it was really thoughtful to reach back the two years or so and remember that and then she found the ring.

Anyway, that's how I'm feeling right now. Nostalgic.