Things I Miss: Comic Books
I used to have a severe habit. No, it wasn’t drugs or Fabergé eggs, it was comic books. Oh, how I loved Wednesdays. Wednesday was always new comic day. Whether it was Golden Apple in Los Angeles, Hi-De-Ho Comics in Santa Monica, the several now defunct stores in northern San Diego County, Wein’s World in Wilmington, Delaware, comic book shops were my weekly dealers. I loved them all, Marvel, DC, and the various independents that seemed to explode in the 90’s. I loved superheroes of the majors, including Batman, Spider-Man, and hundreds of others, but I also admired the stories about average people, stories by Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, and Art Spiegelman. It didn’t matter, as long as they were comics.
I came of age reading the Chris Claremont years of writing X-Men, the George Pérez years of drawing the Avengers, the Walter Simonson Thor years, the John Byrne Fantastic Four run, the Frank Miller years of Daredevil and The Dark Knight Returns, and the releases of the original Watchmen limited series. While it may seem from that statement that I had great taste in comics, I read enough to encompass the stinkers, too. I survived the Secret Wars, whose only purpose seemed to be to give Spidey a new black costume, which turned out to morph into one of the most one-dimensional villains in comics history. I survived the New Universe, a collection of the worst titles Marvel has ever released to the public, including Kickers, Inc., a team of pro football heroes for hire. Ugh. I also toughed it out through the rise of Rob Liefeld, possibly one of the worst pencillers in comics, who had obviously never seen a real girl before, and made up for his inability to draw feet by making biceps the size of Great Danes. (I wanted to choose a Liefeld drawing to accompany this paragraph, but I couldn’t decide between women whose legs were over twice as long as their wasp-waisted torsos, yet always on tippy-toe, men whose pectorals are quadruple D’s, or snarling feral heroes with over 50 teeth in their heads.)
However, it was more than just the successful marriage of story and art that thrilled about trips to comic stores. Part of the romance involves the mindset of the collector. The larger a collection became, the better. My collection wasn’t large by most collectors’ standards, but I was happy with it. In the beginning, I would just go to the comic store, and pick up whatever was on the shelf, but in Delaware, I discovered that some shops employed a subscription method. All I had to do was fill out my free copy of Previews with my selections for that month, then pick up my loot each Wednesday, all copies set aside for me in a nice little cubby, with no danger of missing out on a major seller. I was in geek heaven. This method also allowed me to hone in on titles I might not catch in a quick glance through the racks, debuts that were being heralded as must haves, and reprints of books I had missed out on the first time around.
Of course, comics are all the rage now, thanks in large part to the involvement of Hollywood. The successful reboots of Spider-Man and Batman, as well as the emergence of less popular heroes, such as Iron Man have spurred a comic book renaissance of sorts. But it doesn’t stop there. Adaptations of the independents, like Ghost World, Sin City, American Splendor, V for Vendetta, The Road to Perdition, and A History of Violence have all been stellar films, even if some of them didn’t quite stick to the original story.
So, the question remains, why did I stop collecting comics? Well, the height of my collecting was while I was living in Delaware in the late 90’s. I had a job that, while it wasn’t making my bank vault bust at the seams, certainly seemed to make me comfortable based on the cost of living. The store failed, I had to move back to California to regroup, and the habit just never came back. I have only bought two titles of comic books in the last few years, though none in the last six months. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s 8th season, in comic book form, and the various ancillary limited series of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower became my last link to the comics world. And now, it seems to be over for good. I’d say that maybe someday, after school, and after I get a job, my passion for comics could return, but I fear that time is gone, never to return.
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