Main Menu

Collecting quirks

Started by Trout, 18 November, 2012, 01:53:17 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Trout

I'm toying with an idea. I suspect it's a very stupid one but I just can't shake it.

When I was a kid, my dad sometimes brought me home DC Comics. I'm not sure where he got them, but he got them just occasionally and that meant I have just a few non-sequential comics from that time. It was of course a really kind thing he did, and I'm not complaining.

But lately I've filled in a few gaps from that time. Those Bronze Age comics are pretty cheap and they were good fun to read, so I find myself wanting more. In fact, I'm thinking of getting every DC comic from that year, just for fun... and out of slightly-unhinged completism.

I keep reminding myself that I ditched tons of comics this year so buying more would be wrong. But I can't shake the idea...

Does anyone else have any very specific collecting habits? What are you hunting down?

- Trout

Colin YNWA

I'm glad to say I seem to have shaken most of mine. Okay so I still own ever comic which has Ka-Zar as the title character of the story (or one of in the case of anthologies) and some of them are stinkers, but I doubt that trend will continue for long... well except for the fact that I can't see him being the main feature in a title for a long time to come, after the sales of his last mini!

I've removed all the Metamorpho appearances I don't own off my want list (which is refreshingly short these days), again many of those I own suck big time.

I've even broken my habit of getting the Flash regardless of how little pleasure I get from reading it. I think once I did that I knew I was through with 'collecting' as such.

In fact in some ways I've got the opposite problem and I've found myself selling off things that have surprised me. Books I like but can't see myself reading again. Glorious coffee table art books I know I will not do justice with by spending the time looking at them the way I should. Oversized omnibus (omnibi? Help me out here?) that I like (even love in a couple of cases) but don't enjoy reading cos they are just to damned cumbersome. Books I've treasured over years but a new cheaper edition has come out so I've sold the expensive old thing, got the new cheaper one and pocketed the difference. Stuff like that. I've become quite brutal. One day soon I think my 1st print Bone issue 1 will be up for the crop.

I do wonder if I will regret this harsh phase in my now none collecting and spend a fortune getting stuff back again. We'll see. Hopefully though I'm kinda cured???

SmallBlueThing

#2
I feel the pain of a fellow collector. After years of not buying comics (aside from the prog et al) DC went and done their "new fifty-poo" and I got hooked all over again. Bringing boxes down from my attics revealed a tantalisingly-close-to-complete (or so I thought) Swamp Thing collection, which has led me to try to tick that one off... which has been both immense fun and crushingly expensive. With that now close to being done, sort of, I'm looking towards Hellblazer as my next wife-baiting obsession. I found issues #50-#150 in my attic, with a few missing, so I plan to either get #1-49 or #151-200 next, as well as working backwards from the current (and sadly last) issues.

Must just add that I don't consider the buying of trade collections as indicative of "collectormania"- as they are freely available and everyone buys (or should buy) books. There are a whole bunch of series I buy in trade format as a matter of course.

Other titles I've got on my list of things to get include the issues of Twisted Tales, Alien Worlds, and Tales of Terror I'm missing, as well as certain runs of Amazing Spider-Man that don't look as if they'll be reprinted anytime soon. The other day I received in the post #12 of the second NIGHT FORCE run, completing my collection of everything 'Forcey' from the original teaser comic in The New Teen Titans (and that's another series I may end up going for- the eighties New Teen Titans, as I loved them back in the day and sold them a decade ago, stupidly) right up to the closing issue of the recent mini-series.

I guess the sad truth is that I honestly prefer comics to trades. While collected versions are lovely and I'm very glad they are now so prevalent, having grown up with an industry that seemingly refused to even think about putting consecutive issues together in a 'permanent' edition, I much prefer having a box of bagged and boarded issues. Yes, it's annoying to have to pull out a run and yes, each time there's that moment of terror as you wonder if twenty year old sellotape is this time going to catch the cover of a priceless old comic and scrape the surface off... but I guess, first and foremost I love the format. I love the feel, the smell and the look of old comics more than I love the feel of new trades, however "definitive or absolut" they may be.

And while writing this, I've made up my mind to go straight over to eBay and pick up some Titans. Heh. Good luck Trouty!

SBT
.

SmallBlueThing

Aaaand predictably, a short while later, i'm the proud owner of four old issues of the New Teen Titans... Damn you, Trout, damn you...

SBT
.

maryanddavid

I dont know if ou can ever 'cure' yourself of the collecting bug, it just gets transfered to something else.

British comics are my thing, it did get transfered to American comics for a while when I followed some of ex 2000ad droids, after a while I realised I was buying the comic for the creator name rather than the comics itself. I still pick up american trades second hand though, but only stuff that comes recomended.

I love oddball stuff, condition doesent bother me, so long as the comics is complete and readable, but once I get it, its kept! I still have the first Beano I bought a long time ago,I know this because Brendan is devouring them at the minuite and I found it alongside my Beano club wallet, badges still inside! The flipside is that Im fortunate to have the space to keep them.

Id say go for it, as you say its not expencive, and if it passes a rainy winter evening and you get enjoyment out of it, its win-win.

SmallBlueThing

That's the thing- im sitting here agonising over spending twenty-one notes on three old comics (hellblazer #1, new teen titans #1, new teen titans/ x-men crossover, since you dont ask)- but honestly, most people i know would spend that without thinking, down the pub or on filling up a petrol tank. While beer and cars are probably great :thumbsup: my particular vice is old comics. Is there really a right and wrong here? As david says, if it passes a rainy winter night, then go for it. 

SBT

SBT
.

Dark Jimbo

In the future we will all go into our lofts and lose hours of the day upon unexpectedly finding dozens of old cardboard boxes full to the brim with a comic-reading device. We will lovingly heave the yellowing kindle or tablet into the light, smooth out the creases and brush off the cobwebs. Every crinkle on the screen will spark some cherished memory; the newsagent's mark scribbled in pencil on the corner of the device will take us right back to shops that have long since closed down; we will wonder where the proprieter is now, or if they are even still alive. We will fondle the (digital) comics, drinking in the unique (digital) smell, perhaps marvelling as we read through the issues at how the (digital) page sizes and (digital) paper quality changed throughout a comic's run. A fond chortle will be elicited as we (digitally) turn to a page of a black-and-white comic that our little brothers or sisters tried to (digitally) colour in with their (digital) crayons. We will remember how angry we were at the time; now, the memory simply brings happiness. We will find (digital) sellotape marks on the (digital) covers where long-ago (digital) free gifts were (digitally) removed, and rack our brains trying to recall what they were.

We will find gaps in the collection and want to fill them. Pressing 'download all' and accquiring the entire run in seconds will exactly replicate the thrills and spills of having to do the legwork oneself, and we will in no way feel somehow oddly empty and definately not miss the fun of having to trawl through bargain boxes at comic shops or go hunting on Ebay, forever keeping one eye out for those last few elusive rare numbers. And if we decide to move our (digital) collection on, there is always the comfort of knowing that we can re-sell our (digital) pile of comics to other collectors and recoup most of the money, and this act will in no way be rendered pointless when other collectors can simply buy the lot and immediately have them all on their own device with a touch of a button.

'Thank God print media died,' we will say. 'Rediscovering digital comics years after the fact is in no way an empty and souless expierience utterly bereft of charm and nostalgia. I will derive exactly the same satisfaction from finding my son hidden under his covers staring blandly at a screen when he's supposed to be sleeping, as I would have done to find him with a pile of my yellowing old paper issues.' And we will walk to work next morning with a spring in our steps, past derelict bookshops and closed libraries and liquidated comic shops that are much preferable to that awful thriving print industry which was such a bloody eyesore to look at.
@jamesfeistdraws

Spikes

Quote from: maryanddavid on 18 November, 2012, 10:17:55 PM
I dont know if ou can ever 'cure' yourself of the collecting bug, it just gets transfered to something else.

Ah, was there ever a truer statement?

My collecting has certainly become more focused, and has also slowed down quite a bit, over the last couple of years, though summat will always pop up, that i just must have.
Un-used Star Wars Letraset sets from 1978, anybody?

Now that ive got 99% of the comic runs i want, its a case of fine tuning these, and trying to build a collection with the best condition copies as possible. For me, NM is king. This isnt anywhere near as expensive as it might sound. In fact, pleasingly so, its been down right cheap as chips of late.





Trout

Oooh, Letrasets! Lovely. I have to say that I am terrified something awful will happen after I discovered that old Panini football stickers are sold, in unopened packs, on eBay for very little money...

Thank you, gentlemen, for your support. I may well give in to my needs soon. SBT, Hellblazer is on my "must get around to completing that one day" list.

I quite like getting trades but you lads are right - sometimes there's no substitute for the original comics.

Spikes

Perhaps there needs to be a dedicated thread started for our collective 'purchases'.
Summat like Stuff on e-bay that i couldnt live without.

Two good reasons, im nebby as to what people buy, and.. er... well, mmm - cant think of any other reasons,  ;)

Proudhuff

I've been collecting Quirks, so far I have Pauline.
DDT did a job on me

Trout

Quote from: Judge Jack on 20 November, 2012, 04:43:06 PM
a dedicated thread started for our collective 'purchases'.

I reckon this one would do...

Colin Zeal

Since getting back into buying the prog about four years ago my initial burst of collectormania was based on that. Hence my collection going from about 60 progs to 600. Outside of that my attempt at collecting was limited to buying the run of The punisher that went from the 80s into the 90s. I haven't come close to finishing this yet as I've kept myself away from the internet and only getting what I can from comic shops in an attempt to keep some money in my pocket. It also saves me from moving onto another title and collecting that as well.

Mattofthespurs

I've always found that the thrill was in the chase.
Took me years to get a complete run of "Creepy", "Eerie", "Vampirella", "Famous Monsters of Filmland" and "Mad". Finally did it about two years ago and they just sat there.
Sold them in the end for a tidy sum (although probably nowhere near what I paid for them). Just realised I would never take them out of the boxes again.
I am re-collecting the first three through the archives books though.
The only things I collect and keep now are complete collections of 2000 AD, Megazine, and Fangoria.

vzzbux

You all know my collecting (ahem) quirk. Which reminds me, I have to update my addiction thread soon.




V
Drokking since 1972

Peace is a lie, there's only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.