“I still buy [insert generic comic] every month, but I haven’t read an issue in forever.”
I’ve heard the above statement a hundred million times, and it never seems to go away. My pals in comic retail tell me they still hear it like bad pop music. We know about this, and so do the outsiders. The model comic-obsessive completist is our Steppin’ Fetchit, who takes his funny-books home, shoves ’em into a poly-bag with a board, then gingerly puts his buyings into a long-box and forklifts it into a tower in the basement while avoiding tearing his man-mou-mou. He’s on The Simpsons, all over youtube, and sits in the ethos. I have pals I love who straddle the fence, reading books that make my eyes bleed. They’re just peachy to me. I don’t attack them for their materials (I do engage in some shit-giving), because they LIKE what they’re reading, and who am I to judge? I’m more of an Uncle Tom reader myself. I hang with the folks who don’t know that comics are the greatest thing on earth, and the only thing worth fighting for. I wanna be invited to the parties, after all. Once there, I want to dash home and talk about, read and read about comics. OK, I kid. That said, I’m more interested in talking about the rabid collector who doesn’t actually interface with the product. Like I said, no actual judgement- it’s a victimless thing at first glance. What’s at play here is a situation that effects us all- bad voting, and the impact it has on comics overall.
Before I get into the wider damage, let me tell you about a pal of mine who died in our late ’20s. He was a collector of all things great and cool. Comics, magazines, vinyl LPs, CDs, art, coffee table books, vintage housewares- an ephemera wunderkind. He got really sick and stayed that way until he died nearly two years later with an actual window of problems that lasted more like five. His final year was horrid. He died a million ways before his heart stopped, at about a foot a day, with torturous moments of false recovery that never amounted to more than three days. Supporters brought him wrestling magazines, comics and stuff to keep him interested. He’d thank them graciously, and put on a happy face. It was a lie, and I knew it. He didn’t give a rat’s ass anymore about any of it. It might help waste five minutes, but there was not a trickle of joy in the offing after the fatal diagnosis. Too much to think about, feel, deal with, and endure for anything non-essential to matter. What focus he did have mentally went to the delusion of him getting better, even though everyone knew it was not in the cards. I sat with him a couple of nights a week for quite some time and we NEVER talked about any pop-minutiae. I knew he was away from it all. We spent a lot of time in silence as a result, because that was the tie that bound. When he finally went, there was a half-duplex full of treasures to be dealt with. On his mom’s order, I got about 20 friends together and we formed a line and went one-by-one picking out something we wanted and then back to the back and working ourselves up to the front again. Eventually, it just became a damned free for all. I gave up early, because suddenly after years of collecting it just seemed so moot. I no longer could figure out the goal, and there was no joy there. Two days after the affair, a yard sale happened an a For Rent sign went in the yard. I looked at the house, and it was a moment of clarifying truth- that’s all there is, that’s all you get.
The deep realization was that the empire falls when I do and very likely, well BEFORE. Even if I don’t have a terminal disease, it will likely fall from me before I go. If I spend years in declining health, my joy for everything will be greatly reduced. If I go in a nursing home, I won’t see that shit again. If I die suddenly, it’s just there for someone else to figure out what to do with. If I don’t have close loved ones, it’ll hit the auction block and go for a song. If I think I have young relatives who might care about them, they are likely not going to fill a house with my leftovers unless they are deeply passionate about them. Most folks aren’t going to have the time and energy to pilfer through my leavings to sort, post, collect, and mail them off for the money. I’m not going to go through the astringent process of having my books graded, unless they are spectacularly rare and 9/10s just aren’t and likely won’t ever be. With that logic, I started paring way down. I only kept things I really, really wanted to re-visit with frequency. Over the years, I’ve had lots of sales to keep things light. I’ve given longboxes to children in hopes they’d find some magic inside. My collection as it stands is now roughly forty books- trades and hardbacks- and if I find them not to be appealing, they go to a Half-Priced Bookstore and the credit goes for new ones. I accumulate comics and when I get to over a half-long-box, I find somewhere to fob them off. Part of my platform here is that I do not want to pay for space to hold inanimate objects that I do not use. I accept the fact that I can’t hold on to things because I just might get a wild hair to open them up once in how-ever-many years. The time going past without doing it outweighs the time spent doing it. Also, having an object for a long time steals the magic. It’s like hearing a great song you loved on the radio, and then purchasing it. After myriad listenings, the power is gone. When you just come up on it once in a blue moon, it’s still there. That’s why I like going to the library to re-read old fare that I can find. It’s like picking up a cool animal and petting it, then releasing it back into the wild.
All that said, I’m still not going to judge anyone else who wants to do it a different way. In fact, if everyone did what I chose to, there would be no comics at all, so please don’t if you don’t feel like it. You get one shot and if you want to spend it collecting like crazy, go for it and I truly hope you enjoy it. Enjoyment is the key factor here. It’s also rooted in my reason for finding the absolute form of the practice to be harmful to the overall comics community- it is nothing short of bad voting practice, and it chokes the life out of true comic lovers in the long run.
I read and see so much, and I take part in discussions that are essentially folks co-miserating about the current state of comics. We also spend time worrying about books we do love facing a certain chopping block. We are passionate about these things because we love them; as much as you can love something that is not living, breathing, or essential to living, anyway. People who joylessly show up at comic shops on Wednesday to fill the quota and the boxes are our anti-matter. They cast votes with their eyes closed and too often it goes into an undeserving slot. They fill up a file, empty it, add titles to it, and go home to process their purchases. I’ll step in here and interrupt my own platform to say that much deeper issues might need to be addressed as this points to addiction, which is not limited to substance abuse or such. Voids are obviously being filled by objects that will never satisfy the space of that hole. Change is an option, I’d like to point out. It might be difficult, but a success could result in contentment before death, and I think that sounds worthier than a mechanical existence, myself. Anyway, I can’t tell anyone what a good comic is, and no one else can either, it’s all conjecture. Why not though, ask the guy at the comic shop what’s not selling but in his humble opinion should be and buy that and stick it in a box? If somebody just has to blow some loot, why not move the money around? If they’re not going to read it, does it even matter? Who knows, maybe they’ll get home and feel an intrigue that’s obviously been missing and find something magical for the first time in years. Sounds a lot more potentially fulfilling to me, anyway.
If you’re doing anything that’s not tied to your livelihood or ability to exist and it’s not bringing you actual pleasure, do yourself (and others) a favor and make effort to stop. I can say with more than certainty that it will not harm nor kill you. It may be uncomfortable at first, but change just is. Any way you split it, life is too damned short to settle when you don’t have to. Drop the bag, drop the board, kick the box aside, close your eyes for a minute, open them and look in front of you and out the window. That is all you have, my friend, and it is all you ever really will, and ten seconds later, it’s gone. Save your life! Love what you live, read, and do!
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Saving Wonder Woman 