My Not So Secret Origin…
I have been collecting comics for almost 30 years now. I dabbled as a kid, riding my bike to the local 7-11, and occasionally seeing Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes comics on the spinner rack. I bought maybe three or four comics. I was mildly interested, but I was not bitten by the bug…yet.
Flash forward to 1986, my first year of college. I was taking a film-making course, and my college professor mentioned comic books in one of his lectures as a comparison to film. I was intrigued. There was a local comic book store close to the university (there are always comic books stores close to university and colleges!). I went there to check it out. There was something about the bright four-color adventures. I picked up a few comics that interested me. The clerk told me that new comics come out every week, and he handed me a flyer detailing the weekly schedule of new comics. A whole new world opened up to me, I was hooked!
Flash forward to 1989. I had the unique opportunity to work as an assistant inker on DC Comic’s Batman comic, probably my favorite comic character of all time! I would do the menial task of inking backgrounds, filling in blacks, erasing pages once fully inked. Sure the job didn’t pay well and had long tedious hours to make the deadline but I didn’t care I was part of the process of creating comics, how cool was that!
A year later, in 1991, I bought an existing Comic Book store. Boy was I in for a rude awakening! One of the hardest and most stressful jobs I have ever had, PERIOD! I had a couple of stores for about 5 years during a crazy era of comics. It was the best of times (highest sales week during the infamous “Death of Superman” comic), and the worst of times (Marvel’s bankruptcy/variants/speculators craze!). I met some wonderful people, including lifelong friends that I still have today, and learned some important hard life lessons.
Today, I am a software engineer, creating software applications used by banks. All these years, I have continued collecting comics. In fact, my love of comics and the art-form have continued to grow.
I will post entries about some of my collecting adventures along the way.
This website is dedicated to my wife, who supports my crazy habit, and the constant hunt of great comics, finding those wonderful “unique” key issues, and my continuing adventures and love of comic collecting. I aim to post something weekly. And if I get better and faster at posting, hopefully more frequently than that. Feel free to drop me a line or email, I would love to hear about your collecting interests and adventures.
Enjoy!
As a child growing up in a Mexican household, I remember coming across fotonovelas that my parents had around the house. I loved the pictorial format and the story telling (similar to comics I later discovered). Although I thought fotonovelas where cool, I never pursued the interest on my own. I remember the first comic book I read as a young adult… it was “Batman, The Killing Joke”. I remember being so surprised by it. I had picked the comic book up off the floor of my best friend’s house, her nephew was reading it. I had not planned on reading the entire comic, I thought I was killing time and curiosity by browsing through it while waiting for my friend however, I ended up taking the comic with me and reading it from end to end. I remember thinking it was more like a novel than a comic, and repeating the Jokers dialogue, mouthing it actually while I read so I could take it all in. The play on words and the depth of the portrayal of joker (the word choice and the eye candy) left me psychoanalyzing Joker (that was so cool). I remember thinking this was poetic, and way outside the stereotype I had of comics. My husband and I now talk about my first stolen comic, its effect and how he loves that it was Batman, his favorite superhero! He told me that this was an early sign that I would met and marry him :} My husband’s love of comics introduced me to mainstream comics, his love and understanding of the artists and the subject matter elevated my understanding. He collects for the sheer love of it, and brings me along for the ride! In the beginning he would analyze the investment potential of each comic to me, thinking he had to justify his collecting to me (he didn’t) but I knew better. In his heart I could see a passion that went way beyond money, his collecting is driven by his true appreciating on the art form. His love of comics is infectious… consider me bitten! I cherry picked his collection (with his permission of course, well kind of) to help build mine. I have even been able to negotiate a better copy of Detective #359… the first appearance of Batgirl (I had a G copy and was able to swap him for what looks like it could be a VG (CGC 6?) love you Bear)!
Into Anime, but its nice to see others have the bug too 😀
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