For a five year period, more or less, I collected comic books. Certainly not as an investment. This was in the mid-to-late 80′s. Back when most of the Marvel and DC titles cost less than a dollar.
When I was in NH a week ago… I rescued a couple boxes of them from a damp basement. Some of them have that musty attic/basement smell to them but they are still readable. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is really the point.
So, what do I see?
I remembered buying my favorite titles – Daredevil, Spiderman, and Captain America. (Yes, I was primarily a Marvel Universe kind of person). But I’d forgotten about a lot of the others… Alpha Flight (Sort of a Canadian X-Men-like title), Power Pack (kids with super powers who weren’t really mutants), A large collection of “Marvel Team-Ups”, “What If’s”
I’m sure there must be another box somewhere… could have sworn I had another Spiderman title (Web of, Amazing, and Team-up). — Oh — “Peter Parker” I have a few X-men titles – before they became
BIG business for Marvel – “X-Factor”, “X-men”, “Classic X-men”, “New Mutants” and a bunch of mutant 4-6 issue titles (Does anyone remember “Beauty and the Beast” (Dazzler+The Beast) or the Wolverine-Kitty Pride stories?)
My Daredevil collection includes the Frank Miller years… I even have his Elektra series (I think there was only two – not counting her appearances in Daredevil).
I also have his Batman series (Dark Knight and Year One) – but if it hadn’t been him I don’t think I would have bothered…
Note: I don’t think I bought very many of the glossy “Graphic Novel” format comics. So Batman, Elektra, etc. are all newstand copies. (though some are on glossy paper)
I even have a few where I bought entire series at a small con (Ithicacon?) – Ms. Marvel, Super Girl…
Not sure how I ended up with a large collection of “Ambush Bug” and “Blue Beetle” comics…
I also bought the occasional non-Marvel/DC title – “Evangeline” anyone?
Need to go thru them… see what I’m missing…
Wow…
A couple years worth of Iron Man (Tony Stark), a few “Hulks”, “Avengers”, “Dazzler”, the last “Ghost Rider”, a few different “Nick Fury” titles from the 60′s/70′s – and lots of limited edition/issue comics… that must have been around the time that whole thing started…
I should note that I have no idea what any of these characters have been up to in the last 15 years… for all I know some of the ones that died (Power Pack, Dazzler, etc) have their own titles again…
“Atari Force” anyone? It started out as a small pamphlet-size comic in Atari 2600 video games (I have a couple of those – but the games were lost a long time ago) and later became a 20 issue DC series.
Charles Dixon/Judith Hunt’s “Evangeline” (A nun with a gun… I’ve seen occasional rumors over the years that it might become a movie…)
“Aristocratic Extraterrestrial Time Traveling Thieves” – These are the kind of things that would now-a-days be web-comics.
Okay… it’s been over 15 years so I might have this wrong… it looks like I was buying a lot of the “Secret Wars” (Marvel) crossover issues (from around 87-88 ) of a number of titles I would not otherwise read. I am surprised I only have one “Thor” comic…
