{"id":2570,"date":"2016-09-06T10:37:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-06T17:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=2570"},"modified":"2024-01-09T10:40:53","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T18:40:53","slug":"maggies-world-044-its-collectible-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/maggies-world-044-its-collectible-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie\u2019s World 044: It\u2019s Collectible! Why?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maggie\u2019s World 044: It\u2019s Collectible! Why?<\/h1>\n\n\n
Maggie Thompson<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Collecting for me began when I first bought comics in the 1940s. The challenge then was clear: If you didn\u2019t buy it now, the issue could be gone by the next time you visited the newsstand. If you didn\u2019t hang onto it, you couldn\u2019t read it a month later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was that you bought what you liked\u2014and you kept it. And what you kept was the foundation for (yes) your collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Compulsion for Completeness<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Which is to say that \u201cGotta catch \u2019em all!\u201d is not unique to Pok\u00e9mon. It took me decades after its release to find a copy of Dell Four Color<\/em> #140.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the reason I wasn\u2019t able to add the 1947 issue of Walt Kelly\u2019s Easter with Mother Goose<\/em> to my Kelly collection in the first place was that Mom was distracted, what with giving birth to my sister at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it reinforced my obsession with haunting the comics racks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heck, in 1955, E.C.\u2019s Extra!<\/em> #1 never did go on sale in Meadville, Pennsylvania. It wasn\u2019t decades before I acquired a copy\u2014but it did take a few years. You remember things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, today I\u2019ve almost completed my collection of Air Fighters Comics<\/em> (1941-1945) and its continuation as Airboy Comics<\/em> (1945-1953). And I didn\u2019t even begin looking for copies until the 1960s, because the series wasn\u2019t one I followed in its initial run. So: No nostalgia in that case\u2014but, yes, I\u2019m still a completist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These resonate with my nostalgia. Your mileage is certain to vary. Because (as I said): nostalgia.\u00a0Animal Comics<\/em>\u00a0#26 (April 1947) \u00a9 2016 Okefenokee Glee & Perloo Inc.\u00a0Little Lulu<\/em>\u00a0#7 (January 1949) \u00a9 2016 Classic Media, Inc.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Speaking of Nostalgia<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

By today\u2019s super-slick, high-production-values standards, some may decide that several of the comics I collected were pretty crude. After all, my collecting began when I was 4 and a half (and, yes, I do still have some of those treasures to this day). I\u2019m willing to allow that super-sophisticates may question my early tastes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, dagnab it, I still find those tales rewarding\u2014and they have the additional glow of remembrance of enjoying them as a young reader. Was I uncritical in the 1940s? Hey, I had 10\u00a2\u2014and only 10\u00a2\u2014to spend every week. That can make even a little kid pretty doggoned critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Preservation and Scholarship<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

About that matter of completeness: How will you know your collection is complete until you know what might be missing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Investing? My guideline has always been to collect what I like. Sometimes, it does pay off.\u00a0Showcase<\/em>\u00a0#19 (March 1959) \u00a9 2016 DC Comics;\u00a0X-Men<\/em>\u00a0#135 (July 1980) \u00a9 2016 Marvel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jerry Bails and Bob Overstreet joined forces decades ago to compile a listing of all the comics they could identify in the course of years of research. Before they released that first price guide, I watched Jerry going through every dealer\u2019s stock at a convention, noting details when he came across an issue he hadn\u2019t seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think that was easy? There were errors in publishers\u2019 information, skipped numbers, advertised issues that never appeared, and so on. And, of course, on-sale dates weren\u2019t the dates printed in the issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding to the challenge: There are series to which few collectors yearn to give precious storage room. Harvey\u2019s Little Dot<\/em> ran for 164 issues from September 1953 to April 1976, but the Grand Comics Database has only managed to post indexes of 68 of them, as I write this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And comic books are fragile. People have long been used to see comics as durable enough to survive rough handling by kids, after all. But newsprint? It\u2019s not sturdy\u2014which makes it just too bad for students of the art form. So it was that simple accumulations of comics quickly began to lead to appropriate bags and boxes to save the flimsy magazines from decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s It Worth?<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Jerry and Bob turned their indexing project into an ongoing institution by adding price notations to their information. Given the fragility of comic books, it made more and more sense to focus on condition\u2014and placing a higher value on those in better shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bonus that Jerry looked for was that publicizing prices would keep people from throwing out their comic books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, most of us didn\u2019t buy comics as an investment. Whereas we did pick through all the copies of an issue on the newsstand to find the very best one, we did it because we wanted the best one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tried to fight the idea of comics as no more than financial investments, when we edited Comics Buyer\u2019s Guide<\/em>. But let\u2019s face it: It\u2019s an element for some collectors. And people to this day really do resist the idea of throwing out comics. Thanks, Jerry!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Entertainment<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Oh, well, if you\u2019re going to be picky, sure. We collect comics because they provide an incredible variety of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heck, comics are so much fun that some people who read comics as kids decided to carve out careers in writing and\/or drawing comics. I bet you can name a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wow, a dynamic duo of kitsch covers! We\u2019ve got fat-shaming and stupid dames in just one season! The\u00a0Lois Lane<\/em>\u00a0series featured a wealth of such gems. (November 1965 and February 1966: How many bought them for laughs?\u00a0Lois<\/em>\u00a0was the third-best-selling title in 1965 at 556,091 and fourth best-selling in 1966 at 530,808.) \u00a9 2016 DC Comics<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Finally, There\u2019s Kitsch<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

I first came across the term \u201ckitsch\u201d decades ago in Gilbert Highet\u2019s 1954 essay collection A Clerk of Oxenford<\/em>. Defining \u201ckitsch\u201d as a Russian word meaning \u201cvulgar showoff,\u201d he wrote that it meant \u201canything that took a lot of trouble to make and is quite hideous.\u201d (You may know the name \u201cMcGonagall\u201d from the Harry Potter novels, but Highet paid tribute then to William Topaz McGonagall [1825-1902] for poems that are acknowledged to be among the worst ever.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas I contend that terrible comic books were among the causes of decades of attacks on the art form, even dreadful comics do have their devotees. And, now that a flood of excellent comics stories has swamped the idiotic plotlines that were once commonplace, I find enjoyment today in issues that used to irritate me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mind you, Don and I did maintain a few issues in envelopes we labeled \u201cHorrible Examples.\u201d And every now and then\u2014though I no longer label them as such\u2014I\u2019ll hold onto an outstanding representative. (It\u2019s a safe bet that one of the rarest Marvel comics ever, for example, was the four-issue run of Street Poet Ray<\/em>. The black-and-white 1990 series consisted of poems by Michael Redmond illustrated by Junko Hosizawa, and I\u2019m assured that print runs were low. For a reason.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of the Above<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Harvey Pekar said, \u201cThere\u2019s no limit to how good the pictures can be, and there\u2019s no limit to how good the words can be.\u201d Which may be a simple enough answer to the question of why people collect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, of course, I have hardly exhausted the topic of comics collecting. For example, there\u2019s probably someone out there who maintains a stack of Sunday newspaper comics pages in order to have a source of cheap wrapping paper on hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever their reasons may be, it\u2019s collectors who have brought the art form to its current level of nerd appreciation. Thanks to all of them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maggie\u2019s World by Maggie Thompson appears the first Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Maggie Thompson<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n