And now from the "Everything Old Is New Again" category: Yesterday I drove over to a comic shop I hadn't been to in nearly ten years when I sold just about my entire collection of comics. It was a day of mixed emotions: I knew I had to make space in our new house and six long boxes of comics were just taking up too much room. Yet I hated to part with them. Some of them I'd collected since I was twelve years old, Silver-Age Spider-Man comics from as early as #18, Fantastic Four issues from the early #30s and more.
But yesterday I went to pick up comics for Free Comic Book Day at the library. I got in a conversation with the owner, the same guy I'd sold my comics to ten years ago. He remembered me and the transaction. I'll never forget that day ten years ago when I left and he'd said "When you're ready to get back into it (collecting comics), stop on in." I told him that, yes, I am back into it now in a manner of speaking, but I'm mainly buying graphic novels rather than individual comics, since they are much easier to store in bookcases.
"Tell you what," he says. "Any graphic novel you like - take 50% off!"
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah, I'm serious."
"Okay."
So I pick up a hardcover edition of Batman: Arkham Asylum, a graphic novel I'd parted with in the collection I'd sold him ten years ago, one that has gone on to become something of a classic.
I left and got to the library and opened the book. I looked at it closely. This graphic novel has been reprinted many times, but this certainly looked like a first edition. Actually it looked like my first edition, the one I'd originally bought in a comic shop in Germantown, Tennessee in 1989 and sold to this guy in 2000. I didn't write my name in books in those days, but I did have a really stupid habit of putting labels carrying my name/address/phone number in the endpages. Sure enough, I saw sticker residue on the front endpage.
This was my graphic novel.
And at half-price it only cost me $12.50.
Let me tell you, it was worth every cent.
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