Why do we (I) have this drive to collect rectangles of pulp wood and ink?

[bminor]

I am in the grocery store, checking out. Next to the register I have to pick up the Archie Digest and look it over. (You know he got married last year!)

Go into a antique store, gotta ask if they have any for sale...

When I was a teenager, one of the questions I would always ask a new acquaintance, after I knew them a day or two, was "Hey, got any old comics laying around?"

Why do I have this drive within in me to acquire and read these things?

You know it is almost like a disease or something. It is an obsession.

I have come close over the years to have to sell them, or at least sell some of them. But have always found a way to address the monetary crisis, and save the collection.

I could boil it down to: 

enjoy great stories
enjoy great art

b.

 :-\p.s. Please excuse my rambling...

[Yoc]

Hehe, sometimes it can feel like an addiction for sure B.
I like to think 'at least with scans I don't have a dozen long boxes filling a room.... but then I see pics of JVJ's attic and I'm jealous too.

Hang in there brother.

[cimmerian32]

I chalk it up to the fact that we live in an ugly, random world of petty people, greedy corporations, and violent chaos, but, in our collecting focus, we find clarity, order, and beauty.  Clarity, order and beauty are things you just can't get enough of, resulting in a steady rate of acquisitions.

Well...  that's my justification, anyway

[Yoc]

I think a therapist would have a field day with us Cimm.
Mix in some OCD with it as well.  But I agree you meet a nice class of people in our hobby!

-Yoc

[John C]

It's not in context at all, but I'm reminded of Tom Lehrer's "Lobachevsky."  "Please always to be calling it 'research.'"  I mean, you never know when you'll find that one piece of information in a comic that will make or break your career, right?

...uhm, right...?

[Yoc]

There's an awful lot of teachers, scientists, librarians, etc that collect comics.
Is there a connection?  Doc Wirtham would say that's enough evidence. 

[narfstar]

There's an awful lot of teachers, scientists, librarians, etc that collect comics.

I resemble that remark. With me it is the feel I get. It is a momentary relapse to being ten again. It hits me with SA books but the medium itself revives me.

[builderboy]

I could boil it down to:  

enjoy great stories
enjoy great art

b- that doesn't explain the ones that I still obsessively collect that have BAD stories and writing!  Which...I STILL ENJOY READING!  Go figure.  I think it has something to do with what Narf said...that ability to transport us to a simpler time.

Oh, and I am WAY with whoever said the OCD thing.  Why does owning EVERY...SINGLE...ISSUE of a particular run give me such satisfaction?  I am sure it is that it scratches the OCD itch that I otherwise might not even know that I had.

Strange stuff, this collector mentality thing!  25 years of marriage, and its practically the only thing that gets me into hot water with my wife.  

[Roygbiv666]

...
Strange stuff, this collector mentality thing!  25 years of marriage, and its practically the only thing that gets me into hot water with my wife.  

Then you must be doing something right.

[narfstar]

My wife and I hit 30 years in a week. I buy cheap and it is mainly the space my books take up that is more the problem.

[builderboy]

it is definitely the space issue!  She loves a neat house, and my piles o boxes and books drive her MAD.

Congrats on 30 years, narf!

[Geo (RIP)]

Strange stuff, this collector mentality thing!  25 years of marriage, and its practically the only thing that gets me into hot water with my wife.  

Reminder to self: Don't let the wife read this, I have enough problems with the books I now have, don't have to add fuel to the fire with her on this.

Geo

[misappear]

I don't have more than maybe twenty actual paper comics left.  i've a silly amount of digital comics, which I've loaded on to DVDs. Thousands and thousands of books taking up the area of a shoebox. I suppose I'd prefer to own paper, but the expense!!  Hopefully, the DVDs won't disintegrate in my lifetime.

--Dave

[JVJ (RIP)]

Strange stuff, this collector mentality thing!  25 years of marriage, and its practically the only thing that gets me into hot water with my wife.  

As I mentioned last week, bb,
Karen and I just celebrated 40 years and NOT ONCE have we ever had an argument about comics. She won't let me keep comics in the Living Room or the Kitchen, other than that, no sweat. But she is very happy with my choices of art, with the aforementioned Jeff Jones statues, Frazetta, Stout, Vess, Wildey (and Gerome, Lynd Ward, William Holman Hunt, and Harry Rountree) in our Living Room.

She's a very special lady.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[builderboy]

You are one lucky guy, Jim...in more ways than I can count. Karen, the collection, the associations you have made...you name it.  While I am highly familiar with the first list of artists (some of my all time fave comic artists, no less), I will have to do some research on the second list.  I suspect they will knock my socks off, given the context of the list.

My comics never make it to the living room, either. They fill the two rooms of the third floor, and also crowd the room I use as my scanning/drawing studio.  Occasionally, a select handful make it to my night stand.

A lot in shelving units, a lot in comic long boxes. I am torn...do I leave them exposed to light and potential fading, or put them in a box, where nibbling bugs are more likely to attack? Ah, what a quandry!