We’ve got guests coming next week — guests we actually want to visit, but thank you for wondering — and so we’ve resolved to make further accommodation here at our hostel-in-waiting. Yes, we have… let me count … six bedrooms, or potential bedrooms, but one is my writing room (and so, no, not a bedroom), and one we still call “the office” although it was originally a master bedroom when built in the 1950s, as it also has a bathroom with shower. Our daughter moved to the unfashionable state of Florida last year, but our two sons are still with us, so that fills three bedrooms. Accordingly, we decided to house my great-nephew in our daughter’s former room, and to clean out the “office” (more properly, the “former office”) and turn it back into an en suite suitable for our much-loved friend from college.

In addition to bookcases stuffed with books, and one of the computer stations, what else is in the “office”? Part of my comic-book collection. By part, I mean about 20 long boxes. I know what you’re thinking:  only 20? That’s what I would think too. But there are another 40 in the garage. And two upstairs in my writing room, for… um… reference. And half of one in the master bedroom; those are the comic books I’m actively reading. So that puts me at owning about 19,000 comic books.

Such a small number for a grown man.

When I look at them, frequently all I can see is the ones I don’t have. Can you believe that I’m still missing a few issues of Herbie? I can’t.

A couple of years ago, my eldest son recently read my entire run of Lucifer, which I testify to you is gobsmackingly good and nowhere near as dopey as the idiotic television show theoretically derived from it. (Hey, let’s take the former angel of light, the Macchiavellian schemer with his own side of things as portrayed in the comic book, and in the TV show have him solve cases for the homicide bureau. ‘Cause, why not?) The entire run of Lucifer consists of a 3-issue miniseries, and a 75-issue main run, providing in all one of the comic-book-reading highlights of my life. In reading this run, my son said said, “Hey, you know you’re missing one issue.” “No, I’m not,” I countered cleverly. He said, “No, you are.” Then he showed me. There was indeed a gap in the run. … You have no idea how frequently I’ve thought about that gap in the run since this exchange of two years ago. … I know I bought all 78 issues, and read all 78 issues. This means that, somewhere within those 19,000 comic books in those 60ish boxes, there’s a misfiled issue of Lucifer. At some point, I will pay someone, one of my offspring, or maybe someone else — maybe even the great-nephew who’s coming to visit — to look carefully through all of those and find it, goddammit, and put it where it belongs.

Today, sizing up the available space in the “office” collection of comic books, and eyeing the “garage” space of comic books, I decided I’d pare back a little. I mean, common sense, right? Why did I have a few issues of Transformers? Channeling Marie Kondo, I figured that I could probably identify 600-1800 comic books that I could part with, if I could pull all the comics out simultaneously, cull the runts quickly with no further thought, thank them for their service to me and wishe them well in their next life, and if they were mostly from the 1990s when the artwork was truly abominable and the stories unmentionable.

The good news:  Eight hours of hauling 60-pound boxes of comics inside from room to room, and outside to a staging area, and I’m halfway done. And it’s only 7 p.m.!

I approached my two sons and asked if either wanted to put the soon-to-be sacrificed comic books on eBay or Local5 or whatever the hot selling site is these days. One begged off, having been down this route before; the other looked at me and, sizing up my state of mind, took pity and agreed to do it if he could keep half the revenue or even all the revenue. Once he signed on (although the specifics aren’t finalized), I started lugging all the comics destined for a new home outside under the carport (“out of sight; out of mind”). As the number of comics there grew, and as I threw out comments like, “This is the entire Ed Brubaker run of Captain America!” and I shed inward tears, I heard myself lapse into self-pitying and aggrandizing comments about how brave and noble I was to sacrifice even one — and look how many I was willing to forsake! My wife, inspired by my actions and now emptying an entire Honda Odyssey load of undesirable detritus from our garage into our van, knew to say nothing. My elder son looked at the comics I was putting out and said, “You certainly have enough of them!” He caught my glare and then quickly corrected himself:  “Well… you certainly have a lot of them.” I said quietly, “There are never enough.”

So, now, I’ll be parting with 600 of them. I’ve already got those set aside, and I’m not thinking about them any more. (Well, maybe those Brubaker issues of Captain America. They were so good!) This isn’t the first time I’ve sold comic books, God knows; I’ve been selling comic books in one way or other, professionally or just as part of, um, late spring cleaning, for 45 years.

But here’s what I think about:  Imagine if I hadn’t been selling them for 45 years. Imagine if I still had that copy of Avengers #1 handed down to me from 1963. Or that precious copy of Fantastic Four #1 that I bought for $85 in 1976. Now I could probably buy a house — even in overpriced Los Angeles! — just with those two! I also had all the early Amazing Spider-Man comics, and Journey Into Mystery with Thor, and at one time or another probably every key Silver Age comic from Marvel and DC. If I still had all those, can you imagine what they’d be worth? … No, not in money. To own! The good news:  I’m going to Comic-Con in two weeks; maybe I can get some more of these back.

In the meantime — interested in 600 or so awesome comics? Let me know!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 4th, 2019 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Comics, Theatre. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.