I've been collecting comics since I was roughly six years old. I'm not sure when I started using bags and boards, but it was definitely by the time that I entered high school. In the years before I had a computer, I spent at least a few days every summer carefully writing out the inventory of my collection on legal pads. My adolsenct self only happily went to the grocery store with my mother because my LCS was in the strip mall next to it. I met one of my best friends when we both checked out "Incredible Hulk" graphic novels from our middle-school library.
When I left for college, I was separated from my collection, even as it took up an increasingly large part of my (former) room in my parents' attic. By the time I finished college, I had stopped collecting comics, thanks to the late 1990s era of comics driving me over the edge and a increasing embarrassment in those years before nerd culture became acceptable. Within a few years, I was moving frequently and my collection stayed in my parents' attic, even though it no longer had any active meaning to me. My parents have always happily stored the collection, but my distance from it started to call into question why I still had it. What value did comics in an attic on the other side of the world have to me, particularly since I wasn't even bothering to stay current with the characters?
I resumed collecting a few years ago, and it's been a real joy to discover that the writing and the art in comics have improved dramatically since the last time that I was collecting. But, it meant that I entered a particularly ridiculous phase of collecting: a predominantly large percentage of my collection remained in my parents' attic, but an increasingly large percentage now resided with me, wherever it was that I was. I had a great deal of anxiety over reunifying that resident collection with the attic collection, going so far as taking suitcase full of comics home with me on visits as if I were smuggling drugs. (I would actually frequently be paged in the airport to open up the suitcase, since a bundle of 200 comics wrapped in plastic bags apparently looks "odd" on x-rays.)
I returned to the U.S. in 2012 and spent a year in graduate school, and I was excited about the potential to reunify my two collections at long loast. I moved it the attic collection with me to my new apartment, and it was the first time since I was 18 years old that I was in the same place as it. I spent hours and hours (and hours) going through the collection letter by letter. I made sure every issue had a decent bag and a board, I weeded out second and third printings that had snuck into the main collection. (It's this part that honestly took hours.) I updated my increasingly sophisticated database. It was stressful and enjoyable all at once. By the time I left in the summer of 2013, my collection was a thing of organizational beauty. And, into my parents' attic it would again go.
Insomnia Inspires an Epiphany
I'm once again overseas, and so I once again find myself with a resident collection separate from my larger one. I started considering getting insurance on both collections, particularly as I passed the 5,000-comic mark. When I had nothing else worrying me, I'd wonder how I would store my collection when I eventually returned to the U.S. At some point, I would have to take possession of the attic collection again. I mean, I couldn't exactly have 50+ boxes of comics in the retirement home with me. What would I do? I figured that I'd have to build the sort of specially equipped room like you'd see on some sort of TLC show about organizational challenges. Then, I'd have to, I don't know, die there, cursing the "Clone Saga" with my last breath. In other words, I'd dedicated a lot of energy, money, and time into ammassing 5,000+ comics over the last 32 years and I'd begun to wonder what the future held if current trends continued.
Despite this angst, I never really considered digital comics. To be fair, they weren't really available for most of the three decades that I've collected comics. But, a few weeks ago, I was suffering from a bout of insomnia and realized that I should probably get "Batman Eternal" -- a series that I'm not really enjoying but feel obligated to get -- digitally. I could still read the story, but I didn't really care if I had the comic physically. Given that it's going to generate over four years of a monthly series' issues over the course of its run, it seemed a good place to cut back a bit on storage.
But, this realization begged another question: if I was going to get "Batman Eternal" digitally, why not another upcoming weekly series, "Earth 2: World's End?" I was marginally more excited about that series than I am about "Batman Eternal," but it again seemed a good way to mitigate the problem that weekly comics presented. Suddenly, the floodgates opened. Why not get everything digitally? If I really only cared about the story, did it matter if I had the issues physically? In my gut, I felt like I might want to get "Amazing Spider-Man," since I felt like the physical connection mattered to me. I wanted to be able to read that in the retirement home. But, right now, I have to wait weeks and weeks to get my comics from the Midtown Comics shipping service. Wouldn't it make more sense to go entirely digital?
Where I Am Now?
I've decided to do a trial run on the digital front, getting the weekly comics and comics that I'm thinking about dropping -- like "New Warriors" and "Secret Avengers" -- since I obviously don't care if I have them for posterity. But, I feel like it's all going to fall quickly. I'm not only considering why I'm accruing comics, but I suddenly find myself seeing my collection as a burden. If I were to lose my comics, it would be devastating...but I would be able to pay $9.99 a month for Marvel Unlimited and have access to probably 80 percent of the issues that I lost. It's this sudden inversion of the model -- where back issues had more value than current issues -- that's changed the game. If I no longer have to pay more than a minimal monthly fee to have decades' worth of comics at my fingerprints, why worry about the comics sitting in my parents' attic that I can't read anyway?
On some level, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulder. Digital comics aren't perfect, obviously, though the DRM issues feel like the sort of thing that'll be unlikely to be with us in 20 years, if not ten. (That said, I linked my Comixology account to DC and Marvel, since, if it eventually closes shop, I wanted at least some sort of claim on the comics that I bought.) I will say, though, that I do find myself reeling a bit. If I'm not a collector -- in a physical sense -- what am I? A reader? Do I cound these issues in my spreadsheet? Do they go into a separate spreadsheet? The times, they are a-changin'.
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