My first bit of luck with the comics came from the aptly named Angel, who runs my favorite local toy store, A Nu Toy Store.
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She wanted a comics section in the shop. I wanted to move comics out of my home. We had a deal.
I rapidly put aside whatever seemed valuable—a few 80s Alan Moore Swamp Thing (see, Pat, early training does pay off); an original Watchmen #12; the #1s, of which there were dozens and dozens; the older items. None seemed older than the late 70s, and very few were even that old.
(So, he’s young, I thought. Maybe ten years younger than me).
I hauled out nearly 400 of the kid-friendliest stuff from the 90s and 2000s—the classic heroes in the freshest covers—for the toy store. One long box—POOF!
Thanks to Angel, I broke even. I had almost 750 comics to left to sell and some hopes of finding a treasure.
I placed the two boxes in plain sight in the living room, expecting…intending…ok, fine, in denial about my desire to start the real work of organizing. They became an impromptu coffee table.
I gave a couple copies of Wonder Woman to my friend, the local puppeteer, dancer, and storyteller Jill Muchnick Liflander. They made her happy.
Really, really happy.
By chance, I sold a couple dozen to a recent transplant from Pittsburgh, who came for a table I listed on craigslist and spent an hour oohing and aahing over the Swamp Things, some Whedon-era Buffy, good stuff….I was $30 into the black on my comics venture.
In the meantime, I found myself wondering about the young man—undoubtedly, a man—who gave up literally thousands of comics to Goodwill. The collection—of which I took only three boxes, remember?—could easily, easily, have cost him $10,000. (Average cover price is $3.95; I don’t like to do math, but this one isn’t too hard).
“He’s dead,” I announced to my Man. “He couldn’t have given those up.”
“Maybe he got over it,” The Man tried to soothe me.
“HAH!” I retorted.
“Maybe his mom threw them out. Maybe he fell in love and found someone more important than comics.”
I snorted, scornful, “You don’t know these guys. I do. He’s dead.”
You’ll understand me here: the thought of this young guy’s death depressed rather than motivated me. I’m no teenage Pandora, thoughtlessly jumping into disaster. Opening those boxes again meant traveling into this guy’s comic book ambitions and reveries. I’d be thumbing my way through a pulp version of Being John Malkovich.
Just make Cameron's hair frizzier and blacker and you'll have me.
You can understand why I waited. And you can understand why, in the end, I rushed.
From time to time, I looked up the value of the #1s. According to eBay, everything auction starts at about a third of cover cost, or of “value” as listed in free online resources like Comic Book Realm.
More importantly, though, no one buys. At least, not the stuff I still had. So what if I had a near-mint #1 of JLA-Avengers (2003) and its value is listed at $6?
eBay has ten, all listed at value, and no one’s bidding. Did I really want the long-term commitment of becoming an online purveyor of mostly 90s comics?
No: not my vocation. I simply have a trip to pay for, Friends!
Last Friday, self-loathing and ennui gave way to a rage to do something to make a buck this cold, unprofitable winter.
I pulled stacks of comics from the boxes and laid them on the bed, sorting only by hero, to keep it easy. Within an hour, I was pouring sweat. Comic in hand, I moved with the deliberate slowness of a Tai Chi novice, muttering “Where, where, did those Mutants go?” as I scanned the gridwork of comics that surrounded me on all sides. Brutal.
Does it make your head spin? It should.
On the first day, my younger kid stormed in once, righteously indignant, threw her arms out, and shouted at the chaos on the floors, bookcases, and bed, “What was the matter with this guy? Why did he have so many comics? Didn’t he care about his health?”
I did not laugh. And I did not shout back the obvious, “What about my health? I’m cataloging this mess!” I just felt relieved that the boxes did not contain snuff-porn manga. I need no more of this unknown man’s fantasies in my head.
That night, and all the next day, I ignored my children and my husband in my mania to finish this journey through another man’s obsession. I cataloged every title, date, and issue, including its “value” rather than its going eBay price.
I learned one important thing from my online research: whether their cover price is $.50 or $7.50, most comics are “worth” $3.
Still life with 1/4 of the collection.
A few cover variants were valued far higher than average, and sometimes I was one tantalizing issue away from a title valued at $100. But, on the whole, 3 was the magic number. Yes it is: it’s a magic number.
That's me, screaming with relief to be done cataloging...
Ok, ok, the truth: Spider-Man 2099, vol. 1, no.9 (1993)
Local pride! Check out The New York Times review of Finalmente!
The comics were back in their boxes. The catalog was complete.
I sipped my grappa, determined: Tomorrow, I will sell all of these comics! All, Baby. All.
To be continued….
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