Sunday, February 18, 2007

What up

I think at this point I've more or less explained what that post from the other day was all about to the folks who asked. Let us all put that behind us now, shall we?

I learned an important lesson this week regarding my expectations of my own life, and, I think, in keeping my ears and eyes open when it comes to the big decisions.

In less exciting life lessons, I also learned that the comic store is going to do everything their power not to give you any money for your comics when you go to resell back issues. The good news on this is that I held onto a lot of my Spider-Man comics, so those didn't just disappear on me. I also still have my runs on X-Men and Uncanny X-Men. And more closet space. But I will never, ever try to resell comics at the comic shop. I guess I don't mind too much that I practically gave away the comics I gave away, as I had no plans for reading them ever again, and was pretty certain nobody was going to be that interested in reading them, either.

But, yeah, the whole thing left a sort of bad taste in my mouth. I can't say my tastes are really that much more refined today than they were when I bought a lot of those comics in the last twelve years or so, but I was given some good tips by my Comic Shop owner/manager in PHX. His advice: Pick one thing you're going to collect, focus on that, and if you manage to collect all of those, great. Then you can move on. Now, this applies for purchase of back-issues and less for purchase of current titles. Obviously if I buy Extreme Combat Rats #1, it doesn't mean I should buy every issue of Extreme Combat Rats. But it does mean that if I am to "build" a collection, it's best to have long runs ona title. There is, basically, no advice for what to do with your copies of Extreme Combat Rats numbers 1 -4 that you purchased, but gave up on, and then saw was cancelled with issue 13. It's unlikely anyone will ever really want those.

(Although there will be someone out there who will set up an Extreme Combat Rats fan site, possibly with their own fan art and fan fiction.)

What I did get was some store credit to Austin Books, with which I picked up the Invincible Ultimate Collection Vol. 1, as per JimD's recommendation. And JimD was right. Invincible doesn't necessarily bring a lot new to the superhero genre, nor even really the Teen Superhero genre. Instead, the series takes the concept and simply chooses to execute on some fairly well worn ideas extremely well. In fact, a forward thinking movie producer would find a way to turn the first 13 issues into a very popular 2-2.5 hour movie.

Saturday jason auditioned me for our new, non-existent band. Jamie played key boards, I played the bass and Jason played drums. Sigmund showed up for the end and played the trombone, and thus was born: Sigmund and the Steans Monster (and Andy). Look for us to be filling stadiums next summer, as people rock out to our hit "If I was a Fish".

Last night we headed to Jeff and Keora's place over on Enfield. Apparently Jeff and Keora live in a quad-apartmenet building tucked amongst some obscenely expensive homes in one of Austin's older, monied neighborhoods. I do not know why, but their rent is insanely reasonable. A while back I kept asking Jeff why he didn't move, but I will never ask him that question again.

Anyway, Jason just called and I think we're headed for food, coffee and maybe the dog park.

4 comments:

RHPT said...

Oh, fine. I've put down GIRLS and added Invincible Vol. 1 to my reading list. Happy?

Anonymous said...

Well, actually, if you are getting the trades and not the ultimate set the League bought, then you will need to get Volumes 1 through 3.

Michael Corley said...

I have a friend up here who spent half a day packing up all of his memorobilia (14" chain saw massacare figure in the box, that sort of thing) because a local collectible shot told him he'd give him $3,000 for it (as you can imagine, this is a big collection). When he got there the guy tried to give him three HUNDRED dollars. Heh. He still has a mighty fine collection.

I struggled with selling all of mine recently, but at the end of the day, I don't have all that many and they aren't worth all that much, so I'm keeping them.

The League said...

In this era of eBay, etc... it's probably a lot more profitable to sell a lot of that stuff yourself, if you're willing to put in the effort. I've had mixed luck. I did okay selling Star Wars stuff before I left PHX, but I also understand that the comic shop doesn't want stock they can't sell. So why SHOULD they give you any money for it?

In the future, I'll do it myself.

I do think the underlying lesson is that it's sort of a myth to believe your comics or collectibles are going to be worth ANYTHING, especially to people who own shops and play the game every day.