I
was asked if I had any monetarily valuable comics in my collection.
I started collecting in the mid-1970s, so I don't have much
before then. The bulk of my purchases were made during the
explosion of black & white comics in the late 1980s. Most of
my purchases since then have been from DC's Vertigo line. The
prices for comics have dropped over the last decade as younger
folks are now into computer games, but I'd say because of the movie
tie-ins,
Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles is probably my most valuable series.
Notable
series in a roughly chronological order would be the
Jim
Starlin's
Captain Marvel, the
Chris
Claremont/John Byrne X-Men, Claremont teamed
up with
Paul
Smith a few years later to produce even more classic stuff
and worked with
John Bolton
to do some really beautifully-drawn stories
on past events in the X-Men's lives. Jim Shooter and John Byrne
produced a classic three-issue battle between the Avengers (No relation
to
John
Steed & Emma Peel) and
Count Nefaria
(Yeah, some of
the names used are pretty wacky).
George
Perez drew some great Avengers
issues around that time and
Walt Simonson
did an awesome series on
Thor.
Yummy
Fur was a really fascinatig series, Los Brothers
Hernandez started
Love
& Rockets, Fantagraphics put out a really
interesting series called
Critters,
the rennaissance of DC Comics began
with
Alan
Moore's Swamp Thing and
Watchmen
and continued with
Neil
Gaiman's Sandman (which produced the above-mentioned Lucifer as a
spin-off) and
The
Dreaming.
Legion of
Superheroes has very
consistently been a very good series and the three series
Desert Peach,
Strangers
in Paradise and
Cerebus
are all must-reads.
The
rug is from Tunisia. About $70, I paid for it with a combination
of American dollars, Italian lira, French francs and Tunisian
currency.
And
as one can see, my reading tables get pretty darn full. I have to
clear them off and store things or throw stuff away on a regular basis.
