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a childhood hobby Almost two decades ago I started collecting comic books and I don't think that I'll be stopping any time soon. Although some people might find it odd that a grown man of thirty would still collect comic books, I would be quick to point out that most people still do something that they started as a child. For some people this might be playing sports or music, but for me it was reading comic books. Yes, I read other more sophisticated things, but comic books still have a certain appeal to me that I can't find anywhere else. So rather than doing anything too taxing most of today was spent going over my collection. What started out years ago as a weekly walk to the local bookstore became a great hobby for me. Oh, over the years I have stopped collecting now and then, but eventually I would wander back into a comic book store to see what I had missed while I was gone and there have been many changes from price increases to improved printing techniques. Through time trends and creators have come and gone, but the characters still endure and that is the part that I enjoy the most. Here is something that has worked it way into American culture over time and continues to evolve. Besides if countless people can mourn the loss of Peanuts, I think that it is okay to have some sentimental feelings about other fictional characters. Yes, there have been times that I have said that comic books are soap operas for men, but a little escapism isn't the worst thing in the world either. Comic books don't aspire to be high art, but what they do they do well. For many readers the element of nostalgia plays a big part in why they read them, but for me it is interesting to see new people trying to push the medium into new directions. Sometimes they fail miserably, but once in a while something new will come along that truly works. I should also mention that I probably don't see a comic book in the same way that a person off of the street would. To me the garish colors or strange names go right past me almost as if they didn't exist. Over time I've come to understand the certain conventions that comic books have to meet and waiting for something that breaks outside of those boundaries is part of why I read them. Now almost twenty years later I have amassed a collection approaching two thousand books, which considering the amount of time that I have been collecting isn't that many books. After some quick math, one hundred a year translates into two a week, which really isn't that many and I should add that I definitely consider myself more of a reader than a collector. My goal isn't to own the most expensive titles on the market or make a profit on them. I just love the medium.
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