Issue 3 - The c Word

I was out of comics for eight years. Evidently, the world changed a lot while I was gone. For the last three years, I was blissfully ignornant of the changes until a few months ago. Totally unaware of the undercurrent of prejudice that lay beneath a thin veneer of respect for the customer. I was going around town using the c word. Unprovoked and without hesitation it would from my mouth. I didn't realize that it would cause any controversy, but evidently people don't like you to tell them that you are a collector.

My first experience with the collector prejudice was when I visited a new retail store that an experienced comic book retailer had opened to expand beyond the web. I knew of this Comic Book Shop Owner (CBSO), but I had never personally met him. I introduced myself and explained that I planned to open a store to grow beyond my web-based business. We talked for a while, when the question that often comes up with comic book fans, are you a collector? It seemed a fairly innocent question. I've known people who have an unfocused approach to purchasing and reading comics. I wouldn't necessarily call them collectors. I told him that I was indeed a comic book collector with over 5000 comics in my collection. This evidently opened the door for him to tell me everything that was wrong with collecting comic books. He described customers of his who asked for special lighting to view the comics because they couldn't tell the condition of the comic properly under flourescent lighting. He talked about how collectors almost killed the comic book market. He explained that he did not collect comic books. Evidently, the act of keeping the comics issue after issue from the same title is called collecting, but the person who does that is not a collector according to him. "There is the act of collecting and then there is a collector." It seemed like he was confusing comic book speculation with comic book collecting. Not every collector gets overly anal about their books, but I think that most would like to have their books in new condition. I'm sure if you bought a car you would want to make sure that it didn't have dents in the side before you bought it. Why should buying a comic book that you want to keep nice be any different?

So I thought that this was an isolated issue of a disgruntled CBSO, until I stopped by a second comic book shop. The owner had been out of comics for some time and didn't claim to have collected comics since he was a kid. We were talking about what it takes to open a comic book shop, when he asked the question, "Are you a collector?". I said yes. He told me that comic book collectors ultimately fail at owning comic book shops. I thought that this was a huge generalization. Having at least some anecdotal evidence, I seemed to find that most comic book shops that fail didn't have a plan or business plan before they opened. It really didn't seem to matter what comic book collecting experience they had previously. He was a nice enough guy, but it concerned me that comic book collectors had a bad rep.

So time went on, I opened the store. I started to get people coming in. I noticed that I got a lot of people asking if I was hiring anyone part-time. After getting quite a few people asking me about working part-time, I figured I might as well see what qualifications some of these people had. So I ask them, "What do you collect?". I know I'm making assumptions that people asking for part-time work actually have an interest in comics and read comics on an ongoing basis. After talking to a few of them, I kept getting the answer, "No" when asked if they collect. I thought this was really odd since they seemed to have an interest in comic books. One day when a teenager asked me about part-time work, so I asked him if he collected. "No, I don't, but my dad collects Master of Kung Fu." I decided to question him further. It turns out that he likes comics a lot. He likes video games based on comics. Most of his tastes are mainstream. He reads comics. He has a bunch at home, but he isn't a collector. It just didn't make any sense.

It comes down to this. Somewhere down the line, the train jumped the tracks. Collector became synomous with freak or weirdo, but only with comic books it seems. I know Beanie Baby collectors, Stamp collectors, Baseball Card collectors, Antique collectors, Soup Label collectors and Vintage Car collectors. I've never heard them discussed in the way that I have by my fellow comic book retailers and closet comic book collectors have about comic book collectors. It's gotta end. We can no longer accept the dismissive looks, the heavy signs or the rolling eyes that reveal comic book collector bigotry. I'm willing to lead the charge. I'm willing to raise the flag. I'm willing to shout my battlecry "I'm a comic book collector and I'm proud of it". Who's with me?