30-Day Comic Book Challenge - Week 2

Variety is the spice of life, but not really in this case...

1. Batman #152

2. X-Men #3

3. X-Men #4

4. Batman #153

5. X-Force #4

6. X-Men #5

7. X-Men #6

Well, I at least read two books that weren’t X-Men titles. I never said that I would read a variety of books. I really just need to get through the backlog.

This project has given me some insights on comic book fandom and collecting. Not necessarily new insights, but something that I wanted to write about, at least.

As I was reading those 2 Batman issues this week, I was thinking about how the current writer, Chip Zdarsky, is ending his run with issue #157, only a few away, which may be w good jumping off point. I have stated before in The Alfred Letters that I have been reading Batman comics pretty regularly for almost 15 years, and I still consider myself a rookie, since the character has been around for almost a century. And it may be time to Marie Kondo this one if it’s not giving me a lot of pleasure. But still, I have been collecting Batman for awhile, and I feel like I should go on, since it is the lone DC title I read. However, these books are taking up a lot of space. So much that I had to move some to the basement long boxes, and in doing so, I decided to rummage through these last 153 issues and see if I actually had them all. And I was not surprised, but a little annoyed, that I was missing two of them.

The current Batman run began in 2016, and I bought issue #1 of that series because I had been buying the previous one. And the one before that. Back then, I was making weekly sojourns to a local comic book shop. As long as you didn’t miss too many Wednesdays and they didn’t sell out, you had a good chance of getting every issue of a series. However, since 2016, I have moved, and all the local comic shops I used to frequent have closed. I started getting all my comics through mail order and that has mostly worked out well, but there have been a few times where stuff has gotten missed. And in this case, the misses were Batman #96 and #145.

Now, two out of 153 isn’t bad. And most people would look at two comics they missed, one from 4 years ago and another from about 8 months ago and think, “Well, I went on reading it, and the world kept on a’spinning.” But comic book geeks don’t always work that way. Some of us are completionists, and some of us would like to one day sell full runs of a series, and if that person was missing two issues, it may cut into the price. That person is me.

Batman #96 is part of The Joker War Saga. Click on the cover above to buy and I get a small kickback

Will I ever sell these 150+ issues of Batman in one fell swoop? Who knows? An even more important question may be, “Will I ever read them again?” But again, that is not how comic book collectors think. We’re a strange lot, and missing two issues of a run of Batman just doesn’t sit well, whether you plan to read them, sell them or just keep them in your basement for the next several years. But let’s face it; it’s not like I have every issue of Batman, because that’s over 900. And that does not include Detective Comics, The Dark Knight, and the various other books that he has starred in. So, the most important question might be, “Why are you talking about this?”

I edned up buying the two missing issues on eBay from the same seller to save on shipping (A seller called Gotham Newstand and Books, of course.) They were only about $10 for both, and I told myself that they are there is I ever do want to sell the entire series. But unless I really need extra money to pay the mortgage one day (and that might happen. I don’t have a lot of faith in the incoming adminsitartion.), I probably won’t sell this run of Batman. Mostly because it would kind of make me a little sad.

I do read all my comics at least once. Then most of them sit in a box, untouched by anyone until I sell them or move them to another box. Comic book collectors are weird like that. I can’t convince myself that they are an investment anymore. And I admit it borders on hoarding. But sometimes, it just comforts me to know that they are there.

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