I really liked this article on the essentials of comic collecting. While I don’t necessarily agree with every one, there are more than one items worth noting:
10. Several Tintin AlbumsI think Herge’s work for kids of all ages is just great to have around; they are foundational comics and provide a whole way of seeing the world through the comics form that’s become ubiquitous in popular visual arts. In fact, I’d say Herge’s way of making comics is so ubiquitous that you forget how fun it is to see it for the first time.
15. At Least One Comic Book From When You First Started Reading Comic Books
Because comic books are read in a way that we invest a lot of ourselves in the telling, because they’re visual in nature, and because for generations they were among the only art forms available for a child to easily own, they can be powerful nostalgic items. It’s always great to have a few comics around that you either remember reading or simply recall wanting more than anything in the world. You may be surprised by how much of your comics reading since has been shaped by those feelings.
Some for me serve as suggestions worthy of examining, but would break most banks – especially mine.
I agree with the point of buying lots of alternative titles. I was a voracious sampler of edgy late eighties and early nineties small run comics, but never bought too many runs of any one title.
I have bought a few of the comics that turned me onto the idiom in the mid-seventies over the years, where the original went MIA somewhere between getting into Star Wars and discovering girls.
And no, I don’t meticulously bag them.
I read the hell out of them and it shows.
Found at Boing Boing.
