Issues and Comics

We all have issues. Anyone who says they don’t have issues about something, if not everything, is LYING. The idea of a perfectly sane and normal person is a fabrication created by people who want us to conform to some ideal they cherish. Like a model’s figure or 6-pack abs – the mythical commonly assumed definition of sanity is something we all think we want in a partner; but in reality, unless you want to form a long term relationship with someone who constantly obsesses about their weight, works out, or has the weirdly insane notion that they must conform to the idea of sanity and is constantly in therapy or on pills to do it, you really don’t want any of those things.

No, most people have a wonderful and unique collection of issues: stories that shape who they became and what they strive for; and images that color their aesthetics and ethics: ideas that all things are measured against. A lot of people collect the same comics. For example, many people have a complete run of “Problems With Parental Figure”, some of those have also collected the “I Am a Disappointment” series starring the same character, while others have short runs and individual issues of “He/She Was a Whackjob” about that character; complete with shocking art that they project onto every other image of a character like that one. Sometimes their love or hatred for those earlier series leads to longstanding subscriptions to “Codependency Teamup” or “Non-Comittment Stories”. But those are usually picked up by the more deeply committed collectors. Many people just pick up an issue here or there of “Money Control Woes”, “Christmas is Depressing”, “Annoying Co-Workers”, etc…

Some people have nothing in their life but their collection. They bag and board them in an attempt to maintain the near-mint status. They keep multiple issues: one for reading with gloves on and the other for its “value”; and that one is never opened so that it is never sullied with eye-tracks… Some people go so far as to obtain slabbed issues: graded and hermetically sealed units of future speculative value. They pay professionals to tell them how much it’s worth. They aren’t interested in the story or the art or how it relates to their life or the world around them.

Other people, the far healthier ones mentally, have small or vast collections that they read and appreciate that they keep in sometimes orderly piles or boxes. They aren’t concerned about maintaining them for posterity, their future value, their perceived value by others, or giving, trading, or selling them to anyone. Their issues are just a unique and colorful – and integrated – part of their life.

I keep my comics bagged or sleeved to preserve them so that I will be able to read them later and enjoy the work the artists involved put into them.

As for my issues…

I catalog and sort them. I re-read them. I study them in comparison to one another. I analyze similarities in my favorite artists’ work. I happily root through older boxes until I discover series I didn’t remember collecting. I see meaning in them: an overall pattern to my life: an indication about what series I might pick up next – about what series I want to collect next.

And I’m a writer. Of course I like to share them.