So forgetting about storylines and reboots for a minute I thought I’d share a story
Many years ago I was a little kid at a YMCA Day Camp in Connecticut.
Among many of the games we played (or were made to play) we had one that horrifies me that I took part in.
This was a pool race. We went to the smaller of the two swimming pools my Y had and we all got to the edges. in teams. (one team member standing behind the other with the pool divided into four or five racing lanes.
the participants were given a kickboardc with which they were to hold onto as they kicked themselves from one end to the other.
On the kickboardc in front of them was placed an ordinary comic book!
In the water!
On the board!
Unprotected!
There’s a part of me that accepts that a few comics destroyed in such a fashion are/were nothing against the countless copies that still exist out in the world.
But I have to admit my heart breaks a little bit every time I think about that one particular activity.
So what about it? anyone else take part in a comic-destructive activity?
I have nothing even remotely that horrific. The only thing that comes to mind is…:
About 4 years ago I was having to travel for business. During the drive I had stopped and ate at a little diner. Before I left I used the restroom. While I was washing my hands I noticed in the mirror that in the open stall behind me there was a Comic Book laying in the floor. It was in a pathetic state and been there God knows how long. It was just discarded on the floor like garbage.
Before you ask I did get it up and dispose of it so it would not take anymore abuse. “Rest easy good friend, no one can hurt you anymore.”
My dad was cleaning out the garage. Picked up a box, looked in it, saw a bunch of newspapers, threw the box in the garbage.
That night I am trying to find my box of comics, (you know, the one with newspaper around the books to keep them from rolling around?) and I can’t find it.
I ask my dad, and he gives me an “Oh, s#!t” look.
Yeah. He threw away my box of comics. Valued at about $300.
Into. The. Trash.
My mother sold my entire Batman adventures collection at a yard sale while I was off at college. For like, .25 a piece. I had two #12 Harley Quinn first appearances. Still heartbroken.
I tore Deadpool Max #1 into shreds and happily flung said shreds into the trash on the Wednesday that book came out. I like David Lapham and Kyle Baker just fine, but that issue sucked, and hard.
Also, one of the worst things done to comics is their being tossed out by parents who don’t know better. Just because Billy turned 13, that doesn’t mean you chuck his Action Comics, Uncanny X-Men and/or X-O Manowar into the garbage, Mrs. Qhudleschapazz! That lady’s “my lad’s too old for this” jazz is a real load, I tell ya.
I was relocating a few years ago. At the time I put my long boxes in the loft of my dad’s (climate controlled) garage. The area I live in has an Oceanic Climate so it rains. A lot.
Anyway, my dad has this outdoor cat (17 years old) and he decides to keep the cat in the garage because it rained pretty much every day for two weeks straight. Cat climbs to the loft. Begins spraying my long boxes.
After doing this every day for several weeks the boxes become saturated. The oily secretions from the glands start to add up so much that even the poly bags can’t stand up against it.
Upon my return a month or so later I discovered I lost 450 comics. I’ll save you the pain of telling you guys the exact issues I lost and how, because I collected at a vendor growing up, most of my collection was newsstand variants.
We, as a joke, set a Wolverine issue on fire. A kid was saying he is the best, because he is invincible. Then, we put a bowl over a Batman comic, showing Batman+gear is better than Wollverine w/ powers.
I used to lend comics to my best friend; both single issues and trades. He’d borrow them and take them to the bathroom with him. Okay, a little odd but I’m not one to judge. But he’d leave them on the floor near the door and I distinctly remember one them he had friends over and they stepped all over them, tearing off the cover!
I loaned my Justice League: A New Beginning trade to a friend of mine , so she’d have it to read on her upcoming trip to the Outer Banks. Well, while she and her boyfriend were packing the jeep she left the trade on the roof and forgot it was there! It blew off somewhere along the way
I am lucky enough to not have had any of these tragedies happen to my relatively small collection.
I would kill (figuratively) my dog if he peed on my collection currently occupying a box and stacked on my floor cuz I just moved out of my mom’s and on my own so I don’t have a bookshelf yet. And living alone now I don’t have a parent issue. And either way my mom knows better. She doesn’t understand comics but she knows not to touch or do anything with my stuff unless I give the okay.
But I do vividly remember this traumatic experience as a kid with the dog and my CD collection only 3 survived and they were my least favorites!
