This Is The Comic Book I Found On My Bed

For whatever reason, since the time of my 2011 surgery I've become one of those people that keeps books on the bed, sometimes for weeks at a time. I'm guessing it's because I don't thrash around as much anymore, and also because reading has become more important to me. I also suspect it has something to do with not going to be bone tired all of the time. The books left on my bed routinely include comics. Cleaning my bedroom yesterday I made the bed and my eyes fell to this issue of Fantastic Four, issue #63, lying on one of the pillows. It struck me that this was the kind of comic that I would have killed to own as a kid, but it would have been nearly impossible to secure one. I bought my copy, a perfectly readable comic book, for $1 at the recent Emerald City Comicon.

We're going to see a lot of comics become more attainable moving forward, including many that it will be hard to imagine would ever be that way. Part of this is market; a bunch of us can probably remember when Howard The Duck was relatively expensive to purchase, as well as how the prices on those collapsed almost 20 years or more ago now. But I also think the availability of a lot of comics may be due to a number of factors that play a bit wider than rise-and-fall price points. This includes the ubiquity of eBay exposing some of the collectibles market as a fraud, the availability of comics in collections and digitally, and even the aging of the audience for these books. These are all things that reduce the market for these comics as things to read, as things to own. Part of this saddens at the same time I'm still a little freaked out I can so easily own copies of work like this. Mostly it reinforces the awe I feel about what a magnificent time it is to read comics, and all of the choices we have now. I think these are beautiful objects, and it's not a bias out of which I'm willing to be talked.
 
posted 12:10 am PST | Permalink
 

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