It all began ...

... over thirty years ago. I got a hold of a coverless comic at the Boothwyn Farmer's Market (Iron Man #69) and I was immediately hooked. Who was this guy in a suit of armor? And the bad guy -- he had ten rings that fired ten different sorts of beams/weapons! (That was, of course, Iron Man's arch nemesis the Mandarin.) Best of all, though, was the overall tone of the editorial pages. They made you feel like a part of a common community: The Marvel "Bullpen," being a "True Believer," the "Mighty Marvel Marching Society" ... not to mention the cool little footnotes throughout the story with wisecracking comments ... all right up this pre-teen's alley!

Yep. And so it began. I was never a "hardcore" collector. I didn't put my growing collection in plastic with backing boards. I just liked to read 'em. Certain titles immediately appealed to me: Iron Man, of course; The Avengers, of whom Iron Man was a key figure; The Fantastic Four; Spider-Man; and The X-Men. Eventually, only the first two became long-term staples. Iron Man was an instant fave because of its hard science fiction aspect; The Avengers because of its constantly changing membership which kept the title "fresh." I built up a decent collection through high school and then college; I pretty much ceased purchases after college as marriage soon beckoned. During my second year of teaching (the early 1990s), my wife told me she wanted me to get rid of some of those boxes of comics I had lying around.

So, I did: I brought them in for some comics-happy students of mine to go through. Just like that my collection was cut by about a third. But one day, after about four years of marriage (still the early 1990s), I stopped into Captain Blue Hen. Oops. I began combing the Iron Man bin to catch up on what I'd been missing. "Ah, the hell with it!" I thought, and grabbed each and every Iron Man issue I needed to "catch up." It was around this time that the Internet was just beginning to blossom. Soon, a site called eBay would come into existence ... ... which I made use of to complete my Iron Man collection (sans issues of Tales of Suspense, in whose pages Iron Man graced for the first five years of his existence). To pay for the more expensive back-issues (like, um, Iron Man #1), I sold some of my more valuable issues of other Marvel titles -- especially The X-Men which by this time were wildly popular. My X-Men issues between #95 and #142 (no, I didn't have all the issues in this range) fetched me some coin!

I had begun to collect regularly again, but limited myself to Iron Man and The Avengers. I'd occasionally pick up some other titles -- The Squadron Supreme (Marvel's version of DC's Justice League) and The Ultimates (Marvel's "Ultimate" universe version of the Avengers) being two -- but that was it. By the mid-2000s, though, I had had enough. Marvel had begun to get "cross-over" crazy again, but most of all its writers had taken on a decidedly leftward tilt. (You can read my complaints about such instances here.) So, now I'll just appease myself with an occasional purchase of a Marvel Essential (black and white collections of a character's back issues) or a trade paperback (from any publisher).

And so it goes ...