2003-10-17 - 11:51 p.m.

Agness' Books

Starting to notice a pattern here... I put up an entry proclaiming that I'm back, then go into hamster hibernation again. I really must find a way to say the things I want to say without it being this long, drawn-out, painful process.

Anyway, today was all about comic books. A couple days ago I bought the comic collection of my friend Agness. You can read one of my very early entries about her here.

Obviously Agness' is not her real name, but her actual first name is one that is so very common in my life that I wouldn't be able to use it even if I wanted to. Since the entry mentioned above was written Agness has moved back to Frown Town from San Francisco, gotten a job, gotten a serious boyfriend, then recently ditched both and started working in earnest on her Big Dream - becoming a comics professional. She's currently taking art classes at a local college, while occasionally hobnobbing with industry professionals on the weekends. With her knack for getting to know people she's made some amazing contacts.

However one thing is a constant in her life, and that's a lack of money. A few days ago she called me because she was desperate for cash and could only think of one tangible asset that she could sell - her comic book collection. I said I'd buy them, but I had very mixed feelings about it for a number of reasons. First of all, I didn't really want them. Right now my back room is literally bursting with back issues that I have to go through and sort and put away and I've been making very slow progress on the pile. I am literally running out of places to put them - walking around the back room is like tip-toeing through a four-color minefield. The desk that I work at is now surrounded by boxes, like a little bunker made of pulp-paper. On top of all that, currently money is kind of tight for me as well.

It also made me sad to see Agness lose her comic collection, yet again. She loves comics dearly and probably knows more about Batman than even his editors do, but she has a hard time holding on to them in any great numbers.

When I saw her collection I noticed that it was almost entirely from the last four years. I thought that odd, considering that when she went to California she'd left six boxes of comics up in my attic, and none of that stuff seemed to be present. When I asked her about it she told me that her father had sold them on her. She'd left them at her mother's house, and he'd just taken them and sold them to someone. It makes me just aghast to hear something like that. Not only that, but this is the SECOND time her good-for-nothing dad has pulled this stunt. Years ago when Agness had an impressive collection of Batman comics from the 1940s, she came home from school one day to find her comics gone. Daddy had needed some quick cash so he'd sold them to someone for a fraction of their value.

The fact that she's able to still speak to this person shows that she has a lot more character than I do. Well, at least this time around, Agness got the money for the books! However once again she only got a fraction of the money she put into them. Modern comics, almost without exception, are valueless. More and more the comic market is becoming like the paperback market - new paperbacks are worth $7.95 while used ones are worth 50 cents. Still, I was able to pay enough for her books to get her out of her difficulties.

So today I decided I was going to sort through them all and just put them in order. It was only about six boxes of comics, how long could it take?

I went down to the store about an hour and a half before opening time, figuring I'd be done by the time the doors had to be unlocked. Wrong! In fact it took me five and a half hours to get it all in order! I am SO BAD at estimating how long it will take me to do things! Adding to the problem was the fact that I had to do my sorting out in the front room of the store since the back was too cluttered. I had to work my way around customers while I was sorting things into piles. It wasn't their fault that I had inadvertently turned where they wanted to shop into my work area.

All in all, it was a kind of melancholy task, breaking down Agness' collection. I know how much her comics mean to her, but it seemed like I was a lot more bothered about it than she was. She was even joking that she was going to buy them back from me again. Maybe that's the correct attitude to have - it never pays to get too attached to material things.