Collections

I’ve collected a lot of comics.  I got a lot of them 15 or 20 years ago when I was into Ebay big time.  A lot of them are comic strips, reprinted dailies and Sunday clippings.  I have the reprinted series of Peanuts for a period over 30 years, as well as stuff like Dick Tracy and Popeye and Little Orphan Annie and the theatre-themed On Stage.  I’ve had a lot of reprints of Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side.  My Sunday clipping collection includes stuff like Prince Valiant and Li’l Abner and Terry and the Pirates and The Heart of Juliet Jones and Steve Canyon.

I also have some comic books, though I’m not really into superheroes.  It’s more stuff like Uncle Scrooge and Little Archie and Richie Rich.  I also have some less-known stuff like Howard the Duck and the futuristic Magnus, Robot Fighter.

It isn’t just American stuff.  I have some British comics like The Beano, which would publish annual versions every December.  I have quite a few French-language comics with Tintin and Asterix the Gaul.  And I also have some translated manga from Japan.  Some of it is masterpieces, like Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa of Wind Valley, about a teenage girl in a future world coping with environmental disaster. (I have a feeling they could turn it into the next Game of Thrones!) I also have Shigeru Mizuki’s four-part Showa series, which combines a history of Japan under Hirohito with his own autobiography.  He lost an arm in World War II, which actually saved his life because he got moved back from the front lines!  After the war, parallel to Japan’s recovery, he became a big comic book artist.

I also have some Mad magazine reprints.  They include a lot of comics, with some really sharp satire.  Like the time they showed 1950s parents lecturing their teenagers, “Young people today, their clothes and their dancing and their language—it’s all too much!” Then they showed the parents back when they were young in the 1920s, wearing raccoon coats and dancing the Charleston and saying “Twenty-three skidoo, small change!” Another time they had children’s definitions, like “An aunt is to give you clothes for your birthday instead of toys,” and “An uncle is to pinch your cheek and you can’t pinch back.” They made fun of singer Bobby Darin a lot, like the time they did a Dick & Jane-style feature on Greek mythology, with him as Narcissus!  And they also did “TV shows we’d like to see,” with a commercial where a guy in doctor costume says “What do doctors take for headache and pain relief?  How should I know, I’m only an actor!” And they did famous quotes in their true context, with Teddy Roosevelt saying “Speak softly a carry a big sticky gooey sundae up to my room!” and John Paul Jones a newlywed saying “I have not yet begun to fight with my wife.”