As a child, my interest in heroes was spurred by the Superman and Batman series aired in the 1960's, but my interest in comic books was piqued by the old 1960's Marvel Spider-Man cartoons.  I loved how the Marvel Universe tied together, enjoyed reading Stan's soap box every month, and so I gravitated to the Marvel heroes, Spider-Man in particular. In hindsight, I think the fact that Marvel heroes were common folk with human flaws who happened to obtain super powers, made them very interesting.

 

As a youngster, I occasionally went to the local convenience store and bought an issue or two, but I really became a collector when our family went on a cross country summer driving vacation, and all I had were comic books to fill in the gaps of monotony as we drove through all that 'boring' desert. I'd coax either my mom, or dad to buy me one each time we stopped for gas. I'm sure it was less about my coaxing and more about giving me something to do other than wrestling with my brother and sisters! Four kids and two adults in one car for 1500 miles- how did they do it!

 

When we returned, I began making a weekly excursion to several convenience stores to buy whatever Marvel comics they had.  With a paper route and cash to spend (a whole $3.00 a week), my collection grew quite large. My penchant for neatness, and organizational skills developed by running my newspaper delivery empire (ok, it SEEMED like an empire to an 11 year old.) carried over into the comics. Comics were great for many reasons not the least of which, reading all those books increased my vocabulary and spurred an interest in reading science fiction and fantasy novels, which led, at the time, to my interest in Ray Bradbury, P. K. Dick, Robert Howard, C.S Lewis and J.R. Tolkein.  Marvel Mags were the greatest!

 

My brothers and sisters will attest to how protective of the comics I was. Many of the books that are on the CGC registry are my originals, purchased off those spinner racks that were confoundingly notorious for creasing the spines. (I eventually had a clerk at one of the convenience stores set some books aside for me so they wouldn't get creased!)  I used the plastics from my paper route to store them, and kept them in neat, short stacks on top of my closet shelf and under my bed. As they outgrew that, I hid them away from the prying eyes of my sibs in the back of a deep, hallway linen closet.

 

I stopped collecting in the late 70's and went to college. I started up again in the mid 80's and really built up the collection, upgrading many of the books from my original collection and meticulously selecting the best copies I could find at local conventions. By the early 90's I had stopped collecting comics all together. The reasons for this are numerous, but were primarily due to increased professional responsibilities and to my beloved Mighty Marvel changing their focus during that time.

 

Fast forward to the new millenium- I was fortunate to find a woman who would have me, and we are now on the path to happily ever after. (See Bob Storm's guide to dating for comic book collectors at High Grade Comics.com...it works!) Things have improved at Marvel, thanks to all the successful movie franchises, which I have really enjoyed. I rarely buy new comics and, thanks to the internet, can focus my collecting efforts on selling some portions, and upgrading other titles in my collection.