I finally, and most unfortunately, have time to start mucking out my home office. Something I’ve been wanting to do for months, but golly, always had something else pressing to do. Since most of those pressing things had to do with my recently departed computer, I had run out of excuses. Dammit.
In the course of a little over an hour, I had tossed away a fair amount of crap (wow, a classic PlayStation controller extension cable. That will come in handy some day. Toss.) and straightened out my reference bookshelf. Tossed out some hopelessly outdated material, discovered I had two editions of the same book and gave one to my wife’s school.
Three shelves of books became two. And then that extra shelf got loaded down with Marvel Essentials. I see a lot of hatred pointed toward the Marvel and DC phone books in the land of Internet Comics Journalism (a term that makes me giggle) but I love them. Yes, I once went on record as hate, hate, hating them, because they had no color, but then I bought one out of curiosity at Half Price Books and got hooked. Hooked bad.
I’ve got several longboxes of comics in my closet. They have only a fitful amount of organization about them, because keeping a continually-expanding assortment of magazines in any sort of order requires time and room; I don’t have either. But there on my shelf: The entire Lee-Kirby run on Fantastic Four, taking up a foot of shelf-space, and bought for what I likely would have spent on a Good Quality copy of FF#1.
Worst. Simulation of me. Ever.
I admit, I have the Completist Disease. If I have one piece of a collection, I’m likely to seek out the rest, within reason. I always found a reason to visit Half Price and other used book stores before, but now it’s with a definite mission, a database in my phone, and let’s not even talk about my Amazon Wish List.
I wish DC had followed Marvel’s model, but their Showcase Presents books seem to start at somewhat arbitrary points for their Big Three, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, concentrating on the Silver Age. Then, they also have their Chronicles line for those characters, slimmer volumes that are reprinting the Golden Age stuff from the very beginning, and those are in color.
As you might be able to tell, I love my comics. I was taught to read at age 4 with them, and I carry them in my heart. And my bookshelves.
Oh, yeah, I watched Iron Man 2 last night. Liked it, felt it was a little scattered. As with the first movie though, the suit action scenes were top-notch. Hey, we have a lot of big metal things pounding on each other, and I can tell what’s happening! Does Michael Bay even watch other peoples’ movies to see what works?
I need to go shower and haul my butt in to work to run the floor for the weekly newscast. This evening I cover an art show opening, and suffused with Iron Man 2, I have a nagging feeling there will be some manner of super-villain attack during that. I hope I have enough tape.
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