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Gilda · 07-19-2005, 12:08 PM

Ah, let me see if I can think of something I do that might be considered a hobby.

Hmmm. This is tough. [Looks around the room at the bookshelves covered with hardbacks, trades, and stacks of individual magazines] Oh yeah, I collect and read comic books. I have about 120 hardback collections, another 200 or so paperbacks, 35 long boxes, and another 20 short boxes. All of the individual issues are sorted by publisher, title, volume, and issue number, with annuals mixed into the individual issues at exactly the right point. I have them organized well enough that if I want to find, say, a Batman 412, I'd have it in hand in less than a minute. This is out of, according to my comics database, about 12,000 individual issues.

Why? Because it ties into my childhood. When I was a little girl, and things weren't going well, escaping into the fantasy world of superhero comics, where there was always a hero around ready and willing to sacrifice his personal needs and desires for the purpose of helping others gave me a safe place to go, even if it was only imaginary. There were people who helped others just because they needed to be helped, and that made more sense to me than my actual life or my religion or my family.

I still read the comics because I'm hooked into the characters, I care about them and their lives. Comics is a marriage of literature and visual art, and does things no other medium can. I laugh out loud, I cry, I cheer, I'm offended and inspired, the way many people are by a great work of literature.

Which comics, at their best, can be.

07-19-2005, 12:08 PM	#72 (permalink)
Gilda 32 flavors and then some Location: Out on a wire.	Ah, let me see if I can think of something I do that might be considered a hobby. Hmmm. This is tough. [Looks around the room at the bookshelves covered with hardbacks, trades, and stacks of individual magazines] Oh yeah, I collect and read comic books. I have about 120 hardback collections, another 200 or so paperbacks, 35 long boxes, and another 20 short boxes. All of the individual issues are sorted by publisher, title, volume, and issue number, with annuals mixed into the individual issues at exactly the right point. I have them organized well enough that if I want to find, say, a Batman 412, I'd have it in hand in less than a minute. This is out of, according to my comics database, about 12,000 individual issues. Why? Because it ties into my childhood. When I was a little girl, and things weren't going well, escaping into the fantasy world of superhero comics, where there was always a hero around ready and willing to sacrifice his personal needs and desires for the purpose of helping others gave me a safe place to go, even if it was only imaginary. There were people who helped others just because they needed to be helped, and that made more sense to me than my actual life or my religion or my family. I still read the comics because I'm hooked into the characters, I care about them and their lives. Comics is a marriage of literature and visual art, and does things no other medium can. I laugh out loud, I cry, I cheer, I'm offended and inspired, the way many people are by a great work of literature. Which comics, at their best, can be. __________________ I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that. ~Steven Colbert