Anyone with a large comics collection sooner or later stops counting them. Having an approximate number is necessary, if only to avoid losing perspective completely, but having an exact number becomes pointless. Think of it; if you're having a conversation with someone, even a fellow collector, are they going to visualize a difference between 23,586 comics and 23,587 comics? Who is that number for? It's not for you. If you've made that much space in your life, physical or otherwise, for comics you're not going to suddenly stop when you've reached a particular arbitrary number. You're going to stop when you can't open the refrigerator.
Large collections lead to metaphors, which can be even more efficient than numbers when trying to communicate to others a sense of scale. For some people, all big numbers mean the same thing. Sad but true. My collection passed the point of "grains of sand on the beach" years ago. Trying to impose organization on it often feels like running a sieve through it and seeing what grains haven't sifted through (i.e., what meets the criteria of your search). This month I've been pulling Canadian publishers. Last month it was Richard Sala and Donna Barr. Or course, when I am tracking down comics in a given category I always get sidetracked by some oddball item and it's long past the time I give them a venue all their own. Hence the blog.
The first item is one I had considered posting on April's Fool Day but I didn't want the first post to imply that the tone of the blog was to be misleading. I will say that the comic below is a scan of the actual item from my collection, not a downloaded image I found on the internet. Second, it is a genuine, bona fide 1960's collectible... just probably not the one you think it is. Look at it reeeallll closely. I'll respond to any guesses in the comment section.
Large collections lead to metaphors, which can be even more efficient than numbers when trying to communicate to others a sense of scale. For some people, all big numbers mean the same thing. Sad but true. My collection passed the point of "grains of sand on the beach" years ago. Trying to impose organization on it often feels like running a sieve through it and seeing what grains haven't sifted through (i.e., what meets the criteria of your search). This month I've been pulling Canadian publishers. Last month it was Richard Sala and Donna Barr. Or course, when I am tracking down comics in a given category I always get sidetracked by some oddball item and it's long past the time I give them a venue all their own. Hence the blog.
The first item is one I had considered posting on April's Fool Day but I didn't want the first post to imply that the tone of the blog was to be misleading. I will say that the comic below is a scan of the actual item from my collection, not a downloaded image I found on the internet. Second, it is a genuine, bona fide 1960's collectible... just probably not the one you think it is. Look at it reeeallll closely. I'll respond to any guesses in the comment section.
There was a time when Marvel sold LPs which were dramatizations of their comics and each LP included a copy of that comic.
ReplyDeleteThat's indeed where it came from. There were four Marvel book and record sets released by Golden Records in 1966. This (SLP-186) was one of them. The others were Fantastic Four (SLP-185), Avengers (SLP-187) and Thor (SLP-188). According to the mail-order offer on the back you could also get Batman and Superman sets and for Christmas, "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians" ("Hoo-ray for San-tee Claus!").
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