My wife and I have very different opinions about how to shop properly. My goal is to find a suitable product and get out of the store as quickly and cheaply as possible. My wife prefers to find the best product in the best possible condition, even if it means spending hours finding the one copy of a book with no tears, bends, folds, or creases inside. Needless to say I wind up with a lot of time to kill in most stores we visit together.
To fill time I went and checked out the comic book/graphic novel section. I haven’t read a comic in almost a decade, but I was desperate for something to look at inside the store. I remembered how much I used to love comics when I was growing up. I was then a little shocked to learn that comic books are now $3 each.
I read comics mainly in the mid to late 1980’s. I was lucky enough to live in a big city, and my dad was kind enough to take me to comic book shows about once a month (this was a big deal before EBAY). Unfortunately I didn’t have a high allowance to start with, and I’ve never really been good with money.
Due to my monetary issues, I bought most of my comics out of the $0.25 bin and wound up reading mainly comics from the 1970’s that were in horrible shape. I eventually grew out of comics and got rid of the whole collection, but I still have fond memories of those stories.
Anyway, I located a bunch of the Marvel Essentials paperback collections. I was thrilled to find that each book had reprints of about 20 classic issues in chronological order. They’re in black and white, but that’s good enough for me. This is the only affordable way I can think of to ever pass these stories down to my son.
My wife and I left the bookstore with $50 worth of fancy hardcover Fairy Tale and Mother Goose collections to share with our child (you’d be surprised how expensive children’s books are). I then went home and bought some X-Men, Captain America, Daredevil, and Avengers collections for half-off cover price on Amazon.
Now my son gets the joy of hearing fairy tales at bedtime, and Marvel Comics whenever I’m watching him. My wife and I have different memories we want to pass down. I’m just hoping my son appreciates the variety.