COLLECTING COMIC BOOKS

A Total Newbie's Guide To Collecting Comic Books

Collecting comic books can be an incredibly rewarding hobby. Comic lovers, true comic lovers, are something of an elite circle. No, not just the guys who keep up with X-Men, but the real comic lovers, the ones who love the form, who strive to understand it and to honor the great writers and artists who have given their lives to the art.

The first step to collecting comics is this: Throw out that price guide.

Seriously. Forget about it. If you're just getting into collecting comics, that price guide won't do you any good. What you should do is develop an appreciation for the art. An art professional doesn't use a price guide to evaluate oil paintings, so why use one for comics at this early stage?

If you don't truly love comics, if you don't read them, if you don't admire the art, then there's no reason to collect them. Yes, a silver age comic can net you six figures, but the truth is that scoring one of those comics is like winning the lottery. If you want a safe investment, try real estate.

If you've been considering collecting comics, then chances are that you have read and enjoyed them in the past, so here's what you do to start your collection: Think back to what your favorite comics were when you were younger. Whether it was Archie, Batman or The Fantastic Four, a comic's true value is entirely up to how much value the reader places on it.

So think back to what you used to enjoy reading, and start collecting those.

You can begin with the collected editions of the stuff you read as a kid, then move on to more recent stuff. If there's an artist or writer whose name seems to be attached to all your favorite issues, look online and see what else they worked on.

Learn to love comics again, love reading them. From there, knowing how to collect them will be easy.