Titles Read in 2018

January

Live from Golgotha by Gore Vidal

Equipment for Living: on poetry and pop music by Michael Robbins

Invincible Ultimate Collection, vol. 11 by Kirkman, Ottley, Walker

Not My Bag by Sina Grace

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

Collected French Translations: John Ashbery edited by R. Wasserman & E. Richie

Tales from Moominvalley by Tove Jansson

Salt and Silver poetry chapbook by Larry Felson

Island Dreams photos & text by Margaretta K. Mitchell; Sim Warkov, poems

The Can Opener’s Daughter by Rob Davis

Madness by Sam Sax

Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, vol. 33 no. 1, 2016

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden

A Truce with Fantasy by Bill Mayer

The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon, 1961-63 by Marcellino Truong

German Poetry in Transition, 1945-1990 edited by Charlotte Melin

February

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

Prose Poems by Pierre Reverdy, translated by Ron Padgett

Look Out by Julia Vinograd

Fifty Freakin’ Years with the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers by Gilbert Shelton

Whatever You Do, Don’t Run: true tales of a Botswana safari guide by Peter Allison

Unpacking My Library: writers and their books edited by Leah Price

Walrus 2016, Mills College literary magazine [contains two of my poems]

Handle with Care by Julia Vinograd

Driving Through Cuba: rare encounters in the land of sugar cane and revolution by Carlo Gebler

Hello: poems by Richard Loranger

Last Girl Standing by Trina Robbins

Detours by Julia Vinograd

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Skull & Crosswords by Julia Vinograd

Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson

Slugfest: inside the epic 50-year battle between Marvel and DC by Reed Tucker

The Poems of A. O. Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud, translated by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky

Reft and Light by Ernst Jandl

A New Moon haiku by Bruce H. Feingold

Sunrise on the Lodge haiku by Bruce H. Feingold

Dispatch from the Future by Leigh Stern

March

Old Enough by Bruce Feingold

Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson

The Year We Studied Women by Bruce Snider

Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata

Walking Home by Lynn Schooler

The Moomins and the Great Flood by Tove Jansson

The Dumbbell Nebula by Steve Kowitt

Swinging on a Star by David Trinidad

Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner, tr. by W. Martin

Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

Sorted Books by Nina Katchadourian

Diario de Oaxaca: a sketchbook journal of two years in Mexico by Peter Kuper

Haiku: a concise anthology edited by Santosh Kumar

Soraya: sonnets by Anis Shivani

Letters to a Stranger by Thomas James

April

Against the Workshop by Anis Shivani

The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield

The Stuff of Thought: language as a window into human nature by Steven Pinker

This Art: poems about poetry edited by Michael Wiegers

Notes on a Past Life by David Trinidad

The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw by Bruce Barcott

Russian Roulette: the inside story of Putin’s war on America and the election of Donald Trump by Michael Isikoff and David Corn

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Hell Strung and Crooked editors: Ice, Jane Omerod

X-Men: Grand Design, vol. 1 by Ed Piskor

The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

On to the Next Dream by Paul Madonna

May

Snow Day Pierre Wazem, writer; Antoine Aubin, artist

The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald

The Wish Express by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Selected Poems (2011) by Jaan Kaplinksi

Blue Unicorn, bound collection of five issues: v. 39 no. 1 Oct 2015; v. 39 no. 2 & 3 Feb/June 2016; v. 40 no. 1 Oct 2016; v. 40 no. 2 Feb 2017; v. 40 no. 3 June 2017

A Mind of Its Own: how your brain distorts and deceives by Cordelia Fine

Are We There Yet? by David Levithan

Your Golden Sun Still Shines Denise Sullivan, editor

More Adventures of the Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald

David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 years of LGBT music by Darryl W. Bullock

Dear Prudence: new & selected poems by David Trinidad

Annabel [Hungry Tiger Press edition] by L. Frank Baum

June

Me and My Little Brain by John D. Fitzgerald

A $500 House in Detroit: rebuilding an abandoned home and an American city by Drew Philp

The Hangman’s Lament by Henrik Nordbrandt, tr. Thom Satterlee

Wings of Sunset by Ina Coolbrith

Memories of the Unknown by Rutger Kopland, tr. James Brockway

Antiworlds by Andrei Voznesensky, edited by Patricia Blake and Max Hayward; various translators

The red horse — and the blue by Katy Lederer

Wolf Centos by Simone Muench

Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers! writers on comics edited by Steve Howe

The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs

The Heaven-Sent Leaf by Katy Lederer

The Great Brain at the Academy by John D. Fitzgerald

A World Beyond Myself by Rutger Kopland, tr. James Brockway

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: a new history of a lost world by Steve Brusatte

My Life, My Dream by Henrik Nordbrandt, tr. Robin Fulton

July

Winter Sex by Katy Lederer

When We Leave Each Other by Henrik Nordbrandt, tr. Patrick Phillips

The Great Brain Reforms by John D. Fitzgerald

Mr. Wolf’s Class by Aron Nels Steinke

The Hunter Thinks the Monkey Is Not Wise … The Monkey Is Wise, But He Has His Own Logic essays by Ulli Beier, edited by Wole Ogundele

Like Eating a Stone: surviving the past in Bosnia by Wojciech Tochman

A Journey Around My Room and A Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room (in one volune) by Xavier de Maistre, tr. Andrew Brown

Astro City: Victory by Kurt Busiek, B. Anderson, A. Ross

The Return of the Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald

Distant Center by Ha Jin

Yoruba Poetry: an anthology of traditional poems edited by Ulli Beier

Running with the Kenyas by Adharanand Finn

August

The Deptford Trilogy: Fifth Business, The Manitcore, World of Wonders by Robinson Davies

The Great Brain Does It Again by John D. Fitzgerald

Astro City: Private Lives by Busiek, Anderson, Ross

Where the Animals Go: tracking wildlife with technology by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti

Captive Hearts of Oz vol. 1, 2, 3 [vol. 4 not yet available] story: Ryo Maruya; art: Mamenosuke Fujimara; tr. Angela Lin

The Great Brain Is Back by John D. Fitzgerald

The Story of Doctor Dolittle [Books of Wonder version] by Hugh Lofting

Who’s Yer Daddy?: gay writers celebrate their mentors & forerunners eds. Jim Elledge & David Groff

Joy Exhaustible: Assaracus Presents: The Publishers edited by Seth Pennington and Bryan Borland

Astro City, vol. 12: Lovers Quarrel by Busiek and Anderson

September

Almost All the Music & other poems by Angel Gonzalez, tr. E. A. Mares

The Language of Birds by Kim Sugioka

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

Collected Poems by James Schuyler

Nomandland: surviving America in the twenty-first century by Jessica Bruder

Blackberries; Things That Encouraged Me … ; and Snakes three mini comics by Maia Kobabe

Hair a chapbook essay by Anand Vedawala

Fanboy issue #1, comikake collective 

Sanskrit of the Body by W. B. Keckler

A Full Moon in Santa Cruz by Jonathan Hayes

The Sky Is a Page by Adam David Miller

Confetti-Ash: selected poems of Salvador Novo, tr. Anthony Seidman & David Shook

My Naked Brain by Leopoldo Maria Panero, tr. Arturo Mantecon

The Source by William Wantling

A Walk Among the Bogus by Owen Hill

My Brother’s Husband, vol. 2 by Gengoroh Tagame, tr. Anne Ishii

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Astro-City, vol. 13: Honor Guard by Kurt Busiek

October

Pantheon: the true story of the Egyptian deities by Hamish Steele

Corpses of Angels by Henry J. Morro

Good Gay Poems, 1967-2007 by James Mitchell

Bullets & Butterflies: queer spoken word poetry edited by Emanuel Xavier

Collage: an assemblage of divergent poetry juxtaposed by Jair, the Literary Masturbator

Memories I’ve Forgotten by Marc Elihu Hofstadter

Captive Hearts of Oz, vol. 4 by Ryo Maruya, story; Mamenosuke Fujimaru, art

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

The Best American Poetry 2006 guest editor: Billy Collins; series ed: David Lehman

Emperor of the Air: stories by Ethan Canin

Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris with David Javerbaum

November

A World Between Waves edited by Frank Stewart

Scattered at Sea by Amy Gerstler

We Have Lost Our Fathers by Nicholas Rinaldi

Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, 1981 edited by Alan F. Pater

Where I Live by Donna M. Lane

Misery Islands by January Gill O’Neil

The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting, intro by J. Griswold, afterword by G. D. Schmidt

December

Dead Lions by A. D. Winans

New Poets of Native Nations edited by Heid E. Erdrich

Underlife by January Gill O’Neil

Frogpond v. 40 : 2, Sp/Su 2017

Butterflight haiku anthology chapbook edited by Patricia J. Machmiller

Home Remedy by Norma Smith

Mariposa #6 Sp/Su 2002 Gallagher & Hall, editors

The World Until Yesterday: what can we learn from traditional societies? by Jard Diamond

Mariposa #10 Sp/Su 2004 Gallaher & Hall, eds

Beyond Words: what animals think and feel by Carl Safina

Mariposa #13 Aut/Win 2005 Ebba Story, editor

Velroy and the Madischie Mafia by Sy Hoahway

Mariposa #31 Aut/Win 2014 Cherie Hunter Day, editor

Mariposa #32 Sp/Su 2015 C. H. Day, ed

Invisible Gifts by Maw Shein Win

The Best American Poetry 2007 Heather McHugh, editor; David Lehman, series ed

Lighting a Candle a 4-poet haiku anthology chapbook edited by Michael Dylan Welch

Dear Animal by MK Chavez

Variously, not then by Travis Ortiz

Sparkle & Blink #90 Nov 6, 2017 Folk & Karp, eds

The Half-Finished Bridge a 4-poet haiku chapbook David Grayson, editor

“simultaneously real and fake”

In his autobiography actor Neil Patrick Harris describes his first role (be aware, the autobiography is written in the second person):

Your first-ever stage role comes in 1983, when thirteen-year-old Brian and his friends audition to be Munchkins in Tularosa High School’s production of The Wizard of Oz. You tag along, and when they see you they ask if you’re interested in playing the role of Toto, the dog.

“Bark!” you respond.

You love it. Love, love, love it. Everything about it. The makeup, for example: you love watching your transfiguration in the mirror … [T]he experience is simultaneously real and fake … It thrills your soul. It also engages your mind. … Why is it, for instance, that when you’re onstage as Toto you’re on all fours, but when you’re making your way down the yellow brick road, which winds its way through the rows of the audience, you’re on your “hind legs”? The director feels there’s no other practical choice, so it’s okay. You don’t. You consider it a gross inconsistency that besmirches the meticulous realism of the rest of the high school production of The Wizard of Oz.

source: Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography
by Neil Patrick Harris, with David Javerbaum
Crown Archetype / Random House, NY

Thoughts on “A Question of Degree” by Bill Mayer

A Question of Degree


In Oz no one dies,
which makes for complications
in the stories, all 32
of which I have just reread.
Baum seems not to have been
quite clear; after all, Dorothy’s house
kills the Witch of the East
as the bucket of water later
melts the Witch of the West.
There are endless contradictions
because, finally,
it is impossible to imagine
immortality, no matter
that we all want it,
and some believe it
and the ego denies it.
A flash of light
between two eternities
some say, but that flash
is always going somewhere,
not like a match which goes out.
In Oz, you can stay as young or old
as you wish, be a baby
forever, or a wise old man
or woman. Which would
you choose? Through which door
would you wish to pass?


Bill Mayer

#


Ooh. A poet writing about Oz! I like it. I’ve tried. An old Ozzy, I’ve tried. Bill Mayer deploys a light touch on the details, assumes any reader knows about Oz, he needn’t load up the poem with exposition. You know who Dorothy is, you know about the witches. Mayer doesn’t bother to bring up Tin Woodman or Scarecrow or Cowardly Lion. Considering that he’d just finished reading almost three dozen books Mayer’s restraint is amazing. I mean, by that time my head is all a-clutter.

For the sake of the poem the poet hones it down to one topic: immortality, something Oz people are blessed with. Except when, somehow, they die. As Mayer says, “There are endless contradictions” in Baum’s rules for Oz. I remember well! Even the rules for magical implements change. In one book the Magic Belt is easily operated; you just point and say Shoot! and your finger goes BANG! In another book you have to go through some rigamarole every time you want the Magic Belt to grant a wish. Why? No explanation, really.

Considering the weighty nature of immortality, Bill Mayer gets in and gets out rather neatly. Too neatly? Could it be otherwise?

“In Oz, you can stay as young or old / as you wish, be a baby / forever, or a wise old man / or woman,” Bill Mayer says. That’s pretty much quoting L. Frank Baum. “Which would / you choose?”

Who would want to remain an infant for eternity? Especially if one never attains control of one’s bowels or achieves the coordination necessary to speak or walk. If you did, would you still be a baby? Wise is nice, but old means physical decline. Age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom. On the other hand experience is a good teacher and If you were immortal (albeit in a seemingly young body) wouldn’t you accrue the experience wisdom requires?

I have to say I am a little confused by Bill Mayer’s own ideas about immorality. “[I]t is impossible to imagine / immortality, no matter / that we all want it, / and some believe it / and the ego denies it,” Bill Mayer says. I don’t know about that. For the ego isn’t it death that is “impossible to imagine”? Can the ego truly imagine its utter annihilation? The ego is presented with plenty of real world examples of death, it’s true, whereas there is no real world example of an immortal. Still, the ego balks at death and will cling to belief in a life beyond it.

Life is a light, Mayer tells us, but not a light like a match flame. “[A] match … goes out,” Mayer says, whereas the light of a human life “is always going somewhere.” Oh? Where is it the light of a human life is headed? Mayer doesn’t tell us. Not that he makes any explicitly religious argument. He refers to no creed. No mention of Heaven, no Judgment.

Still, I like “that flash” that “some say” lights up the gap “between two eternities.” As Mayer himself notes, it’s not an original thought. But there’s magic to it.

L. Frank Baum would say in the Oz books that fairyland isn’t the only place that has magic in it. As a kid I got impatient with his occasional awe over the natural world. But these days I find life itself pretty darn amazing and the inventions of fantasy fiction too often banal.
Each time I read Bill Mayer’s poem it touches me, as an old Ozzy, but as a mortal too.

I’ve saved the most esoteric bit for last:

Bill Mayer mentions 32 Oz stories. Where’d that number come from? L. Frank Baum wrote 13 full length sequels to The Wizard of Oz (plus a collection of short stories). After Baum’s death his publisher contracted with Ruth Plumly Thompson to write a new Oz book every year. Thompson kept up that schedule for 19 years. Other writers published Oz books with Reilly & Lee after Thompson, including John R. Neill, the man who’d provided the illustrations for all the Oz stories up to then (bar Wizard). The last book in the Reilly & Lee series was number forty. If we take the 14 of Baum and the 19 of Thompson (and ignore subsequent authors), we get 33. Bill Mayer, however, does not mention Thompson. Odd. Maybe the 32 Oz books were the ones he owned as a kid, still had, and was able to reread? That was his Oz.

source: A Truce with Fantasy by Bill Mayer
2015. Kelsay Books / Aldrich Press

In Kenya or in Oz?

Adharanand Finn is a Scottish journalist and runner. He goes to Kenya to learn from some of the greatest runners in the world. Who knew he would find himself mentally in the land of Oz?

I head out past the edge of town and into the countryside. Mist hangs blue in the dips, thick and magical. Pointy-roofed huts and neatly sown fields rise up here and there, the red track stretching out before me. I run on, like Dorothy, through a strange, Technicolor world. And who is that I see now, running toward me, his bright yellow jacket glowing in the first rays of sunlight? The scarecrow? It’s Japhet, grinning to see me. He turns and runs beside me, back the way he came.

We run together, easy, passing bigger groups, people running hard, the sweat beading on their anxious foreheads, pushing themselves on in search of the elusive Oz, sure that someday, if they just keep running, they will get there.

[This post is dedicated to the friends attending the Oz Convention next weekend.]

source: Running with the Kenyans: passion, adventures, and the secret of the fastest people on Earth by Adharanand Finn
2012. Ballantine Books, New York

answer to Yoruba riddle

answer to the Yoruba riddle (which posted yesterday):



humanity between heaven and earth



source: Yoruba Poetry: an anthology of traditional poems
compiled and edited by Ulli Beier
illustrations by Susanne Wenger
Cambridge University Press, London

Yoruba riddle

Riddle:


A pile of shit on a leaf, and covered with a leaf.



[answer]



source: Yoruba Poetry: an anthology of traditional poems
compiled and edited by Ulli Beier
illustrations by Susanne Wenger
Cambridge University Press, London

possible epigraph

once I gave a party
and some of the people who should have come, didn't,
but all of my books were there,
enjoying themselves immensely,
murmuring lightly,
and discussing so many things

*

lines from "Books" by William Baer
as the poem appears in Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry 1981, edited by Alan F. Pater

I wonder if these lines would make a good epigraph for Autobiography of a Book.

Notes Toward an Autobiography by Others

Xavier de Maistre, in his whimsical Journey around my Room, describes the way the body will go on doing things, even competently, while the mind is somewhere else. One of his examples is an activity that one might not think would be capable of going on without the mind’s participation — reading. Addressing the reader, de Maistre says:

When you read a book, sir, and a more agreeable idea suddenly strikes on your imagination, your soul straight away pounces on it and forgets the book, while your eyes mechanically follow the words and the lines; you come to the end of the page without understanding it, and without remembering what you have read.

De Maistre calls “soul” what I was calling “mind.” But it’s the same thing.

On the other hand, I don’t think I can completely miss what my eyes have read. The mind will capture some of the meaning of the words the eyes bring in, even if it’s not enough for comprehension. When I have gotten to the bottom of a page and realize I couldn’t tell you what was said, my conscious mind having been busy with other concerns, I will often reread the missed passage. And it will always be at least a little bit familiar. If you slapped the book shut before I had a chance to reread, then put before me a multiple-choice test covering the material, I bet I’d do significantly better than chance. Still, I do tend to read slowly, an internal voice sounding out the words as they pass. I wouldn’t have thought so if you’d asked me, but reading without connection to voice, I guess that is something I do now?

source: A Journey around my Room by Xavier de Maistre; translated by Andrew Brown. First published in French in 1795; this translation published 2004.
Hesperus Press Ltd, London UK

Superman will not save you

In the years after the Dayton Accords ended the Yugoslavia civil war, outside investigators went into the conflict regions to verify possible war crimes. There were many. Thousands of civilians had been rounded up by the Serbs and murdered. The bodies were dumped into mass graves, the graves often just convenient holes in the ground. Polish forensic anthropologist Ewa Klonowski was one of the most conscientious about the exhumations, doing her damnedest to reunite (dead) family members with those who had survived. In this passage Dr Klonowski describes what she found on the floor of what the author of the a book on the investigations calls “a sixty-five feet deep … beautiful chimney-shaped cave [with] honey-beige walls … full of stalagmites*” :

”I was digging with the knowledge that I’d found some children … [C]hildren have more small bones; they are less durable. And I came upon some small bones of the kind I was expecting to find. And a toy next to them — a Superman doll. I had to put it in a plastic bag. … I was holding [the doll] in my hand, and the child’s father was there above me. … I was about to start crying. I rationalized it to myself by thinking, ‘Ewa someone has to work here. Bones are bones. This is a toy found next to some bones. You must put in the plastic bag and get on with the next body.”

source: Like Eating a Stone: surviving the past in Bosnia by Wojciech Tochman
2002/2008. Atlas & Co. Publishers, New York NY

“the primitive pleasures of serendipitous art”

As a teen I discovered found poetry, and I quickly became infatuated. I have kept my eye out for source texts ever since. First line indexes of poetry anthologies can be fruitful. Back in the early 90s when I was an undergrad at the University of California at Berkeley the first line index in An Anthology of New York Poets edited by Ron Padgett and David Shapiro really got me excited. I was working at the university’s main library. Perhaps it was the New York poets anthology that inspired me to turn library search results into poems. I compiled as many title lists as I could think of. Some worked as poems immediately; some worked with massaging; most, frustratingly, refused my efforts. But it was a lot of fun, especially when I was assigned to the desk and there was dead time. I could even print out some of the lists, which saved my writing hand.

In his essay about his boyhood obsession with Classics Illustrated comics Gary Giddins talks about his hunt for some of the adaptations that he knew only by their appearing on a list in the back of issues he did own. The more obscure titles (Mr. Midshipman Easy, The Black Tulip, for example) just weren’t available. Attempts to order them from the publisher could net an entirely different issue, too often one that Giddins already had. Left only with the titles and no other information, the young Giddins found some distraction in reading the lists for themselves, as though they were stories, or maybe poems.

William Gass has written that ‘lists are juxtapositions, and exhibit many of the qualities of collage.” They may, in fact, offer the primitive pleasures of serendipitous art. A computerized list, for example, of the popular songs published during the first half of the twentieth century reveals an infinite treasury of found poems: Flip to any page, put your finger on any title, and track the first ten songs upward or down, and voila, instant lit. Lists of artworks are serendipitous and canonical, too … also publishers’ catalogs and individual work-lists.”

I have gotten some of the library database lists published as poems.

source: Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers: writers on comics edited by Sean Howe

valuing comics

After my mother died I was faced with the prospect of cleaning out the house I grew up in. Among other things there were boxes and boxes (and unboxed piles) of comic books. I loved comics. I still love comics. But not all of what I bought back in the 70s and 80s are worth rereading. I did throw out a lot of stuff, including videogame magazines, but I brought all the comics back to Berkeley, except David’s, which I shipped to Seattle. David had more than I did. I don’t remember how many boxes I shipped his way. Several. When I sorted out what I’d brought back to Berkeley I found more of David’s comics to ship. 

When my brother and I were first buying comics back in the early/mid-70s there was no way a kid could get his hands on back issues to read all the stories. And you wanted to! You wanted to read the story that introduced the Vision to the Avengers. You wanted to read the stories where the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were still working for Magneto in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants! When comics were twenty cents, a back issue costing a couple dollars would break the bank. And those old comics have continued to go up in value. 

The era from which most of David’s and my purchases date — when we had the biggest comics buying budgets — was the era when comics were being marketed to adults via comics shops. The comics I wanted as a kid were comics that were being marketed to kids through supermarket wire racks and newsstands. Those comics got beat up. The comics being bought by adults in the 80s were being slipped into comics-tailored plastic bags backed with cardboard to prevent creases and stored in multiples. There weren’t many good condition copies of those old comics to be had and the people who wanted them paid what they had to to get them. The comics of the 80s were much more expensive up front but as collectibles they were missing something. They weren’t scarce. They were too well tended and stowed for that. These days you can buy most of the comics of the 80s and 90s for less than cover price. 

A recent book about the decades-long competition by the major comics publishers, DC and Marvel, reminded me about going through my comics and wondering what I was going to do with them. Nobody else wanted them either! Not enough anyway, not enough to make selling them anything more than a hassle that wasn’t going to repay the effort. 

Reed Tucker writes here about the comics speculation bubble from shortly after I’d stopped buying superhero comics:

[H]ordes of speculators … were buying up product in hopes of paying for their kids’ braces down the road. … New faces, fueled by media hype, were showing up at comic shops across the country to buy a case of Superman or X-Men comics. … The idea that comic books were collectibles that would increase in value dated back to at least the 1960s when Newsweek wrote an influential article on comic fandom and noted, to the author’s shock, that a copy of Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1 was selling for an astronomical $100. (A copy went for $3.2 million in 2014.) … DC editor Len Wein in the early 1980s used to keep boxes containing one hundred copies each of The New Teen Titans #1 and #2 under his desk, claiming they would be his retirement account. A few years later, when he left the company, he didn’t bother taking the boxes.

Yes, I still have many comics, but when I made a cull and filled shopping bags with comics I didn’t really need to see again I asked around until I found a coworker at the library who would take them off my hands. I wanted to give them to someone who would tell me they wanted them; that was enough payment for me. My coworker promised not to tell me if she ended up using them for art projects. 

How much, by the way, would it cost you to buy a like-new copy of The New Teen Titans #1, the back issue that Len Wein abandoned when he left DC? According to mycomicshop.com you can get a copy for from forty to sixty dollars. If the copy is signed by the writer and artist you can get it for about $350. That is, if you — or anybody else — wants to pay that price. One of the tricky things about collectibles is that in order for them to be worth anything they have to have multiple purchasers vying for ownership. Which is why scarcity helps with value. When there are a million copies of the exact same thing and only a thousand people interested in having one, there won’t be any competitive bidding. If you have the million copies it might be cheaper to throw them out than pay to store them until you find a buyer. 

In the last year or so I reread my collection of The New Teen Titans. I did not have the first few issues. So I bought access to them by buying reprint paperbacks. That was another thing that wasn’t available to me as a kid. They weren’t reprinting the old unavailable comics in trade paperback editions back then. I didn’t have to pay collector’s prices to get my hands on The New Teen Titans. I did buy two or three single issues from late in the series run from My Comic Shop, but I paid less for them (not counting shipping) than I would have paid had I bought those issues back in the 80s. That was a shock! They didn’t even keep up with inflation. 

I wrote about this subject in more diary-like form two different times on my LoveSettlement blog, once in 2003, and again in 2005: change mind and collecting comics

source: Slugfest: inside the epic 50-year battle between Marvel and DC by Reed Tucker