Grab-bag Post #4

 

Grab-bag Post #1

Grab-bag Post #2

Grab-bag Post #3

 

Why physical games are better

Whenever possible, I get physical versions of games. As convenient as it is to have a ton of games all on one microSD card, I prefer to have physical copies of games. Now that I have 3 different Switch consoles (OG, OLED, and Lite), I don’t want to pay $20 to download Portal onto each one or mess with account sharing. By contrast, I can pop my Metroid Dread gamecard into any of them and play without problems, and also let my kids play the game on their Switch as well. Another reason is that there have been times when publishers retract games that have been paid for on certain platforms or the shop just gets taken down entirely (this has also happened with digitally bought music and movies). If I have a physical copy, Nintendo can’t stop me from playing the game even if it gets pulled from the digital store, and they can’t barge into my house to take the game back.

I also tend to avoid games whose main draw is the multiplayer aspect of it. Once that server goes down and the ability to play multiplayer goes with it, the game loses all value and interest (see various versions of Call of Duty). Meanwhile, if the single-player game is the main focus, when the multiplayer gets taken away most people don’t notice (see Phantom Hourglass, for example). This is similar to why I also strongly dislike the, “games as a service,” model, since the games can’t be preserved for future generations unless someone also makes a fan server, which only happens to the biggest games.

It also goes for physical games which require many gigabytes of updates to make it playable. 

 

Being a hardware minimalist

This is a little expansion of something I mentioned on the Collecting post, but I have usually been a hardware minimalist for the most part. And what I mean by that is my priority has always been about being able to play the games themselves. When the SNES was announced, I knew I needed the new hardware to play the new games. By contrast, when the Game Boy Pocket or Switch Lite was announced, I didn’t see the need because they were just smaller. When I got the Game Boy Advance, I knew I could play any original GB game, GBC game, or GBA game on this device. Even though the SP added a backlight, it didn’t allow me to play anything I couldn’t already play on the original model. I skipped the DS and DSi and re-entered with the 3DS, but that allowed me access to all previous DS and DSi games up through that point. So in theory, I could have played any Nintendo handheld game ever made and I was happy with that (until I got the idea to get one of everything).

Obviously this doesn’t apply to the home consoles as much, as there are fewer revisions, but I didn’t feel the need to get a SNES Jr, or a Wii Mini because they didn’t allow me to play any new games.  

 

 Collector's Editions 

In a similar vein to being a hardware minimalist, I usually don’t go for extra bells and whistles when games are released. Some games have Special Editions that include a book, a map, a carrying case, a steel gamecase, or some other collectible. I just want to play the game, and don’t need the extra junk, especially if it’s some kind of guidebook, because I prefer to discover things for myself. But I can see the appeal to people who like those sorts of things. I did buy the collector’s edition of Twilight Princess HD because it came with the Wolf Link amiibo, but only because 1) I hadn’t yet discovered NFC-215 tags yet, 2) it was supposed to unlock new content for both TPHD and BotW, and 3) it was Zelda stuff. The same goes with movies that used to have special editions. I remember kinda wanting the $80 Lord of the Rings Extended Edition sets for the extra junk, but ultimately I just wanted the movies and the other stuff would probably be collecting dust in a cabinet.

 

 Pop Culture Loss

I suppose this might fit better on the Evolution of Gaming series, but I don’t have enough to say to warrant its own post.

There are both positive and negative aspects to the various facets of progress, but one I’ve noticed is that with a lot more choice comes a loss of connected pop culture. Back when I was a kid, (insert uphill both ways joke here) most people had the same console (NES), and then later one of two options (SNES or Genesis). Because of that, it was almost always possible to find someone to trade games with, and at some point we all kinda played each other’s games so we could all share in a common experience. Likewise, with only 4 real TV channels (and PBS), we could all talk about a lot of the same shows.

But I fear that these days we have lost the major aspect of pop culture – that being popularity, by which I mean seen/played by a good majority of the people. When it comes to TV, due to different cable packages or streaming services, someone might have a completely different set of shows they watch than their friend, and so they have less in common. The same might go for someone who owns a PlayStation and a Nintendo console with a friend who does only PC gaming. Plus, in both cases there is now so much content and so many games that it would be impossible to keep up on all of them. With a lot of streaming shows, we never know if our friends are “caught up” or if they’re waiting for the season (or series) to end and to binge it all at once, and it can somewhat stifle conversations at work/school that would normally bring us together after having had a common experience in order to avoid spoilers.

Grab-bag Post #5

Grab-bag Post #6 

Nintendo Systems (Collection Part 3)

Zelda Manga (Collection Part 1)

Zelda Games (Collection Part 2)





Onto Hardware!

Now that my Zelda collection was basically complete, I wanted to have a Nintendo collection. No, not one of every game or anything crazy like that - just one representative from every system so that I could kinda have my own, “Museum of Nintendo” exhibit at my house similar to the one we had collectively done at the 3DS meetups.

Side note: I had the same attitude about hardware that I had about games, and a lot of it stemmed from being cheap or thrifty (your choice). Once I had a Game Boy Advance, I felt that I could play any GB, GBC, or GBA game on it so there was no need to spend the money on a slightly better unit (the GBA SP / Micro) that only backlit games instead of letting me play a new set of games (or worse, took out backwards compatibility), and I couldn’t really afford/justify the purchase of a DS when they came out due to college/employment/family financial concerns. I just wanted to get by on minimum hardware. So a GBA and a 3DS would suffice for any Nintendo handheld game, for instance. Had I known that the only Zelda games for the WiiU were going to be HD remakes, I might have skipped the console entirely (though I’m now glad that I didn’t).

I decided to not take a Game Boy with me when I moved out on my own because 1) I had the Super Game Boy to play all of my Game Boy games, and 2) because in my mind they were owned by the family and not just me, though I now wish I had taken one because I suspect my brothers wouldn’t have missed them anyway. But at the time of the original model GBA releasing, I felt even less of an urge to keep one of the original Game Boys. 


Anyway, when it came to hardware, I was mainly missing variations of systems and a couple that needed replacing. The original NES and three Game Boys my family owned had long since been scrapped, so I bought an NES from a local store and a Game Boy from eBay. The other variations of things I needed include:

• the original “fatboy” DS
  
  
  
• DSi and DSi-XL
• 2DS and 2DS XL
• 3DSXL and NN3DS (the non-XL one)
• Game Boy Light (only sold in Japan)
• Game Boy Color, Pocket, and Micro
• SNES-101 (aka SNES Jr.)
• Wii Family Edition and Wii Mini
• Switch Lite

(like I said, it's mainly variations and revisions of stuff I already had)

While having boxes for each of these would be nice, I think I’m going to only get a couple of reproduction boxes for some of the main representatives (like getting a DS Lite box to represent the entire DS line).

I have procured more than half of the list, and at the moment I’m only in need of the Game Boy Pocket and Micro, the 2DS and 2DSXL, and the 3DSXL and NN3DS. As these are a bit more expensive, getting some of these is going to take a bit longer because I’ll have to save up my self-imposed allowance to pay for them. I anticipate editing this particular part somewhat often as I get closer to my collection goals. 

Since the N64, release dates have been pretty much simultaneous between Japan and North America, and the hardware has basically been identical. But I kinda think having a Famicom / Disk System and Super Famicom / Satellaview would be a nice piece to add in the future. (Update: Got everything including a Famicom, Famicom Disk System, Super Famicom, Satellaview, and a DD by Summer 2023)

And then finally, the last thing I’ll need is proper display shelving and space to put all of it in, as well as ways to hook them all up when needed. I figure once one of the kids move out and we can reclaim their bedroom I can turn it into a bit of a museum. But all of that is several years into the future so I have time to think about it.

Zelda Games (Collection Part 2)

Zelda Manga (Collection Part 1)

Once my Zelda Manga series was nearing completion, I turned my sights closer to the original source material: the games themselves. Now, I have (almost) always had all of the games in some form, and some way to play them basically at all times. The few exceptions are getting the original Legend of Zelda after owning A Link to the Past, a 6-month gap between Four Sword Adventures coming out and getting it for Christmas, and not being able to play the DS games due to not having a DS. But what I prioritized was being able to play a game in some fashion, and not necessarily having every version. Like comics, I was less interested in the merch but was into the puzzles and story, so I didn’t rush out and get Ocarina of Time 3D when it first came out just because of some quality-of-life improvements and upgraded graphics. There wasn’t any new content or more Hyrulian history to learn about so I didn't feel compelled. Likewise, if Four Swords hadn’t been included, I might not have gotten the GBA port of ALttP.

As another example, I didn’t really feel the need to own the Zelda Collector’s Edition because it seemed redundant due to still owning the original hardware and cartridges in working condition (and being able to also play them on the Wii VC). Nor did my wallet feel the urge to get both the Wii and GameCube versions of Twilight Princess, because it was basically the same game other than being mirrored. I only bought the GBA re-releases of the NES games because my son had a GBA and I didn’t feel like hooking up the NES.

So once I set my sights on obtaining a complete collection, I started off by making a list and noting the things I was missing. These were things like the GameCube version of Twilight Princess, the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild, a physical version of Wind Waker HD (I only had the digital version up to this point), and the Collector’s Edition disc. All of this would be a bit of spending so I gave myself a $100 per month limit, both to avoid putting us in the poor-house and to make the collection process more fun by spreading it out over several years rather than all at once.

This would complete the games, but to make them a bit more presentable, I found a shop that specializes in making reproductions of the original game boxes as well as the instruction manuals. So I added those to the list of things to buy. Luckily, I still had all of the boxes and manuals from Ocarina onward, so I really only needed to replace the boxes for the NES games, ALttP, both versions of Link’s Awakening, and the GBA re-releases of the NES games.

I figured I might as well do the same for the spin-off games as well, so I imported the 3 Tingle DS games from Japan, got the 3DS and Switch version of Hyrule Warriors, bought a Game & Watch Zelda, and found a seller who made physical copies of the BS-X games along with custom manuals and boxes. Unfortunately, the CD-i games were prohibitively expensive, so I resorted to making my own versions of the discs and jewel cases, knowing full well that they would never be played. My work was . . . adequate, but then I learned of a British place that made much better replicas, so I ordered some. And for the three other games that only got digital releases (FS:AE, TMTP, and MNP:TP), I made custom cases using Photoshop and some cheap cases I got from a used game store.

In addition, I also got Japanese versions of the first six games (including both disk and cartridge versions), the Japanese FSA (because it has Navi Trackers), and a set of the Barcode Battler II cards for ALttP. The only thing that doesn’t have a box is the Nelsonic Game Watch. I could buy one with the packaging, but I’m still a bit too cheap at the moment and would rather spend my money elsewhere. Perhaps in the future, maybe. But all of this wrapped up in April of 2022 with a complete Zelda game collection.





What’s next? I’m glad you asked . . . (Part 3)

Zelda Manga (Collection Part 1)

As I’m writing this, it’s the summer of 2022. For the past couple of years, I’ve aimed my collecting habit in a particular direction, and it should come as no surprise that it ended up pointing at Zelda.

As a side note, I think I’ve always had the collecting bug. When my mom bought my brother Matt and me a baseball card starter pack, I wanted to get all of them, despite not knowing a whole lot about the MLB. Later in life it turned to X-Men Cards and then Comic Books. At one point around 2002, I was collecting Sobe bottles.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

But about three years ago, I decided to invest into some Zelda stuff. When it comes to branded merchandise, I’m not usually one for stuff like mugs, pillows, keychains, stickers, etc. My love for the series is centered around playing the actual games and the joy of completing quests and solving puzzles, and not around wearing a different Zelda shirt each day of the week to advertise my geeky-ness. While having some of that stuff is nice, it’s not the actual content. As another example, the reason I was reading/collecting X-Men comic books is for the art and the story, not for the merch. So a Wolverine telephone wasn’t something that I would purchase myself, but I got one for Christmas. Truth be told, had the money been spent on 10 back-issues that I didn’t have, I probably would have been more excited.

So even though spending money on a Hyrule Crest window decal wasn’t all that enticing, the thing that caught my eye are the Manga books, specifically the ones by Himekawa. And the difference is that this isn’t just some typical Zelda-themed item of something I already owned – like a T-shirt, drinking glass, or Rubik’s Cube – this is actual new content that, admittedly isn’t canon, but related to and based on the original games.



Once I had made that decision, I started out by making some lists from information I found on a few Zelda fansites and let Anne know about my plan. I asked for a few of them for Christmas and Birthdays for the next few years and have slowly been amassing the ones that have been translated into English. At the moment, I have all of them except for the last two volumes of the Twilight Princess series, as well as the 4-book set of hardcover books made by Dark Horse (Hyrule Historia, Art & Artifacts, Encyclopedia, Creating a Champion).

For nearly all of the other non-translated stuff, I have digital scans that I have found in various places on the internet. It should come as no surprise that in Japan there was a lot more material available that didn’t make it to the West. Maybe someday I’ll get actual prints of these. Despite formerly having a grade 6 reading level in Japanese, I don’t know that I want to spend the time meticulously going through one of these books in its original language, so I’m kinda sticking to the English stuff.

There are a few other adventure books and comics that came out in the 90’s, mostly somewhat based on the Animated series. If I had known about them, known where to buy them, and had money to do so, I might have bought them back in the day. But finding out about these kinds of things in a pre-internet era small town would have been rather difficult, plus I don’t know if I would have kept them in good shape all of these years.



Anyhow, I’ve read all of them except for the Twilight Princess ones – I’m waiting for the series to conclude before diving in so that I don’t forget details along the way.



And that got me started onto something else . . . (Part 2)

(Or skip ahead to Part 3)

Collecting Comic Books part 2

Collecting Comic Books Part 1

Eventually I was buying 10 monthly titles: Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, Excalibur, Generation X, X-Man, Cable, Wolverine, and Deadpool. These plus the mini-series, quarterly series (X-Men Unlimited, etc.), annuals, and other random issues I bought meant I was spending upwards of $50 per month on comics, and sometimes more. One time I realized that we were going to be out of town on a Saturday and hadn’t been able to give Jake notice to hold some stuff for me. I knew where he worked during the week so I paid a quick visit to him to let him know. Later he told me that I shouldn’t have bothered him at work, and it was doubly embarrassing for me because I knew the girl who worked the counter from school. 

Here and there I got the opportunity to visit a few different shops. When visiting family in Utah I tried to visit comic/card shops when I could, and besides visiting 1,000,000 Comix a few times, once my dad took me to a shop near my old house in Boise during a visit to my grandma. 

Things continued much this same way for quite a while until Jake decided to move on with his life and close the shop. What I had to do instead was make arrangements with 1,000,000 Comix to set aside a copy of everything I wanted and then send them a money order every 6 weeks or so and they would ship me what I wanted. It wasn’t nearly as fun as getting a few issues every week, but it sufficed. However, I, too, was about to embark on a new stage in life and needed to find a decent cut-off point. Marvel did a company-wide event in May of 1997 where every monthly title was numbered -1, and it was a throwback to some past event. That seemed good to me so I stopped there. As it turned out, I was slated to help my aunt/uncle run their fireworks business that summer after I graduated high school. My mom and I mostly sat in the booth with not a whole lot to do (this would have been a perfect time to have a 3DS and a few Zelda games, but since those weren’t invented, a Game Boy). Out of sheer coincidence, the parking lot we were assigned to happened to be across the street from 1,000,000 Comix, so I was able to get my last shipment of comics in person and tell them that I won’t be needing their services anymore. I bought everything up to and including those -1 issues, and from that point forward the only thing I bought was Wizard Magazine. All together, I had seriously collected comics for a little over two years, roughly about the same amount of time that I had spent collecting cards, with about a 6 month overlap. 

During my first year of college, I left most of my things at home as I didn’t see the point of moving all my junk to a dorm 5 hours away to just go and move it back 8 months later. I did, however, take my stack of Wizard magazines as reading material. And I also made a trip to the local supermarket where I was able to keep purchasing the magazine when it came out. But after that year, I went to Japan for a couple of years so I wasn’t able to do anything comics related. When I returned to the States, I ended up buying a couple of issues of Wizard, and then one more after I was married, but it wasn’t quite the same. And since that day my collecting days have been over. I still have them, but they just sit in a plastic tote in my shed. I wonder if the acid from the paper has turned some of them yellow yet . . .

However, just because I didn’t buy physical copies didn’t mean I stopped collecting. I discovered that there were electronic versions of most major comics that people had scanned and put into zip files. Using file-sharing programs like eMule and some others, I spent weeks downloading large volumes of comics and sorting them. My goal was to a) get all of them, and b) separate them into “eras” that seem to make sense. So for example, the first era was from the beginning of publication until it was cancelled. The second started when the “new” X-Men (like Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Storm) were added to the team, and ended when the first spin-off books were made (New Mutants and X-Factor). Another one was the 1991 reboot of all the teams up through the Age of Apocalypse crossover event.

In addition to all of the monthly titles which were easy to find, I also tried getting all of the one-shots and mini-series starring my favorite mutants, which was a lot harder because they aren’t as popular as the main series. I worked on putting a chronological publication list together, and then got more ambitions and started working on a correct reading order list, but that would take forever and be super confusing, so I gave up after a few hours. After doing all of that work, I had the project like 97% done, with the remaining 3% being finding random issues of things like Marvel Comics Presents or some obscure mini-series. I started to read through them and got up until around the Inferno crossover (circa ~1986) and then kinda stopped. So I can say that I’ve read everything from 1963 to 1997 except for a gap of 5 years between 1986 and 1991.

Part of me wants to go back and pick up reading the digital versions again, but then I think of the futility of it all. It’s not like the story actually stops at 1997, and a lot of things have changed in ways that I don’t agree with since then. In a way, I sorta like keeping things how they are; it’s like things just kinda paused and have been the same ever since. To me, comic books are like the male equivalent of a soap opera for girls. They both have a serialized nature with characters, but one focuses on drama, love, and betrayal, while the other focuses on action/fighting, super powers, and good vs. evil. But both just keep going (for the most part). It’s not something like the Harry Potter series where JK Rowling knew there were only going to be 7 books all written by the same author, or something like Back to the Future where there are 3 movies made by the same creative team and no more will be made. These comics keep getting published monthly, and all the while writers and artists swap out every so often so tone, quality, and pacing vary wildly from year to year. But I also suspect that because of waning interest, publishers have resorted to gimmicky tactics in an effort to attract readers, and such things turn me off from wanting to resume the hobby.

So it’s not like reading Tolkien’s works. In that world, Tolkien endeavored to make it seem like Middle-Earth was a real world, and that these tales came to us because he translated the stories from the Red Book of Westmarch (the one that Bilbo started, Frodo added on to, and Samwise finished). Unfortunately, the dedication of the writers/artists/publishers to keep up such standards depends on the year and the particular combination of the staff. When Chris Claremont was writing all the X-books (1975-1991), it felt more like Tolkien in that he (Claremont) had a grand story to tell in many parts though several teams, and that the stories of the various books wove together to make a tapestry. But once he was gone it seemed like every book had its own direction and so the illusion was ruined.


Looking back, there are a few trends that I don’t particularly care for in the world of comics. I didn’t like them when I was collecting, and from what I hear, they’ve only increased in frequency over the years. The first is cancelling and then relaunching a title with a new issue #1. Corporate bean counters noticed that a lot more people are willing to give a first issue a try so if they relaunch then that individual issue sells better (this can probably be explained by investment collectors buying #1s because they tend to be worth more and that issue #1 is attractive to new readers because they know they’re not missing out on crucial character history). After the Bryan Singer X-Men movies were popular, Marvel relaunched/rebranded the X-titles with a restarted numbering (and with new costumes that resembled the movie), and then after a few years continued the numbering where they had left off (with more traditional costumes). And while high numbering initially turned me off when I was younger, I took a sense of pride in reading something that had lasted over 300 issues. In the case of Action Comics, I loved seeing it hit issue #1000 as a testament to the longevity of the character of Superman.

Another trend is major retconning. Spider-Man did it in the 90’s with the whole clone story and everyone hated it, so they had to retcon the retcon. While I don’t mind that after 30 years of the character being around someone at Marvel finally decided to tackle the actual origins of Wolverine, it retconned a bunch of things like that the X in ‘Weapon X’ was actually a Roman numeral and our long-time understanding of how certain powers work was changed.

I also really, really hate title/mantle-swapping. To me, the character is the person and not their mantle/title/job. Peter Parker is Spider-Man, and if he retires while someone else gets similar powers, they need a different title. Spider-Boy, Arachnid-Man, the Tarantula - anything but Spider-Man. I didn’t like when Azrael was (temporarily) Batman - he should have been named something else. Unfortunately, it seems like almost every major character has been replaced with a race and or gender swapped character who took the original character’s name. This feels like a social-justice inspired change to try and appeal to the blue-checkmarks on Twitter, but ends up pissing off long time fans. In the case of Thor, ‘Thor’ isn’t a title - it’s his actual name, but somehow it got transferred to Jane Foster. When I replace Bob in accounting at work, I don’t change my name to Bob, but I guess this is how it works in modern Marvel. Granted, there are a few characters where title swapping is appropriate, like Green Lantern, but those are less common.

Overall, it was a fun ride and I'm glad I got to participate in the hobby. I'm not sure if my collection is really worth anything. The recent slew of superhero movies may have made them go up in value, but bad movies might have had an adverse effect. I guess I am not sure where I would find the demand for such things to sell them even if I were so inclined. While they're not really doing much other than collecting dust, I do sort of enjoy the feeling of knowing that I at least have them.

If I suddenly had lots of money and a ton of extra time, it'd be fun to take it up again, but I don't think the publishers are making them in a manner that I would appreciate at the moment.

Collecting Comic Books part 1

While I have always liked the superhero/comic book world, I didn’t get into collecting them as soon as you might imagine. Here and there, we would get free comics from school about fire safety with Smokey Bear, or stranger danger with Captain America. I remember getting another one about being able to tell parents about sexual abuse starring Power Pack, as well.

But I mainly stayed in the realm of the various animated series and the like. As mentioned on my first card collecting post, I felt like I would need to read all back issues to fully appreciate the current story, so I never started. I always saw them at Circle K, 7-11, K-Mart, and other places, but never really bothered to even flip through them most of the time. Once I did and saw Superman with a beard talking to people I’d never heard of about things I’d never seen and it just confirmed that it would be too hard to get into.

My friend Brooks was a closet comic fan, and we had a sort of mutual understanding that we could discuss such things only when there was no one else around. He was a fan of Superman and Spider-Man, while I liked the X-Men and Batman. He took me to a small comic shop called Jake’s Comics in the back of a flea market in town that was only open for a few hours on Saturday. It was run by a local guy named Jake Bear, who was also an aspiring artist. Incidentally, there was a sign out front letting customers know about the comic shop in the back that was a really good Wolverine painted on some wood. But because it was his brown/yellow costume and not the yellow/blue one I was familiar with, I didn’t like it as much (though now I think his brown one is the best). Brooks later showed me his collection, and while I thought it was neat, I didn’t feel like getting into the hobby just yet.

The first “real” comics I owned were Christmas gifts from my parents. They found a 4-pack of X-Men related comic books that came in a nice cardboard box, and I believe it was a way of getting rid of some copies of issues that had been over-printed. It turned out that the issues were X-Men #1, Uncanny X-Men #281, X-Factor #71, and Excalibur #42 (all from late 1991). I read them and enjoyed them, but didn’t really understand certain parts of what was going on. Each issue referenced some history and characters that had not been covered in the information from my card collection, so I was kinda in the dark. But it turns out that those particular issues happened to be part of a major shift/re-branding of the entire X-Men family of comics, so they were good jumping on points. If it had included X-Force #1, then I would have had all five issues where the X-teams “reset.” Later on a trip to Utah, my mom got me an issue of X-Men Adventures, a comic book rendition of certain episodes of the animated series. While I appreciated the thought, she happened to pick the one episode that I liked the least - it was kind of a lackluster story and was somehow shown most often on re-runs. But now I had 5 comic books.

Around the Spring of 1995, when the first round of cards had wrapped up and the second set of X-Men cards were out, my friends across the street (who had I had traded cards with) bought a few issues of X-Men and showed me. There was a new Crossover event called the Phalanx Covenant going on that was going to start a 6th X-team: Generation X. He had a paper route that delivered to Circle K, so he had a daily opportunity to see the comics, and the card collecting had gotten him excited to try comics. I started learning about some of the “current events” of the X-Men world, like how Wolverine had gone off on his own after losing the adamantium from his bones. My friend Brooks shared an issue of Wolverine with me and left it at my house. Eventually he told me I could keep it, so now I had 6 issues and I started toying with the idea of buying things monthly.

Soon after something big happened, and something that I didn’t like - they were going to completely change everything and everyone involved with the X-Men. It was announced that the story was going to go in a whole new direction where Professor X hadn’t lived to form the X-Men so the world was a dystopian nightmare with Apocalypse as its architect. It was like everything I had worried about breaking into comics, but ramped up to an 11. I was on the verge of starting to read/buy stuff but I wanted it to be like the animated series version I was familiar with - not this whole new and completely different take. But it ended after only 4 months and everything went back to (relative) normalcy. And here was my opportunity. A really good jumping on point. That’s when I decided to go visit Jake’s Comics again and start giving comics a shot.

I started going there weekly, and it became a bit of a ritual that I would wake up on Saturday morning, eat breakfast, watch the X-Men animated series and whatever was after it, then head on down to the back of the flea market to get the latest comics. Often, I was there before Jake (the owner/proprietor) got there, and soon became one of his most reliable customers. Over the next few weeks I started to learn a lot about how the comics industry works - things like the release schedules for each title, and what limited series and one-shots are. It turned out that Jake didn’t really have an account with the big comics distributors; he happened to be friends with the owners of a comic store in Boise called 1,000,000 Comix and they let him purchase things at the same price that they did. He would make a weekly trip over there to pick up the week’s order and hang out with them for a few hours.

After getting 2 or 3 months of issues, I started to feel comfortable enough to branch out a bit. I told Jake to get me one of anything that has anything to do with the X-Men in it - be it a mini-series, one-shot, or guest appearance. I knew that the Marvel Universe was pretty interconnected, so sometimes events in Thor spill over to the X-Men in the form of weather, or a newspaper strike from Spider-Man shows up in the Fantastic Four. I guess you could say that I had a big case of FOMO - fear of missing out - and I didn’t want to be caught unaware when crossover events (however small they may be) happened. Even though I learned that I probably could have just stuck with the main series and been ok, I still wanted everything just in case the Gambit/Spider-Man/Howard the Duck Team-up One-shot had lasting implications (it didn’t happen often, but you never know).

Occasionally I would take a brother or two with me; Mitch and Brady were the usual candidates. When they came I would buy them a $1 issue of something called Professor X and the X-Men, which were re-tellings of the original Stan Lee run of X-Men from the 60’s, but with smaller words and newer, more modern art that was aimed at younger readers. 

I soon started learning to recognize different artists’ styles, and about how often they have to have guest artists sub in. Certain pencillers were very consistent and only rarely missed an issue, while others couldn’t seem to string more than 2 issues together at a time before tagging out. Another thing I caught onto was how the release scheduling worked; on a given Friday night I knew in advance which monthly issues I would be able to buy the next morning, so I took the time to re-read the last issues of those titles so that I would have a refreshed memory on Saturday.

I also started buying Wizard Magazine monthly. I had flipped through them here and there at the card shop and other places, and was turned off by how negative they seemed to be towards Marvel in general and the X-Men in particular. But I soon learned to take it in stride and grew accustomed to their brand of humor. After a while, I learned that their criticism most likely came from a place of love - they wanted the X-books to be better and poked fun at them as a form of public shaming to try and get Marvel to get back on track. My mom somehow heard through her false rumor grapevine that this magazine (Wizard) was teaching kids black magic. I argued with her for a little bit and finally had to resort to grabbing a copy and showing her, “Look - it’s Batman and Spider-Man. Comic books - nothing to do with magic or Satan worshiping whatsoever.” I fully believe that she would have been on the “D’n’D is of the devil,” train if I played such games.

So after having read and re-read those first four issues I got for Christmas multiple times, I finally decided to find out the resolution to those cliff-hangers. I learned that those gift issues were pretty good jumping on points, so I decided to try and complete the collection starting with October 1991. Over time, I bought issues here and there from Jake’s and other places, but the biggest score was finding a stash being sold for pennies per issue at a bookstore in Boise. I had gone over there with my mom, who was running some errands, and she dropped my brothers and me off at Q-Zar, a laser tag place. We played a few games of laser tag, some arcade games, and had a slice of pizza like usual. But I wandered over to the bookstore a couple doors down and found that someone had decided to sell their kids’ abandoned collection. I ended up going home with more than 50 back issues for like $15. Then I made lists of what I had and was missing and started to try and fill in the gaps from various stores (mainly Jake’s).

Once I had a decent collection going, I had to make a choice of what I wanted to spend my time/money on. The Nintendo 64 was going to be released within the next year or so, and card collecting had been fun but the benefit of learning new stuff was starting to see diminishing returns, so I stopped doing cards after the 1996 Fleer X-Men Kubert set and focused most of my monthly money on comics. Instead of buying pages, binders, and plastic cases, I started buying sleeves and cardboard backers to keep them in good condition. Acid-free paper and other things were popular at the time because apparently a lot of older things turn yellow over time because of a certain acid used in the manufacturing process. So stores were selling acid-free options (for a higher price) which were marketed as a preservation tactic. I cheaped out and bought the regular stuff, but I haven’t noticed anything detrimental yet. I used some old boxes from canned food purchases my family was going to throw out and turned them into makeshift longboxes that were laid out in my room. Unfortunately I had a slight mishap one day. I spilled some hot chocolate and it got onto some issues of X-Factor. They were in sleeves so most of the damage was just on the tops of the pages, thankfully, but I tried to clean and dry them as much as possible.

As part of the effort to get everything starting from that 1991 starting point, I had to go through and find all of the Age of Apocalypse stuff that I purposely skipped. Now that I knew it was just an extended “elseworlds/what if” type of thing (even though it had consequences that permeated back into the ‘regular’ world) I was okay with it and wanted to read it. But because it was such a popular crossover, it was hard to find certain issues. The next big crossover was called Onslaught, and it involved most of the Marvel Universe. In an effort to get everything, I ended up buying random issues of things like Hulk, Spider-Man, Green Goblin, and Fantastic Four. Here and there I would buy something else non X-related. When Spider-Man relaunched, I bought the first 5 issues of the new book, as well as a few independent things just because I liked the artwork.

Collecting Comic Books part 2

Card Collecting Part 3

Card Collecting Part 1

Card Collecting Part 2

When the following year came around, I collected the 1995 editions of all three sets. But I noticed something at this time – that I was doing it mostly solo, more or less. I didn’t know of anyone else personally who was collecting these sets, so I mostly had to deal with the card shop or just rely on my paycheck and lady luck. 

The 1995 Fleer Ultra X-Men cards had some new characters (the Generation X origin story had just finished in the comics) and some more history that the previous year’s set had omitted. Once again, these were painted by various artists, and had several sets of special cards. There were some plastic cards that were transparent and double sided, Sinister Observations (Mr. Sinister’s thoughts on various heroes), as well as something called Hunters and Stalkers, which came in 3 colors (like the Marvel Masterpiece set). 

 The 1995 Flair Marvel cards were similar to the previous set in terms of quality and art style, but it only covered the previous year’s worth of story developments. I felt like at least half of the set should have been devoted to other major Marvel storylines that didn’t make the cut in the original set, and have the other half be stuff from the past couple years. Like the previous set, this had Powerblast cards, as well as some new kinds called Chromium and Holoblast, and something called Duoblast, featuring 2 similar heroes with one on each side of the card. 

When the 1996 X-Men cards debuted, I was excited because they were all done by 3 of my favorite artists: Joe, Adam, and Andy Kubert (a father and his two sons), and every card was a chromium card. While I enjoyed the set, each successive collecting experience wasn’t quite as good because the information on the cards sorta covered the same ground each time (i.e., I wasn’t learning a whole lot) and it seemed like they were more focused on the recent events (which I had kept up on by actually reading comics by this point). One interesting idea for a set of special embossed cards was the set that had the "regular" version of a character, with another card showing the "Age of Apocalypse" version in the exact same pose. 

But one thing that sorta turned me off was that this set had one included card with a signature of one of the artists on it in gold foil. Neat, but it would be nearly impossible to collect a full set of 150 special cards when only 1 came in a pack. If I had perfect luck, it would have taken me 150 packs to finish that set, and I would end up with ten (10!) full sets of “normal” cards and like 3 full sets of the other special cards. Not worth it. The Hildebrandt Marvel Masterpiece set had done something similar and I didn’t appreciate the feeling of having something that was out of my budget to collect.

But by this time, I was reading more and more comics directly and sorta phasing out the card-collecting part of my hobby, so I finished the set and its special cards (none of the signature ones) and called it a day, so to speak. One special crossover X-Men event had each issue packaged with a special X-Cutioner’s Song card. I collected all 12 and added them to my collection. In order to prevent the rings from pinching the first or last pages, I used some extra card pages filled with some of the basketball cards my brother gave me (mostly low-level Portland Trailblazers cards) to be the sacrificial cards should something unfortunate happen. 

I started also buying something called Marvel Overpower cards, which was a collectible card game (think like Marvel’s version of Magic: The Gathering). I bought the starter decks and a few booster packs, but could never find anyone to play with so I just have them but don’t use them. Wizard Magazine, a publication about comic books and its related merchandise, packaged a special card for Overpower with their 50th issue. I bought one from 7-11, but it turns out that the card was either forgotten or stolen. So I surreptitiously took the card out of another issue a few days later. They also started issuing a special card with each issue and so I have a set of Wizard cards as well. 

Years later, when I discovered that some of these cards were being traded on eBay, I was able to complete my collection of the original 1994 Fleer set - the one Red Foil card I could never find. Then I found that there were a few other holes in my collections that I could fill using these online auctions, and sorta went a little overboard (as one does). But I finally completed everything and stopped the spending. The only things I don't have are the Silver X-Over cards (which I mentioned go for around $500 these days), the sets with signatures, and extra things like the giant cards that came as case toppers (meant for store display purposes, so I don't feel like those are "part of the set," but they often get listed with the cards).

I hung onto the full sets and have them nicely organized in binders, and any extra cards (including special cards) are safely stored in little boxes in totes in my shed. I should find something to do with them.

Card Collecting Part 2

Card Collecting Part 1

Once I had acquired a taste for card collecting, I wanted to keep going. During my frequent visits to the card shop, the owner would introduce me to new sets. The next one I had my eye on was the Flair Marvel set. Flair was an imprint of Fleer, and were their highest quality products. These cards were made/colored in Photoshop or some other computer program, used cardboard that was easily at least twice as thick, and had a very nice slick UV coating on them. Instead of coming in foil wrapped packs, these came in small cardboard boxes.

Like the previous set, there were 150 cards, but only 18 special foil cards. As I recall, I was able to get all of the cards without too much issue and only had to trade with a friend-of-a-friend once for a particular special card.

However, unlike the previous set, this one was not X-Men only. The set was a celebration of the biggest and most memorable events in the Marvel comics universe up to that point. Examples include character/team debuts, character deaths (like Gwen Stacy), crossovers, major stories (like the Phoenix Saga), and many other snippets of the 30 year history of these characters. These cards expanded my knowledge of the Marvel Universe quite a bit, and allowed me to feel at ease about buying a comic book in that I would probably know who a majority of the referenced characters were now. 

Around this time my mom became concerned about how much money I was spending on these silly little cards. I reassured her that I was being responsible - in fact, it was precisely because of these cards and how I hated being broke 28 days out of the month that I forced myself to learn how to budget. Anyway, my weak defense was that they were worth something and that I could sell complete sets to recoup the money for things like college or going to Japan. The concept of comics as investments had been in the news recently so I defaulted to that. She asked to whom and how would I go about doing such a thing. I didn't have an answer, but found one years later - eBay (though I had obviously overestimated their projected value and demand). 

The third set I collected was the 1994 Marvel Universe set. It had 200 cards in the set, with a variety of solo cards and 9-card page sets telling a complete story arc in one picture. This set had some holographic cards, and I happened to get one on my very first pack. There were only 4 of them, and I had spectacularly good luck getting those particular ones. Besides these there were the usual Powerblast cards, but these came in 3 varieties and were a pain to collect. Packs from Wal-Mart came in a gold variety, packs from a hobby shop (like the Card Shop) came in silver, and anyplace else had "rainbow" versions. The collector in me decided that I needed all 3 so I eventually did it. They also had something called "Suspended Animation," which were on transparent plastic and were double sided (it was supposed to emulate a celluloid animation frame). 

Another one I got was the Marvel Masterpiece set. These were a set of 150 cards that had the most popular and relevant characters that were in the stories in the comics from the recent years. Each card had more character history and facts on it, but what was unique was that the entire set was painted by the same duo – the Hildebrandt Brothers – so there weren’t various styles from card to card like previous sets.

There were 10 special holofoil cards, but they each came in three flavors (like the last set) - gold, silver, and bronze. Because I was chasing a complete set of 30 of these holofoils, I ended up buying enough cards to do almost 3 full normal card sets. I gifted one to my brother Matt, hoping he would use it to get more into the comics side of things (it didn’t work so well). There were also 9 other Powerblast cards that I almost collected 2 full sets of during my pursuit of the 30 holofoils.


With four full sets of Marvel/X-Men cards, I had spent quite a bit of time and money on them. They became like my pride and joy, and I pored over them for hours reading the information and admiring the artwork. I learned quite a bit about the characters, but learned that I quite like collecting things. I made sure to have them in the best kinds of binders using the best kinds of pages and other ways of preserving them so nothing became ruined. 

Card Collecting Part 3