This weekend, I did something I never thought I could do.
I threw out some comics. To be entirely accurate, I recycled them, as I am an environmentally concious sort. But it still feels like I’ve done something wrong.
I am, by nature, something of a packrat. I don’t throw things out unless I’m absolutely certain I’ll never need it again, or if it’s taking up too much space. Consequently, I often walk around with a wallet full of old movie tickets, receipts, and expired coupons, and my apartment is full of dubiously organized newspapers, magazines, more receipts, and flyers I never got around to throwing out. And, much to the chagrin of my girlfriend, lots and lots of comics sitting about in boxes and random piles.
Most of them are still there, of course. But I found a bunch of stuff that I’m never going to read again: Books that were cool for a week or two after they came out, or were issues I picked up to sample. Plenty of first issues and new storylines. Some of them are actively sucky, while others are just unmemorable. They’re mostly pretty scattered, rarely more than one or two consecutive issues of a series, and aren’t worth nearly enough to go to the trouble of selling them off on eBay. Most of them aren’t appropriate, or interesting enough, for donating to a children’s hospital or something.
Throwing out comics seems even more egregious than throwing out other random crap, but I’m not sure why. Obviously the collector mentality hangs off many readers, telling us that these are valuable items and should be preserved and protected. But as anyone who read comics in the 90s knows, that’s pretty much crap; 99.9% of the books I own have no value beyond that which I assign them. I’ve long since given up bagging and boarding, aside from the highlights of my library. Books I want to re-read long-term are usually in trade format when it’s available.
So this is perhaps the final farewell to any last vestiges of the collector mindset that may have been hanging on. Yeah, I’m throwing out comics. So what? They’re only paper.