Farewell to Yesteryear

Pictured above is the entrance to our kitchen, which is where we've had my seven and a half boxes of comic books stored for the past two and a half months. If you look closely, you'll notice that the comic boxes aren't there. That's because I sold them this morning.

I feel a little like I've cut off a limb. I started reading comics with Batman #476 in 1992 and have been filling up boxes ever since. Over the past few years, I've been cutting down on my boxed collection by selling sets on eBay and then replacing them with trade paperback editions, which can be stored nicely on a bookshelf. Over the past year I've mostly stopped buying the monthly issues except about five a month (compared to the thirty a month I used to get), and have restricted my collected edition buying to when I have an Amazon.com gift certificate from our Amazon.com credit card.

Yesterday I decided to finally list the 1250 or so comic books sitting in the kitchen entrance on Craigslist (as a set, not individually--heavens no), and this morning a guy who runs an online comic shop came by and bought them. I did save a box full of my favorites, and I still have a bookcase full of graphic novels and trade paperback collections, plus I think I still have a box hidden somewhere in my mom's place in Hawaii, so it's not like I've cut myself off from comics forever. I'm even going to continue getting the five comics a month I've been getting. But still, those six boxes the man with the long black and red hair took away this morning in his station wagon had nearly fifteen years of memories in them: Superman's wedding, Green Arrow's funeral (don't worry, he got better), Robin's first date, and the time Green Lantern went crazy and destroyed the universe (it got better too). Every time the Justice League of America, the Teen Titans, and the Legion of Superheroes broke up and got back together again are now fleeting images in my mind, no longer waiting in a long white box for me to find and relive.

Sigh.

At least I can walk into my kitchen without knocking the phone off the wall. And maybe we'll use the money to get Little Dude a Jumperoo, and when I see him playing in it I can imagine he's a superhero, leaping over tall buildings in a single bound for my amusement.