Not a hoax! Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!

I miss treasure hunting.

No, I've never hunted for the Ark of the Covenant, gone off on an adventure with my friends to find the fortune of One-Eyed Willy, or stolen the Declaration of Independence. (And really, would it be wise to admit it if I had?) Sure, I occasionally check the vending machine at work for abandoned change, but that doesn't really apply.

I'm talking about the activity I started around the time I learned to read and continued until my mid-to-late 20s - finding an interesting story told with a combination of words and pictures at a fair price, or (later in life) one at a decent price that I knew I could trade for one or more later on.

I'm talking about buying, reading, collecting, trading, and selling comic books.

My earliest memories of the hobby are going to the local IGA with a parent and perusing the latest issues of Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Archie. (There were a few superhero books, but those hadn’t grabbed my interest yet.) Multiple titles featuring each of the characters filled the shelf and I could acquire them all (oh, the agony!), so I based my selection on the following criteria: my top choice was any Richie Rich book featuring his buddy, amateur magician and comedian Jackie Jokers. From there my memory is a bit hazy, but I believe the remaining Richie Rich books were reviewed, and if none grabbed me I moved on to Casper, then Archie. If I still couldn’t find one that I couldn’t live without I’d cycle back to Richie Rich and determine which one looked most interesting. No point in going home empty-handed, right?

I specifically remember the day everything changed. During a Christmas gift exchange at church (one of the few church-related memories of my youth) my best friend’s older brother opened his gift – Marvel Tales #148 and #149. The former looked interesting, but the latter...”Not a dream! Not an imaginary tale! You’ll gasp in amazement when Peter is ‘Unmasked by Doctor Octopus!’” By this time I’d developed a love of the character due to reruns of both the 1967 cartoon and the 1981 animated series Spider-man and his Amazing Friends. I

knew that revealing Spider-man’s identity would change everything, and I just HAD to know what happened in that issue! (Which I later learned was a reprint of Amazing Spider-man #12, published in 1964.)

But alas, ‘service’ ended and everyone went home. The only additional information I’d managed to acquire was that the pharmacy downtown sold Spider-man comics. Within a few days that issue was mine! Not only that, the pharmacy stocked books featuring all the superheroes I’d seen on television: Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four, the rest of the Justice League, a book featuring kid versions of the heroes called Teen Titans, and the Hulk! There were others, but I didn’t recognize the characters and they looked too creepy. Shortly after that the IGA moved across town and began stocking superhero comics as well. (First comic purchased there: Captain America #292.) I now had TWO sources for my habit! Then I learned that the bookstore about fifteen minutes away offered an even wider selection! Any time I had the opportunity to visit any of the three locations I looked for new issues, with Spider-man replacing Richie Rich, Superman replacing Casper, and the Hulk replacing Archie in my selection criteria.

There was a brief period when I abandoned the hobby – I estimate about two years – before I picked it up again in the late 80’s. I began finding old comics at random places and friends and I would make periodic trips to a big chicken barn that had been converted into a used bookstore and antique shop. All comics were half cover price! (Condition varied based on how they were when they were purchased and how long they’d been stacked in the Barn.)

Around the time I got my driver’s permit rumors began to swirl that there was a new store, about an hour away, that sold new and back issue comics and comic-related products. I’d read about such stores, but NEVER been in one. Once again the specifics are lost, but I can tell you I made frequent trips to the store, buying new books, as well as filling in some of the gaps in my collection and discovering new titles and characters I never knew existed! The store was clean, well-lit, and well organized. The only catch? The owner was a rude jerk, and his wife was even worse.

But then more rumors...of another store in the same city just a few miles away! Long story short, the new store became “my” store for almost a decade. (The other store closed soon after.) At the new store I maintained a regular “pull list”, grabbed an extra book or two a week, and trusted the owner’s recommendations. I’d often go to the store with a friend or two, make our purchases, then we’d take our purchases to nearby Pizza Hut and flip through them while waiting for our food. Good times!

And then there was my semester of college a state away in 1991. I maintained my relationship with my “home” store, but my newfound friends and I redefined “treasure hunting.” Actually purchasing anything became secondary to leaving campus for a few hours, locating a new store (this was before GPS, of course), and perusing its contents. We may have found a few good deals along the way, but the memories of those hours in the car are priceless. Granted, there was that time we showed up after the store had closed for the day and were yelled at by a police officer for looking in the store window. Then there was the time I found the first few issues of The Tick...

But age (dare I use the word ‘maturity’?), multiple changes within the comics medium, the price of modern books, readily available reprints, and the internet have spoiled the hobby for me. Most of my collection has been sold (no more gaps to fill in), I don’t buy anything on a regular basis, and if I really want to read something created in the last decade odds are good my local library has it in a collected format. In the past fifteen years there have only been a handful of comics I’ve sought out including a special Spider-man written by (now) Late Night host Seth Meyers and a bizarre book called Tales From the Bully Pulpit (To quote one reviewer, “’The Bully Pulpit’ is what Teddy Roosevelt calls the time machine that he stole from H.G. Wells after it has been modified by the ghost of Thomas Edison.”) There are two treasure hunting stories that stand out as entertaining stories, though, and together they would make a great blog entry. Next time, that is.