Back issue bins can turn up interesting items, but why not trade collections?

CTV News wrote about what people find in back issue bins, at conventions like FCBD and the Calgary Expo:

If you’re the right kind of geek, there’s a good chance you’ve spent some time lately rooting through comic book back issue bins.

Calgary Expo and Free Comic Book Day are just freshly behind us.

Maybe you were hoping the next flip would bring you a particular something on your list for a mere dollar or two.

Maybe a successful dive through the cheap reads means getting exactly issues 520 and 521 of Journey Into Mystery.

Or maybe you were flipping aimlessly, and it was by the Comic Book Gods’ good grace you hit on the “fear-filled final issues” of that specific Marvel Comics series that someone else either didn’t want anymore or couldn’t sell at face value.

It was a rescue mission, regardless.

How comic book collectors approach it is what can vary, says Bill Bateman from Alpha Comics in Calgary.

“While some are looking for anything to fill in the blanks in their collections, others are looking for that elusive rare book that may have been missed by the store,” Bateman told CTV News.

“Some people show up with a binder of notes showing what they’re missing, (while) some have apps on their phones that do the job a lot faster, and some just know all of the books well enough.”

Sure, there can be gems to find in back issue bins, but if the same issues have been reprinted in trade collections, why must we hear about would-be collectors zeroing in almost entirely on said bins and not searching for paperback/hardcovers reprinting the very same issues? Why not even whether anybody wants specific issues reprinted, if they haven't yet been? That's what I never seem to see these news outlets bring up, nor do they interview people who do. But trade collections or paperback/hardcovers are what comprise the bulk of my collection now, and I think it's working a lot better that way, because thanks to the Marvel Epic Collections and the more recently launched DC Finest archives, I now own hundreds, perhaps thousands of old issues reprinted through these forms of collections for older comics. And these news companies don't want to talk about how great those can be for everybody who hopes to acquire a complete run of various classic series? That's just the problem here.

Rhiannon Mesler says comic book bin diving “runs on the same machinery that powers a slot machine.”

Likewise, the University of Lethbridge marketing professor and expert in consumer behaviour and decision-making says, “the same machinery social media platforms have spent fifteen years optimizing.”

“What makes it irresistible isn’t the find. It’s the unpredictability,” she says.

“Neuroscientists have shown that the brain’s dopamine system fires hardest not when reward arrives, but when reward arrives unexpectedly.

“And that the dopamine signal actually peaks when the odds are roughly 50-50, when you genuinely don’t know whether the next comic in the box is going to be ‘The One.’”

They make it sound more like a game of hide-and-seek than searching for the best reading material. Another clue the speculator mentality plays a part in this whole affair, which effectively ruins any attempt to sound convincing in their fandom.

In addition to the above, ComicBook also told about a guy who, with aid from his dad, managed to purchase at least 400 of the Amazing Spider-Man issues printed up till around the mid-90s:

Many times, comic book collectors are only interested in building a collection for bragging rights or to hopefully one day make money off of the collectibles. However, there are other times when a collector has a more personal reason for collecting memorabilia, and it has a purer meaning than just looking for the big bucks. In some cases, the idea of collecting comics or other items of memorabilia is passed down through the generations. In those cases, it is more about the relationship between a person and their parents, and that makes completing a collection something that means so much more.

This was the case for a Redditor known as joeltheconner, who just revealed that he finally completed his Amazing Spider-Man run of the first 400 issues. He then added that he has his father to thank for this fact.

In his post, joeltheconner wrote that his dad was a comic book collector and would take him to comic shops when he was a kid. However, he said that he was never as interested in comics until he was nine years old. “At the age of 9. My dad gave me a copy of ASM 300 to read. I was hooked instantly,” he wrote. “From then, we started collecting together. For two years we took our vacations to Chicago so we could go to the big convention up there.”

Around 1998, he said he lost interest and stopped collecting, and then moved on. However, he admitted there was something his dad had said to him before that he thought was cool. They discussed having the full run of a specific comic book title. He chose Amazing Spider-Man and decided he would collect the run of the first 400 issues. That led to a few years ago, when his dad asked if he was still interested in completing that collection. His dad then did something that meant the world to him.

His dad had his “prized” Silver Surfer comics, and he offered to sell those to the local shop to get credit so that his son could work on finishing his Amazing Spider-Man run. “I honestly tried to talk him out of it, but it sounded like a really fun thing for him and I to do together again,” he wrote. “From the first time I stepped back into a shop, it took me right back and I was hooked again. 2 years later, today I bought the last book that I needed to complete the run.”

That book was Amazing Spider-Man #2, which was the first appearance of the Vulture and which was the first book where Spider-Man fought a superpowered villain (Chameleon was the first villain in the debut issue). This man’s dad gave up a prized possession to work with his son to help fulfill a dream. It was obvious that it meant the world to this man. “It’s so hard sometimes for sons to tell their fathers what they mean to them, and I’m going to figure out a way to really tell him,” he wrote. “But thank you, Dad. I owe more to you in this life than I could never repay.”

While it's great for dads and sons to do all sorts of things together, it's simply ludicrous how somebody would like to get as much of Spidey when it mattered in pamphlets, but not in trade collections, which at this point is precisely what I own. As of now, I own, for example, the first 12 ASM Epic archives, and have plenty more coming after that, and hope the ASM run will be more or less completed eventually, so that then, I can try to buy complete sets myself, though admittedly, at this point I'm hesitant to buy those collecting the Clone Saga, which, while it may not be as awful as some other artistic humiliations to come down the pike later, was still very damaging to the Spidey legacy, and certainly the part where Peter assaulted Ben Reilly in frustration and accidentally injured Mary Jane when she tried to get him to stop, after which Peter just ran out of the laboratory in horror instead of doing what he could to mend the damage to MJ. That kind of scene is far more reprehensible than claiming Ben was the protagonist all along between 1975-95 (and it was soon confirmed by writers that Peter was the protagonist within that time frame, not Ben, in their efforts to apologize to Spider-fans they alienated).

And I have plenty more Epic Collection and Finest archives I've bought, including a few dedicated to Superman's series and spinoffs, all 3 for Black Panther, several for Daredevil, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Dr. Strange, Justice Society/League, Punisher, Luke Cage, X-Men, Capt. America, Thor, Hawkman, Defenders, Moon Knight and even Excalibur. I also have several omnibuses to boot. And I hope other Spidey spinoffs like the 1976-98 Spectacular will see some Epic archives eventually too. That's what serious "collectors" should really be buying, and considering the back issues are highly likely to become increasingly expensive over time, if they really want to read this stuff, that's why they'll buy the trade collections.

So again, why are we still seeing this otherwise absurd news about people searching for back issues instead of paperbacks/hardcovers? That's another huge letdown with modern news coverage of comidom. Because in the end, it only hints they still don't take the medium seriously, otherwise, they would talk about all these reprint collections and how they can introduce new generations to older classics as a great reading pastime. And this demonstrates how the MSM continues to belittle the medium, by not highlighting a far more convenient approach to collecting notable stories of the past decades by today's standards. Unless something is done to dissuade speculators and collectors from back issues and try trade collections instead, the problem's going to continue for at least another decade or three.