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Adventures of an Anal Retentive Comic Geek

As Charles says, "What are bros for?" He chortles, as he sends me an URL that is guaranteed to cater to my not so recently supressed past, as well as the vein of obsessive compulsion that runs through me, causing me to quake and realize that its time to come clean about my deepest, darkest secret...

Hello, my name is Josh, and I am a comic book collector.

Well, "collector" implies a bit of present tense, so it's not entirely true. With the exception of the signed Kevin Smith original Daredevils and Green Arrows I picked up in the last couple of years, my collection is firmly rooted in what I consider comics' heyday, the 1980's. Like all of my ilk of that time, the X-Men and their spinoffs dominate my collection. but that is also the time of Frank Miller's Dark Knight series, which changed comics (and movies) forever. It's the time of Alan Moore, who brought V for Vendetta to a public who clearly had no idea what to do with it. And it's the time for the rise of the alternate universe, where anything is possible.

Like all collectors of the time, most of my comics are polybagged and boxed (though not boarded, to my chagrin). I occasionally consider selling them off, as the collection is good; I tried to, some years ago, but the cataloging required lots of spreadsheets and value estimates. Thus, I held on.

Now, the Web threatens to take my obsession and make it go full blown again, Phoenix-like. Comic Collector Live allows you to catalog your comic collection, with all of the key indicators, in classic Web 2.0 free style. I can see many hours spent, transferring my Google spreadsheet to this, and identifying the holes in my collection. Instead of selling, I could be coerced into...gasp...buying!

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