Skip to main content

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!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Loyalty Review: Kohl's Yes2You

 As some of you know, I've spent over 15 years in the customer loyalty space. So, when I come across a new retail loyalty program, I can't help but see the pluses and minuses. After this many years, it's kind of ingrained. Periodically, I'll share my thoughts with you. Today, it's Kohl's turn under the scope. Let's have a look, shall we? I've divided the review up into three sections: what's good about the program, what's bad about the program, and what I'd change about it. That last one has some actual value: I charged hundreds of dollars per hour for loyalty program consulting, and had over a dozen clients, before I moved to JustAnswer FT. But, being a pandemic and all, I'm giving it away for free here. Kohl's, you're welcome. Here we go! The Good Sign up is opt in Seems odd to praise Kohl's for this, but in department store loyalty, this is a rarity, and a smart one. It means the customers who are opted in are already prime

The Icarus Effect

This morning's news started with the latest grim proof of overdevelopment in a tough sector: SkyBus Airlines shut down , less than year from when it started. Never heard of Skybus? Not surprising; they chose to focus on trips from Ohio to the West Coast for ridiculously low fares. Yes, you read that right: the airlines' unique niche was that they focused on trips from Ohio . Was air travel such an amazingly profitable business that we needed that much segmentation and focus? Of course not. A year ago, when Skybus was just getting off the ground (har har), fuel costs were at an all time high. United was still in bankruptcy; Delta, a fellow airline with a major hub in Ohio, was just exiting Chapter 11. And yet, "irrational exuberance" led investors like Nationwide Mutual Capital, Huntington Capital Investment Co., and Battelle Services Co. to ignore the obvious signs of risk, and dive into what was a dubious investment. Today, they, and the passengers who were lured by

2020 CV19 Lockdown: Winners and Losers

It is said that in any time in history, the winners and losers are determined when a unique set of circumstances arises the requires an unprecedented response. How a company responds to those conditions can often propel them to new heights, or sentence them to an ignominious end. This post is meant to be an ongoing and often updated list of those that may come out of the Great 2020 Covid19 Lockdown as champs...or chumps. Winners Zoom How is it that, with all of the video conferencing choices in the market, a relatively obscure one (and a freemium one, to boot!) ran away with the title? Think of it: you had entrenched competitors like Skype and Facebook, as well as work-focused like Microsoft Teams , Google Hangouts , and Amazon Chime , any one of which had far greater reach than Zoom . Yet Zoom won, to the point that they achieved the exalted state of having their product/platform become a verb ("I'll Zoom you later"). More amazingly, they even continued their gro