Comics provide a source of escapism away from the real world

I may be a college student, but I am a giant comic book geek.I have the first comic I ever bought, or my dad bought I mean, when I was 7 or 8-years-old.

It was a comic book adaptation of that horrible “Batman and Robin” movie that starred George Clooney and it was written by comic book legend Denny O’Neil.

But it wasn’t until high school when I actually started to collect comics on a regular basis.

My collection started off simple enough, a comic about the return of the Silver Age Green Lantern one week, then next week grab an issue of “The Amazing Spider-Man” where the title character is fighting against the accelerated-aged children of his dead girlfriend—yeah comics can get extremely weird.

But then I started to buy 3-4 comics a week with each issue costing about $2.25—a comic book today would cost you $2.99 or even $3.99 an issue—which wasn’t that bad then, I just took it out of my weekly allowance from my parents leaving me with enough money to grab a Double-Double from In-N-Out.

However, I’m still chided by my parents for collecting comic books. They see it as a childish thing and a waste of money. And as usual for Asian parents, they think it’ll distract me from getting good grades in school.

But I don’t care about that.

Comic books provide me with a source of escapism from the world. I don’t collect them just to sit on them for years and hope that they become a substantial investment. I collect them because I love to read them.

I spend every Wednesday afternoon unwinding after a long, and sometimes extremely boring, day at school and immerse myself in a different world where some super soldier from World War II throws a star-spangled shield at a villain’s head or where a bat-shit insane billionaire playboy dresses up like a flying-mammal to fight crime.

I must confess that collecting comics does take a toll on my wallet. I spend $15-$23 on comics, that’s a significant chunk of change and it’s not helping that comic book prices have been steadily on the rise.

And I’ve been trying my damnedest to save money by not buying any new comic series or stop buying comics all together after a storyline ends.

Although what little money I am able to save by buying less comics usually ends up fueling my addiction to sushi.
---
Photo courtesy of Google