Yes, one might say that I am at a crossroad. But to what or where? Simple, I am contemplating on stopping my comic collection - not just stop buying a title or two, mind you - just plain and simple stop it all. Heck, I just might... just might ditch my collection altogether.
What happened? Why'd I get into this mode? even I don't have all the answers - but I don't know that I have been feeling less enjoyment in reading comics in general... where once I was very passionate about the hobby - to the point that I would go out of my way to have such comics... and not just have it, but to make sure I was one of the people, in this elite group of hobbyists to get it first, to have that pride of being first to read - and maybe explain things to others... man. How can a simple thing as reading and collecting be so competitive?
Ah, but it was... I'm talking (actually reminiscing) about how I was in High School. I shared this passion with others of course... and funny how some of these helped create lasting friendships.
My early years of comics collecting were shared with Raymund Uy, a classmate in primary school. Back then it was simple discussions on what comics we could scrounge upon in our usual neighborhood shops.
Later, there was Maxi Fernandez... a high school classmate of mine, who had the most complete collection of both current and back issues. The current was courtesy of his dad being a pilot in PAL (Philippine Airlines) and thus bringing home a bundle of comics whenever he'd fly to and back from the U.S. Maxi would be an almost constant companion - and classmate. he'd share discussions, art lessons (mostly self-taught... but he did a mean Gil Kane rendition) and later, other teen age experiences.
I would remember hanging at Maxi's place to read his comics, and apparently, I was not he only person doing this, since I would meet others as well through Maxi... I certainly met Ditto, another long-time friend, through him.
Going back to my circle of comic-collecting friends, i would also meet Ricky Pagdanganan by way of seeing him with his loose association of acolytes - younger people (grade school kids) hanging around him, adoring his comics. Apparently, Ricky's dad worked in downtown - close to a magazine stall that had comics... and Ricky refused to divulge where this was. After all, this was his treasure mine, and having more comics coming in at a regular pace was his link to popularity amongst the younger kids.
Between Maxi and Ricky, I found the latter slightly abrasive - and as I said earlier, he was not as sharing as Maxi was, so my friendship with Ricky was rather limited, and it would not be until College that we would really hang out with each other a whole lot more... by then his comics collecting passion would shift to other considerations - hence his possibly seeing me less as a competitor. But these two guys were the main reasons my hobby and passion grew.
I learned a lot from them - and molded myself into a serious database of knowledge for anything Marvel (the company titles we preferred back then). So I guess, I was a more serious collector starting in high school.
College would give us different tracks, and the first to seemingly get less interested was Maxi, having discovered nirvana by way of premarital sex, he started dating and bedding ladies here and there. Sometimes it did not matter where they came from, and he did pay for those flings by way of seeing the doctor for his necessary shots - but then again, those were the days when what you got was curable... and AIDS was still some years into discovery immersion into our global society. Funny, when you reflect that perhaps AIDS was one reason we started becoming aware of just how global we could be.
But with women into the picture, comics got left out of Maxi's life - and I guess, I also started drifting away from being a pal he'd long to hang around with. I would even say that I envied the guy for his seeming skills at bedding young ladies - but I also later realized that the one reason he could do that was die to the fact that he targeted less sophisticated ladies, so he could easily flatter, and maybe trick them into bed. So, off Maxi went - with other circles and interests.
Ricky had a similar interest... but whereas Maxi was seemingly juggling ladies around, Ricky was obsessed with one lady... and continued to be obsessed with her for years. Still, it was not an unhealthy obsession, and I guess only Ricky felt that with perseverance he would eventually win her over. But I would d have ot admire the guy - for I knew his intentions were pure with Sari... but she did not find the spark with him.
Still, it was also at this time that Ricky, and some of his college classmates, started to become my new regular friends... and I guess, we both became friends easier than others due to a shared interest - even if this interest was less Ricky's focus now.
So for me, comics were a constant with friendships gained. Later I had another friend - Ongie, again met through Maxi, and he was part of a well-to-do family. It was later that I found out that his family's business was a night club in downtown... and I guess, at that point in time, this would have been a heaven-sent friendship. I guess for maxi and a few others, it seemed that way. You see, Ongie managed the family business, and that included overseeing (and I say this literally) a lot of ladies in their costumes - in-between performances.
At a few occasions, he'd bring us to his place, until the group became regulars... and why not. We'd be going to bars to ogle girls by then - and right here was a bar owned and managed by someone we knew... like I said, heaven-sent for some. Why was I not totally into this experience? I guess it was because I was struggling with school back then. I was hard to study and live the night life - and I did not even bother trying. Besides, even with a lot of freebies, it was still expensive to maintain such a lifestyle - and still continue buying comics. How about that... comics actually helped be stay a 'good boy' (I can hear some people saying 'what a wuss'; or maybe 'nerd'; or even 'loser' - but hey... that was me, I can't deny that part of history).
Anyway, I found myself reliving stories with Ongie - and Ditto Amador, though not a collector, was an avid reader... and he liked these 'intelligent' discussions. You see, Ditto - later calling himself Deke, would revel in the moment of friendly debate to prove to all - maybe himself most of all, that just because he was a school drop-out, this did not mean he was stupid. On the contrary, Deke was - and is the most well-read person i know, and he is easily a self-trained rules lawyer - able to discern fine prints where others would hardly bother. His dad was a lawyer, so I guess it rubbed off on him in some way.
Now imagine how this debate would happen while we could see ladies walking around heedless of the fact that they were naked... in between costume changes or just taking a down-time between shows and 'tabling' duties. You could say that zoning out to focus on the discussions was a difficult thing for a young man on his 20s. But discuss i did, and I do miss those days for the discussion - and of course the freebies I saw, courtesy of the office one-way mirror.
Oh yeah, and Tony, another regular friend by now, who like Ditto also read Maxi's comics in between school happened to know how to cook real well, so since the office was just beside the kitchen - Tony would come up with real great dishes... and Ongie really loved to eat, so it was a great time had by all. Sometimes I would miss the show, because of our discussions... and I'd wonder if missing said shows were a waste - but I did not see it that way. One happy compromise would be we'd discuss, then stop when show time came up then continue where we left off, after the show. One other interest I had was music, and Ongie had the latest dance mixes delivered to him on a weekly basis... the club actually had more advanced songs played when compared to some discos (as they were called back then).
Ah well... those indeed were the days.
One other highlight about sharing comics experience was when I met Johnny Alegre, musician and another person i met at Maxi's place. But the one really long discussion I had with Johnny was when I brought the maxi-series 'Secret Wars' to Maxi's mom's wake. Johnny was easily an impressionable guy - but he was quite blown away with the concept of the Beyonder; the war between heroes and villains; the in-fighting; Doom's near victory... the maxi-series opens a lot of great discussions, as we helped update him on stuff.
A second such discussion happened when we - that is Johnny, Ditto and I, were guarding ballots in a hotly contested precinct. To pass the time and tension - as we were vigilant for possible hooligans trying to snatch ballot boxes and rigging the votes, we entered into a discussion of the X-men from beginning to the current events... and this was 1986, so you can imagine how long a time-frame we were talking about. Johnny was enthralled, Ditto came in to clarify a few things and confirm some other events, and I wove it all together. I mean, to tap into my stock knowledge as a sort of distraction to lessen the underlying tension back then... comics really heped me find some inner-courage.
All these would not last, of course...
Raymund, we've hardly seen nor talked to each other since College. Different crowd already back then.
Maxi... we hardly talk these days; as I know he's working in a call center - still single, with a girlfriend half his age - and a stewardess at that. So I guess, he's happy with his minimal responsibilities. We do see each other at times, when a mutual friend visits the Philippines... though at times, I don't even see them too as work and family takes precedent for me. We hardly talk about comics; heck we hardly see each other.
Ricky is somehow off the radar these days - maybe he's here, maybe he's out of the country. So I can't say where he is. But I know he started buying again, and later got frustrated with some stories - then stopped. He was very happy when they finally made a movie about his favorite hero - Iron Man... and seemingly got it right - watching it several times with his daughter.
Ongie has been out of touch ever since his family migrated to the U.S. Rumor has it that they had a kind of misunderstanding with some politically connected people and decided that discretion was the better part of valor... hey, back then, they would have been correct. Still, when he'd visit, he'd drop in unannounced in my old apartment... but I left my old place to transfer with my family (wife and newborn son back then), so even if he tried looking for me, I doubt he'd succeed. So I know not if he's here or in S.F. and my son is now 13, so you can see how long its been.
Deke, by the way, introduced me to a different hobby - role playing games, with people who played the Marvel RPG - but this was during the times when we had a whole lot more time and a whole lot less responsibilities. He's now in Canada; been there for at least two year now, and hopefully living better - I don't think there are immediate plans to visit for a vacation. he emails once in a while - though these are mostly game-related.
So I only have online forums to share my comic buying and reading experiences - a fer cry from face-to-face communications, but still a way of meeting new 'virtual' friends. But is this enough? Yes it has been enough. But what is different now? If its not the lack of friends to hare the hobby with - what is it?
Well I won't totally rule out the lack of friends entirely. After all, discussing comics with them help me reminisce and further strengthen the need to continue buying and sharing. but costs have gone up - inflation is hitting us, and comics are, after all a luxury item from where I'm sitting.
So stop... yeah, guess its time. But maybe... just maybe I'll start slow - trim down, limit myself to a title or two... okay, maybe four per month. Get rid of my collection... I'm still thinking about that. Maybe lessen them - give or sell some. Who knows? I've asked Alan Bengzon to help me sell them. He said he'll ask a friend to sell it for me. Until said friend contacts me, I can still decide what to keep and get rid of.
But to continue collecting? Maybe not now... after all, the passion to collect seems gone. I can hold off reading or buying comics for enve until a month... and I can start feeling regret with my expenditures. So yeah... definitely, time to quit... or at the very least, slow down.
What happened? Why'd I get into this mode? even I don't have all the answers - but I don't know that I have been feeling less enjoyment in reading comics in general... where once I was very passionate about the hobby - to the point that I would go out of my way to have such comics... and not just have it, but to make sure I was one of the people, in this elite group of hobbyists to get it first, to have that pride of being first to read - and maybe explain things to others... man. How can a simple thing as reading and collecting be so competitive?
Ah, but it was... I'm talking (actually reminiscing) about how I was in High School. I shared this passion with others of course... and funny how some of these helped create lasting friendships.
My early years of comics collecting were shared with Raymund Uy, a classmate in primary school. Back then it was simple discussions on what comics we could scrounge upon in our usual neighborhood shops.
Later, there was Maxi Fernandez... a high school classmate of mine, who had the most complete collection of both current and back issues. The current was courtesy of his dad being a pilot in PAL (Philippine Airlines) and thus bringing home a bundle of comics whenever he'd fly to and back from the U.S. Maxi would be an almost constant companion - and classmate. he'd share discussions, art lessons (mostly self-taught... but he did a mean Gil Kane rendition) and later, other teen age experiences.
I would remember hanging at Maxi's place to read his comics, and apparently, I was not he only person doing this, since I would meet others as well through Maxi... I certainly met Ditto, another long-time friend, through him.
Going back to my circle of comic-collecting friends, i would also meet Ricky Pagdanganan by way of seeing him with his loose association of acolytes - younger people (grade school kids) hanging around him, adoring his comics. Apparently, Ricky's dad worked in downtown - close to a magazine stall that had comics... and Ricky refused to divulge where this was. After all, this was his treasure mine, and having more comics coming in at a regular pace was his link to popularity amongst the younger kids.
Between Maxi and Ricky, I found the latter slightly abrasive - and as I said earlier, he was not as sharing as Maxi was, so my friendship with Ricky was rather limited, and it would not be until College that we would really hang out with each other a whole lot more... by then his comics collecting passion would shift to other considerations - hence his possibly seeing me less as a competitor. But these two guys were the main reasons my hobby and passion grew.
I learned a lot from them - and molded myself into a serious database of knowledge for anything Marvel (the company titles we preferred back then). So I guess, I was a more serious collector starting in high school.
College would give us different tracks, and the first to seemingly get less interested was Maxi, having discovered nirvana by way of premarital sex, he started dating and bedding ladies here and there. Sometimes it did not matter where they came from, and he did pay for those flings by way of seeing the doctor for his necessary shots - but then again, those were the days when what you got was curable... and AIDS was still some years into discovery immersion into our global society. Funny, when you reflect that perhaps AIDS was one reason we started becoming aware of just how global we could be.
But with women into the picture, comics got left out of Maxi's life - and I guess, I also started drifting away from being a pal he'd long to hang around with. I would even say that I envied the guy for his seeming skills at bedding young ladies - but I also later realized that the one reason he could do that was die to the fact that he targeted less sophisticated ladies, so he could easily flatter, and maybe trick them into bed. So, off Maxi went - with other circles and interests.
Ricky had a similar interest... but whereas Maxi was seemingly juggling ladies around, Ricky was obsessed with one lady... and continued to be obsessed with her for years. Still, it was not an unhealthy obsession, and I guess only Ricky felt that with perseverance he would eventually win her over. But I would d have ot admire the guy - for I knew his intentions were pure with Sari... but she did not find the spark with him.
Still, it was also at this time that Ricky, and some of his college classmates, started to become my new regular friends... and I guess, we both became friends easier than others due to a shared interest - even if this interest was less Ricky's focus now.
So for me, comics were a constant with friendships gained. Later I had another friend - Ongie, again met through Maxi, and he was part of a well-to-do family. It was later that I found out that his family's business was a night club in downtown... and I guess, at that point in time, this would have been a heaven-sent friendship. I guess for maxi and a few others, it seemed that way. You see, Ongie managed the family business, and that included overseeing (and I say this literally) a lot of ladies in their costumes - in-between performances.
At a few occasions, he'd bring us to his place, until the group became regulars... and why not. We'd be going to bars to ogle girls by then - and right here was a bar owned and managed by someone we knew... like I said, heaven-sent for some. Why was I not totally into this experience? I guess it was because I was struggling with school back then. I was hard to study and live the night life - and I did not even bother trying. Besides, even with a lot of freebies, it was still expensive to maintain such a lifestyle - and still continue buying comics. How about that... comics actually helped be stay a 'good boy' (I can hear some people saying 'what a wuss'; or maybe 'nerd'; or even 'loser' - but hey... that was me, I can't deny that part of history).
Anyway, I found myself reliving stories with Ongie - and Ditto Amador, though not a collector, was an avid reader... and he liked these 'intelligent' discussions. You see, Ditto - later calling himself Deke, would revel in the moment of friendly debate to prove to all - maybe himself most of all, that just because he was a school drop-out, this did not mean he was stupid. On the contrary, Deke was - and is the most well-read person i know, and he is easily a self-trained rules lawyer - able to discern fine prints where others would hardly bother. His dad was a lawyer, so I guess it rubbed off on him in some way.
Now imagine how this debate would happen while we could see ladies walking around heedless of the fact that they were naked... in between costume changes or just taking a down-time between shows and 'tabling' duties. You could say that zoning out to focus on the discussions was a difficult thing for a young man on his 20s. But discuss i did, and I do miss those days for the discussion - and of course the freebies I saw, courtesy of the office one-way mirror.
Oh yeah, and Tony, another regular friend by now, who like Ditto also read Maxi's comics in between school happened to know how to cook real well, so since the office was just beside the kitchen - Tony would come up with real great dishes... and Ongie really loved to eat, so it was a great time had by all. Sometimes I would miss the show, because of our discussions... and I'd wonder if missing said shows were a waste - but I did not see it that way. One happy compromise would be we'd discuss, then stop when show time came up then continue where we left off, after the show. One other interest I had was music, and Ongie had the latest dance mixes delivered to him on a weekly basis... the club actually had more advanced songs played when compared to some discos (as they were called back then).
Ah well... those indeed were the days.
One other highlight about sharing comics experience was when I met Johnny Alegre, musician and another person i met at Maxi's place. But the one really long discussion I had with Johnny was when I brought the maxi-series 'Secret Wars' to Maxi's mom's wake. Johnny was easily an impressionable guy - but he was quite blown away with the concept of the Beyonder; the war between heroes and villains; the in-fighting; Doom's near victory... the maxi-series opens a lot of great discussions, as we helped update him on stuff.
A second such discussion happened when we - that is Johnny, Ditto and I, were guarding ballots in a hotly contested precinct. To pass the time and tension - as we were vigilant for possible hooligans trying to snatch ballot boxes and rigging the votes, we entered into a discussion of the X-men from beginning to the current events... and this was 1986, so you can imagine how long a time-frame we were talking about. Johnny was enthralled, Ditto came in to clarify a few things and confirm some other events, and I wove it all together. I mean, to tap into my stock knowledge as a sort of distraction to lessen the underlying tension back then... comics really heped me find some inner-courage.
All these would not last, of course...
Raymund, we've hardly seen nor talked to each other since College. Different crowd already back then.
Maxi... we hardly talk these days; as I know he's working in a call center - still single, with a girlfriend half his age - and a stewardess at that. So I guess, he's happy with his minimal responsibilities. We do see each other at times, when a mutual friend visits the Philippines... though at times, I don't even see them too as work and family takes precedent for me. We hardly talk about comics; heck we hardly see each other.
Ricky is somehow off the radar these days - maybe he's here, maybe he's out of the country. So I can't say where he is. But I know he started buying again, and later got frustrated with some stories - then stopped. He was very happy when they finally made a movie about his favorite hero - Iron Man... and seemingly got it right - watching it several times with his daughter.
Ongie has been out of touch ever since his family migrated to the U.S. Rumor has it that they had a kind of misunderstanding with some politically connected people and decided that discretion was the better part of valor... hey, back then, they would have been correct. Still, when he'd visit, he'd drop in unannounced in my old apartment... but I left my old place to transfer with my family (wife and newborn son back then), so even if he tried looking for me, I doubt he'd succeed. So I know not if he's here or in S.F. and my son is now 13, so you can see how long its been.
Deke, by the way, introduced me to a different hobby - role playing games, with people who played the Marvel RPG - but this was during the times when we had a whole lot more time and a whole lot less responsibilities. He's now in Canada; been there for at least two year now, and hopefully living better - I don't think there are immediate plans to visit for a vacation. he emails once in a while - though these are mostly game-related.
So I only have online forums to share my comic buying and reading experiences - a fer cry from face-to-face communications, but still a way of meeting new 'virtual' friends. But is this enough? Yes it has been enough. But what is different now? If its not the lack of friends to hare the hobby with - what is it?
Well I won't totally rule out the lack of friends entirely. After all, discussing comics with them help me reminisce and further strengthen the need to continue buying and sharing. but costs have gone up - inflation is hitting us, and comics are, after all a luxury item from where I'm sitting.
So stop... yeah, guess its time. But maybe... just maybe I'll start slow - trim down, limit myself to a title or two... okay, maybe four per month. Get rid of my collection... I'm still thinking about that. Maybe lessen them - give or sell some. Who knows? I've asked Alan Bengzon to help me sell them. He said he'll ask a friend to sell it for me. Until said friend contacts me, I can still decide what to keep and get rid of.
But to continue collecting? Maybe not now... after all, the passion to collect seems gone. I can hold off reading or buying comics for enve until a month... and I can start feeling regret with my expenditures. So yeah... definitely, time to quit... or at the very least, slow down.
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