On the TV, me and nellorat
While we were gone at DetCon1, I got an e-mail from Drew Breese Beebe, a reporter at Bloomberg TV, who had been assigned to do an article on comics to tie in with Comic-Con International (aka the Sandy Eggo Comic-Con). He had come across my name in a Bloomberg Business Week article from last year about comics fans my age discovering that their collections were, in fact, almost worthless. He wanted to do a piece about comics collecting, with some discussion of the financial aspects but ranging over as many subjects as I felt comfortable discussing.
Given that I am an attention whore whose primary mode of discourse is the lecture, I was happy to oblige, so Tuesday night we rendezvoused at Carmine Street Comics, my Friendly Neighborhood Comics Shop and the store that has the portion of our collection that is for sale. We talked and filmed for about 4 hours, at Carmine Street, in his car, and within Valentine's Castle. Most of the discussion at home was me solo in my study, but nellorat joined us in the basement to show off the comics-filled filing cabinets.
I will confess that I had some fear of being made ridiculous (well, more ridiculous than usual), but Drew called back on Wednesday with a follow-up question about the collapse of the industry in 1994-95 that he would only have asked if he were serious about the subject.
The piece went live on Bloomberg TV this morning and I'm very impressed at how it came out. It's really well-edited, both in the sense of finding many of my most interesting and concise statements and in the juxtapositions of words and image when it's not just my talking head.
nellorat points out that the article doesn't convey the degree to which we are also drowning in books, fanzines, stuffed toys, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, though he did manage to work in a reference to the ratties!
Go, enjoy.
Footnotes: It is in fact very unlikely that I have spent $100,000 (net) on comics, even if you lump in things like traveling to comics conventions. However, the figure is closer to $100K than I care to admit. Of course, we moved to New York so that I could pursue a job in comics which never materialized; that cost quite a lot of money. Deathmate, which triggered the collapse of the comics industry in the 1990s, finished in early 1994; the Marvel bankruptcy was about 2 years later, not quite as immediately as I implied. I did not woo nellorat with Swamp Thing; she had rediscovered that on her own (though I did, many moons later, get her a copy of #20, Alan Moore's first issue, which precedes "The Anatomy Lesson").
Given that I am an attention whore whose primary mode of discourse is the lecture, I was happy to oblige, so Tuesday night we rendezvoused at Carmine Street Comics, my Friendly Neighborhood Comics Shop and the store that has the portion of our collection that is for sale. We talked and filmed for about 4 hours, at Carmine Street, in his car, and within Valentine's Castle. Most of the discussion at home was me solo in my study, but nellorat joined us in the basement to show off the comics-filled filing cabinets.
I will confess that I had some fear of being made ridiculous (well, more ridiculous than usual), but Drew called back on Wednesday with a follow-up question about the collapse of the industry in 1994-95 that he would only have asked if he were serious about the subject.
The piece went live on Bloomberg TV this morning and I'm very impressed at how it came out. It's really well-edited, both in the sense of finding many of my most interesting and concise statements and in the juxtapositions of words and image when it's not just my talking head.
nellorat points out that the article doesn't convey the degree to which we are also drowning in books, fanzines, stuffed toys, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, though he did manage to work in a reference to the ratties!
Go, enjoy.
Footnotes: It is in fact very unlikely that I have spent $100,000 (net) on comics, even if you lump in things like traveling to comics conventions. However, the figure is closer to $100K than I care to admit. Of course, we moved to New York so that I could pursue a job in comics which never materialized; that cost quite a lot of money. Deathmate, which triggered the collapse of the comics industry in the 1990s, finished in early 1994; the Marvel bankruptcy was about 2 years later, not quite as immediately as I implied. I did not woo nellorat with Swamp Thing; she had rediscovered that on her own (though I did, many moons later, get her a copy of #20, Alan Moore's first issue, which precedes "The Anatomy Lesson").