Day five. Europa and the pirate twins. (5/1/19)

I'm taking a break.
Just an hour off.
Which I'll probably spend doing this.
Because that's a break.
Honest to God, we're back under the heading of 'why do I do these things to myself?'

(Soundtrack: Thomas Dolby's 'Golden Age of Wireless' album. Starts with 'She Blinded Me With Science'. Magnus Pyke all over the place. £3 on vinyl from the ever lovely Dig Vinyl on Bold Street)

I've no idea how you're spending your Saturday. Belatedly hitting the sales? FA Cup games? Bit of shopping? Maybe a nice walk in the park or on the beach? Binge watching Netflix? Trying to work out whether Birdbox is any good or not? Completing every possible permutation of Black Mirror's Bandersnatch episode (I'll talk about that particular bastard at some point)? Nursing the hangover to end all hangovers? Or just simply relaxing. Like a normal person would.

I've done it again, I've gone out of my way to make life more involved than it needs to be, to show that I'm physically and psychologically incapable of just bloody sitting down and having a day off.

I had a brainwave the other week. "All those comics in the loft? They're sitting there, doing nothing, gathering dust, not been looked at in... well, genuinely decades, some of them. And some of them are worth a few bob."

I used to be a geek. I know that's a shock, you'd never think it to look at me. But I was. I was the kid in class who read comics. And reading comics was the kind of thing only nerds did. Reading about Superheroes? How old are you? They're for kids. Said every single person who waited with bated breath for the first Deadpool film to come out, despite never having actually READ a single Deadpool comic. 

And The Avengers? Quite successful that. And the movie connection is going to raise its head again in a second or two.

I think I may have mentioned the idea that's coming up in a second in the original blog. Five years. Sometimes it takes five years for me to get round to doing things.

I still read comics. Occasionally. There are two or three titles I pick up now and then. But there are a couple of factors that have made me all but give up on buying comics to the extent that I used to:

1) They're so bloody expensive. When I started reading (best part of fifty years ago), comics were 10p. Disposable, cheap. You could buy loads of the bloody things. And then not dispose of them. Now? Four quid a pop. I'm not sure how the maths works out, how inflation sits across the decades but I'm pretty sure it's not in line with where it should be. And four quid for a ten minute read? Nah

2) I don't actually enjoy them that much now. Once a year, DC and Marvel relaunch everything to get in new readers. I'm not a new reader. I've got a feeling they're not aimed at me any longer.

I basically gave up about a decade ago. It just took me a while to admit it to myself.

And I've got this loft full of boxes of comics that never get touched, never get opened, never get read. Just sit there and age.

For a long time I thought I'd pass them down to our Tom. But he gave up reading them before he turned twenty. He's not even vaguely arsed.

Plus, Marvel have this really smart app for the iPad. 10 dollars a month (six quid when I started it, god knows what it is now) and you can read pretty much everything they've published up to 6 months ago.

So, why have a paper copy in a plastic bag in a cardboard box hidden under the Escape From Colditz board game you brought back from your mum's.

Sell them then. That's the answer I came up with. Five years ago. Reinforced it last week. Decided, if I'm leaving my job (day two in case you forgot) then having dead money sitting in the loft didn't make a great deal of sense. Let's make my past work for me.

I'm in the loft. Not right now, obviously. I'm writing this now as my idea of taking a break. And I'm working through the purchases of forty plus years playing 'keep, sell, keep, sell, sell, Jesus don't remember that AT ALL, sell, sell, hold on that one MUST be worth actual cash, god I loved that deffo  keeping that'.

All this with the idea that I'm booking myself a table at the Bluecoat's next comic mart and I'm selling everything I don't want. At a quid a pop.

I'm keeping the stuff that I have a sentimental attachment to. Those Legion of Superheroes are how being fourteen felt to me. They're staying. Probably never get looked at again but they're staying. The Englehart/Rogers issues of Batman? Going nowhere, they're genius.

There are the others though. The others that won't be sat on a table in a box for a quid. The ones that sit on eBay with a nice price tag next to them.

Dark Knight Rises issue one. Forty quid. Am I selling that? Am I buggery.

Ms Marvel issue one from 1978 though? The Ms Marvel who becomes Captain Marvel whose trailer you've all seen. Oh, that is definitely going on eBay. I'm not a bloody charity.

So, if you're looking for a second hand bargain, all being well, I'll be at the Liverpool Comic Mart on the 3rd of Feb, selling my youth.

Spent my teenage years in those rooms looking for bargains, it'll be interesting to be on the other side of the table.

(I really need to learn the whole 'sit down and relax' thing.)