Well this is it.  Today marks thirty hubpages in thirty days, and even though I only found out today I was supposed to be tagging my hubpages so that the administration could keep an eye on them, I hope that I will still garner some attention for having made the effort.  In one month I wrote approximately 120 pgs of text on the history, criticism, structure, and emotional addiction of comic books.  Now I think I will tell you why it was one of the best experiences of my life.

My comic collection is a burden, a drain, and an embarrassment to my family.  They would have me sell the entire thing even if I could only get pennies on the dollar of what I originally paid.  I believe that nothing used should completely retain its value, but then I think some comics are at least collectible enough to offset their degradation over the years.  But the problem here is I am thinking in terms of their value to others when I should be focusing on their value to me.

Many comics that are cheap and easy to find on-line are important to me.  X-Men #1, the West Coast Avengers series, and all of these old New Universe titles can give me just as many thrills as my #300 Spiderman, a comic book I kept even when it passed being worth 100$'s when the black suit movie was being launched.  So I have a big collection and many of them I can remember after only a quick perusal, others seem to promise that I will never memorize them all.  This is why I hold onto them: so I can remember and revisit my happy times, and happy times have always meant comic books and graphic novels.

When I say that you can be your collection's worst enemy I refer to a dark page in the history of my collecting where I became acutely psychotic and was talked into selling three longboxes worth of comic books for three hundred dollars.  I was delusional, blaming the comic books for the voices in my head, and yet I still held onto the majority of my books; I could not be fully swindled.  The way I gave away comics was truly horrid however:  I gave away certain numbers as if it mattered whether it was #13 or #52, there were certain numbers I knew were cursed and these I purged, leaving a collection as holy as Swiss cheese.  I can still see the long boxes I was stealing from as I did back then, eight of them lined up with their lids straight up, looking like a row of graves that I was picking at and primping before a final viewing.  It was a sad time, a sad goodbye, and I wasn't doing it because I needed the money, but because I had momentarily bought into the whole "comic books are bad for your mental health" way of thinking which now I abhor and reject.

I was taken advantage of because I was not in my right mind.  I suffer from a type of schizophrenia called schizoaffective disorder.  I didn't even get to keep the three hundred dollars, it was "put with the rest," as most of the money I come by usually is.  My parents were so happy to have me complicit with them in selling the comic books that they nearly swooped in and tried to get rid of them all.

So how can I rectify such a situation without spending huge dollars?  Easy, I forgive but I do not forget.  Today I work harder on staying sober and clear headed than ever before, so as to cause no situation where I might have my comics stolen again.  Likewise I have immersed myself in analysis of the art form so that my love for graphic art grows back to its highest point.

What comics did I lose?  Nothing really important.  A lot of Doctor Strange and books about Witches, plus a number of 5s, 8s, 13s and 31s, for strange numerical reasons.  Thankfully I can slowly rebuild what has been destroyed using the Internet and I will keep working at maintaining complete storylines, both past and present.

So how can you keep your comic books safe from the possible deterioration of your mind?  The truth is you might not be able to do anything of the kind.  You may be your comic books collection's worst enemy if you think of comics in terms of money.  I think of them as a mass of windowpanes, views into worlds where I would have preferred to exist no matter how dangerous the times get for our fearless heroes.  I see of them as a bargain and an art form that allows people like myself to become an art colletor  Finally I see them as sanity, a place with right and wrong even when there are problems with gray areas.

I hope you liked my thirty hubs on comic books in thirty days and I hope I am getting the date of the end of the competition right, I would hate to go this far just to find I was short one article.  Ah well, such is life!  Thank you for reading and please, read on!