#0017 American Marvel and DC comics

The collector: Chris Beckett, Birmingham, UK.

The collection: American Marvel and DC comics

The story behind the collection:

There are two major American comic companies – Marvel and DC, and then lots of independent companies. I prefer the characters in the Marvel comics as the storytelling is better in my opinion. I think that DC tend to have their own universe of heroes which is separate from earth. It’s set on earth but it’s separate. It’s almost like a fictional world on earth, whereas Marvel interact better with the real world. They put superheroes in a realistic world rather than in another world.

I suppose really that I got into them when I was a kid and I love fantasy science fiction. I was already into Sinbad and Conan and fantasy stuff. Superheroes, I suppose was another stage of that and everyone wants to be a superhero as a kid. I just never grew out of it.

The one I like the best is the furthest away from me you could ever get - the Incredible Hulk. He’s a really complicated character as he’s all to do with split personalities and emotions. When he’s Banner he’s got no emotions at all and then when he’s the hulk he’s pure rage, and the reason behind it is that there’s a lot of psychology. He’s not just this monster everyone sees him as, it’s the way he was brought up. Comics have been going since the 1960’s so there’s been a continuous story since then with the character over fifty years. In the TV series they had to reach a big wide audience where nobody knew about the character so they had to condense all that time. I suppose also that nobody really wants to hear about the Hulk’s childhood abuse (he was beaten by his dad and his mum got killed by his dad), so they made it more palatable for TV and film.

I started collecting when I was seven years old, and I’m forty-one now. I stopped collecting when I was about twenty. I reached the real world and other things took over, like girlfriends and going out and that sort of thing. There was quite a long gap. I started collecting again when I was thirty because I’d got more money and all I did then was basically buy all the comics that I didn’t have. I have got every single Hulk comic since I originally started collecting, and some back issues as well, so I have probably got about seventy per cent of all the Hulk comics that have ever come out. It’s the biggest part of my collection. I have about six thousand comics in all.

I go to comic conventions, there’s one in Birmingham every year in August and I also have a lot of comic book friends who are professional comic book illustrators in both the UK and America – through social networking and emails and whatever. There are a few people I admire, I wouldn’t say I hero worship them. When you meet them they’re just nerds really! My favourite artist is Dale Keown. He’s the guy I like the best at drawing the Hulk. Most of the actual drawing is still pencil. It used to be inked in, nowadays they're scanned in and digitally coloured.

I keep them all in my bedroom. My valuable and favourite comics are on shelving, you can’t pile them because it would crush the spines. They also need to be in a protective bag. The rest, those that are not so valuable, financially or emotionally, are boxed up or just strewn across my bedroom!

There’s a lot of money in comics.  A Spiderman comic sold this year for a million dollars. It was the first appearance of Spiderman in Amazing Fantasy number 15. If you find the right comic then you can be rich. The value doesn’t interest me though, it's the actual comics that interest me.

My best find was Fantastic Four number 31 in a second hand bookshop whilst Avengers number 165 was the first comic I ever bought.

Fantastic Four 133 and Amazing Spiderman 120 were the first comics I ever had… they were given to me by my dad, so yes I suppose it’s in the genes. I have always collected things all my life, I was the nerd at school. Yes the collection is out of control and yes I am obsessed!

If you want to buy comics then I would go along to your local comic shop. Here in Birmingham, Forbidden Planet is probably your best bet, or Nostalgia Comics. I worked at Nostalgia Comics for four years. I didn’t care about the money, it was because of the comics. I would go there because everyone who works in these shops loves the comics, but I would recommend NOT collecting comics. I have spent a house, pretty much, on comics.

Images © Graham Powell with the kind permission of Chris Beckett.