Today's true story:
Whenever I go past a garage sale, I always secretly hope that they've got comic books for sale.
I have mentioned this to some of my friends and they usually respond with a look of incredulity. Okay, so I admit I am a comic book fiend and think about them far more often than the average bear. Whenever I hear anyone talk about going shopping, the first thing I think of is going shopping for comics. Not clothes, not food, not electronics - comics.
However, I have always associated garages with comic books. When I was a kid, one of my neighbors, whom I used to hang out with all the time, stored his comics in his garage. He had a long box packed with issues. I have good childhood memories of spending hours with him in his garage just poring over various issues in his collection. Sure, most of it was typical early '90s stuff like Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man and Rob Liefeld's X-Force sprinkled with a healthy heaping of mid to late eighties David Michelinie Amazing Spider-Man and Christopher J. Claremont Uncanny X-Men, but I was a kid and those all excited me at the time.
At the time, my own collection of comics was rather meager by comparison, so hanging out with my friend in his garage and experiencing his treasure trove of wonders was always a real joy. We spent a lot of Saturday afternoons looking at and reading his comics. Sometimes the other neighbor kids would hang out, and we'd look at some comics together and then start pretending we were the characters and play act.
It didn't matter that the garage was dusty and there were spiders and stuff crawling in there. In fact, I'd even say that being in the garage in the first place enhanced the experience. There was something disarmingly down-to-earth about the mustiness of the place, the dreariness of it all. Every time we cracked open one of those comic books, a nuclear warhead would explode in our collective imaginations. We could really lose ourselves in those four-color worlds.
Everything started in the garage. (Just like the Weezer song!)
This is why I will forever associate garages with comic books. Thus, whenever I see a garage sale, I will look over the wares to see if there's any chance of comic books. I know, in my heart of hearts, that it is highly unlikely for a random garage sale to just happen to have comics for sale. Highly unlikely. I've walked past a bunch of garage sales over the past year and not once did I find any comic books. And yet, despite being disappointed time and time again, I still have a small amount of hope that my luck will change one day. I keep hoping, against all logic, that the next garage sale I encounter will have some secret treasure that I will be able to swoop in on.
I'm kind of stupid that way.
