Covid 19

It seems the whole world has been turned upside down with this Covid 19 virus and my thoughts are with everyone and their health and safety. Let’s take the necessary precautions and let’s put all our efforts and energies into getting through these unprecedented times.

I tried to pick a comic collecting topic for today but just wasn’t feeling anything I wrote, I know we could use the distraction but my conviction just wasn’t there. What I can say is that situations like this make me appreciate collecting comic books even more and I can’t wait until we get ourselves past this and get back to vigorously pursuing the hobby we love. For now, we can continue our collecting online and we can continue to talk to each other and support each other in forums and comment fields of posts that keep us active in the hobby.

Things seem to be changing so drastically by the day that I’m not sure what this week coming will bring us, I’m almost certain it will involve us enduring more restrictions and having to take more precautions. Let’s do what needs to be done and let’s keep close and safe and healthy and let’s help those in need if we can.

Walter Durajlija
Walter Durajlija

Walter Durajlija is an Overstreet Advisor and Shuster Award winner. He owns Big B Comics in Hamilton Ontario.

Articles: 1817
11 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bud Plant
Bud Plant
4 years ago

Thanks for the thoughts, Walter. Things are a bit grimm here, no help from our embarassment of a president. To put it kindly. We also woke up to 8” of new snow and no electricity. (We’re at 3000 feet here in the Sierras). The gods want us to stay home! Snow day for most of my staff. But I have my comics to play with, and no lack of reading material! Feel badly for not keeping up with Chris’ Beyond 365, but other priorities. Our two local shows coming up this week and next, a comics and a book show, both got the axe.

Klaus
Klaus
4 years ago

Walter, my sympathies to you and all the other store owners out there. This is going to be painful in the pocketbook for the next few months.

tim hammell
tim hammell
4 years ago

Doing my bit, just ordered NEW Canadian comics published by Grandway Comics. Keep healthy everybody!

tim hammell
tim hammell
4 years ago

and Kamandi Omnibus ordered through my local store.

Chris Meli
4 years ago

I wish I could say that we’re all in this together, but I don’t think that’s right as some are going to suffer far more than others. As a community we can work against this and try to support the weaker among us. Also we can try to keep our spirits up by finding diversion in the hobby, and inspiration from all those heroic characters we follow. The heroism in this fight will be a grinding and seemingly pedestrian kind (sit out another nice spring day while watching your bank account evaporate), but it should result in saved lives, including some of fellow collectors.

Over the past week I have been thinking about those great WW II covers. On the one hand it’s a ridiculous comparison – if we fight this out properly on an international scale, the loss of life should be many orders of magnitude lower, and destruction limited to the effects of disuse – but in mentality I think there is a great commonality. My family sat at the dinner table confronting their lives disrupted and the fight still to come. There were tears over missing friends (although they could FaceTime them any time they want to!) and concerns about being cooped up for months in this situation. I kept thinking back to similar dinner tables in 1939, 1940, 1941 – and how lucky we were compared to them. If kids (even “big” kids) were still able to take enjoyment from comics in those dark times, it should be easy for us to keep that going. We are also blessed with nearly a hundred years of great material to peruse, while in those days you were lucky if you didn’t lose the few books you had to the paper drive.

So if the whole deal is getting to you, open up a trade reprint, an old reader copy, a scan of some weird Golden Age book on the web, or – God forbid – one of those Marvel holo-foil cover jobs from the nineties – and discover or rediscover. Then maybe sometime in 2021 we can all have a nice club soda in Hamilton and relate what we found.

Klaus
Klaus
4 years ago

Don’t get too comfortable online, folks. On the news, they were saying how so many extra prople are online working, they risk blowing out the internet. It’s like if everyone in a big apartment building flushed their toilets at once.

Gerald Eddy
Gerald Eddy
4 years ago

Love to hoist a soda with you guys! Here’s to all of us getting through this together!

Chris Owen
Chris Owen
4 years ago

A club soda to all!

Dave Mackay
Dave Mackay
4 years ago

Considering what has happened in China , Spain and Italy, it is good that President Trump and others are taking this virus seriously. It is nice to see President Trump and New York Governor working in a bi-partisan manner . Politics aside, we all need to work towards a healthier world. I worry about the small business’s and the working men and woman….here is to a quick recovery