Let me tell you, comics shops are not the place to come to grips with your mortality, even slightly.
The shop in town absorbed a collection and was clearing out some of it with a 50-cent sale. As I’m looking through the long boxes, snarking to myself on this person’s taste (lots of Liefeld, Byrne, and Claremont — even a full run of Sovereign Seven), it hits me. Someone’s going to be doing this with my long boxes someday.
Somewhere down the road, geeks like me will be dismissing my choice in reading material, muttering things like, “Well, somebody sure liked The Defenders,” and “The Chapmions? Who the hell are The Champions?” and, worst of all, “He bought the full run of the Heroes Reborn Avengers! How sad is that?”
It was jarring. I couldn’t even bring myself to pick up Captain America in: The Return of Asthma Man. (Though I reserve the right to go back later and see if it’s still there.)
But, it has made me wonder if I shouldn’t be more tolerant to the reading preferences of others, just in some kind of pay-it-forward bid for posthumous charity.