Lending/Borrowing

From time to time, I have lent comics to people, thereby inflicting my opinion of what is worth reading on another reader. This is all well and good, as the borrowers were previously readers of comic books and didn't necessarily have to agree with my tastes. I just picked out issues that I thought were worth a second look...or worth a look by someone other than me.

I think this is a great thing. People lend books all the time...why not comics? I've collected comics for years, and been friends with people who collected as well, but the idea of borrowing or lending with my friends never really came up before.

Sure, we would lend/borrow the occasional issues, but for the most part, we would pretty much read our own issues.

If anything, it was me who was doing the lending, as I seemed to have more comics than my friends. Hardly something to boast about, I know. But I was always something of a completist. I'd want to have all the issues before I'd commit to reading a particular run. But that's getting a bit off topic...

Perhaps this lack of lending/borrowing was because we collected the same titles. Or because we didn't overlap all that much...and wouldn't have wanted to read the books we didn't collect.

I know for my part, if someone would tell me about something that was interesting, I would usually just go out and buy it.

With comics being $3 a pop now, that certainly has changed. It's a shame - at that price, one is not as free as one once was to try new titles.

It's too bad that I don't have as close a contact with the fellow collectors I grew up with. I think I'd be more open to borrowing/lending now. I do have someone now that I've borrowed a few things from, but it's kind of few and far between.

Of course, I don't really have the time to read the comics that I've accumulated and haven't had time to read. But if there was something interesting out there that I thought I might want to read, and someone was willing to lend...I'd borrow.