When the traders, dealers, browsers and collectors gather at the Baltimore Comic Convention tomorrow, there will be a lot of little kids in the group.
Some of them will actually be little kids, bored parents in tow, hot on the trail of the latest Aliens vs. Predator or Incredible Hulk or Little Mermaid comic.
But some of them will look and act like grownups, with jobs and bills and maybe kids of their own. They will be hot on the trail of the latest "X-Force," or maybe a set of collector cards or some original artwork from the legendary Frank Frazetta, or the elusive "Star Wars" issue No. 107 -- or maybe a manga, Japanese for comic book, translated into English.
That is, they will be hot on the trail of whatever mysterious appeal attracted them to comics in the first place, some 15, 20, even 30 years ago.
"I've been collecting for years, since I was a little kid," says Rickey Shanklin of Baltimore, an independent comics writer and entrepreneur who owns the Mindbridge store in Dundalk. He arranged his store, in fact, to be what he wanted when he was young: everything in one place, back issues available, a "holding" service so no one has to miss an issue while the allowance builds up, or until he or she can come in to pick it up.
"I've been into comics ever since I was 5 years old," says Peter David, who writes "The Incredible Hulk," "X-Factor" and the "Little Mermaid," among others. "I would terrify my mother as I walked across a busy street with my face buried in Action comics."
Mr. David lost interest in comics for a few years ("I discovered girls, which unfortunately happens to a lot of our customers"), then rediscovered them in high school. He ultimately went to work in the sales division of Marvel Comics in New York, then moved over to the writing side.
"There's a stereotype that people have of a comic collector," says Pete Hoefling, a Baltimore-area promoter of trade shows, including comic book conventions. "I mean you generally think of a kid in high school who has no friends -- but really it's high school football jocks, grandfathers, 6-year-old kids that are smarter than 30-year-old men when it comes to a good investment, housewives, mothers, rich people. . . . Conventions are the closest thing you have to a club."
