How much money went into these comics?

While I don't have any deep regrets about it, I try not to think about the amount of money I've spent on comic books over the years. Because, according to my brief calculations, it was a fucking lot. 

As a kid, 90 percent of any pocket money went into mainlining any comic book I could get, and when I started getting my first paychecks, I went a little crazy on it. Back then, in the early 90s, regular American comic books were $3.95 in NZ money, and I was buying long runs of deeply mediocre Fantastic Four and Tj\hor comics. 

I dropped a couple of hundred dollars on the Red Dwarf Smegazine alone, and was buying half the comics Vertigo was publishing at one time. I've spent hundreds and hundreds of cheap dollar comics, and paid full price for the majority of 2000ad progs - all 2350 of them. That shit adds up.

Now I'm in my very late forties, and after nearly half a century of obsession with the funny books, the dollar amount must be in the tens of thousands now. Maybe more than $100k now, on goddamn comic books. 

I could have invested that money, I could have done something with that, put down a deposit on a house or something. I might have something more concrete than the vast piles of paper that have built up over the years.

But, on the other hand, fuck that shit. 

I always liked that line in Citizen Kane where dear old Bernstein says it's not that hard to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money. If you are frugal, and never do anything with your cash, you can build up a serious pile, and nothing generates more money by having some in the first place. And if I worked my arse off, and saved and never went traveling, or bought any books, or did anything, my bank balance would certainly be a lot fatter now.

But is that what life is for? Is that what it's all about? The accumulation of wealth? I really don't think so.

It's possibly the oldest cliché in the history of mankind, but you really can't take it with you, and the only thing I can say with certainty on the matter is that I fucking loved all those comics, and the stories they put into my head, and the dreams they created.

It would be a grey life if I had never been exposed to the works of Alan Moore or Los Bros Hernandez or Kate Beaton or Jack Kirby or Grant Morrison or literally a thousand other comic creators. All that beautiful art, all those crazy stories, that's worth thousands of dollars, turning numbers into art, any time, any lifetime. Spend and be damned.