Tales Of Accumulation & Excess The Incredible Adventures Of The Collector

December, 2004

So one evening in 1997, a comic-book artwork restorer named Rick returned to me a piece I'd sent him more than a year earlier. He returned it only under duress. More precisely, he was limping and had a black eye.When I'd given him the cover of Captain America #117--which featured the initial appearance of one of the first African American superheroes, the Falcon--he said he would have it back in three weeks. Three weeks became six, then a year, and then I got a phone call from someone who traffi...

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