Here are the answers to those questions:
Which encounters with real life vintage comic book collectors, comic book dealers or shop owners have been most inspiring for you?
I’ve had many many encounters with comic collectors dealers and shop owners over the decades. Back in the earlier days of alternative comic when you did a “book tour” to promote your work you often stayed right in the houses of the Comic shop owners and this was a rich source of material, believe me. I certainly don’t want to say any bad things about people who were kind to me…but “it takes all kinds to make up a world”. Lot of classic collecting behaviour and a wide range of social skills!
I’ve had many dinners over the years where I have heard more than my fair share of “yarns” about the comic greats and “don’t tell this to anyone” anecdotes about other dealers or other cartoonists. All of this will stay where it belongs. In my head.
I’ve had lots of positive experiences, of course. People who were very good to me—other collectors or publishers or comic shop owners. I have had a long friendship with the owner of Toronto’s Beguiling, Peter Birkemoe (a rich source of collecting stories—he started working at comic shops in his early teens) and with the previous Owner Steve Solomos (who was quite a character as well). In fact, most of the folks I’ve dealt with over the years have supplied a lot of the background ‘atmosphere” for the collectors in Wimbledon green.
Going around conventions looking for back issues was always interesting as well. You met quite a range of collecting “types” there. Both the guys (always “guys”) running the booths and the other collectors elbowing you at the back issue bins.
To be honest, I’ve spent as much time at second hand bookstores and paper shows as I have at comic shops. You meet the same types. In fact, collecting, no matter what you collect, seems to attract pretty much the same types. Some are kind, some timid, some very aggressive, some total clueless, some very selfish and some enormously generous. A very wide range. but every type (including my own type) has something about them that is both endearing (or heartbreaking) and usually off-putting as well. Funny too.
I love to read about collectors of just about anything. Collecting is so interesting. I often read books or magazine about things I don’t even collect (coins or playset toys for example) just because I love the “idea” of collecting as much as actually acquiring things.
What were the most instructive personal conversations or written articles about the underlying know-how/expertise of the field that you had come across before you put down your sketches/episodes of "Wimbledon Green" (for example, thinking of topics like the "earliest comic book in history" and of the "name-dropping" like in "Ashcan Kemp" vs. "ashcan copy")?
A lot of Wimbledon Green comes out of just little things. Small memories of
dealing with the fan world or my own experiences at book fairs etc. Nothing really jumps to mind as memorable at the moment.
To be honest, a great deal of the rough shape of the Wimbledon green story came into my head right after I read the book A GENTLE MADNESS by Basbanes. I mention it in the introduction. It was all about book collecting and it immediately made me want to write a funny book about the same sort of characters. The character Jonah, for example is based largely on a book thief from that book (besides being an obvious parody of myself).
The other huge source for inspiration and research was a book called THE GOLDEN AGE OF FANDOM by Bill Schelly. I adore this book and had read it many times. I am utterly charmed by those early days of comic nerds. All the fanzines and early conventions are utterly charming in retrospect. A world of “busy work” and fannish enthusiasms …and extended childhoods.
Certainly there have been tons of other sources. Fanzines themselves. The 80’s and early 90’s issues of the Comics Journal leap to mind. A great article from an old price guide —titled “The Pop Hollinger story”—I think of that article all the time.
Too much stuff to mention, really.
Are there any sketches/panels/episodes about comic book collecting from the same period of time that did not make it into the published version of "Wimbledon Green" and what would they deal with?
Not really. As you yourself mentioned, I did a little strip to promote the book but besides that Wimbledon green exists entirely in that one book. I suppose, if I think about it, you could say that the GNBCC book was an unpublished “out take” of Wimbledon Green….but then I published it and so that is now something of it’s own. I think of the two books as being two parts of the same thing. In fact, a few years ago I had a show of artwork from the GNBCC and I did some big colour paintings of some the characters and thinking about it now, those paintings had characters from both books in them…as if I had forgotten which ones belonged in which. To me they are two sides of the same coin.
All the best,
Seth
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