Jim Davis - Garfield pocket 37 (01-073)

[gerbie]

Somehow I turned into a collector. Obviously I liked the comics, in secondary school I started collecting them. By the time I was a student I was up to scratch, every time a new one came out, I bought it. Until I found out that reading the original is always better than the translation. I bought several in English. I found out that there are different editions for the US and the UK market. And when I was learning Spanish, I bought some of the Spanish ones I had to search for in Santo Domingo. And suddenly there is a collection. Living close to Germany made it easy to find the German version. Working in France helped me to the French edition. By then it became more complicated. In Milano I have spent three quarters of a day to find a comic shop that had an out of date collection in Italian. They were not as popular there, as in the rest of the world, out of print therefore, I consider myself lucky to own one.

By this time the collecting had taken over from the reading. I'm sure I've got several in the pile that haven't been read yet. To take things into the absurd, I bought a Finnish one, when I was in Helsinki. Now, after being away for such a long time, I'm not up to date anymore with the Dutch version. But still I bought the last one last week, when I was in the local bookshop. The American and English version are nearly complete as well, the rest are just on a pile. I don't even think they're that funny actually, though I do continue reading them. I'm not sure about collecting though. Then again, if somebody could help me to a language I haven't got yet, I'd be chuffed.