An Interview with Collector Jeff Harris
04.17.06 By Deanna DahlsadJeff Harris is an artist inspired by the comic books he collects and the film noir genre he loves to watch…
How you see or define your collection:
A vast well of inspiration and comfort. Especially with a comic book collection nowadays, I don’t really collect for the quick buck like many did in the 90’s and lost their shirts doing so. Mostly my collection reflects my interests and creative influences.
Do you have any photos to share with us?
Sure. Some of these books were lost for almost 14 years. They were recently found deep in Dad’s garage.
When & how did you start your collection?
Actually in the late 70’s. When I first started reading comics, I used to cut up the books into paper dolls and create stories from the existing characters. And when I started to draw more, I cut up the books a lot less. Plus, there were many books I’d love reread.
When did you acknowledge it as a ‘collection’?
When I started to buy boxes for them in the early 80’s. And when the Virginia State Troopers at a weigh station nearly had me arrested in ‘92, during my move from Maine to Arizona. The U-Haul truck had half of it filled with my comic collection and had also the words “Under 21,000 lbs” on the cab. My paperwork from U-Haul said that I had unlimited lbs on it. The truck was weighed at 29,000 lbs. So some state trooper, possibly deprived of his donut, was going to take the word of the truck cab over my U-Haul paperwork. Fortunately before I was carted off the hoosegow, one sane superior officer finally arrived at work and let me go. This also meant that I had to avoid every weigh between Virginia and AZ. A normal 3 day driving trip turned into 5 in every backroad imaginable.
Has it affected you financially? If so, how?
For the extreme example, see above. But for every day life, I do budget myself. Of course, it’s not like the old days where one could buy an week’s shipment easily. I stick to my favorites and leave room to try some new stuff though. But nowadays, I do budget myself very carefully in that department.
What is the most drastic thing you have done to pursue your collection?
Definitely what I mentioned earlier in the first question was probably the closest thing that I had to do to keep from losing my comic collection and being arrested at the same time. Never really had to do anything drastic to pursue something. Maybe except when I would get in trouble as a kid, Mom would ground me and forbid me from buying any new comics at the time. Still would though and sneak them in my backpack or something like that.
How has it affected your daily life?
In a lot of ways. But the most important one is that it was the main reason I wanted to be an artist in the first place. It also helped take me all over the country and keep me sane at the same time. The collection provides reference of what to do and what not to do. It also helped me get in touch with many of the creative people behind the books, which helped further myself as an artist.
You can see Jeff’s artwork at his website, www.studiohadra.com.
For more comic books, see the following websites:
The Sol and Penny Davidson collection Sol Davidson’s doctoral dissertation, Culture and the Comic Strips, earned him the first PhD in comics in 1959. There was no institutional support for Comics Studies at the time, but Dr. Davidson’s interest in comics has never flagged and The University of Florida offers this unique set of comic books, anthologies, newspaper sections, magazines and rareities slowly accumulated by the Davidsons.
Michigan State University’s Comic Art Collection With over 200,000 items, the collection is mostly comic books, but also included are over 1,000 books of collected newspaper comic strips, and several thousand books and periodicals about comics.
Comics Guaranty Corp The leading third-party grading service for comic books, the site includes registry, census data, message boards and gallery.
Images © Jeff Harris
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Article Tags: , art, collector, Comics, film noir, Jeff Harris================
Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect - Join our Collectors’ Community!
March 10th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
[...] Jeff Harris doesn’t just love comic books, but the creativity they represented to him when he was a child, the inspiration they provide him as an adult artist, and the connections he has to those who came before him as well as those he works with now. [...]