Comic Book Collecting

A hobby that treats comic books and related items as collectibles or artwork to be sought out and preserved, more recent than stamp or book collecting but with a large following worldwide, partly responsible for reviving interest in comics after a slump in the 1980s. Collectors are drawn to the hobby by appreciation, nostalgia, the prospect of financial profit or the pleasure of completing a collection, and the hobby's growth traces the rise of superhero characters such as Superman and Batman in the 1930s and the industry-wide dominance of Marvel Comics and DC Comics since the 1960s.