Over at eBay, someone just picked up a bound volume of Incredible Hulk 167-182 which had my name embossed on the cover in gold. (The cognoscenti among you will recognize that run as including the origin of Wolverine.) And he wondered … what’s up with that?

I’ve only been asked about this sort of thing once before, by someone who wanted to know whether receiving bound volumes of comics was a perk regularly given to Marvel Bullpenners in the ’70s. (As if!)

So why does this artifact exist? The short answer is … it seemed like a good idea at the time.

The longer answer is … blame Marv Wolfman and Len Wein.

In the mid-‘70s, quite a few comics professionals decided to get their comics collections professionally bound. It seemed like a way in which one could more easily access the comics to actually read them. So—like Marv and Len before me—I boxed up whichever of my comics had uninterrupted 12- or 16-issue runs and sent them off to a bindery.

Looking back on it now, it’s obvious we all damaged the individual issues, what with the stitching and trimming. But since, back then, I never dreamed there’d come a future in which I’d ever want to sell my comics, I didn’t worry about lessening their value.

Of course, I later burned out on the business, which resulted in me selling my entire collection except for a few key issues which had remained unbound because I didn’t have a complete set going back to the beginning of Silver Age Marvel. (Since, as occurred with so many of us when young, my parents forced me to sell my comics for a pittance. For me, that took place during the 7th Grade.) Those key issues, such as Amazing Fantasy 15, went into a safe deposit box and have since been sold.

Strangely, the only volume I regret selling is Not Brand Ecch. Luckily, the entire run is about to be reprinted, so that loss (at least of the content, though not of my personal copies) can be easily repaired.

I wonder who owns all the other dozens of bound volumes embossed with my name?