HASBROUCK HEIGHTS — While some women collect pricey designer shoes and purses, those items don’t stir Kristen Mocerino’s passion anymore. She’s developed a fancy for the objects her husband has long loved and collected: comic books.
Kristen and Nick Mocerino, who live in Englewood, spent their Sunday partaking of the pastime they now share. The couple were among roughly 200 attendees and 15 vendors at the Hasbrouck Heights Comic Book Expo at the Holiday Inn on Route 17.
The Mocerinos got married in 2010, and were looking for an activity to share. Comic books “evolved into a hobby we could both enjoy,” Nick said.
John Paul and his Pug Productions, based in Montclair, have been hosting monthly “comic cons” since 1991, and have done more than 400 of the comic-book sales. Normally, at least once a month they are conducted at the Clifton Community Recreation Center, and this Sunday the show debuted at a new venue, the Holiday Inn.
Paul, whose day job is working as general manager of a Paramus fur store, estimated that there were more than 100,000 comic books at the sale. On Sunday, one of the highest-priced comics was a copy of the first Fantastic Four valued at $7,800, which Gary Platt of Oakland was selling at his table.
The highest price some rare comics have fetched is about $1 million, Paul said, and one of his vendors had a high-quality copy of “X-Men No. 1” worth more than $100,000 at the Clifton expo in December.
Steven Titus of Dumont had his 14-year-old daughter Stephanie in tow for the show Sunday, which was the elder Titus’ birthday.
“I’m a ‘Superman’ fanatic,” said Titus, showing off a tattoo of Superman’s “S” emblem on his arm.
Titus, a math teacher at Glenfield Middle School in Montclair, said he owns thousands of comic books.
One of the vendors was also a math teacher, Michael Williams of Cedar Grove. He had 3,000 to 4,000 comics that he was selling, and said he has another 5,000 to 6,000 at home. Comic books have a special meaning for Williams. He said he was a bit dyslexic as a child and his aunt, an educator and school principal, gave him a comic book to help him read.
That was “the impetus” for him to get hooked and continue buying and reading them, Williams said.
A lawyer who is one of Paul’s regular customers, Hank Wagner of Rockaway, browsed the expo. He said he started collecting comics when he was 11, and now has about 45,000.
“I always liked stories,” Wagner said of the appeal of the comics. “It’s modern mythologies.” Several attendees pointed out that the “mythology” of the comics have been the foundation for blockbuster movies such as “Spider-Man,” “The X-Men” and “The Avengers,” as well as the hit AMC zombie show, “The Walking Dead.”
