My dwindling comics obsession

Jason
Thursday
10:25 am

I have always liked comic books. It probably started at a young age when my pops would bring me home an issue of Spider-man or Marvel Comics Presents. Throw in GI Joe and Transformers, and a trip to the used comics store, and I can understand why one of my closets has 10 long boxes of comics just sitting there.

And within those boxes exist an OCD testament to my interest in comic books, because they are not only alphabetized, but alphabetized by publisher. I know, I know, don’t ask, I can’t explain. Like I said OCD.

There was a period when I hit the end of high school and college that I let them go. I really did not follow anything. I couldn’t tell you what happened. Somewhere in there Knightfall happened with Batman and Superman had a crapton of clones. X-men and Avenger teams changed like 326 times. But then 2000 rolls around and I start dabbling again.

Dabbling turned into an ungodly amount of money spent on comics each week. A couple of titles turned into spinoffs and things to try out, number one issues and crossovers. It all go very convoluted. And there came a point where it was just too much. I was able to sluff off all the crossovers and new series and turn it into a manageable pile of reading material.

But over the last year or two, my must reads has slowly dwindled to only a couple of titles. Those are mostly Marvel titles now (as I was always a Marvel fan over DC). I think I am down to Thor, Spider-man, Uncanny X-men and Avengers. The last five titles out of my subscriptions have been Exiles (which I had read from the beginning), Justice League of America, Buffy, Angel and Avengers: The Initiative. And I think Mighty Avengers and New Avengers is going to be shown the door here shortly. I wish they would get back to one Avengers title a month.

I am not sure what exactly is going on. Perhaps the economy has played a role. Having a kid certainly makes it hard to pop out a large sum of money each week for new books. Even more so when for the cost of one comic I could but a paperback book that would take me a month to read compared to a comic reading length of 10 minutes. I also have to thank the wife for helping out as well. She has really help me remove the excess I was just collecting, not really interested in.

But I think I will always have more core titles. Thor, Spider-man and Uncanny X-men. If Doctor Strange ever pops up, I pick it up. But outside of that, it is very hard to get excited about anything in the world of comics right now. That I am going to blame on some very bad global events for both Marvel and DC. But right now, I don’t see that comic pile growing any time soon. I still have some character favorites out there, just don’t want to buy their book. Sad day.

Oh, and I blame it on comic book movies. I get my superhero fix in other ways nowadays it seems.