I went ot the comic shop Thursday. It was the first time I had been there in ten weeks, judging by the number of copies of 52 that were waiting for me. I didn’t touch the pile of comics until this afternoon, when I pulled out two issues of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes, enjoyed the Barry Kitson art, and found myself mildly irritated that the storyline in question would continue for at least one more issue.
I think the lesson has finally cracked my thick skull. I’m just not enjoying comic magazines anymore. I think they’re too short a reading experience, I hate having to organize them in a bunch of boxes in my basement, and the hassle of the aforementioned boxes means I almost never reread them. For the amount of money I’ve been spending on these things I ought to be racing to read them, and I’m just not anymore.
This is part of a larger problem I’ve identified with myself, that I’ve started collecting media more than enjoying it – a backlog of books, DVDs, and stuff on my DVR. But the comics are really the worst example. So I’m culling just about all of the issues. If I care enough about the series to buy a shelf copy, I’ll buy the trade. If not, oh well.
I really hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for comics and me. They’ve given me a lot of happiness over the last eighteen years. (Good Lord.) But something’s gotta change.