Comics Count, 2011

[womzilla]

1037 comics read on 253 different days. That's *up* 9% from 2010, which is the opposite of what I want to happen. A lot of the additional volume was just the natural sprawl of "event" titles--the modern superhero summer event generally involves a mini-series, a lot of crossovers in the ongoing books, and a plethora of tie-in miniseries. However, this year I'm mostly steering clear of the X-books and Marvel in particular looks like it will make it easy to avoid their "event" books. (Marvel has also canceled, in some cases with no issues published, several major titles I would have enjoyed picking up, such as Alpha Flight and Fred van Lente's kaiju event title.)

Another boost was the nuDC, which briefly increased my net DC buying by about 7 monthly titles and sampled more--I actually bought 25 of the 52 first issues and briefly subscribed to, I believe, 19 of them. However, attrition is culling that--I'm down to 16 already and 2 more are likely to go when their initial writers leave.

But, mainly, I just buy and read a lot of comics.

Comments

[uvula-fr-b4.livejournal.com]

I read a hella lot of collected comic books from one library or another (and I worked the almighty bejeezus out of the inter-library lending system doing so), bought a handful of Marvel's b&w "phone books" just because I was nostalgic and it was far cheaper indulging my muddle-aged nostalgia that way than trying to chase down and purchase the actual back issues I was jonesing for, bought a "Marvel Masterworks Edition" (of the first Tales to Astonish stories featuring the Sub-Mariner), and bought some individual issues, some current, mostly back, and most of which I regretting purchasing after I'd actually read them (Howard Chaykin, I am looking at you; and damn my weakness for your art!); but my head wants to explode (or my sperm want to erupt from my testicles and go shrieking off into hyperspace, aiming for the nearest black hole; yes, I did start reading Transmetropolitan in 2011 via inter-library loans, thanks for asking...) at the thought of keeping a list of every single comic I've read, re-read, re-re-read, etc., from year to year.

You are some kind of mensch. Or meshugenah. Something.

I'm still PO'ed at Marvel for bouncing Agents of Atlas from title to title, and then finally cancelling them altogether. I have to settle for a Gorilla Man cameo in Avengers 1959 (which does yet more violence to the continuity I grew up with...)? Bollocks!

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Over 25 years ago I developed the habit of writing down in a notebook every comic I read including the names of the writer, penciller, and inker, but about 6 years ago I switched to just writing down the comics in a Word file.

These days, keeping track really isn't very difficult. When we moved to Yonkers 20 years ago I began making lists of every comic I expected to buy, so that I could track whether I missed anything in my mail-order shipments. So now I just take that list and copy it into a file of all the comics I own and haven't ready (a frighteningly large list), and then I move titles from that list to the list of comics that I've read.

Yes, it's compulsive, but it makes me happy. It's also helpful to be able to look back and determine things like "what order do these comics come in?" by seeing how I read them at the time.

[uvula-fr-b4.livejournal.com]

See, if I were to actually do such a thing, I'd probably do it in a spreadsheet program, and I'd probably try to track a lot of incidentals -- where and when did the supporting character(s), villain(s), guest-starring superhero(es), last appear; where is this issue's story set; what major gadgets were used; what issue of what comic is the story continued in; etc. -- rather like George Olshevsky's Marvel indexes; and it wouldn't be very long at all before my head exploded like that one poor slob's in Cronenberg's Scanners. (Actually, I'm surprised that Olshevsky didn't end up in a padded cell, trying to follow the rat's nest of Marvel's continuity in the Silver and Bronze Ages; I can't imagine anyone being able to make heads or tails of it now.)

But hey, whatever works for you and keeps you out of the pool hall, as they used to say.