I am going on a Journey towards reading all of the comic book series I have been spending way too much money on. Let me explain my conundrum. I was really into comic books growing up and have fond memories of being in the favorite used book store of the Reeses in Reno. Smell is the sense that leaves the most indelible impression on memories. For me that smell is of old, slightly worn comic books. I remember sitting in the back of that store near the science fiction section and the store had tons of used comic books sitting around. I would spend hours in that store reading them until I finally acquired them through the five-finger discount (my tendency to be a Thief will be explored in some other BlogSpot. Those comics were with me through high school.
In preparation for college, I decided to try to sell me comic book collection. I took all of them to the local comic book store that happened to be in the Indian Colony mall in Reno. I had a complete collection of the original Ghost Rider series that, if I had it today, would be worth some money. I did not like the price that was being offered so I declined……
And then I pulled one of my classic flake moments. (For those of you who do not know me well or are rediscovering me after a period of absence, if you look in the dictionary then you will see my picture as representative of the classic flake. I know this is a problem and try to manage it but for those who are my friends and in my social network, I will apologize in future tense for forgetting something, or not showing up somewhere, etc.) I was going away to college, United State International University, and partying into the wee hours with my good friends. The debauchery of my younger years will have to be related in a future post. I was not thinking of comic books. So I left them there. It was only years later, when I rediscovered my love of the sequential medium, that I tried to track down my old comic books that were by that time sold off and transferred among the comic book store network. I was mad at myself for that.
I rediscovered my love for comic books near the end of my undergraduate years. I was living with my then future wife and tried to spend some money (that we have never really had) on the few series that were in my pull list. What brought me back? Well you will have to look elsewhere for the history of comic books at that time but two things were really going on, the creation of Vertigo Comics and Image Comics. One had great stories and the other had great art. Eventually the market for comic books would collapse because of speculation and the endless ‘collectible editions” of comics that might have great art but had no story.
When I was working on my Master’s degree in San Diego, I was a member of the San Diego Comic Convention, which is now the Comic-Con International. It sounds like boasting but it was under my gentle needling that writers began to be appreciated at the convention as artists were. Rather than complain about the horrible stories of early nineties comics, I wanted to enable good writers to write those comics of the future. So I asked for us to begin to offer potential comic book writer a way to have their work seen and critiqued by the pros. I do not know if they still have Writers’ Portfolio Reviews at Comic-Con because I have not been in awhile and do not see myself as going anytime soon because the convention is all about Hollywood nowadays and not really comic books per se. Comics are now pre-movies rather than the original art form pioneered by Americas.
Towards the end in San Diego, I stopped buying and reading and did not come back at all during my doctoral education because Amy and I never had enough money and if I had free time to read, I was reading political science. I was probably one of the first trade waiters. Most comic books are collected into trade paperbacks nowadays so those who are into the stories usually wait for the complete story. So I got swept up in this relatively new phenomenon and trade all of my original and complete Sandman comics in for the trades (Slap to my younger self.
So recently I have rediscovered comics and am busily catching up on the lost years and reading the essential good stories. The thing that had changed is I no longer care about how the stories come, as long as they are low cost. Most of the time that means that I buy the comics. They are usually cheaper and they are complete. A collector of trades in never guaranteed the complete series, sometimes they leave out one-shot stories and other miscellaneous issues. I usually get comics at about one dollar per issue after accounting for shipping and handling. I get most of my complete series on eBay.
The conundrum comes in reading them. I have found over the years that the more I am enjoying what I am reading the slower it takes. I am collecting what most comic reviewers would agree are good series (although I also collect ones that I like that may have mixed reviews. And I read the complete series from issue one to whatever the last issue was. For the comics that are released weekly I usually wait for the series to be cancelled so I can get them all. For instance, there is a new series starring the Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson’s character in Iron Man II. I know that someday this series will be canceled and that is when I will get a chance to read it. This means that I have to wait longer than even trade waiters. I am a series waiter, I guess.
So my goal now is to read all of these great stories and relay them to my social network and anyone else that cares about what a middle-aged college professor of Political Science has to say about comic books. Now I know most of the people in my social network are not comic book fans, but they should be. Comic books are one of the three original American art forms, the other two being jazz and chataqua. If you like movies, there is a comic book for you. The reason that Hollywood is mining comics for scripts is that they are essentially written. If you have ever seen a storyboard for a movie, you have seen the comic book for that movie.
Part of the review will include how many times I am distracted from the entire comic book series by the need to read something else (usually a bad sign) or slow down to appreciate the series and make it last that much longer. Kind of like sex, sometimes depending on the passion you may need to walk through the process quickly “I need you right now” or to take your time and enjoy the experience for as long as you can (or can hold out for us guys.
So I am almost finished with Manhunter and will give you the rundown. The only hiccup I can foresee is how long it takes me to read a comic now. Before I would read quickly, but now I know what to look for in panel progression, inking and coloring, expressions, pacing, characterization, etc. So the way I read comics: First I look at the composition of the page itself, then the panels, and finally read it panel-by-panel.
Stay tuned….
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