Despite comic prices having risen over the past decade - at a rate that's probably higher than inflation - I actually spend less on new comics each week than I did ten years ago. Around the end of the 90s, I was averaging close to $60 per week on my Wednesday trips to the comic store, whereas these days I seem to hover within the $40 - $50 range.
Now, it doesn't take a genius to deduce that either I've taken to shoplifting some of my weekly haul or I've simply reduced how many 'pamphlets' I come home with. And of course it's the latter. I use a little system that's worked well for me over the last several years: after cataloguing the new (and unread) comics, I stack them in the order in which I intend to read them, which is usually best-to-worst as top-to-bottom. I keep my eye out for titles that consistently end up at the end of the pile, month to month, and will usually stop collecting that title once I notice that pattern. It's sort of synonymous to what I've read of General Electric's (previous?) policy of "rank and yank," where the bottom 10% of the work force would be fired every year, and replaced by new staff. Except that I'm not actively replacing yanked titles - just buying ones I like or ones that I hear good things about - and, umm, there aren't actual people losing their jobs in my scenario. Because that would be nasty.
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3 comments:
Where does Buffy fall in the big stack? I'm guessing maybe in the middle somewhere?
Top third, most of the time. I haven't read the first Brian K Vaughan issue yet - although I'm expecting that it'll be very good - but the first Whedon run was certainly very good. Of course where you fit has as much to do with what else is there, as it does with how much I'm looking forward to reading you.
Good old GE...Mgmt 101!
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