When I went to the comic store over the weekend, I was picking up two weeks' worth of product. I had them in my hand when I walked to the back of the store where a friend, who'd caught a ride with me there, was picking out trade paperbacks from himself. He saw the small pile I was holding, and said, "Is that two weeks of comics for you?" I looked at what I had, which was six very thin comics (compared to the thicker collections he was about to purchase), and replied, "Yeah, kind of pathetic, isn't it?"
Not that many years ago, I was routinely buying 10 to 15 comics each week. I tried to cap my weekly expenditure at no more than $60, although I didn't always manage it. On Saturday, I spent less than $20 on my bi-weekly purchase! (A small part of that shocking difference is due to the Canadian dollar being on par with the U.S. buck at the moment, rather than it costing $1.60 CDN to make $1.00 USD as was true at the start of this century.)
I'm probably at the lowest ebb of interest in comics in my 40 years of collecting them. It actually seems conceivable to me that I might... just... stop... one of these days. But I've been saying that for a few years now, and it hasn't happened yet. So maybe I'm just kidding myself, still.
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2 comments:
say it ain't so Matt. Say it ain't so.
Does this reflect on the current state of Comic quality or is it a more personal thing?
Tim asks, in the previous comment, "Does this reflect on the current state of Comic quality or is it a more personal thing?"
Honestly, I think it's a combination of the two. If comics were a hotbed of really interesting, engaging stories right now, I imagine I'd be buying more of them. Instead, both of the major publishers seem intent on recreating the Speculator Madness of the 1990s, by doing event after event and flooding the market with variant covers (DC Comics, in March of this year, will put variants on approximately 1/3 of its DCU line!). I long for a return to the sort of comics that we saw in the mid-80s, instead, where Moore, Miller, Gaiman and others were simply telling great stories.
At the same time, I'm also consciously trying to spend less on the hobby, reflecting the fact that Vicki and I are (mostly) living off savings now. While I could certainly stand to spend more than I do on weekly comics, I don't know that I'd be comfortable plunking down $60 or more each week as I did when we both were working full-time.
So I guess it's a happy convergence, of a sort... although I wouldn't actually say I'm all that happy!
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