A post from my old Marvel blog concerning how many comics I had stacked up that I hadn’t yet read. I haven’t been to a comic shop in a year, obviously, but I still buy new books every week online and have them shipped to me.
My younger self would be somewhat aghast at me if he were to see how many comics I own that haven’t yet been read.
I get a bundle of the Marvel and DC books every week, and I try to read just about everything. And I also visit the local comic shop every week (Jim Hanley’s Universe on 33rd Street just under the Empire State Building) to pick up the interesting stuff that other people are putting out, or the more expensive hardcovers from Marvel and DC, or whatever else might catch my eye.
I’ve also got a stack of older books acquired at conventions. At the moment, there’s a pile of mostly 70s comics bought at the Wizard Philadelphia convention last month that I’m slowly making my way through.
What this means is that, at any given moment, I’m likely about three months behind on reading any given title. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day, in the week, for me to ever entirely catch up. Already I’ve got the ETERNALS hardcover to go through, and a stack of ESSENTIALS and DC SHOWCASE volumes, and the second Jack Kirby BLACK PANTHER volume, and a compilation of Roy Thomas’ ALTER EGO magazine all in various stages of completion. And that doesn’t take into account “real” books either (I’m almost finished with “Yes Man” by Danny Wallace, and I’ve got the new Remo Williams paperback cued up right behind it.)
Off to the shop now to sort through the latest. More later.
Tom B
P.S.: Despite all of the CIVIL WAR goodness that’s hitting the racks today, this week’s Heroes Office Hot Pick has to be SPIDER-GIRL #100. Not only is it a milestone issue, with an exciting announcement to you from the editors, it’s also 100 pages of Tom DeFalco goodness. Worth it alone for the cover gallery.
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The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I have a similar bit also different situation. I still have a good few months of comics to read but haven’t gotten round to it – and it’s not as if I haven’t got the time either these days. Maybe it’s my age and these blessed rose tinted glasses I seem to wear when it comes to comics, but I found myself just not enjoying the new books any more. It was rare something actually entertained or enthralled me and I was just buying and reading them because that’s why I’ve been doing for most of my life (over 50 years now I guess), but now it was like I was on autopilot.
So after years of being disappointed with various titles and gradually reducing them, I found I was pretty much down to one title, and with the first lockdown and no new comics coming in, told my comic shop to cancel/suspend my pull list. That was about ten months ago and I still haven’t read the last batch they posted to me. I have however read and even bought some back issues since then. The latest was ASM Annual ’96 simply because it contained Romita finishes/inks over Frenz pencils, and was a flashback story to the halcyon Lee/Romita days. The characters looked how they should and it was a short but wonderful return to my childhood. Must be those glasses again. Before that, it was a Tales to Astonish that I needed to complete the Hulk run (61 I think) and Ditko’s Return of the Question #1, amongst others.
My first thought was that I am living off of nostalgia, but then I remembered reading the Clarement and Byrne’s Hellfire Club storyline a great many years after that had originally debuted and enjoyed it a great deal more than the current books I was reading at the time, There was a gap between my initial years of collecting, and restarting again after some years of being at work and being a ‘grown up’ so I had missed some good stuff. I guess once comics are in you they never truly leave. Once a comic book nerd, always a comic book nerd (and proud as the Cinematic Charles Xavier would say)
Spider-girl was an interesting ‘What If’ storyline that I found a bit more interesting now that you mention it, though I can’t remember if I have them all or stopped picking them up them at some point. Another box I could look in I guess.
I remember picking up Kirby’s 4th World stuff back in the 70s (even used one image for a huge wall poster for one of the teachers that she asked me to paint) but found myself completely unimpressed by it – Kirby’s artwork was still great as always but it just wasn’t pulling me in like he had at Marvel. I still bought them but wasn’t enjoying them. They didn’t last long before they were all one by one cancelled and he eventually ended up back at Marvel where things weren’t much better. For me his Eternals was a better attempt than his New Gods but where I can remember story arcs and images from his earlier Marvel days, nothing much sticks in my mind from his DC stuff or his return to Marvel. I still have some of that poster somewhere though…
Loved Roy Thomas’s work – a seamless merger from Stan and some great storylines wherever he went. I wish he’d stayed on Spider-Man for a bit longer – Gerry Conway just wasn’t doing it for me, and neither was Ross Andru unfortunately.
Now, where did I put those glasses…
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