Comics biorhythms
This past Monday (April 19th - "Dark Clouds'a Gatherin'" -- after several paragraphs involving shows I'm only vaguely aware exist), over on his blog, Revoltin' Developments, Ken mentioned somethings that all long-term comics readers go through: Built-up stacks of unread comics, and the sense that if one just stopped buying them that the absence would barely be felt.
I've certainly been there.
I've been reading comics since about 1968 and especially in the past 15 years I've gone through the drop in interest more than once per year. In 1997 I dropped everything new, completely and utterly, and it was just over a year later that I cautiously began buying again.
The urge creeps back.
When I restarted I promised to only pick up comics I wanted to read right away, and not to let runs of 8, 13, 24 or more issues build up - dispersed among dozens of "cleaned up" stacks of comics - as they'd done before. I was fairly good about it, too, for a couple years. Somewhere along the line it happened again. I've tried simplifying matters by shifting strongly towards waiting for trade collections, but I didn't do it completely. See, aside from not necessarily being sure that a series will be collected, one can also realize he's bought a couple issues into a storyline he might enjoy, but possibly not enough to want to buy a collected edition... and even less certainly something he's already bought a couple loose issues of, only to essentially buy those all over again (though a little less per page in most cases) while buying the rest of the story.
Chances are, I've just been making it more complicated than it needs to be.
I order my comics once per month (via Westfield) and get semi-monthly deliveries. This calls for me to choose items based on a little information. It works out well enough for me. Using local comics shops found me not getting a good discount, and my impulse-buying being completely out of control. I'd have a length pull-list, that they would set aside for me, and then I'd find myself picking up this and that, and even in the midst of the mid-1990's implosion of the comics market an inexpensive, "off" week at the comics shop was running me $25 US. (Which, at 2004 prices seems reasonable, but the average comic wasn't that expensive back then.) Adding in anything special, not to mention those weeks when clusters of comics I wanted came out, and it became absurd. Breaking the weekly comics habit was a tough matter, though I was in enough of a pit of despair at the time about life in general that it was easier by far than it would have been during some happy time.
The monthly orders find me often having to decide on whether or not to order issue #3 of a series before I've received issue #1... and, well, you can see how matters could quickly spin out of control.
The rationale of waiting to "read them in a run" of issues is generally the next refuge. It works because we all know how much better most comics read when one can immerse one's self in a run of several issues rather than in installments separated by roughly 3 days. Obviously it's even more tempting when there's a multi-issue story involved, and how many comics can one think of these days where there isn't a multi-part story unfolding? While making theoretical sense, the reality is that while they're waiting, these comics pile up. They pile up in stacks that are easily disturbed and often put in danger by family and pets. Because they haven't been read, we're loathe to slip them into boxes in our collection, but we end up moving them out of the way -- and sometimes into "temporary" positions in boxes.
I have comics I bought in 1990 that are still waiting in "temporary" resting places.
See, the situation develops that soon not only is it a question of finding a time to sit down and catch up on a series, but first one has to locate them. Certainly, a little planning - keeping the waitlist of comics organized by assigning them a box of their own that can be kept like a file drawer - can prevent this. I've even done that once or twice. However, we're constantly under the delusion that we're going to get to that sometime tonight, or this weekend, and that file box inevitably has to be put out of the way, too.
These things never happened to me when I was a kid, of course, but aside from school there wasn't much else complicating my life back then. Buy the comics, then read through the stack -- it was usually all within the same day.
As an adult I'm constantly finding myself deferring anything fun for another time. Sometimes I'm siezed by the twin terrors of not only thinking that that time may never come, but that if it did I might not be capable of enjoying anything anyway.
I see I've veered off course into some mid-life crisis material.
So, if you've wandered by and have had similar experiences, or simply wish to publicly sneer at the mess I and others have made for ourselves, the comments box awaits.
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