Ouch…!

“Say it with me, OCD fans — it’s okay to NOT know what’s going on in books you don’t like. Let it go.”

Greg, I think I have a new sigfile.

So, you’re dropping FF and Amazing now, when they have only one Civil War tie-in issue left apiece? Okay. But I’ll bet money Dwayne McDuffie’s FF will bring you back.

Actually, no, I dropped them a couple of months back. I just wrote the column this week. But I’m not interested in stories about whatever the post-Civil War status quo’s going to be, or alternatively, whatever the post-Civil War DAMAGE-CONTROL-CONTINUITY-FIX stories are going to be. The whole event has annoyed me to the point where I’m dropping the books, probably for years. That’s my pocketbook vote.

Although one of the irksome things about the process is that it takes a couple of months to kick in because I have to do it via Previews. So I have to deal with a month or two of being committed to purchase comics I don’t want because they were ordered out of Previews SPECIFICALLY FOR ME a couple of months before. And believe it or not, this is one of the LEAST regimented pull-list systems in my area — most of the other shops I checked into were more draconian about it.

There’s a whole other column (well, more of a screed, really) about how nutty the whole Diamond/Previews three-months-ahead, retailers-must-be-psychic system is and how ridiculous we are for supporting it as blindly as we do. The last time I took a swing at it I got more than double the usual comments, most of them yelling at me for daring to question the system, with a rider that it’s really all on Diamond and the retailers and not us, WE have no choice.

Well, we do. This is one of the things that led me to resolve to cut the list, a lot. If somebody collects Dwayne McDuffie’s FF stories in a book and it’s a fun self-contained FF story, I might pick it up THEN. But my New Year’s resolution is that I am only buying books I enjoy and I am only pull-listing books I enjoy enough that I don’t want to miss them. Of the current list, Action from Johns and Donner is the only one I have doubts about; and I still might take it off.

Also, people were telling me LAST year that Legends of the Dark Knight was getting canceled. It chugged along like there was no problem all year long. If Batman Confidential is the new LOTDK that’s fine but that will be read in trade too, if it gets any. I prefer my superheroes in book form, any more. Pacing is too annoyingly slow and the price is too high for most comics from the big two. The stuff that got left on the list tends to be a denser reading experience, overall.

I agree, and I can’t help but feel this is all tied somehow to 9/11. We know it affected Didio and Quesada a great deal, and I can’t help but get the feeling that they’re trying to justify putting out “funny books” in a world that doesn’t seem very funny to them anymore.

Very well said. I agree with that completely.

This is an excellent point, and one that I would stamp on the forehead of everyone buying comics even if they hate them if weren’t so lazy and that also wasn’t likely illegal.

“Say it with me, OCD fans — it’s okay to NOT know what’s going on in books you don’t like. Let it go.”

With the advent of the internet and spoilers and what not, you don’t even have to buy books to follow them, so I really don’t get this. I have kept up with Civil War and Infinite Crisis while actively trying to ignore them via message boards and blogs, for crying out loud! I can’t fathom buying comics you don’t like because I never have enough money to buy all the stuff I like, though.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Astonishing, but I’m enjoying the hell out of Mike Carey’s run on X-Men, and I haven’t been this psyched about the franchise in years. I’ve been hearing great stuff about Carey’s work on UF4 too, so if he can make me excited about that book again like he did with X-Men, I’ll probably have another title to start picking up.

This is the first time I’ve even bothered to follow the two main Bat-books. He was at a stage where he needed to be dragged back to the fundamentals. Wear Bat Suit, fight crime, occasionally romance very dangerous women.

There does seem to me this tone in Johns’ work- and in much of the Big Two’s output overall- that he’d LIKE to do bright shiny adventure, but feels that he can’t justify it, that the characters have too much weighing them down or that good storytelling requires internal turmoil. There’s a certain “yes, things were fun back then, but WE CAN NEVER GO BACK” attitude.

I haven’t actually read JLA CLASSIFIED in a bit, since for me its interest value is entirely determined by what it’s doing this arc- who’s writing, what era it is, etc. I bought the ICBINTJL “arc” aka miniseries, Simone’s run, Morrison’s when I heard about the “jet powered apes” line, and a bit of the Detroit arc, but nothing since.

Amen, brother. DC and Marvel are already starting to hyper their next big crossovers and I find myself tired of the thought of having to follow another 40-part, 20-title crossover. Oh well, plenty of other things to read…

I notice, scrolling up, that I keep coming back to the idea of fun books that don’t have to tie in to a bunch of other crap. Well, that’s the way I’m voting with my wallet, comics industry.

Me too, Greg. Me too.