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With the New Year many people make all kinds of resolutions. I work out at the gym regularly so right now I'm
seeing one of the biggest ones happening for many people. Of course if you talk to someone who goes to the gym
regularly you'll hear them making the same comment about the chaos of the gym that is happening now and that is
that, "The gym will be back to normal by March." See, that's when the "resolutioners" give up.
While I wish people who want to have a healthy life well, the reality is that most people who do it for a
resolution will quit. They're doing it for the wrong reason. So, when they don't get what they want (a sudden
change in their body) they give up because the commitment isn't there.
What does this have to do with comics? For me it's a very simple thing. For a while I've been talking about dropping a few titles. Now is the time for me to do it, and it has nothing to do with a resolution. If it did, then I wouldn't stick with it. I'd find every excuse in the book to keep going with titles I know I shouldn't be buying anymore. I'm done with Ghost Rider as of issue #32 and I've already dropped Thunderbolts even though I really like Andy Diggle's writing. There are interesting things going on in both, but I'm done hoping for consistent quality and meaning out of what happens. Next on the list is Runaways. The current storyline is being stretched out and it's boring as heck. I didn't have to make the call with the current run of New Warriors, that decision was made for me (yes, I'm finishing out the run). The same can be said for Legion of Super-Heroes. I'll probably check out future incarnations of both though. I'm sure the next incarnation of the LSH will come into existence before another Warrior's run.
I'm also likely to be done with Astonishing X-Men and The Brave and the Bold soon. As with other titles I've mentioned they just aren't holding my attention. I think this is happening because it is something that I need to do. No, this isn't a matter of finance for me. I happen to be very fortunate right now in that what I do for a living is a career and I'm pretty much set to have a job for as long as I want (knock on wood just in case). For me, this is a matter of having let go of a level of criticality in how I choose my titles and choose to continue reading them.
When I was in college I had to make decisions like this all the time, many times to my dismay. I dropped titles that I really liked that I just didn't have the money to keep going with. Now I look back at the past couple of years of my life and see that I was getting many things just because I could. You see, comics are my vice. In a world where people have many things they engage in that could destroy their lives by having them as a vice, reading comics isn't really that bad, but it is still my vice (toys being another). I am seeing now that I must be more critical.
This doesn't mean I'm going to become one of "those" people either. You know those ones that I mean. The ones who berate people who read things from Marvel or DC because they're not allowing the "independent" stuff to grow or by reading things from the mainstream publishers, we're killing the opportunities of people to get their new ideas heard. Bull. In today's day and age of self-publishing that's a major load of crap. Anyway, my point is that I just need to be more critical of quality. I can be faithful to my support of all things Green Lantern, but I really need to start limiting that to being my only "pass" for poor issues and runs (sorry, but the first few issues of the current Green Lantern run sucked, just admit it).
I've been rearranging many of my comics lately. I'm moving most of my stuff from long boxes to short boxes. That means I have to incorporate my new stuff from the past couple of years in to my old stuff, and I can see now that I've been buying way too much stuff. I look at my bill and see that just buying comics (no collectables) was costing me about 200.00 a month. That's too much for the quality I have been reading. Due to cancellations and such I'm already down to about 120.00 a month again. I'm hoping to be back to 100.00 a month within the next couple of months.
So, how does this tie in with the resolution again? Simple, if you're going to do what I'm doing and start whittling away titles because you know you spend too much, or you just want to spend less, you have to make sure you're making your choices for the right reasons. Long ago when I was jobless I chose to continue reading my comics because while it is a vice for me it is also a bastion of sanity for me. It's my hobby and something I've been doing for 27 years now. For me to drop titles, it has to be done on my terms. For me to know how to choose titles to drop, it has to be done on my terms. If I do it for the wrong reasons I'll find myself picking up new crap/bad titles to replace the others.
This isn't a New Year resolution. It's a choice about trying to bring my eye back to some semblance of quality in what I spend my money on (it's not all quality, but I'm gonna do my best). After boxing up so many comics again I realized that if I don't become more critical in what I am choosing to read then I'm going to end up with this mass of issues and titles that are nothing more than expensive fuel for a fire. I can deal with looking back saying "I thought they were worth the money" but I can't look back and say "I really thought they were going to get better" anymore. The reality is that many titles aren't getting better. We all know it. Me, I'm going to do something about it, at least for myself.
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