Full disclosure: I didn’t go the entire 25 years without buying or reading any comics. I couldn’t give the exact date I stopped reading -- sometime in 1979 I think -- but I continued to buy two titles for at least a year more: Justice League and the Avengers. My two favorites, couldn’t give ‘em up. This was as much out of habit as anything else. The Justice League had gone very stale and predictable. The Avengers were a little less so but still not compelling enough to overcome girls, sports, cars and of course, girls. I quit collecting both titles around issue 200 and never looked back. Well, okay, I’m looking back now, but I mean up until this point.
Then sometime in late 1993, for a very brief few months, I started buying comics again. I’m not quite clear why. I think I was blinded by the hype of all those new companies and titles; all those new worlds to explore and being able to get in on the ground floor with each of them. So I bought Malibu, Dark Horse, Image, a bunch of new Marvel titles and some other random stuff and…very little from DC. The DCU seemed almost impenetrable at the time. Crossovers and crisises. (Sound familiar?) One guy actually told me that if I hadn’t read Crisis on Infinite Earths (I hadn’t) I might as well forget DC altogether. I didn’t, but I gave more of my attention to the new guys than they probably deserved.
It was fascinating to see these new companies spring up and work so hard in attempts to churn out their own icons and universes. But what I witnessed happening in comics was eerily reminiscent of what had happened several years earlier in my other hobby, sports card collecting. In the late 80’s card collecting exploded. Tens of thousands of new “collectors” entered the market, many of them speculators looking for the quick hit. In response, a grab bag of new card companies sprung up, producing varying qualities of cards, in unvaryingly huge quantities. The market was flooded, the speculators left, many true blue hobbyists quit in disgust and the industry was never quite the same. Was this now happening in comics? Yep. And I’m certain some of this hype fueled my brief return.
In hindsight, the reviews of the books and companies are not very favorable. Image was very much the Jessica Simpson of comics. Ooooh, pretty. Just don’t say anything. And they didn’t. But they did help raise the bar on standards of artistic quality. Sure it was gratuitous and over the top but it was gorgeous to look at too. Characterization? Scripting? Plots? Sorry, not in the five year plan. Malibu had some interesting storylines and characters, but couldn’t seem to help Xeroxing the establishment. Remember Prototype? Some guy flying around in blue and gold, weapons-grade armor? Not a bad concept except there was this other iron suited fellow under the Marvel masthead that at least a few people had heard of. Wore red and gold I think. Dark Horse had several titles I really liked, NextMen, Danger Unlimited, X and of course, Sin City.
But I never had the sense that much of what I was reading had real staying power. Maybe it was too new or derivative or just plain bad. Eventually I got bored. Not surprising considering what I had chosen to read. I managed to completely bypass most of the good stuff coming from the likes of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller. Instead, I OD’d on the Rob Leifelds, Len Strazewskis and Todd McFarlanes. Unfortunately, the Internet was in its infancy at that time. Had it been the unmatched resource it is today, I might have found all that good stuff. Alan Moore alone would have kept me busy for a few months.
And so, within four or five months of starting, I stopped. Just like that. Cold turkey. No holdovers this time; no titles bought for months out of habit or nostalgia; and not much looking back. Just a brief glimpse into some childhood memories, easily stored in boxes and forgotten as the rest of my life kept me busy. At the time I gave no thought to whether I would read comics again, but I never got rid of those books either. In fact, I was reading some of them just today and surely will read them again.
Comments