This Year's Comicbook Resolutions : Kenn

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Kenn

This year's comicbook resolution is to spend less on comics. Nice, eh? Someone posted a similar resolution on The Pulse and got a snide remark for their trouble. I have to agree though. Last year I spent too much money on crap books. Last year's resolution was to try more new stuff. I found some neat books that way, but most of what I tried was just plain bad. Once again Sturgeon's Law is shown to be true. Ninety percent of everything is crap.

I dove back into Marvel to see what was happening there and was rewarded with a slap in the face. Hey Bendis, slow down a little. Take a few minutes to actually reread what you've written before you send it off to the artist. Maybe if you weren't writing half of Marvel's output you might have time to actually think about the words you were putting down. I did come to my senses early enough to avoid the Decimation nonsense, however.

Same thing goes with DC. Overall, I prefer DC books nowadays if I'm going to buy mainstream, but that covers a lot of territory. I mean, DC includes Wildstorm and Vertigo as well as the usual stable of men and women wearing their underwear out in public. And any company that gives Grant Morrison a license to go ape shit with a stable of second string characters, well, you've got to give them their due. Of course the whole "Infinity crossover let's restart the DC universe just one more time" thing uses up most of the credit they built up with Seven Soldiers...



Most of the new books I tried were from independent publishers, which nowadays seems to mean anyone other than Marvel and DC. I found a few gems. Most of it was garbage and a few things were just plain offensive. They are gone and my lesson is learned. That's very sad. The only way to try so many of these books is to preorder them and hope for the best. There is some much out there that most shops just can't afford to carry them. Even if they could there just isn't enough shelf space.

2005 was the year I started really hunting down strips on the internet. The payoff was better there. Sure, it's still mostly crap, but you can sift through it pretty quickly to find what you like and it doesn't cost a cent. (If you're going to jump down my throat and start yammering about the time spent sifting or the cost of online service, you can piss off already. That's not what I'm talking about and you know it.) It was the year I discovered Apple Geeks and Sordid City Blues, just to name 2 that have become regular reading for me.



So that ended up being more of a wrapup of last year than a look forward, but it sort of, kind of, maybe, shows where my head is at. Spend less money and have a better good stuff to crap ratio. Let's see If I can stick with it.