geekent's Buy Nothing Year

Over the past weekend I worked 20 hours for my local comics shoppe, helping out at the Toronto Fan Expo. I have the option to take cash, but they give you a lot more store credit, not to mention a very healthy (staff) discount on everything you purchase using convention-earned credit. A lot of people work the con with their eye on a very specific prize that they're hoping to stake claim to... some are laser gun prop replicas or Red Scull models or an old issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. Me, I was just working for store credit. My wife's been doing the con for years and she always takes the rolling credit in return. It regularly lasts her between 6 and 9 months of weekly pick-ups, which is quite nice (although she doesn't usually pick up more than three or four books a week... I routinely pick up between 4 and 10 per week, and often a trade or two).

Now, with "Buy Nothing Year" (which I'm half-heartedly thinking of renaming "Acquire Nothing Year") looming, I'm in a pickle. I have the opportunity to save my credit until 2008 and then start using that in trade for my regular comics. I think this is a good idea on the one hand, however, I also think it's slightly in violation of the spirit of what I'm doing. In part I'm trying to not acquire new stuff in order to reexamine my old stuff, and if I'm still amassing new product then I'm going to be distracting myself from my task. At the same time I'm planning on helping out my LCS at the spring show they hold, and if I do, then I'll just have more credit to spend in the year I'm not supposed to be spending so I'm kind of stuck regardless (I guess I could always just take the cash, but comparatively, the cash isn't very much)

My current plan is to just spend it... blow some of it on trades that I've been meaning to pick up and perhaps an action figure or model or two, then just use it up for the rest of the year. If I run out, great, if not then I'll have a small reprieve for a time. But again, is this a violation of the spirit of my little project? I dunno... I'm still thinking about it.

What I do know is for the past few months I've been watching closely the Diamond solicitations and planning, realizing that some of the mini-series' I'd like to get are going to run into 2008 and if I have to go cold turkey, then I won't be able to finish reading the stories. And then there's a few ongoing series which have a finite term that I'm not going to be able to keep carrying.

Here's a small list:
(* denotes a book my wife might pick up if/when I stop)

Mini-series I might not start since I might not complete them:
Annihilation: Conquest #1-6 (issue 3 comes out in January)
Metal Men #1-8 (issue 6 in January)
Pax Romana (from the creator of Nightly News) #1-4 (issue 2 in January)
Fearless #1-4 (issue 2 in January)
Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus #1-5 (issue #5 in January)
Marvel Zombies 2 #1-5 (#3 in January)
Omega The Unknown #1-10 (#4 in January)
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters v2 #1-8 (issue #4 in Jan)

Ongoing:
Buffy:The Vampire Slayer Season 8 (number 10 in January)*
100 Bullets (#88 in January... ends with #100 in Jan'09)
Justice League of America (#17 in January)*
Ex Machina (#33 in January)
Blue Beetle (#23 in January)
Nova (#10 in January)
X-Factor (#27 in January)*
Brave and the Bold (#10 in January)*
The Flash (#237 in January)*

Should be finished:
I should be done Y:The Last Man by December (I hope) as it's ending with issue #60 *
Dwayne McDuffie's run on Fantastic Four should be completed in December
Action Comics (Geoff John's Superman/80's Legion storyline)

New Series which I probably wont give much a shot but I'd like to:
Infinity Inc.
The All-New Booster Gold
Batman and the Outsiders
The Authority: Prime
The Vinyl Underground

DC's January Solicitations are live. Here's what I want, or would normally get, but won't (for at least a year):

TEEN TITANS: THE LOST ANNUAL - by classic TT writer Bob Haney (RIP) and illustrated by indie darlings Jay Stephens and Mike Allred. Allred was pretty upset when this was shelved a while back so it's good to see it's actually going to be printed (too bad Bob won't see it though)

BOOSTER GOLD #6 - despite my noted apathy towards Dan Jurgens' art, I'm actually quite enjoying this series. I hope it survives my BNY so that I can continue reading it when 2009 hits.

SUICIDE SQUAD: RAISE THE FLAG #5 - it's killing me that I won't be able to keep reading this

NIGHTWING #140 - a new team on Nightwing! Will it be any good? I have no idea and will continue to have no idea for a while... unless my belove wife and Nightwing buff gives it a shot.

BLUE BEETLE #23 - this is one of the best ongoing superhero series on the stands. I'm going to miss you, Blue.

GREEN LANTERN #27, GREEN LANTERN CORPS #20 - following the events of the Sinestro Corps War, I'm interested to see what direction GL is going to take. Alas, it'll probably be disappointing and I'm better off not knowing as it'll probably be forgotten about by the time I return to it anyway.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #17 - okay, I've been really disappointed in Dwayne McDuffie's first storyline, but this has a really kickass Black Lightning cover.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #12 - I'm not actually sure I'll miss this, especially with it's unnecessary Kingdom Come affiliation.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #38 - Jim Shooter and the Legion... sigh... see you in trades in '09 mehopes.

METAL MEN #5 - same for you little metal dudes.

CATWOMAN: CATWOMAN’S DEAD TP... you too, Selina.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL HC - even though I've bought all these issues half a dozen times over, I'd totally buy the hell out of this again.

Y: THE LAST MAN #60 - (the last issue) okay I'm not buying this but Aden will... won't you sweetie (WON'T YOU!)...

100 BULLETS #87 - by the time BNY is over it will be 1 issue shy of ending... weird. I also haven't read the last 20 issues of it I've purchased... but then I DO have a year to catch up.

Marvel Solicits for January

ULTIMATE HUMAN #1 (of 4) - more Ultimates by Warren Ellis... yes please! Oh, crap.

ULTIMATE IRON MAN II #2 (of 4) - I really dug the first volume by Orson Scott Card. Guess I'll just have to read it again and decide how much I like it.

SPIDER-MAN: WITH GREAT POWER... #1 (of 5) - by David (Stray Bullets) Lapham and Tony (Ex Machina, Starman) Harris? Nice. Thankfully I don't care much for Spider-man, so I'm not *that* disappointed.

NOVA #10, ANNIHILATION: CONQUEST #3 (of 6) - I gonna miss yew space epic.

FANTASTIC FOUR #553 - whoops. Though I was going to get to see McDuffie's run to it's completion. I guess not. Sigh.

WWH AFTERSMASH: DAMAGE CONTROL #1 (of 3) - McDuffie, back doing Damage Control. Holy flip, can't believe I'm gonna miss that.

X-FACTOR #27 - I think the wife's going to keep buying this. Phew.

Since I've been thinking a lot about my debt, I figured I should work a little harder at planning how I spend my money. I'm going to look at all the advanced solicitations from the bigger publishers so I can help figure out what I'll be buying, what mini-series and stories perhaps I should stop buying in order to minimize purchases.

The list behind the cut

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's): purchased
Date Purchased: monthly from around July 1992 - July 1994
Original Review: N/A
Thoughts/Memories/Remembrances: I recall enjoying Team Titans a lot, but then I recall enjoying most '90's comics a lot. My tastes have become more discerning since then. What I remember liking about the series is how it tied into Armageddon 2001 (only now remembering the New Titans Annual from that crossover is where the main characters were spawned), the series that I first really noticed Phil Jimenez's art, and having the really cool concept of dozens of 6-man teams displaced across the time stream as they went back in time to stop a tyrant and make a better future.

ReReview:
Wow... um, where to start? Team Titans, quite frankly, is a bloody mess at best, an utter crap-fest at worst, and didn't have a hope in hell of being a very strong book from the get-go. In the era of multiple covers (spawned by X-Men #1), an interesting gimmick kicked off the series: five different first issues, each with the same main story, but also each with it's own 16-page biography story of one of the lead characters from the team, each illustrated by a bankable artist like Adam Hughes or Kerry Gammill. The idea was solid, give the reader something worth obtaining the variants over (and at no extra cost), however, the origin stories they were revealing were awkward, far-fetched (for comic-book standards) and rather dull. Where the world of Armageddon 2001 (which I remember only with rose-colored glasses) that spawned the Teamsters was an intriguing alternate future, Team Titans veered into a dull and pocketed part of that future, where a character named Lord Chaos acts as despotic ruler of a megacity (that looks not unlike the Los Angeles of, say, Demolition Man) and is the Monarch's chief rival.

(preamble: as part of BNY, it's my goal to sift through my thousands of acquisitions and revisit them, to ultimately decide if they're worth keeping or letting them go)

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's) : purchased

Date Purchased: purchased in four quarterly installments mid-1993 to mid-1994

Original Review: N/A

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: At the time (mid-'90's) James Robinson (Starman) was one of my favourite writers and he really could do no wrong. He painted superheroes in a very human way, with faults and emotions and thoughts constantly running through their heads. It was very obvious in Starman that Robinson had a fondness for golden age superheroes, and at the time I was so into the DC Universe (past and present) so did I. The Golden Age was an out-of-continuity story set in the post-war 1940's where Robinson could add his humanist angle to these classic characters. I remembered, in part, the surprise final issue reveal, and part of the climactic final battle but it all wound up a little hazy. I have carried a strong feeling towards this mini-series since, but don't think I've read it since my first purchase.



Re-Review: Wow, I can't believe how much of this series I didn't recall. The opening chapter is fantastic, written almost in the style of a 1940's newsreel (even though it's mostly the narrative voice of Johnny Chambers -aka Johnny Quick), bringing the reader up to speed on the major characters in play, the political climate and a recap of the superheroic involvement (or lack thereof) in World War II.

I wrote a report in high school for peer editing which I called "My first comic book" (or somesuch)... I believe the intent of the assignment as we were given was to detail our earliest memory. If my first memory were really of a comic book then my lifelong obsession would be easily understood, but, no that was kind of a cheat. Even the essay itself was a bit of a lie, since I detailed the story of "my first comic book" as the cherished memory of acquiring my tabloid-sized Superman vs. Muhammad Ali. I'm almost certain that it wasn't my first comic book, and amidst all my tens of thousands of comic books, it's probably not my first comic book memory, but it is one I do remember quite vividly.

I remember the dingy store in Victoriaville in Thunder Bay which had a counter with cigarettes and smoking-related things everywhere, candy and chocolate bars and lots of lottery paraphernalia. At the end of the counter ran a long and tall, multi-tiered wooden magazine rack where many of the comics were stored. Beyond that, precariously stocked shelves of toys, mostly the cheap Japanese import stuff, but sometimes things I actually wanted. There was a stand-up wire magazine rack which had a few of these oversized comics as well as things like Life magazine, probably Rolling Stone and other such tabloid-format thing. The publishing date of "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali" is somewhere around 1978, so obviously I didn't get this when it was released, as I was two at the time and most likely wasn't aware who Superman was yet. I'm betting it was around 1980 or 81, putting me around 5 years old, and that seems about right. I can't imagine this comic sitting on the shelf for four years, but if it sat there for two, then why not four?

The first new comic book day (NCBD) of 2008 hit on Friday (as opposed to its usual Wednesday because of the holidays), and while it was supposed to be the the first NCBC of Buy Nothing Year, thus my first week in a very long time without getting my weekly fix, I managed to stave off the expected symptoms of withdrawal, thanks to an XMas gift of store credit from my lovely wife (I think it was a somewhat self-serving on her part as she was a concerned that I'd no longer go with her to the store on NCBD, a ritual of ours since the day we met).

It's one hundred dollars of store credit, which, for me, won't go very far (especially not when I acquire a quartet of action figures with it last week and have, after two weeks, already blown more than half of it). I have an expensive habit. NCBDs for the foreseeable future will still be open to me, since I'm helping with store inventory in exchange for credit on Monday. I've asked about possible additional opportunities where I might be able to acquire more credit, but from the looks of things, the well is going to be dry until the August Fan Expo.

I'm trying to decide how best to utilize the credit. Should I just be business as usual, and pick up what I'd normally pick up every week until it's gone? If I do, then it's going to disappear rapidly and then it's a long, dry road until August. I think I have a plan though... it's called restraint.

Since I have invested so much in helping build Rack Raids over the years, obtaining material for review for as long as possible should be my altruistic objective. While I'd like to keep getting the books I enjoy (but don't review for, well, lack of anything fresh to say about them) I think picking up "books of interest" for the purpose of review should be core.

There's also a half-dozen mini-series and storylines I started reading before BNY began, so I'm also going to finish acquiring those (for review as well, of course), but other than that, I'm avoiding my routine purchasing. I've been given a bit of a reprieve, in a manner of speaking, so I need to be smarth, thrifty, and determined.

Source (purchased/given/ borrowed/the wife's): the wife's

Date Acquired: July 26, 2007

Original Review: N/A

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: The original miniseries ran monthly in 2003, with the trade collection issued in 2004. I know I overlooked it at the time, but I don't know when I realized that it was Kyle Baker, one of my favourite comic book creators, handling the art chores. Anyway, since I realized that, this has been one of those "on the list" books to buy, but I also just never got around to it (it's $29.00 Canadian price tag was also a hindrance) until recently when the wife and I found it for 1/2 US cover at the San Diego Comic Con. Aden being the big Captain America fan she is, and me, the Kyle Baker aficionado, she spotted it and made the purchase. Somehow it got shelved upon return from San Diego instead of filed on the "to read" pile, and it was really only a week ago I rediscovered it in our collection.



Review - Like many truths, this Truth is shocking, absolutely shocking. In the backmatter of the book, writer Robert Morales documents his inspirations, which come from history books, periodical articles, war films, comic books, folkloric rumours. He uses his dozens of sources, most of which present a truth of sorts, to create this fiction about black soldiers during World War II used as guinea pigs to test a super soldier serum.

Part of "the plan" as handed down to us by the show was to take inventory of our various collections and figure out their value as well as determining where we can sell them. The host of the show implied that we should look to getting rid of our quite sizeable (specifically comic) collection in total, but I assured her that it would never happen. Comics, you see, are a part of my life. Were it a choice between movies, music, comics, tv, or any kind of recreational entertainment, it would be comics all the way. There was mention about "letting go of the past" but comics aren't my past, they're very much my present and quite likely my future. I love comics, they're not just a hobby, but a passion (that both my wife and I share, which actually brought us together to begin with). I love the art form, I love the medium and I love it's potential. I think what she was responding to is that tired stigma that comics are kids material, but that's, quite frankly, ignorance. There's still a juvenile sensibility to comics (primarily superheroes), and comic fans (primarily superhero comic fans), but there's not a lot wrong with that, provided its not the only meaningful thing in your life. People want to demean fantasy and sci fi just as much, but there's a literate side to any genre, no matter the format. But I'm starting to rant, and I shall digress.

So I mentioned that I'm looking to sell some of my collection anyway, and after a bit of back and forth about all versus some, I stated that sure the bulk of it could go but there would be about 10 - 20% that I'd just not part with. Like a DVD hound and his favourite movies or a bookworm and her favourite books, there's just some things that I'm going to keep revisiting because, well, I like them dagnabbit. Anyway, there's a lot of crap in my collection that I'd gladly part with, but the other point Aden and I made was the market for back-issues is incredibly limp right now. There's a smaller audience than ever and a glut of material, plus some of this crap (especially from the 1990's) sold in the millions, and it's so terrible that nobody really wants it. It'd likely be more valuable per-volume at a recycling plant than trying to sell on-line or at a store. I won't go into detail about the '90's speculator market, except to say that it made a lot of suckers out of gullible teenagers like me. To finish my thought though, the point I want to make is that I'm cataloging our collection, with an eye towards what we want to sell, with the realization that we're not going to want to sell some stuff, not going to be able to sell other stuff and really not make much money back off the stuff we do sell.

So anyway, down to brass tacks, I spent a large chunk of yesterday cataloging the collection (about 8 hours and I got up to "Flash"). It's a tedious procedure as I've basically created a spreadsheet, with columns for the title, the issue numbers we have of that title, the condition of the book (from mint down to poor), the US cover price (or price range), the total US cover value of the run of that title, the price guide value(s) (when we get a price guide), and the status of the book (whether we're going to keep, sell, or revisit then decide). It's a lot of information to extract quickly and thoroughly and it bends my brain to get the math straight especially on 50-issue runs of books where the price changes four or five times (when it changes from 1.95 to 1.99, that's most frustrating).

I know there are programs to buy out there that help index your books better, but the spreadsheet is simplistic enough to meet our basic needs as well as thorough enough for our end purposes. It's just a time consuming process cultivating the information. Using the sum function I added up all the totals, and mid-way through the F's the wife and I have about $3300 worth of comics. That's only about 1/4 of our collection that I've counted so far and that doesn't include the 6000 or so books I still have up in Thunder Bay. I basically figure that by the time I'm done counting the books we have here we'll have about 15K worth, based only on US cover price. The sad thing is, we mostly paid Canadian cover price, which during our heaviest spending years, was about 40% higher than us cover price. But then again, a lot of the books I bought for 25cents or 50cents in bins, or in collected bundles for less than $1 each, as well, we've both had discounts and trade at times, so who knows what the real output was for all this stuff? We sure don't.

In the end, even if our collection is 15-20K, if you amortize that over our 15 to 20 years of collecting, and divide it in half for each of us, it's only about $500 a year (actually, it should probably be broken out mor 70/30 in my favour, and that's not including trade paperbacks... not yet anyway) and that's not really all that bad for something we enjoy so much... just don't ask us to count how much we've spent on peripherals, like action figures and statues and paraphernalia and the like, because it's so more than we'd likely care to admit.

I was helping out at the Snail today with their inventory, and, well, quite frankly, after that mind-splitting task, our measly collection is nothing comparatively.

well, for the most part, anyway. Actually, I won't be buying anything, but if I have any trade left, I'll still get a few... list behind the cut

(Only Dark Horse has sent up their April solicitations so far, but DC, Marvel and Image should be along in the next week or so).

It was my second week picking up new comics during Buy Nothing Year, and I think the guilt was starting to settle in a little... well there was guilt and greed, and a little bit of the old withdrawal shakes. With four books that I'd have regularly bought, I only picked up two (initially) and only one was one I had bought previously. In keeping with what I mentioned last week, I want to use my trade for something productive so I picked up a second book for review, a new title I actually wasn't thinking about buying originally. And I was good to go... except, I mean, two books? I don't remember the last time I've left the comics shop with only two books (not on NCBD, anyway). It didn't feel right, and I panicked, and picked up a $10 graphic novel as well. I should have put it down (because at this rate, ten bones is a week and a half worth of floppies) but I just couldn't leave the shop with two books.

At the same time, I'm finding leaving some of those titles I routinely purchased last year (or before) surprisingly easy. Maybe they were good books that I recognized as good books but just wasn't enjoying that much, or maybe they were books I was enjoying, only not enough that I'm disappointed by not reading them. Perhaps it's because at this point, anything actually worth reading will show up in a trade, and I can read them later (theoretically). As well, what I've been most concerned about over the past year is covering notable books for the Raid, so that's what my focus for my credit-in-trade is.

So almost all of those books you see in the previous post, you won't be seeing in my collection.

(part 1)

It was the tail-end of summer, school soon about to start. I don't remember how I found out, but I wound up at the May Street Used Book Store, 15 years old, picking up two copies of each of the five covers of X-Men #1. I don't know why it became so important for me to have so many copies of that comic, but that's pretty much where my "collector's head" mentality started, definitely the start. Maybe it was point of pride amongst geeks to say to one another "I have x-number of copies of X-Men #1, how many do you have? I don't really recall. Up until then, I was pretty happy to just pick my weekly Superman-related titles and Justice League books up off the spinner rack, but now, here I was, suddenly and completely entrenched in collector fervor. Atop my pile of comics that day (all the same damn book with, cover aside, no unique content) was the first issue of Wizard: The Guide To Comics.

Wizard, an upstart magazine, competing with Comic Report, Comic Buyers Guide, and a few others, was all about promoting what's "hot" and telling you why. The magazine's focus was not telling readers about good comics, but collectible ones. The back material of the magazine featured a price guide, and for the first time I became aware of the "value" of comics. It wasn't just about having something (like 20 issues of X-Men #1), but about investing. An impressionable mind like myself was enraptured by the thought of my hobby becoming something for financial gain, and with my new friend Wizard by my side, I would be directed towards everything that would give me a nest egg for my future... or so I believed. Suddenly, plastic bags and backing boards were needed for everything comic. Grading comics based on their condition was also essential, and anything that didn't cut the "very fine" mustard would go in the discards box. My collection, which was sitting in a heavy-duty wooden box my dad made out of scraps, was 150 books full and my engagement was just ramping up.

I've been thinking that I've skirted around the intent of Buy Nothing Year with my finagling of trade and credit at the shoppe. The point of this year was to leave the new stuff revisit the old stuff, and while some progress and effort has been made in that regard, I still don't think I'm doing it properly... or rather, doing the BNY concept justice. I mean, I come out of the comic book shoppe every week with two or three new floppies and 2/3rds of the time with a trade paperback or original graphic novel, and I shouldn't be reading all that. Instead I should be pulling things off the shelf at home and giving them the twice- or thrice-over.

Alas, I still find myself in the Wednesday cycle, and I'm still grabbing regular titles, even going back and picking more that I already had dropped because I have the capability to do so. My intent was for the store credit to be used solely for review materials, but that's not the case, as I keep dipping into books I don't review or won't review again for some time.

In part I think it's reviewing for Rack Raids that's making it difficult for me to separate myself from the weekly sojourn and amassing of books. I mean, I was planning with going to the shoppe with Aden anyway just to see what's out and really to assess what I'm missing, but there'll be so little that I will miss if I don't stop picking everything up. Aden also enables by picking up some of the titles I dropped, because she likes reading them too. I just hope that she feels comfortable enough to drop those books when she's not enjoying them instead of getting them on my behalf.

Anyway, I just feel I haven't been revisiting enough of the things I'm supposed to be revisiting. I got a couple books around Christmas that I'm working my way through (I'm a slow prose reader), and going to the theatre or renting DVDs takes away from the revisiting of the stuff on my shelf. On top of that I haven't finished my lists of discards from my collections yet... with the comics and DVDs it'll be a little easier as I can pretty much look at a title and know I don't want it anymore. The CDs are going to take some more attention than that. Connections to music are a lot different than connections to stories. Were I a more intellectual man with more time on my hands I'd probably explore why.

The good news is that Aden and I traded in a whole bunch of comics for store credit recently, meaning she's not spending any money on comics now either. As a result our combined total spending on comics for the year of 2008 so far is a whopping $22 (appx.), which, as you might guess, is usually half what I'd spend in a week. The great thing is that figure will remain pretty stagnant for a long, long time (I have to wonder how long). That store credit is separate, btw, from the store credit I earned, and is under Adrienne's sole control, to be spent at her discretion, although I do get to influence it a little. I need to remember my original endeavour of stretching out that work-in-trade store credit money for as long as possible, meaning I need to look at cutting back again, dropping the titles I don't review and sticking to review-only books like I meant to be doing.

1) We finished inventorying our floppies (well, our on-site floppies) today... I recorded every issue and the cover price (U.S. cover) and the grand total came out to just under $14,000. I haven't recorded the thousands of comics still remaining at my parent's house, and the value doesn't take into account that on most books we paid anywhere from 20 to 40% more for Canadian cover price. So yeah, over the past, erm, 18 years, we've bought a lot of comics with a lot of money, but really, not that much... I suppose. Next step, figuring out what gets kept and what gets gone.

2) I realized today that aside from various food products, I have actually bought nothing for myself so far this year. I mean, that's the point of Buy Nothing Year, but I haven't bought any clothes or accessories or... other such things not on the BNY list. Mainly, it's because I have no money. But today, on "Family Day", the wife and I, sans the little guy who's at his dad's for the holiday, went shopping, which seemed to be the general consensus on what to do for most of us lucky enough to have this new holiday off (with crappy weather and, well, being mid-February, maybe June would be a better time for a "Family Day" holiday?... how about "Shopping Day" for the third week in February? Call a spade a spade). Anyway... I bought two sweaters and a collared shirt, total cost of just over $25 (and not on credit). Thanks Indonesian children! Kidding. If it didn't have a red "sale" tag, then I didn't bother looking at it, and most of the items were 70% off (or more). A little treat for myself for being so good.

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's): purchased
Date Purchased: sometime 1993
Original Review: N/A
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances:Ah, the Valiant universe. From 1991 through to 1993 (perhaps even into 1994), thanks to the speculator boom fuelled by Wizard, Valiant books became hot, hot, hot. Valiant's thing was story above art, which seemed in glaring contradiction to what Marvel (and later Image) were practicing at the time, and without any "hot writers" or "hot artists" on board, the line of titles at Valiant proved good reading. The biggest boost to Valiant's business, early on, was their obscurity. Their first few titles came out with little fanfare or hoopla to low, low numbers, meaning once people did catch on, the resale value of the first 20 or 30 issues Valiant published went through the roof. Literally, in the time of the speculator boom, some books were over $100 within a year of being printed. Valiant, seeing a market to exploit, pushed the "collector-friendly" angle and began all number of schemes to make their books collectible, including cupon redemptions for "zero-issues" and later specialty covers and 3-D "Valiant Vision".

X-O was part of their first wave of titles, introduced in the first year. All those early book were guided by the hand of Jim Shooter, who seemed bound and determined to have a superhero universe to call his own (later he was turfed from Valiant and started up the short-lived Defiant universe) and had his sights on taking mighty Marvel down a peg or two. Appropriating old Gold Key heroes like Solar, Magnus and Turok as his baseline, he then introduced original characters like the Eternal Warrior and Rai, as well as Marvel deviations likeHarbinger , which was an interesting spin on the X-Men, and here, X-O Manowar, which was a melding of Conan and Iron Man.

I remember the Valiant universe as being good reading, at least better than most of what Marvel and DC were doing in the early to mid 90's, but I can't recall what specifically I liked about it. My collections of Valiant titles are all scattered with only one exception, Archer and Armstrong which I have a complete set of, and next to that, X-O Manowar has only a few gaps. I tried a few issues of nearly every title, but most were ignored after three, with some random character crossover issues filling it out.

I haven't actually read any of my Valiant books since I stopped reading their title's altogether after the company's acquisition by Acclaim in 1995, and the general flavour of the line turned sour (seemingly more keyed on collectible covers and "hot books" more than story). With a Hardcover X-O collection solicited in this month's Previews, I thought I'd take another look and see how it stands up.

(part 1)
(Part 2)

By the end of my last year of high school I was still very much a comics junkie. Although I have never tried to completely kick the habit, I did spend a lot of time then paring back my pull list and attempted to manage how much I actually acquired on a month-to-month basis. I had a disposable income and boy howdy I used it.

University beaconed and it seemed suddenly the self-conscious, nebbish outsider with big glasses and oversized t-shirts that had entered high school was finding unlikely acceptance in his new environment. All it took was a little refinement in personal grooming and attire to lead to greater self-confidence, and reestablishment (or redefining) of identity.... it all did wonders for my social life and thus self-esteem. Yeah, I was still a geek, but post-secondary, being a geek suddenly wasn't all that bad. My Superman "S"-shield t-shirt was a big hit on campus and I found new social circles to play in that embraced individuality rather than conformity. Nobody ever looked differently upon me for my comic book fanaticism, and a few people even found me more the interesting for it. People who were snobbish in high school now seemed relaxed and cool, just as some less socially adept kids seemed equally relieved to have left an old life behind. People in upper years of university didn't look down on the new kids, not the same way a grade 12 grad would look at a grade 9 freshman (if at all). It was like an even playing field, and you could connect with anyone, and everyone seemed to be walking with their minds open, receptive to what's different and new. A comic book habit was not uncommon.

My tastes had redeveloped between my closing year of high school and the opening year of University, and I was no longer looking at comics and movies and music as strictly entertainment but also as art. The conceptual side of things began to play as much a part in my enjoyment of entertainment as the execution, and I learned to see past merely my gut reaction and analyze what I had taken in a little more. Movies, while being for the masses, have always catered strongly to an adult audience, but even though I had always trumpeted the maturity level comics could achieve I rarely looked past the development of the superhero genre, and often hit a wall trying transcending them. But, within my new environment I was encouraged to explore things beyond what I knew, to look outside the box in terms of how I thought, and I extended this to my comics interest.

Vertigo was the most readily available source, and I became a fast proponent of the imprint, the bulk of the stories weaved around some element of fantasy or another, but frequently literary in bent or cerebral in storytelling. Neil Gaiman, Steve Seagle, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and more became the new face of comics, the people daring to do something different and succeeding at it. Series like Sandman Mystery Theatre, Preacher, and the Invisibles weren't the first things I would read when I picked up my weekly stash of books, and often were left lying aside for weeks or months -- my affinity for superheroes still reigned supreme -- but it was those Vertigo books that messed my shit up, that really got me excited about what the medium could do and how stories could be told. That DC and Marvel both embraced these writers on their mainstream superheroes tells me that their editorial wanted the same thing out of their superhero books, to recapture the sense of excitement Superman or the Fantastic Four gave them when they were kids, reviving them with a new sense of adult-centric thrills. Either that or they were desperate for someone to pull them out of the atrocious rut they found themselves in after the comics bust of the mid-90's.

Thanks to Vertigo, I became more adventurous in the titles I was selecting, venturing outside the mainstream, looking at Slave Labor, Oni Press, Caliber and a host of other publishers who came (most who also, shortly thereafter, went) to try something new. What I learned was superheroes are predictable, and dependable... even with bad superhero books you know what you're going to get. But with indie and smaller press books, it's a real crapshoot, and there's little or no sense of familiarity with most of them. Sometimes the artistic style is underdeveloped, over-simplistic, or downright horrible, other times the writing isn't nearly as insightful as the ideas, or the ideas aren't befitting the writing. I picked up quite a few anthologies in the later 1990's as a means of trying creators out, as I discovered that I could more rely upon a writer or an artist to deliver than I could a series, or character, or company.

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's): the wife's (but I bought the original series run back in the day)
Date Purchased: N/A
Original Review: N/A
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances:What do I remember about Starman? Well, I was sold on Starman even before it arrived on the stands. Spinning off (sort-of) from Zero Hour back in 1994, Starman was one of a handful of titles DC was launching with #0 issues. I don't remember if each of the new series were given 4-page previews in, erm, the Previews catalogue, but Starman for certain did, and within the first four pages of the zero issue, the new Starman, David Knight, was shot dead out of the sky! It was such a huge and dramatic moment, that I was invested immediately in knowing why, and how a book would carry on when it's lead character is killed. Beyond that Starman delivered something altogether different, seemingly a collaborative project between writer James Robinson and artist Tony Harris, both invested themselves immensely into the book and it's lead, Jack Knight, and in doing so becoming two of my favourite creators, following them obsessively for some time. Over the next 40 or so issues, Starman proved itself not a book about superheroes, but a book about Legacies and families, about feuds, reconciliation and redemption. It turned the concept of heroes and villains from stark black and white to abstract colours and shades that spoke to the humanity with which Robinson and Harris imbued their characters. I got frustrated with Starman about the time he took to the stars on an inter-galactic adventure in search of his titular namesake, the thought-deceased Starman Will Payton and although I haven't read the title since the series ended, my affinity for it hasn't wavered. Like Robinson's The Golden Age, and unlike most other '90's books, I had no doubt that Starman would hold up.

Re-Review: The "Sins of the Father" trade paperback consists of issues zero through five of the ongoing series, and by the end of the first chapter it's evident exactly how special this series would become. David Knight is shot dead, Ted Knight, the original Starman (and star of TV's "Too Close For Comfort"), suffers a concussion when his home and lab are destroyed, and Jack Knight, collectibles shop owner, finds himself staring down the barrell of a gun as his livelihood goes up in flames. The Knights have been targeted and the gloriously art-deco Opal City (introduced in this series) they protect is meant to suffer. It all happens at the hands of Starman's golden-age nemesis, the Mist, and his chip-off-the-old-psychopathic-block children.

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's): purchased
Date Purchased: July 2007
Original Review: N/A
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: I remember seeing advertisements for The Tick in the comics I bought when I started visiting a local comics shoppe in 1991. "Ninjas," the Tick said, "I hate ninjas", as he trudged across the panel with a dozen men in black suits about half his size futilely attacking him, Tick obviously feeling none of their attack thanks to his nigh-invulnerability. That panel from the ad for NEC's mail-order service has stuck with me to this day, I didn't actually read an issue of The Tick until 2 years later when Chroma Tick #1 came out (reprinting the first issue but in color). I recall enjoying it, and yet, for some reason, that's the only comic starring the Tick I'd purchased for some time.

I managed to let the cartoon bypass me, having only ever watched a handful of episodes from it's original Fox airings, and it really wasn't until the Patrick Warburton-fueled live-action series that I developed a deep appreciation for the character... something the Tick comic lovers and/or cartoon lovers tell me is blasphemy. Within the past year and a half, I've managed to read the first of three trade paperbacks of the Tick, a result of the merging of collections with the wife, and watched the DVDs of The Tick (seasons 1 and 2). My appreciation for the big blue bug is at an all-time high. Looking at the order form in the back of the 20th Anniversary Special Edition (June 2007) and I realize I've barely tapped the Tick's comic book repertoire, a solution that was fixed by acquiring these first two Karma Tornado collections at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con. One geekdom obsession translated to another since I knew these were written by Venture Brothers co-creator Chris McCulloch (under the pseudonym Jackson Publick).

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's): the wife's
Date Acquired: N/A
Original Review: N/A
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: It was the mini-series Marvels that launched both writer Kurt Busiek and painter Alex Ross into comic book superstardom. Though Busiek has gone on to write and create some of the best superhero comics of the past 20 year, it's Ross' star that has shone infinitely brighter, inescapably so (if you're a comics fan at least). It's undeniable the man has talent, but his overwhelming prevalence in the comic book community has earned him quite an unhealthy backlash. Over the years he's worked with a few different writers -- Mark Waid, Paul Dini, Geoff Johns -- to also grip onto the story creation side, being more of a collaborator than just an artist. His most enduring pairing, though, has been with writer Jim Krueger who seems tasked with taking Ross' ideas and turning them into something readable. Currently the duo are playing with Golden Age public domain characters in Project Superpower, and before that the 12-part Justice series. Preceding even that, however, was the grandiose re-envisioning of the Marvel universe in Earth X (which continued on in Universe X and Paradise X).

Earth X followed up Ross' triumph on DC's Kingdom Come (with Mark Waid) and he was riding high, and smack in the thick of the Wizard-era of comics this 14-part mini-series became the hot ticket item, even more so with limited edition collectors sets when it was printed in hardcover collections. I had always meant to get to it, to acquire the trades and see what all the buzz was about, but never did, and to be honest it kind of left my consciousness a few years ago. It wasn't until reading Wikipedia's entry on the series and it's sequels that I realized the series no longer held the esteem it once did and that its continued expansion and spin-offs only diluted the initial work in many fan's eyes. The fact of the matter is, of Ross' early portfolio, Marvels retains a quiet dignity and Kingdom Come is the bombastic, egotistical celebrity that refuses to go away, Earth X has slunk away into the shadows, maybe not in shame, but perhaps a little embarrassed. While inventorying the family comic collection, I discovered the wife had a complete set of the series. When I (eventually) pulled them from the shelf to give them the read over, she informed me that she couldn't remember any details about it, or ever actually finishing reading the series, even though she quite obviously bought them all. I was curious as to why she wouldn't have completed it (and has no interest, years later, in doing so).

Re-Review - How do I put this gently? Earth X is not a very well constructed story. The ideas are interesting, Krueger does his best to support the concepts in their execution, and John Paul Leon's art is pretty spectacular, but it's all really for naught as this series is not much more than 14 issues of non-stop exposition.

Titles: Marvel Boy tpb; JLA: Earth 2 HC; Seaguy #1 - 3; JLA #1 - 44; Fantastic Four: 1, 2 ,3 ,4
Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife's):all purchased, except Earth 2 which is the wife's.
Date Purchased: 1995 - 2003
Previous Reviews:
JLA 17 - 18 - extra nerdy review

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: Grant Morrison brings something fresh to the table every time. The man is certifiable, but certifiably ingenious much of the time. Unlike some writers who love and embrace comic book history and nostalgia (Geoff Johns, Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, James Robinson), Morrison is able to take his fondness for a character, a story, a team, a book, a universe and distill it down precisely to the bare core of existence and then rebuild them for a modern age, rather than just perpetuate or refine. His non-superhero work, like the Invisibles, the Filth, We3, The Mystery Play etc. show him to be utterly inspired in his ability to weave complicated narratives while also imbuing a natural sense of excitement and kinetic action. But it's in his superhero work, from Animal Man starting back in 1987 through to his Batman work today that he really cuts loose, strangely enough. In the culture of corporate entities where the overlords are watching their properties and investments very closely, Morrison has earned their trust and is able to play with their toys as he sees fit... because they know that if he breaks them, he's going to fix them so that they're better than they ever have been.

Marvel Boy was the first breakout Morrison book for me, the one where I fell completely under his sway. I hadn't been reading Marvel comics for years, and his was one of the first that brought me back into the fold (the other was Busiek's Marvels). Though my younger mind didn't quite grasp everything that Morrison was doing (my thoughts were more concerned with how the book fit in with Marvel continuity) but in a post-Matrix world where it became evident that movies could deliver pretty much everything a comic book could, it was Morrison who was able to match and top it in a comic that didn't play with Marvels' toys, so much as make radical copies of them for his own amusement. It's still a high point for me in his very distinguished careers.

Morrison was given the reins to the Justice League for a few years, and his initial impulse was to construct the team from DC's big players. It was such a logical approach that you had to wonder why it had never been done before. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Aquaman, all in the same pages, DC's most recognizable and most powerful characters. If there's a team that supposed to defend the Earth, they should be on it. When Morrison first approached the book I kind of balked at his idea. I was a fan of the Giffen era of Justice League, a comedy-action book where the team was comprised of basically no-hitters that functioned like a dysfunctional family more than a super-team. The Justice League to me was not the big guns, each who had a title or two (or five) to their name, but characters who couldn't hold their own book but form a strong title together. I did eventually (after 5 issues with thunderous praise) climb aboard the JLA bandwagon, but it didn't resonate with me as strongly as others of Morrison's work. I was too entrenched in the DCUniverse at the time and the first four issues of the series in trade didn't make me a fan, because Morrison went too big, but also too narrow. I'm not fond of storylines that impact the planet as a whole, but that's where Morrison repeatedly went, in his first JLA story and his last. They're incredible stories, absolutely massive in scope, and I think I had a hard time wrapping my head around them then.


After JLA, over at Marvel, he was handed the keys to the X-Men, giving an intense, exotic and mind-blowing run that was pretty much counteracted once he left. Off to the side, he produced a small story about the Fantastic Four, and for once his typical sense of characterization felt... off. Perhaps it's because I don't care about the Fantastic Four very much, but I found 1, 2, 3, 4, frankly, boring when I first read it. Morrison abandoned his usual knack for paring back and rebuilding characters and instead chose to examine them as flawed individuals, using their most prominent enemies to expose their greatest weaknesses Channeling Reed Richards, Morrison's usual big, out-of-the-box action was sidestepped for more character-centric story and a cerebral confrontation, which was unexpected and atypical.

Marvel Boy was intended to be the first of a trilogy that's been left sadly unfinished. Sea Guy on the other hand, is a trilogy that looked like it was going to remain incomplete, but the second mini-series was recently announced. Sea Guy is set in a universe of Morrison's own imagination, where all the superheroes died saving the Earth and society now exists in an uncommon tranquility where the bizarre is commonplace and there's no need for heroes. Sea Guy wants to be a superhero and searches out adventure and action, but is completely incapable of handling it when he finds it. As Morrison has said of him, he's as much a superhero as you would be if you put on a wetsuit. I found Sea Guy confusing upon first read, but so incredibly stimulating, a magic within that can only come from someone channeling pure imagination.

With just over $100 in trade remaining to share, Aden and I left our local comics dispensary with our meager acquisitions... four books all told, two apiece, one of which closes off a mini-series I was reading. I took a gander the the coming week's purchases already and noticed that two more of my mini-series reads are coming to a close, leaving me with the following books remaining:

Gutsville - 3 issues remain
Serenity: Final Days - 1 issue remains
Pax Romana - 2 issues remain
Transhuman - 3 issues remain
Local - 2 issues remain (1 of which is out next week)


I've terminated all my ongoing titles, two of which Aden's now getting (X-Factor and Brave and the Bold, the latter of which I think she's stopping at the end of the current story line, which coincidentally also ships next week).

I also have an open storyline from Action Comics, written by Superman movie director Richard Donner, which will be concluded whenever DC gets around to printing the Action Comics Annual (It was supposed to hit in February but obviously was delayed).

So, for the first time in nearly 7 years I don't have any ongoing books to read, and soon enough most of the stories I'm collecting will be concluded. It's funny, because I have the opportunity to keep acquiring (without spending money) but I'm still scaling back, way back, trying to keep more in spirit with Buy Nothing Year.

As I keep track every month of what's solicited two months hence, I know what I'm missing, but, as I originally stated when I had first conceived of BNY, it'll be interesting to see what I'm still interested in next year.

As I do every month, I take a look ahead at comics being solicited for publication in two months' time. I take a loot at all the items I might have an interest in, or, in some cases, thinks I most definitely have no interest in. DC and Marvel are usually first out the gate, this will be updated as Dark Horse, Image and others get their solicits released.

For the first time in YEARS I have no new comics this week. I didn't even go to the shoppe. I thought I had one book, and Aden was already out and about and so she stopped in to pick up our weekly dose, and nope, my book didn't get released this week. So I had nothing new. It's happened once or twice where I've had next-to-nothing and I usually pick up something, but in the spirit of BNY, I've got nothing. Nada. Zip. Nothing new to read this week.

It feels weird.

Advanced solicitations for some publishers' August offerings are on-line in various places.
Here's what I may be reading if I have some trade or Aden's also curious in buying.

It's been 6 months of "buying nothing" in the comics front and, well, it's been tough, primarily because I've been the showrunner of Rack Raids and it's hard to run a comic book review website without, you know, reviewing comics. I had planned on just reviewing freebies I received from publishers, but I've found reading PDF comics difficult to say the least. I have to fight with myself to do it. If only there were electronic paper and I could read digital comics on the subway. Alas, until futurescience catches up with my petty needs I'll have to keep coming up with excuses to get store credit at the Snail for my weekly batch of acquisitions. So far, I've received credit for Christmas (thanks wife!), worked for credit, sold comics for credit and put some birthday money towards credit (which, essentially, will have to last another 2.5 months... it'll be tight). By the time the September comics come around I should have plenty more work-for-trade after working behind the booth during the Con. Given that my actual weekly purchases now range from a maximum of three books to a hefty single paperback collection, I should be able to carry that store credit through to the end of the year. Then, in 2009, shopping spree!

No, actually, in 2009 I'm going to really restrict myself in my purchases. I've tried it before, maximum 5 titles and 1 trade in a week, but this time I mean it. No side purchases either at the Con or from other sources (much of which I still haven't waded through many years later). Come 2009, I can buy up to 5 titles a week (no banking) and 1 trade paperback (provided I've read the previous week's trade... if not, I can't buy anything new). If I've learned anything this year, it's restraint, if not outright discipline. Of course I'm out of debt in a few meager weeks and once I actually have disposable income my... reservations/hesitations may no longer apply.

Oh, and my idea for 2009, in terms of returning to purchasing CDs and DVDs is I can't buy anything until 6-months after it's release date. It's the only way I can ensure that I actually want to listen or watch or indeed buy it. That should prove pretty easy since I'll have such a backlog of things I've not purchased from 2008 that it'll be easy. Plus, a lot of DVDs and CDs and whatnot will be in the cheapo bins after 6 months, which should save me at least $5 per disc, if not much much more. Hmm... maybe I should do that with graphic novels/tpbs as well...

Still to do this year... sell sell sell. Review review review. but now: September comics: