Binging & Purging

It has been a fantastic summer break, but now that I have spent much time filling gaps in comic runs and reorganizing (most of) my collection it is time to get back to "work." Not surprisingly, the process of organizing was not inexpensive. To do it well, I felt it was necessary to  purchase backboards and bags for each book, cardboard dividers for each newly purchased  longbox, and, most expensively, filling in some gaps in runs that I had wanted to see bridged. of course these "gaps" are filled by purchasing back issues of older comic runs.


Price of Bat Lash #5? 90 cents.
Value of a completed run to a fanboy?
Priceless!

The expense was not in the individual cost of each comic (all of which were cover price or cheaper) but in the volume of acquisitions. Sometimes this required unusually odd purchases from the Internet that were (after checking) unavailable at my local comic shop, such as issue 5 of DC's 2007 mini-series Bat Lash featuring art from the legendary (and recently deceased)  John Severin. This little jewel of a series also boasts a script by Peter Brandvold and Sergio Aragones, with a sharp cover Walter Simonson. For those of you who are not "in the know" that (with the exception of co-writer Branvold) is an extraordinary cast of creators!

But, now that I have spent some the my free time binging on comic book from the past, I need to update my weekly pull list and purge myself of some titles I have recently picked up am no longer willing to purchase regularly. It is a vicious circle. It is possible that next summer one of the titles I drop this month will fall back into my favor (new creative team, new direction) and I'll search for the issue to bridge the gap. As fate would have it, some titles I have enjoyed have recently wrapped up (iZombie and Gears of War), so some losses are through attrition. Truth is, I enjoy streamlining my pulls in such a way that I can focus the significantly reduced time I have to fewer titles and enjoy them more fully.

It's been a blast... see you in the trades (maybe)!

So it is au revoir to the following titles for the foreseeable future: Dark Avengers, X-Force, The Massive, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, G.I. Combat, Frankenstein Agent of Shade, '68 Scars, Batman, Fatale, Debris, Planetoid, Mind MGT, Planet of the Apes, Conan the Barbarian, Warlord of Mars, Mind the Gap, Warriors of Mars and Rachel Rising.  To be fair, some of these books have only been purchased this summer (idle hands and blah-blah-blah), so the only real regret is not stopping sooner (though each did have a quality which endeared it to me in the first place. FYI: Action Comics may also soon join these titles, once Grant Morrison wraps up his run on the title.

Allowing a day or two to recover from the hangover my collecting binge, and eventual purge, has left me with, I'm looking forward to getting back to school and getting back to weekly trips to the local comic shop to catch up with those titles which have made the cut...