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April 26, 2006

My Comics Subscriptions

As longtime readers of this blog know, I'm a big comic book fan.

Although I loved superheroes as a little kid, I actually wasn't a comic book geek in high school. (I was a sports stathead instead, which may be even geekier.) And I got back into comics the wrong way around - in college, rather than moving from the mainstream to the indies, I started with R. Crumb and Los Bros Hernandez, got into Neil Gaiman, and gradually worked my way back to the guys in tights. Today, I find the indie scene disappointingly thin (beyond Carla Speed McNeil's amazing, overlooked Finder), but there's lots of superhero genre stuff I love - especially the work of the astonishingly prolific Brian Michael Bendis, who combines the dialogue skills of David Mamet with the mythographic imagination of Alan Moore. There's a superhero comics renaissance going on, as great writers like Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Kurt Busiek, Warren Ellis, Alan Heinberg, Paul Jenkins, Robert Kirkman, David Lapham, Brian Melzer, Mark Millar, Greg Rucka, Kevin Smith, Brian K. Vaughan and Bill Willingham reinvigorate a genre many gave up for dead years - if not decades - ago. Call me old-fashioned, but I still love seeing the classic archetypes put through their paces - and I'm still thrilled when a visionary like Bendis rings some new changes on the old tunes.

For years, I stopped by my local comics shop every Wednesday to pick up new releases. But it closed down a few months ago, leaving the nearest store a little too distant for a regular haul. So, I've started mail-ordering my purchases from an online subscription service, Sci-Fi Genre. It's not the best way to buy comics - I miss the weekly ritual, the browsing, and the overheard debates over whether Picard could take Kirk in a fight - but it's better than waiting a year to get the trade paperbacks on Amazon.

So, here's my current subscription list. It may look like a lot of comics - alright, I admit, it is a lot of comics - but it boils down to about 5-10 issues a week. Since each issue takes about 15-20 minutes to read - more for the talky ones, less for the ones with lots of fights and explosions - that's roughly 2-3 hours of new comic book reading a week, less than the time it takes to watch one baseball or football game. The only problem comes when responsibilities intercede and I start falling behind. Then, catching up can start to seem like work rather than fun, and I end up feeling like Steve Buscemi in Ghost World when he tells Thora Birch, "I hate my interests!"

I'd probably read fewer comics if there were more good SF on TV, or if SF literature weren't currently dominated by the "hard SF" genre, which so often boils down to blowhard scientists with guns. But I'll take my pleasures where I find them.

Ted's Comics Subscription List
  
Albion
All Star Batman and Robin
American Virgin
Apocalypse Nerd
Astonishing X-Men
Astro City
Battle Pope
Books of Doom
Captain America
Checkmate
Civil War
Colonia
Conan
Daredevil
Dork Tower
Dr. Blink: Superhero Shrink
Eightball
Eternals
Expatriate
Fables
Finder
Girls
Hate Annual
Hawaiian Dick
Invincible
Justice
Love & Rockets
Luba's Comics and Stories
Marvel Team-Up
Nat Turner
New Avengers
Palookaville
Polly and the Pirates
Powers
PvP
Queen & Country
Runaways
Shadowpact
Stray Bullets
Superpatriot
True Story, Swear to God
Ultimate Extinction
Ultimate Fantastic Four
Ultimate Spider-Man
Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk
Ultimate X-Men
Ultimates
Usagi Yojimbo
Walking Dead
Wonder Woman
Y: The Last Man
Young Avengers

Posted by tedf at April 26, 2006 05:29 PM

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