Life officially sucks

By Michael Hutchison on September 18, 2008 1:00 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jimmy Jams Comics here in Rochester is closing its doors next week.

I've just found out tonight, having missed the announcement earlier. (On top of everything else wrong with this, I'm very late to their storewide 50% off sale on trade paperbacks and I've missed a lot of goodies!)

This leaves me without a comic shop. Oh, their store in Winona an hour away will gladly ship my books free of charge once a month if I choose. I'm wondering whether I want to.

Frankly... at this point, I could probably be happy just buying the TPB collections of PS238 and having that be my total involvement with comic collecting. I don't really enjoy the majority of books that DC puts out these days (the exceptions being Green Lantern Corps, Booster Gold and Birds of Prey). I'm not even buying the current Crisis book, which is kind of a stunning thing for me. A few months ago I realized that I have not truly enjoyed a single issue of the Justice League series since it was relaunched. I buy Justice League because I have an uninterrupted run going back to 1982. Aside from skipping the last year of Gerard Jones' awful run, and then buying all of the issues from the cheap bin later on anyway, I have been a nonstop reader. But...it just isn't a good book.

Hey, I'm 38, I've got a wife and a teenager to care for, and other things to occupy my time. It makes sense to move on from comics at some point, right? Except that...I still love comics if they're done right, which is why I read PS238. I get a thrill from RE-reading the comics made in the 1980s and some of the 1990s. I could haul out the old Suicide Squad or L.E.G.I.O.N. or Giffen's JLA and enjoy them just as I once did, and if those titles were being put out today I'd buy them. It's probably why I'm loving Ambush Bug: Year None so much.

And I still would love to write comics, which means I can't give up on READING comics, can I? I'm making one final go of Metro Med and hoping it goes somewhere.

I've got more to vent about the state of comics, but I just had to share what's going on with me right now.

Categories

DC Comics , Monitor Duty Site News , Monitor Duty's Own Reporting , Personal Projects

0 TrackBacks

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Life officially sucks.

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.thehutch.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5767

1 Comments

The Shark Author Profile Page said:

Welcome to my world, Mike. I went on my mission and came back in 2003 to find that DC Comics had all but gone to pot, and about six months ago I realized that they'd completed the transition to pure crap. I have stuck to my proclamation I made a few months ago regarding my decision to boycott all mainstream DC Comics from now on. It's just not worth my money to read cop-out writing.

However, I haven't given up on comics as a whole. I found a local comic shop and have been visiting every month or two to check out what they have to offer. I've spoken a lot with people who work there to find new titles being published under other companies that are worth checking out. I highly recommend checking out the TPB's of Joss Whedon's run on "Astonishing X-Men." There are four volumes, and the first and fourth are AMAZING. Marvel suffers from a convoluted history, which makes it hard for me to decide whether or not I'm going to follow any of their titles, but I'm confident that there is something out there for me, whether it's with Marvel or a smaller publisher.

So I recommend satisfying your comics itch by backing away from what you're used to and trying something a little new. It'll take some research and effort, but I think it will be worth it in the end and should keep your creative juices flowing.

September 18, 2008 9:50 AM | Reply to this Comment

Leave a comment

 

Author Monthly Archives

Archives

Subscribe to this blog's feed
[What is this?]

Search


Tag Cloud