Hobby-Jumping

Anyone who knows me, as well as anyone who reads this blog, knows that I am a comics collector. I am more avid than some, and less avid than others, but the point is that to a certain extent, I have, for nearly the last twenty years (off and on) needed my monthly comic book fix, even to the extent that I'd buy them even if I couldn't necessarily afford them.

2006, though, has been a strange year for me as a collector. There's a lot of stuff I've liked, but just the same, as the year grows to a close I find myself leaning more and more towards retiring from collecting comics, at least as monthlies.

The first reason for this is as collectibles, comic books just don't have the same appeal as they used to, particularly with idiotic concepts like "graded" comics emerging, and the return of the variant cover, which stores automatically price at as much as five times as much as a regular comic book even when they just come out. Another good thing about not rushing to buy monthlies is that I no longer have to worry about an issue getting sold out. Even bookstores carry trade paperbacks, so I won't have to trawl comic stores to find an issue that I missed.

There's also the problem of storage, given how inherently flimsy comics are (even the cardstock ones), it's not as if I can just shove them into a bookshelf as I can the trade paperbacks (of which I have about six or seven by now), and I'm quite simply running out of space, not only in my long boxes but in my house as well. I'm running out safe places to put the darned things (and when one has a one-and-a-half year in the house, that is quite important).

Third, as much as I love good stories and art, I hate late comics. I'm not a fill-in advocate, but I'd still rather read a story without long intervals in-between issues. People who bought the hardcover of Joe Quesada's Daredevil:Father for example had a much more coherent and pleasant reading experience than the poor schmucks like me who waited the two and a half years for him to finish the six issue miniseries. I don't really travel in comics-reading circles except for two or three friends tops, so it's not as though anyone will spoil crucial story points for me.

Finally, and this is something I've come to discover lately, I really don't like being disappointed by a storyline mid-arc. It happened with Civil War, and even more recently, in a title I was sincerely enjoying, namely Ed Brubaker's Criminal. Without giving away any crucial plot-points, let me just say that what started out as a very engaging heist story is playing out in an extremely by-the-numbers fashion, with a crook with a heart of gold getting in trouble, running from the bad guys, and sharing the obligatory sex scene with the only female in the story's landscape. If I were to peruse this in the book store, I wouldn't have bought it.

I'm finishing the comics I started this year even as they spill into next year, but for the first time in nearly two decades of collecting, I'm starting to re-think my collecting habits. I won't be so pompous as to say that I've outgrown comics, because really, I still enjoy good stories, but picking up new "floppies" every month is just losing its allure, really.

Besides, and by way of an epilogue, after months and months of walking into hobby/collectibles stores and ogling the several different brands, makes and scales of diecast vehicles, I finally got it into my head to buy a couple, and the rush I felt upon buying a toy car I'd been tracking down for months was something totally new to me, even after years of collecting. I'm still giving the matter a lot of thought, but I'm seriously considering shifting hobbies...