A Collector's Sense of Closure

Well, it's been a bit of a bloggerific weekend for me, this being my third post in as many days.

I haven't really "retired" from collecting comic books, but I would like to call my current state of non-collecting an indefinite sabbatical, while I sort out other matters in my life, and while there isn't anything that particularly tickles my fancy.

Whether I've quit for now or for good, though, I couldn't stop without finishing up the storylines or miniseries I've already begun. Just today, after almost four months of having quit cold turkey, as it were, I finally completed the seven-issue miniseries The Eternals, by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr., which I once upon a time trumpeted in this very blog.

I maintain that these pages feature Romita Jr.'s best work since his seminal Daredevil miniseries with Frank Miller, but I confess that as a whole the story was rather anticlimactic and therefore not nearly as satisfying as I would have wanted. It really strikes me that in seven issues, Gaiman did not tell a complete story. Sure, there were a lot of pretty pictures strung together and some enjoyable dialogue and characterization, but all told the whole thing felt largely pointless, in that this is a story with a clear beginning, a clear middle, but no clear resolution to the big dilemma set up for the characters.

Essentially, we learn why the Eternals have forgotten who they are and have lived the last few years thinking themselves to be merely humans. We learn that their enemies, the Deviants or Changing People want to reawaken a Celestial (Jack Kirby's fantastical version of God) buried near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and we see the Eternals finally all come around and remember who they are and what they have to do, with the exception of Sersi, whose memory remains clouded although she has her power of transmutation back.

But there is so much more that is left to be told, which is why Gaiman aptly captions the last panel with "The Beginning..."

Clearly this series was meant to whet the readers' appetite for more Eternals, but personally I don't think I'll be coming back for seconds, considering the price tag of these issues (P240 in most stores P200 in a couple of others) and given that for most of the series we didn't even get to know the characters, except perhaps Makkari, in any significant way. I see no reason to follow their further adventures when I haven't particularly connected with them in this story.

Say what one will about Civil War, at least a lot took place in those pages, which, all told are fewer than those it took to finish Gaiman's latest tale.

Still, I'm glad I've given myself this closure, the same way I'm glad I waited for Kevin Smith Spider-Man miniseries to end, as big a disappointment as it turned out to be (for all its faults, Eternals played out a lot better).

I have only one more miniseries to finish, two issues of the creator-owned Criminal, and my sabbatical begins in earnest. I'm glad I didn't buy Captain America #25 (and yes, I did spot one in a comic book store, still selling at a normal price, but I put it back on the shelf) because that would just start the collecting cycle all over again. I still love the comics I have (and a much trimmer collection it is now by over a hundred issues), and I'm quite the completist as well (which would explain how quickly my diecast car collection has grown), but to start up new storylines when there isn't anything out there that strikes any particular chord with me would just be prodigal at this point.

So, Mark Millar, Steve McNiven, and all you other creators whose work gets me to the comics stores in a flash, take your time with your next projects or your sabbaticals; I'm glad for some time off from this hobby. It is my hope that, if or when I should revisit this hobby, I'll have quite a bit more money to spare, and that there will be projects worth that money.