Get a good job with good pay and you’re okay
So said Pink Floyd in Money. Only, today… not so much. The World economy is in melt down, my new house’s value has dropped, food costs more, etc. etc. etc.
Enough of this crap, how does this effect comic books???? Well, pretty bloody badly it seems, especially if you are a Canadian. This time last year it was $1C to $1US, however, it is now $0.8 to $1US. This mean that the same issue of Action Comics that cost me $2.99 a year ago now costs $3.75, while in the US they are still getting them for $2.99. That is a 75 cents mark up on EVERY comic. I guess it is time to cut back a bit. I love comics though, and I find it hard to whittle down my pull list. I have posted my pull-list of comics below, with those comics I am considering dropping marked in orange. At the bottom of the screen I have marked in red a bunch of comics which I just dropped last week. I need people to be harsh. If you look at the list and see something you think is pure crap, please tell me, I have a hard time deciding. My wallet (and wife) will thank you
Aardvark-Vanaheim
- Glamourpuss
Abstract
- Echo
Avtatar
- Absolution
- Anna Mercury
- Crossed
- Doktor Sleepless
- Gravel
- Neonomicon
- No Hero
- Wolfskin
Beserker
- The Dead
- Church of Hell
- Maura
Cartoon Books
- Rasl
Dark Horse
- Hellboy
- BPRD
- End League
- Fear Agent
- Gigantic
- The Goon
- Umbrella Academy: Dallas
DC
- Action Comics
- All-Star Batman & Robin
- Batman
- Batman: Cacophony
- Batman Gotham After Midnight
- Blue Beetle
- Brave and the Bold - I am going to see what happens after that Hine/Briathwaite arc, pretty sick of the concept, again!
- Booster Gold
- Detective Comics
- Final Crisis (+ all Tie-ins)
- Green Lantern
- Justice League of America
- Justice Society of America
- Legion of Super Heroes - I thought Jim Shooter would help bring the excitement back, but this title is so dull it hurts, no wonder it is getting canceled again.
- Manhunter - The series is getting canceled again, and frankly I’ve had enough
- Sgt. Rock: The Lost Battalion
- Simon Dark
- Superman
- The Spirit
- Vigilante
DC (Vertigo)
- 100 Bullets
- Air
- Army@Love
- DMZ
- Fables
- Haunted Tank
- Hellblazer
- House of Mystery
- Jack of Fables
- Madame Xanadu
- Northlanders
- Sandman: The Dream Hunters
- Scalped
- Unknown Soldier
- Young Liars - I still have no idea what is going on, if it doesn’t get better soon, it is gone
DC (Wildstorm)
- Authority
- Ex Machina
- Fringe
- Stormwatch PhD - I’ve been buying it because of Ian Edington, but it is just dull
- The Ferryman - This series sucks the big one
- Top 10 Season Two
- Wildcats - Another sucky World End title, yawn, nothing good is happening
- X-Files
Desperado
- The Actress and the Bishop
Dynamite
- Black Terror
- The Boys
- The Death Defying Devil
- Garth Ennis’ Battlefields
- Project Superpowers - (on hiatus between seasons)
Evil Twin Comics
- Comic Book Comics - (Quarterly)
Fantagraphics
- Castle Waiting
- The Comics Journal
IDW
- 30 Days of Night: 30 Days ‘Til Death
- Criminal Macabre: Prisoner Cell Block 666
- Doctor Who Classics
- Doctor Who: The Forgotten
- Legion of the Supernatural
- The Presidents of the United States
- Star Trek: Countdown
- Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse: Down the Pub (one shot)
Image
- Back to Broklyn
- Charlatan Ball
- Elephant Men
- Fell
- Godland
- Gutsville
- Invincible
- Jack Staff
- Madman
- M Theory
- Phonogram 2: Singles Club
- Rock n’ Roll (one shot)
- Savage
- Special Forces
- Walking Dead
- War Heroes
- Young Blood
Radical Comics
- City of Dust
Rebellion
- 2000 A.D.
- 2000 A.D. Extreme Edition
- 2000 A.D. Prog 2009 (annual)
- Judge Dredd Megazine
Rude Dude
- Nexus - very infrequently released
Marvel
- Astonishing X-Men
- Avenger/Invaders
- Captain America
- Captain Britain and MI13
- Daredevil
- Dark Tower: Treachery
- Ender’s Game: Battle School
- Ender’s Shadow: Battle School
- Fantastic Four
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Ghost Rider
- Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch
- Immortal Iron Fist
- Incognito
- Invincible Iron Man
- Nova
- New universal: Shockfront
- Marvels: Eye of the Camera
- Punisher
- Punisher: Frank Castle (nee Max)
- Punisher Max: X-Mas Special
- Punisher War Journal
- Punisher War Zone
- Ruins
- Runaways - Just bored of it, sorry Terry Moore
- Secret Invasion: War of Kings
- Thunderbolts
- Thor: God Sized #1
- Thor: Man of War
- Uncanny X-Men
- Wolverine
- Wolverine: Manifest Destiny
- X-Factor - I have to drop an X-title,
- X-Force
- X-Men: Kingbreaker
- X-Men Legacy
- X-Men Manifest Destiny - I was getting this for the Mike Carey penned story, but it is too costly to pay for just 8 pages of good story
Marvel (Icon)
- Criminal
- Kick-Ass
Oni
- Wasteland
SLG
- Ubu Bubu
Deleted:
- The Stand: Captain Tripps
- Batman Confidential
- Captain action
- Greatest Hits
- The Flash
- Ambush Bug: Year None
- Tek Jansen
- Savage Tales
Related posts:
- No Comic Talk Tonight, But My Mortgage Woes Are Over, I am Full of Good Grub, and a Little Bit Drunk - Life is Good!
- What I’m Buying - Week of Wed 13-August-2008
- What I’m Buying - Week of Wed 23-July-2008
- What I’m Buying - Week of Wed 24-September-2008
- What I’m Buying - Week of Wed 10-September-2008
Wow, big pull list! I have also recently cut back on my purchases for similar $ reasons, so I know where you're coming from. I understand both Marvel and DC will be raising the prices on most of their books to $3.99 US, so that's another good incentive to ditch the dead weight. Anyway, here's my 2 cents, purely IMHO and as I see it…
First, my Comics Rule of Thumb #1: If it's likely to be collected in a trade format, wait. Collections are cheaper, easier to store, they stay in print and have the added bonus of allowing you time to read some reviews before you sink the cash in a project. CRoT#1 (wow, I love acronyms!) has saved me money on turkeys like Civil War, House of M, and Secret Invasion, so there must be something to it.
Apart from that, these jump out at me:
RASL — awesome comic, but an awesomer collection! No more monthly for me if the trades are going to be this nice.
ALL DARK HORSE COMICS — refer to CRoT#1.
ALL DC COMICS — yeesh… where to start? I'm probably not the best person to ask. Seriously, many of these are already slated for / are close to cancellation, so DC just might do some of the work for you here.
VERTIGO — keep all these. You gotta read something, right?
WILDSTORM — walk away, man. Just walk away.
MARVEL — I say keep the Ed Brubaker stuff and the Abnett/Lanning stuff… maybe Thunderbolts too, now that Diggle is writing it (but considering how important that will be to Dark Reign, I am falling back on CRoT#1 with that book). The rest of this is purely optional, IMHO.
2000 AD & CO — Essential! Reading these are like getting a snapshot of the entire comics industry… some stories stink, some are meh, some are pure comics gorgeousity. (If you have trouble with 'gorgeousity', just imagine Stephen Fry saying it and you'll probably be fine.)
That's all I can think of… except to say that I've seen many a big-pull-list comic collector who lost interest in the entire medium thanks to exposure to too many mediocre stories. If you can't live without it, get rid of it! Otherwise you might find yourself so fed up that you walk away from the whole industry 5 or 10 years down the road.
Doc Crane left a message re: the Pull List of the Gods here -
http://www.curious.bc.ca.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=2780&pid=9718&st=0&#entry9718
Oh crap! I ahdn’t noticed any of these comments here. I must have screwed up a setting that makes blogger email the posts. Sorry about that Gle. Thanks for all the advice, and I am definitely dropping quite a few, and have already dropped many of them. Also, it seems like lots of mini series that I was collecting are ending at the moment, and that should save me quite a bit. I really need to send Bill a revised pull-list this week, so all these duds don’t keep ending up in my file.
The thing is that I am so far behind on my reading pile, that I don’t realise until I get to many of them. For example, I haven’t been getting Superman, because James Robinson is a hack, but I am still getting Action. However, I now have 2 or 3 copies of Action that I can’t read because of some lame-ass cross-over. I really do need to catch up and drop lots. It is getting silly