Alternate Cover: Buying comics

As reader of superhero comics, you sometimes have to make difficult decisions about what you buy. It’s hard to be a comic reader without becoming a comic collector. You become stuck into your habits, buying every issue of a series regardless of your interest in it. One way or another, the time will come when you realise you’re not enjoying a series at all, and this is where the problems start.

The industry is littered with dissatisfied readers who bay for the removal of certain writers or artists from the titles they read. Unfortunately, the only real democracy in the process is an economic one. Criticism – good or bad – can only go so far. The sales figures are what really matter. The logic is simple – if you don’t like a series, stop buying it – but the reality is far more complicated.

For example, after 150 enjoyable issues of a series, does it make sense to throw in the towel just because one writer isn’t giving you the kind of read you want? One day, that writer’s going to be gone, and the potentially good stories that follow are going to be continuous with the bad ones. If you don’t read them, you could miss something important!

It’s a strange mentality that drives comic geeks to this level of distraction. The characterisation of them – of us – as embittered nerds full of impotent rage, locked in abusive relationships with the comics they love to hate, and hate to love, is sadly true of more readers than ever.

However, it’s a dependency that can be broken – and I’ve found the secret.

Back issues.

If you collect one of the industry’s big books – Batman, Superman, Amazing Spider-Man – and you can feel your blood boiling with each new issue, then why not give it up for a few months, and spend the money on following the series in the other direction - concentrate on working your way through the back catalogue instead. In many cases, you’re literally looking at decades of previously-published stories, all tinged with the rosy glow of hindsight. It’s hard to get angry at writers and editors for their poor story decisions when you already know that 10 years down the line it actually didn’t bring the universe crashing down around it – and as an added bonus, you already know which issues are worth skipping for whatever reason!

Best of all, if you decide you want to fill in the gap you left from when you stopped buying to when the series became interesting again, you can pick up more recent back-issues at rock-bottom prices. If not for the Internet, you could safely move back your buying habits by about 6 months and save an absolute killing on the price of new comics. As it is, you need a staggering amount of willpower to stay out of ALL the conversations online, so perhaps this is a move that can only apply to certain titles.

In fact, with the price of new comics creeping ever-upwards, forsaking new comics entirely is actually looking like a pretty enticing prospect even though I AM enjoying the current stories. The only problem I can think of at the moment, though? Buying up back-issues would mean living through the 90s again. I’m not sure that’s a price worth paying.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.