That's it. I quit collecting comics!

Cafe Society
1

That’s right! I’m sticking to trades unless I’m rooting through quarter bins. No more weekly comics for me.

Juist as soon as Y the Last Man finishes up, and the first four titles of Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, and Ellis’ Iron Man, Planetary and the JLA: Classified arc – I’m going the trade route exclusively.

I was on my way to doing this a couple years before, when Transmetropolitan wrapped up. But Marvel and DC did their crossover, and Frank Miller did DK2, and I slowly got suckered back in.

No more.

It’s cheaper. Especially if you buy them discounted.

Trades can be stored on shelves and take up less space than long/short boxes.

If the monthly comics are any good they’ll be collected in trades anyway.

I keep accidentally buying multiples monthlys and comics shops act like they have problems if you want to take them back for refunds or exchange.

Who’s with me?

2

Oh, you bought the re-covered Wonder Woman issue last week too, huh?

3

… no comment…

WHO’S WITH ME?

4

Can I have your old comics, then? :smiley:

5

CandidGamera. I gave away / tossed out boxes of them when I moved from Ohio this summer, and handed my nephew about a hundred or so a couple weeks ago.

I will winnow down my collection some more… those dog-eared mid-70s Marvels my uncle gave when I was to me have GOT to go. (I don’t even like MARVEL TWO IN ONE, MARVEL TEAM UP, THE DEFENDERS or Pre Miller DAREDEVIL.)

So yeah, you got dibs.

6

Sweet! I got dibs!

More seriously - I’ve pondered the transition to Trade Paperbackery once or twice - my problem with it is ultimately twofold. One, I’m impatient. Two, some stuff doesn’t make it to trades.

7

I will miss talking about storylines as they unfold, but I’ll be better off financially if I kick the serial habit. I’m so proud of myself for walking away from buying TOP TEN 2 and all the DC Crisis stuff this summer!

Some stuff doesn’t get collected. I’m still pissed DC never collected the entirety of Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s HITMAN – I’m still piecing that run together. Overwhelmingly, though, most the writers and big storylines I follow do have their stuff collected in trades.

F’rinstance, I never read all of Batman’s No Man’s Land and now I can see what all the fuss was about by buying all the volumes used, pretty cheap, with no missed parts, compiled in order.

8

I don’t read comics anymore, but I always wondered why people don’t just wait a little to get their comics from the discount bin. Is there some advantage to getting the latest issues right when they come out?

9

Not all comics get discounted. In fact, short term demand for some titles tends to go UP in value after about two or three months, where owners tack on an extra dollar or three. So if you’re reading a popular title and get them immediately, you’re reading them at cover or slight discount price, you’re up-to-date on the storylines and don’t risk, say missing part five of a twelve part storyline.

Lots of comics are soap operas for nerds.

Quarter bins have comics that are not very popular, damaged and tend to be more than five years old. But you can get some pretty good finds.

10

I’m with you. I made the switch a few years ago and couldn’t be happier.

I got rid of thousands of old comics in a garage sale (I kept the ones that were truly special to me like my Giffen JLI’s). My wife and I are expecting our second child, and the comics were in the baby-to-be’s room.

I was kinda blue as I had always wanted to keep them my whole life. They had no financial value. I READ my comics. Later in life, after I shook off the speculator disease, if someone would tell me a comic was “worth something”, I’d tear the corner of the cover and tell them it still was!

Heck, I still have the very first GI Joe Comic I ever bought, which sent me down this hard life of fanboyism.

But happily, I sold them to a woman who bought them for her mentally handicapped daughter. I was happy they were going to a good home and would provide joy to someone who would appreicate them as they were intended! (I do hope I got all of the porn out of the back of the long boxes…that used to be my best hiding spot!)

The time comes for most of us to either make the transition to TPBs, or cut it all together.

Let me tell you something Askia, that you need to know. It is not going to be easy to hear this.

But the first six months to a year are going to be hard on you. Not just because you have to shake the habit of going to the store for your weekly fix. A fix you have no doubt been hitting since childhood.

But because there will be a huge gap in publication.

You have read MONTHS beyond the TPB collection period. It will be months before they publish the TPB for the issues you HAVE read. And then another 6-8 months to publish the TPB for new material.

No new comics for up to a year is hard!

Don’t backslide, because that only pushes back the inevitable.

But the new lifestyle is worthwhile. You get better stories and because you are less dependant, you will become less tolerant of crap.

Eventually you may, as I have, pare down your TPB buying to two or three key books.

Good luck and know that fanboyism is a disease. It can be treated.

There are others like you. And know that we love you.

11

The good stuff never hits the discount bin. Unlike DVDs, comics are nominally ‘collectible’ - so the things people will want to buy will often go UP at least slightly in price.

12

middleman. I hear ya, I believe ya. Like I said, I almost pulled this off once – I’m more determined than ever to do it successfully. Not even All-Star Superman and All-Star Batman and all this other stuff will be bought monthly. I have to wait for the paperback trades.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tempted to by Alan Moore’s hardback 49ers – except that I’m waiting for the paperback version.

13

That’s a new wrinkle they are adding to the TPB market. The hardback. It pushes you back even further.

I’ve quit weekly comics twice.

Once altogether for about 3 years.

The other time, about 3-4 years ago, I successfully made the TPB transition.

I found it easier to make the change after the end of a series I ENJOYED.

The first time, I waited for Kingdom Come to end. The second time, I wanted to see the last issue of Midnight Nation.

14

I’m thining about doing this, too. $3 a comic, ouch! I order from an on-line pull list (dreamland comics) and they have pretty good savings. My comics are like 98% damage free. I only collect like maybe 6 titles now (New Avengers, Superman/Batman, Ultimate Spiderman, The Ultimates, Planetary, Y the Last Man).

I’m thinking about going the ebay route to find cheap titles that I normally wouldn’t pull. But, I can’t stand damaged comics.

15

I’ve cut back to primarily TPBs and discounted back issues in recent years. I still buy occasional singles, usually to give low-selling books I love a show of support (such as Sleeper and X-Force/X-Statix). Particularly with DC, if the singles don’t sell well enough, they won’t even bother coming out with TPBs, so occasionally I’ve felt like “voting with my wallet.” I also got caught up in the post-Countdown hype, and started buying crap like OMAC Project before realizing it was glacially-paced and not going anywhere. I like Villains United, though, and I can sooner justify following miniseries as singles rather than popular ongoing titles. But the most popular ongoing titles rarely interest me anyway.

But now I buy discounted TPBs (often from Amazon.com) and discounted back issues from eBay, local shops, and the occasional convention, and go to those local shops more like once a month instead of once a week. I am patient and cheap, and those two qualities lead me to get great deals. I also trade a lot with people on various message boards, and I’m not above picking stuff up that I don’t necessarily want, but I think it can be used for good trade fodder later (while allowing me to come out ahead in the end). I’m also trying to trade my collections of singles for the corresponding TPBs, which is harder to do than it sounds. Too many people have the same plan these days, but occasionally I get lucky. A couple years back, I traded my 12 issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths for the brand-new Crisis TPB AND twenty bucks.

16

Askia, I’m with you. I’ve gone trade-only for the last couple of years, with a couple of minor exceptions, and am happier (and slightly welathier) for it. The only singles I buy these days are discounted back issues of books that are unlikely ever to be collected. I know by no longer going even monthly to the shop I’m overlooking material that I would probably enjoy, but I figure if I don’t know about it I can’t be sad I’m missing it.

17

I quit reading comics in 1994, started up in 2001 and promptly quite in 2002. I have tons of comics that I nobody’s interested in buying and I’m not really interested in just giving away. <sigh> Maybe in a few hundred years an ancestor of mine can sell them for a mint. I got a pretty good price for the first 20 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man though.

I stopped reading in 2001 because I got sick of all the crossover storylines. It was the one where Bruce Wayne was accused of murdering a woman and to follow the story I had to purchase a bunch of comics I didn’t normally purchase. To top it all off it inturrupted the Nightwing storyline and just soured me to all comics.

Marc

18

I quit in '95, I think. I collected off and on as a kid. When I was young it was pretty haphazard. I’d just get whatever looked interesting on the magazine rack at the local 7-11, with very occasional trips to a comic store, as the nearest ones were far enough away to be outside my normal walking distance. But through the last couple years of high school and my freshman year of college I had regular titles I’d get every month, and I had a pull-list at a local store.

But, there was a point during my sophomore year where I was really broke in a college student type way. I mean, my tuition was covered and I had a meal plan, but I had very little pocket money. When I didn’t even have enough cash to go out and get a snack when I wanted, comics were a luxury I couldn’t afford, so I didn’t get any for a couple of months. When I was finally a little more flush, I could’ve afforded to resume the titles I had been buying, but going back and getting three months worth to catch up would still have been too expensive. But I didn’t want to resume my titles with a gap in the run either, so I just quit instead. Being broke is one way to stop buying comics, though I don’t recommend it.

I haven’t even bothered with TPBs for the most part either. I think I’ve gotten less than half a dozen in the last decade.

19

I quit waaaaaaay back in the 90’s when Gaiman ended Sandman and I had gotten fed up with Cerebus. As a side effect, I never did finish collecting Bone, but this ended up for the best because I later bought the super-all-in-one-volume bound set for a much better price than all those individual issues would have been.

20

This was largely what brought on my decision to quit as well. I was REALLY enjoying Rucka’s Detective comics run. It was one of my favorite books in a long time.

But all of a sudden, I had to buy lesser titles to keep reading it.

Soured me as well.