Comics / Spotlight

Why I Won’t Quit Comics (Again)

By Josh Dean
June 30, 2011 - 21:24

A Man Without Socks

I don’t think my story is unique. If you have been reading comics as long as I have (about 28 years if you don’t count the years my parents would read comics to me as a tike) then you have probably put them on hiatus at some point. Perhaps you moved to a country that only sold comics about boys with cowlicks exploring strange lands or deformed Vikings. Perhaps you ran into hard times and had to say a fond farewell to your favorite hobby to avoid eating ramen noodles every day. Or maybe, like me, you wanted to actually go on a date.


Picture this: it is your senior year of high school. You have hung onto your hobby of comic collecting throughout your academic career and, shockingly, it has not been met with approval. When you were a kid, in elementary school, you could read comics out in the open, although your teachers chided you. As you moved into middle school, you began to realize you had to hide your habits. Like a drug addiction or a bizarre fetish, by the time high school hit you were a closeted comic book reader. Nowadays, being into comics is probably not a social death sentence (I would like to think that is true, what with the rise of nerd culture) but in 1995, being dark and edgy was the thing. “Funny books” just didn’t fit the bill. If you were one of those poor souls who did fly their nerd flag proudly, peer pressure made sure any person interested in dating you would be laughed out of a room.

The situation listed above was my experience, at least.

A life-long Marvel Zombie, I was taught to read out of those old Marvel Tales Reprints of the first Spider-Man stories. The first comic I remember owning was Marvel Tales #140 (cover dated June of 1982). I still have it somewhere in my collection, I hope (I have been pretty ruthless in the culling lately). Walt Simonson’s Thor run was highly influential to my young life. Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr.’s Uncanny X-Men rocked my world. Sure, I dug Batman and Superman but I was part of the Merry Marvel Marching Society to the core. All the way through high school, I still recall sitting down with a Captain America comic and eating a greasy pizza once a month. And those weren’t even good Cap comics!

As the end of my high school career approached, it occurred to me that I could completely reinvent myself in college. People would not have known the old nerdy me. I would be dynamic and new!

But I had lived through the early 90s boom of Image artists. I have all the Liefield X-Force run and the Jim Lee X-Men. I own WildCATs and Codename: Strykeforce and a million other crappy comics that came out at that time. Knightfall was winding down and the world of the mega-crossover reigned supreme. What caused me to finally bite the bullet and throw out my favorite hobby as part of my college reinvention?

The Age of Apocalypse.

I think I see Nightwing in there?

Simply put, I really liked that event. Marvel announced that all the X-books were to be cancelled, replaced with new number 1 issues. The storyline involved a villain going back in time and altering history so that the Marvel universe was a whole new ball game (sound familiar?).  Warren Ellis, John Ostrander, Andy Kubert, Chris Bachalo and dozens more created a unique “what if?” scenario where they could demonstrate that it wasn’t the claws that made Wolverine cool or that the Beast was a few bad decisions away from being a total jerk. It worked as a standalone story and also helped define the sprawling x-cast of the time through contrast with their alternative selves.

And then it all went back to normal. And normal just seemed so boring at that point! They were beginning to set up Onslaught (another mega-crossover with big implications) as soon as they got back and I found myself just not caring. Some tool was running around in Batman’s costume, Wolverine had bone claws, Superman had been replaced with four chumps. It was a time of ambitious storytelling, but the execution was lacking. I didn’t know stuff like Robinson’s Starman or Morrison’s JLA were right around the corner.

Therefore, I quit. I walked away. I thought, “Let’s all go out on the high note that was Age of Apocalypse.”

Flash forward (pun intended) to 2001. I have made it through college even more frustrated with dating than I was in high school…and, I just wasn’t having much fun anymore. Everyday, I walked past a New England Comics shop in my neighborhood and realized “Hey, people in there are my age.”

I did lots of internet research before I eased back into the hobby. I remembered all the crap I had waded through before I left. I found Geoff John’s Flash trade “Born to Run” and the rest if history. I was hooked again and have been ever since.

Now, I am more a DC fan than Marvel. Marvel has some good stuff at the fringes (Herc is great, check it out) but the X-Men leave me cold now and the Avengers aren’t my cup of tea. When DC recently announced their line-wide reboot, I was floored. Not so much in the “How Dare They?” department as “Why Are They Making It So Tempting to Quit?”

He will rip your face off

I seriously considered doing just that. There was a kind of poetic symmetry to rejoining comics with the Flash and exiting comics with a Flash event. Recently, some evergreen titles have fallen off my pull list (like Batman and Action). Secret Six, my favorite title under any publisher right now, appears to be headed to the graveyard. As much as I like titles such as X-Factor and Green Lantern, I would not miss them terribly were they gone.

But then I read about a new Aquaman and Justice League from Johns, a new Action run from Morrison and (despite my disappointment over the Reign of Doomsday crapfest marring his otherwise excellent Lex Luthor storyline) Cornell on Stormwatch. There is a new Suicide Squad title on the way. That is a concept long overdue (but I hate they are killing Secret Six for it). So, there were concepts in new comics to keep me around awhile longer. But that isn’t why I am staying…

I am not ashamed to read comics anymore. While nerd culture is all the rage online and with the media, it is still not very mainstream where I live here in the south. However, comics are a part of my identity. My latest friendships were forged through comic-based bonding. Even my romantic horizons have expanded due to comics. This hobby- this passion- of mine has actually enriched my life rather than hindered it. It brings me happiness and, just perhaps, I am getting too old to care what others may think of my life.

If you are on the fence or even eyeing the fence, just keep in mind that our little corner of the media world is filled with a pretty awesome variety of titles to choose from. Tired of super-heroes? Read a war comic or a slice of life indie or one of the 8,000 horror titles out there. There are comics about sci-fi, comedy, crime, licensed stories from other media, religious topics, biographies…you name it, someone is publishing it out there. And the web is loaded with great short form comics as well. As with all things, the content doesn’t matter so much as whether or not comics still bring you happiness. As long as they help more than they hurt, keep those long boxes filled. I will see you on Wednesday.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12