Brill Building: Sometimes You Have to Grow Up

Sometimes You Have to Grow Up

This week marks the first time in a long time where absolutely no books that shipped were of interest of me and I have no reason to go to the comic book shop. I like Mike and Dorian’s company and there are probably a few back issues I could get, but there’s no reason for me to part with my all-too-scarce-these-days cash on any new product. This will become a scenario that will become more and more common for I am now in the waning days of my “every week a trip to the comic book store” phase.

In August I’ll be moving to San Francisco and while the school I’ll be attending is about three miles from a well regarded comic book store I’ll take the change as a chance to quit the habitual side of comic book fandom. I’ve been finding that the “waiting for Wednesday” approach to comics less and less satisfying for a few reasons. One is the fact that I’m turned off by two big companies controlling the Direct Market that aren’t that interested in people my age as readers. A lot of Marvel and DC books depend on the reader to be already interested in the events of continuities and universes. For those who missed the intoxication of those story devices in their younger years because they were too busy reading far superior books like Pitt (hey, we all make mistakes when we’re younger) the current crops of books don’t offer much. DC can both enrage and/or delight men in their 30’s and 40’s but to everybody else it’s just too obscure to be interesting. Marvel seems to have done a bit of a better job of creating books that could possibly catch the attention of younger fans with Runaways, Livewires and the earlier issues of Ultimate Spider-Man (Sean T. Collins once described the latter as an American shonen manga, a fair assessment) but they are still a company that’s far too conservative to make any big splash with anyone outside their core audience. DC’s Vertigo line has success in their back catalog of Sandman and Preacher but I can’t think of any books they are currently publishing that can live up to those titles, although I think The Losers, one of the books I have phased out of my purchasing routines, has the potential to.

It is in fact another Vertigo title I have dropped that made me realize another reason why my trips to comic book stores should become less frequent. I was once very interested in Y the Last Man. Brian K. Vaughan comes up with a brilliant first issue with a high concept and ran with it. Soon enough I was waiting every month to see what was the latest with Yorrick, 355 and the all-female world they have to make their way in. I read every issue the day I bought them, often as the first comic I would read of the day. When I had to drop the book for financial reasons I agonized over the choice. It’s been four or five months since I’ve made the decision and I harbor no regret at all. I remember now that I was interested in the book as pulp-y serialized fiction, but Vaughan never really did have much to say about gender roles or sexual politics beyond the very ham-fisted. It was more about “how did he and his monkey survive?” than anything else and after a while I see that the price both financially and in terms of time are too much for me to get caught up in the continuing developments of it or most other comics. Reading the same titles month-in and month-out and repeating the phrases “it was a decent read” and “a nice way to kill ten minutes” over and over in my head became too punishing. I realize that I need to get more out of comics than that with what I’m already putting into the medium.

I still dig a lot of serialized genre fiction, but the thrills can be found more in television than in comics. Lost is a superior endeavor to 99% of the monthly comic out there and its getting pumped into every home in America for free. Why should I travel to a comic book store and pay four or five dollars for comics to find out the answer to pressing questions like “what’s Batman/Wolverine/Irving Forbush up to this month” when I can find a better thrill and sense of fun sitting in my living room?

Titles like Or Else or The Fixer remind me why I read comics after all these years. There are creators that remind me of the things that only comics can do and what potential the medium has outside of the dictates of a dying business. Reading those books I don’t feel like I’m in some stupid routine that I have to convince myself to stick with. I don’t make statements like “a decent read” but start to see the world around me different and perhaps evolve into a better person. It’s the whole reason I go to a comic book store in the first place.

I do plan to keep going to comic book stores. I love them (the good ones anyway). There are some superhero titles I like and others forthcoming that I look forward to. A lot of manga titles present unpretentious genre tales that are accessible to most people. It doesn’t always have to be about seeing the world around me differently; I just don’t ever want to lose sight of that in favor of turning comics into some kind of comfort food.

Not to mention I already promised James Sime I’d visit his store when I moved north. If you break a promise to that man…bad things happen.

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