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  1. Well, I hope this draws some comments as it is pretty apparent that many of us do love us some funny books. Especially the kind with athletic folk in bizarre attire kicking ass on the bad guys... I've been at this awhile now, the first comics that I can remember reading were owned by an older kid down the street, there were a couple of Justice Leagues (I recall the first JLA/JSA team-up, and I've been a JSA fan ever since), an issue featuring Kanjar Ro, whom I liked because he was a little guy getting the upper hand on the super heroes who were obviously a lot bigger and stronger), a couple of issues of Mystery in Space with Adam Strange that I thought was the coolest thing imaginable and a lone issue of either Daredevil or Spider-Man featuring both characters. Don't remember much about it except that Daredevil had that ridiculous yellow costume. The first comic I bought was Strange Tales 140, which I picked up because this Dormammu dude was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, cooler than Dr. Strange even... So yeah, that makes it over fifty years as a reader and almost fifty years as a paying fan, so my love affair with the graphic novels is pretty deep. That brings us up to today, all the stuff that I screamed about and demanded as a fan has come about. We have diversity among characters to the point that people don't snicker and refer to Sam Wilson as "Captain Token". We have strong female characters with even Power Girl making a statement about why she shows off her boobies. We have a marketplace where guys like my pal Kurt Busiek can create something rare and fine like Astro City and have it be a success. A marketplace where books like Starman and Sandman Mystery Theatre can have long, successful runs. As a kid in the 1970s if you had told me about what Mike Mignola, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and Caitlin R. Kiernan would accomplish in the medium I wouldn't have believed you. Yeah, comics finally became everything that we fans decades ago dreamed of as possibilities, sure, there's still lots of misogynistic, boneheaded bullshit being published, but at least there are people around now who will call such stuff out for it is and won't accept "that's just what the marketplace wants" as an answer. So in most ways, comics have never been better positioned to be truly great, so why am I bored to tears with the current product as a whole? I haven't given up on the field, no, not at all, in fact, I probably buy more than I did ten years ago. However, most of my purchases are for stuff that came out five to fifteen years ago. There's current stuff I'll look at and make a mental note to get the trade, but when the trade comes out, I look again and say "nah", maybe the next one. I can say part of it is the infernal re-boots, Back in the Silver Age writers were stuck with a world they'd never made and couldn't just change at the drop of a hat because it didn't suit them. They had move the pieces around on the board that had been set up and this limitation led to some real creative work being done. What started as DC's "Imaginary Stories" grew up to be Marvel's "Ultimates". But the rank and file had to find ways to tell stories within the existing framework and that led to a lot of really well thought-out concepts. Have I just finally burned out on the field? God knows that I'm not the target market and haven't been for some time, but there's always been a few things going on to keep my interest up. Now when I look at previews the main thing I'm checking out is what's coming in the Masterworks series or in trades from other publishers. Economics also plays a part, of course. I can't get too thrilled about laying out $3.99 for a regular issue of something that's going to take a six-issue arc to tell a story ($23.94) and be released as a trade for $19.95 that I can get for 40% off at In-Stock Trades. (I have to wonder how a market like that sustains itself, are fans really that impatient (stupid)?) Sure, not everything gets collected in hardcover or trade format, but by and large most of the stuff that I like does, (even the oddball shit like BPRD, which I'm fanatical about). So is this just a phase of ennui on my part, or is the industry as a whole pretty flat right now? Thoughts?
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