How many squares do you have checked in your StashMyComics.com pull list? I’ll tell you how many. Too many, that’s how many. Week in and week out I see folks at my comic shop buy a stack of comics that looks heavier than a house. So I ask them: “What have you read that’s good lately?”. Assuming they will impart some sort of holy comics knowledge due to their mass consumption of them. Invariably the answer is something like this: “… uhm… well… I don’t know… I can’t think of anything right now.”
Let me get this straight, you just bought one million* comic books and you can’t think of a single one that was awesome?! Not even one?!
If you recognize yourself in this scenario, if you read a ton of comic books and can’t think of which ones are mind-blowing reading experiences, call 911 because you are almost literally bleeding money.
Comic books cost money and because of this they should be awesome. If they were free they wouldn’t have to be awesome. I’d be writing articles about how ecstatic I am that they simply exist. But they are not free oh heck no! So unless you hate money, you’re going to want to constantly rethink which comics you buy. To help you do so, I am throwing down a challenge. The Geek on a Budget pull list challenge.
Step 1: Take out all the books you bought in the last 4 weeks. All of them. Now stack them up on a coffee table so you can look at them.
Step 2: Take out a piece of paper and answer yes, no or maybe to the following questions
Is the coffee table showing any signs of structural stress under the enormous weight of the comics which are stacked on it?
Would you be able to lift the entire stack of comics without incurring any lower back injuries to yourself?
Are there any of these books which you have not yet read and probably won’t read?
Are you eating Mr. Noodles and Kraft Dinner in order to prevent fainting and starvation because you spend more money on comics than you do on proper nutrition?
If you answered yes or maybe to any of the above questions, YOU ARE READING TOO MANY DAMN COMIC BOOKS! Here is the solution to your very serious problem. STOP READING SO MANY DAMN COMICS!
“But, I don’t know how?” you might say. Well that means you are an addict. So here is Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12 step program re-written just for you, the comics addict. Read these out loud to yourself.
1: I admit I am powerless over comics–that my life has become unmanageable.
2: I have come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity and no this power is not Galactus, Uatu the Watcher or the Anti-Monitor.
3: I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of god as I understand him even if I understand him to be Geoff Johns, Brian Michael Bendis, Wolverine or Batman.
4: I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of my long box and realize that this is getting ridiculous and out of hand. Please help me before the folks who live on the floor below are crushed by a mountain of Deadpool books and Flashpoint tie-ins.
5: I admit to god (my LCS owner) and to myself the exact nature of my wrongs.
6: I am entirely ready to have my LCS owner remove all these defects from my pull list.
7: I humbly asked my LCS owner to remove my shortcomings, ie. those 47 X-Men books and 17 Bat-titles that I don’t read anyway.
8: I made a list of all persons I have harmed, namely my wife/girlfriend/significant other/pet/college professor/boss/credit card company, and I am willing to make amends to them all.
9: I will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would mean buying more damn comic books.
10: I will continuously take stock of my pull list and will promptly slash from it any and all crappy books written by crappy writers and drawn by crappy artists.
11: I will seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with god, as I understand him (diamond previews), praying only for knowledge of books that are awesome and the power to buy only books that are awesome.
12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, I will try to carry this message to other comic book addicts, and to not buy so many damn comic books.
There, you are cured. Now go enjoy some comics.
*estimated figure
Best Geek on a Budget. Ever.
I am Niko Kaylor, and i am addicted to comics books…But i am damn proud of it
Awesome Geek on a Budget.
While I don’t have any of the problems listed I still feel that I need to cut back. It would be fine if I could honestly say that every issue I was reading was awesome, but they are often just alright.
AA uses first names only in these circles. What with the whole “anonymous thing. 😉
