🚀 go-pugleaf

The last time that I was on the net (meaning the past period, not yesterday)
we had just started discussing why people (specifically us in the net) read
comics.  If this conversation was exhaused back then, please bear with me and
allow me to put my two cents (well maybe a buck twenty-five with inflation) in.

I buy a few comics for collecting and their resale possibilities, but for the
most part I am buying comics that I want to READ and REREAD.  This occasionaly
means that I will end up having to buy some back issues of a comic that I
didn't start getting on my own.  This net cost me a small bundle on back issues
of the MASKED MAN and SWAMP THING.

What's my point?  That I read comics because I enjoy them (there I said it and
just ended my career in marketing).  The new ones are wonderful novels and
complete stories frequently better then I can find in modern books (for example
the great characterzation in JON SABLE, the futuristic world of AMERICAN FLAGG).
Sitting back and reading the latest GRIM JACK, or WHISPER gives me the same
type of enjoyment that I got from reading TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD or STILL LIFE
WITH WOODPECKER.  The comic book is becoming more and more of its own literary
medium.  It can offer you the insites into a persons mind like a book can as
well as give you some of the striking visualization of a movie.

I also read some comics as good old fashion mindless fluff.  With the state of
television today I can't unwind by turning on the boob tube after a long days
work of listening to a customer saying that the system is "broken" only to
discover that they didn't have the bloody thing plugged in.  TV frequently
can't entertain me for the same reason MARVEL frequently can't; it is too
pat, it is too predictable (when you get to the punch line of a sit com a full
two minutes before the character does you are either a genius or the show is
lame).  A comic like MEGATON MAN is a great way to unwind.  Not every thing
that I buy is something that I would be willing to show my father (I did show
him the first few issues of A LIFE FORCE and he asked to see the rest of
them!), but they are all things that I enjoy for one reason or another.

Because of this I won't support inferior comics just to have a complete set.
I also won't buy tie in comics that are poor just to know how a character is
<ahem> permanently changed (it wouldn't surpise me to see Uncle Ben come back
in a future issue of Spider-Man).

I don't want you to think that I take my comic books TOO seriously.  I don't
go to Geppies wearing my smoking jacket with a pipe in my hand looking like I
stepped out of a bad comedy of errors (right Guy?  right Eric?) but I do go
there with great anticipation that I am going to have my mind challenged,
perhaps provoked (the last WHISPER story in First Adventures), and hopefully
entertained.  It's rather nice that a $1.75 (or less) "kiddies" product can
provide those services for me.

If this topic hasn't been exhaused in the past, then I encourage others to
write about why they read comics.  It could be fun.


				Of course if anyone asks you why you collect
				comics there is always the fallback position
				of: "I have a comic that I bought for $1.00 just
				8 years ago and now it's worth $300!"

					OZ
				seismo!rlgvax!oz

The views of The Great And Powerful OZ does not reflect the views of the Federal
Sales Office, Computer Consoles Incorporated, or the United States of America.