2009.04.24 hold on there:

A couple buddies of mine recently launched their awesome new website—Shelfbound—where they're currently talking mostly about comics (but eventually about books, music, and movies as well, I believe). On Friday of their first week, they posted a discussion about their personal histories relating to comics, which I felt compelled to comment on.

That post, coupled with the call I received from the comic shop I (used to) frequent—asking if I was actually going to come pick up my (7 months worth of) holds, or if he should put them back and delete my holds list— got me started thinking about my own comics history, such as it is.

At some point in the not too distant past, I was an absolute nut with an active holds list of more than 20 titles, and an average of over 33 books purchased per month. I thought it might be entertaining to air out the dirty laundry of my former addiction, by way of some lists comparing then versus now.

Going through my collection (at least, those books that actually made it up to comicbookdb.com before I stopped entering them), I came up with the following list of titles that, at one time or another, was a regular purchase. Mind you, these were not ALL on my list at the same time, but a LOT of them were.

The "long-time" list consists of books that I purchased (usually consecutively) for more than a year.
The "short-time" list consists of long-running titles that I picked up and dropped, or bought off-and-on, or which were longer-running mini-series.

Long-Time Collections
Amazing Spider-Girl
Amazing Spider-Man
Batman
Batman Confidential
Batman: Gotham Knights
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight
Batman (various mini-series)
Captain America
Captain Marvel
Catwoman
Daredevil
Detective Comics
Harley Quinn
Incredible Hulk
JLA
Marvel Knights Spider-Man
New X-Men (Morrison run + a few)
Peter Parker: Spider-Man
Powers
The Punisher
The Spectre
Spider-Girl
Spider-Man
Spider-Man (various mini-series)
Superman/Batman
Transmetropolitan
Ultimate Fantastic Four
Ultimate Spider-Man
Ultimate X-Men
The Ultimates (2002 & 2005)
Webspinners: Tales of Spider-Man
Wonder Woman
X-Statix (X-Force)
Short-Time collections
All-Star Batman & Robin
All-Star Superman
Army of Darkness
Dark Tower
Elektra
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man
Green Arrow (kevin smith run + a few)
Marvel Knights
The Pulse
Sensational Spider-Man
Spectacular Spider-Man
Spider-Woman
Superman (off and on)
U.S. War Machine

And finally, after a few years of increasingly sporadic trips to the comic shop, and the cancellation (Spider-Girl) or ruination (Spider-Man) of some favorite titles, I've whittled down my holds list to the following:

Current holds list
Batman
Daredevil
Detective Comics
Powers
Superman/Batman
Ultimate Spider-Man

So, from 30+ titles every month I'm down to 6 (well, five plus Powers, which is apparently not even close to monthly anymore). Depending on the quality of the last 7 months, I may yet drop Superman/Batman, and I was considering dropping Daredevil (though the guy in the store said it'd been pretty good of late, so i dunno… i may just selectively pick up arcs, if they look good).

Of course, I just saw on Diamond's site that Dynamite Ent. is coming out with a new Buck Rogers comic, which I have to at least get the first issue of; and the guy at the store told me there's a rumor my girl (Spider-Girl, that is) may be re-launched. So, I may be back up to 8 titles in the near future… but for now, at least, it's a little more reasonable.

- 11:54 pm :: permalink :: 4 comments
categories ::  Comics - Cool Links - Friends - Happy/Love - Pop Culture

4 Responses to “hold on there:”

Hunter Dixon said:

Good news Matt- Spider-Girl has returned as a digital comic: http://marvel.com/digitalcomics/titles/SPECTACULAR_SPIDER-GIRL.2009.1.

I was sitting here thinking about pull lists and the fact that (pre-X-statix) X-force would have been on mine and I remembered something.

My grandmother bought me a copy of X-force #1 in all of its Liefeld-drawn glory. There was a small comic book shop in Ottawa, IL- god knows how they stayed in business- but X-force (with the collectible trading card!) was kept in a cabinet behind glass. We had to ask permission to remove it. I added it to my "summer collection"; this was the suitcase full of comics I would take on trips because I couldn't leave my collection behind.

# April 25, 2009,

Paul said:

Don't forget about your other friend that writes for a comic book review site!

I know you're avoiding Amazing Spider-Man out of principle, but it has been fairly decent as of late.

# April 27, 2009,

m@ said:

Certainly not! In fact, I just added the Comic Addiction and Shelfbound both to our links list/dropdown menu.

But speaking of The Comic Addiction… have you guys talked about adding an RSS feed for your reviews? I pretty much do ALL my regular site reading through Google Reader nowadays.

# April 27, 2009,

Paul said:

We've reworked the site and hopefully you should be able to do so now. Go check out the new look.

# May 8, 2009,

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