For the last couple of years, I’ve been visiting my local comic book store once a week and picking up a few books. I started doing this around the same time DC’s Rebirth started, in 2016. I was originally looking at it as an experiment to see if I could get back into buying and reading regular superhero comics again, after a fairly long break. Well, I found a few books I liked and I stuck with it for quite a while. A few things happened recently that got me thinking about whether or not I wanted to stick with it though. Some changes in creative teams on the books and stuff like that.
I thought about jumping off the “weekly comic store visit” bandwagon in January 2017, and wrote a lengthy blog post about that, but I decided to keep going to the local store, and I stuck with most of the books I was reading. Well, I’ve now somehow managed to talk myself into switching back to getting my comics from Westfield Comics again. I placed an order with them today, for comics coming out in August and September. Maybe switching to Westfield will cause me to spend more money on comics, or maybe it’ll be less money. (Placing just one order per month, and seeing the total for the month all at once, might lead me to manage my comic book budget a little better.)
My plan is to stick with Westfield until the end of the year, then reevaluate. I might then give up entirely on monthly books again, or switch to just getting stuff digitally from Comixology, or go back to the local store. I don’t know. The thing I need to watch out for is my tendency to build up a ridiculous backlog. I think I should set a rule that if the pile of unread comics gets taller than me again, I need to stop buying them altogether.
2 thoughts on “buying comic books is complicated”