Adventures of Superman #444, 480, 488, 489

I have a “junk pile” of comics. These are, mostly, made up of comics that I owned before I began “collecting” comics; a motley assortment of random drug-store purchases and hand-me-downs from who-knows-where. They used to sit in the bottom drawer of the desk in my old room in my parents house. When I began collecting, these comics were kept separate, from what I was buying and bagging in protective sleeves. If you asked me about these comics when I was a teenager, I’d probably say they were comics in either very poor condition (a few are missing their covers outright) or that they were so corny that I would be embarrassed to include them in my “real” collection. (This junk pile included, among other things: a half dozen random Marvel Tales, Marvel’s three-issue A-Team mini-series, and about twenty semi-random issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic.) And yet these comics stuck around, because my collecting-mentality couldn’t bear to discard even the comics I had essentially already discarded. When my wife and I bought our house three years ago, my mother unceremoniously handed over four or five boxes of my old crap that she had been wanting to get rid of, and among those boxes was my “junk pile”. I weeded through those comics and ended up pulling out a few dozen issues that, as an adult, I had a nostalgic attachment to. I now have a “not-really-junk pile” and a “junkier pile”; the whereabouts of the latter is unknown, either donated to some Goodwill store, or buried in a basement closet, while the “not really junk pile” sits, unbagged, on a shelf; part of my comic collection but, still, not really part of my comic collection.

I mention all this for two reasons: to explain why I own issue 34 of DC Comics Presents and the why it is not counted as one of the comics in the 5,600+ that are part of this project. This comic is from 1981, featuring a team-up between Superman, Captain Marvel, and the rest of the Marvel family, as they battle Mr. Mxyzptlk , Mr. Mind, and King Kull. Among other things, it also included Supes and Marvel being transported to an alternate dimension populated by talking bunnies, one of whom was, of course, Bunny Marvel. (A serendipitous bonus: the “next issue” blurb promised a Superman/Man-Bat team up! Man, now I need to track that sucker down!)  It’s all played straight—even Marvel Bunny—and clearly meant for a young audience. But I got to tell you: I enjoyed reading this issue more than I did these four Adventures of Superman comics.

Action Comics 800, 900

I like round numbers. In my review of Action Comics #600 I talked about the importance of milestone issues, how impressive and difficult it is for a title to reach 100 or 200 consecutive issues, to say nothing of 600. It had taken 50 years to reach that milestone, and another 15 years to reach #800. A lot had happened in the 15 years since then. In those intervening years, Superman had died and lived to tell the tale, had gotten married, and had much of the Silver Age trappings restored to his mythology. For the comicbook industry, it had seen the end of newsstand sales and the implosion of the direct market, with sales mere fractions of what it had been less than a generation before. And for me, I grew up, went to college, became an adult, and quit comics.

Quitting comics was mostly, though not entirely, a financial decision. I had lost my job in the Spring of ’02 and the job I found afterwards was paid significantly less money. Suddenly my $40 a week habit was a luxury I could no longer afford.  But I had also been culling the number of titles I was collecting throughout 2002. If my inventory database is to believed, I had reduced my comicbook buying by over 40% over the course of 2002. As these last few reviews can attest, there was a growing dissatisfaction with the stories being told --or at least in the stories being told in the comics I read. As I reach the titles I was collecting up until I stopped, I’m sure I’ll start to poke at the why’s and wherefore’s of this.  But for the moment I’m content to simply acknowledge that whatever satisfaction I was getting from comics was no longer enough for me.

But the truth is I’ve never quit comics completely. Yes, the weekly buying is gone, but I’m still picking up the occasional trade paperback, still browsing Wikipedia and various comicbook web sites to keep at least somewhat informed of the latest twists and turns. And every once and a while something happens that gets me into a comicbook store to buy an actual single issue. In 2003, that something was the 800^th issue of Action Comics. 

Action Comics, #601

So here’s a hypothetical for you: You publish the longest running comicbook in America. It features one of the most popular/recognizable fictional characters of the 20^th Century. You’re about to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of both the comic and the character, and you want to do something to commemorate the occasion, beyond a single “special anniversary” issue. What would you do?

If your answer is: “I’d turn the comicbook into a weekly anthology featuring second- and third- (and occasionally fourth-) tired characters and put the previous main attraction in a two-page back-up,” well, you were obviously working at DC Comics in 1988.

Action Comics #600

As I mentioned in my first Action Comics post, I was more of a Marvel Zombie than a DC . . . um . . .what are DC fans called? Well, whatever they were, it wasn’t me. Just didn’t look interesting to my 12 year-old-brain. And yet, with the impeccable logic of a 12 year old whose head was spinning with the heady potential of collecting, the idea of having a comic that I bought today become valuable in the future had me willing to buy anything that had the potential to be worth money down the road. Such a topsy-turvy view of economics and investment strategy is why I majored in English and not Accounting.