The Culling

It's cyclical with me. Bingeing on stash ,then my economy crumbles , and the cracks in quality I didn't see when I had money to burn start coming to relief, said cracked titles then get abandoned midway , owned copies resold or given away, and regretting mistakes I can't take back or even re-sell - - - Kevin Smith's DD and Green Arrow, Loeb/Sale's Daredevil:Yellow, Miller's Batman/Spawn, Grant's JLA/WildCATs, Gaiman's 1602 and both Deaths (you likey?) Time to cull again, sad to say. Number of reasons, mostly personal. Chief being my current salary of 0 pesos a day. Second being space,buying anymore means I have to give up my bed to make room. Thirdly,geek thresholds runneth over - - - I have outgrown this craving for continuity when I was 13 , and my collecting dynamic has always favored creators over characters, so this feels like so much backslide to me. Of course, I'm bound to be back here a year from now,swayed by the brouhaha. Oh well. Fourth, my current salary of 0 pesos a day. Fifth, and probably contradictory to all reasons aforementioned, is the spate of #1s I aim to sample - - - Iron Fist (second favorite character since I was 7 and foreskinned) , Tranquility, New Universal and Crossing Midnight- - -and I don’t want to dip into my insurance money to do that.

But mostly it's aesthetic. Something about these books just isn't giving me the rise and hook I need to evoke devotion. Hype brought them to me and hype almost always is a come-on with no follow-through. Twenty or so years of collecting comics, of Onslaughts and Heroes Reborns and Secret Wars and Crisis On Infinte Earths and DC One Millions and . . . I still haven't learned. Of course, if the busking and the begging on the streets and the whoring yields some cashflow and the withdrawals nag, I might give some of these castoffs a go still - - -Stormwatch,perhaps? Might. Otherwise, I either tradewait , torrent or just move on to better shit.

Like food.

Action Comics and Superman Confidential: I had to ask : self, do you really give a bat's penis if the kid 's Kryptonian ? Obviously, I got my answer. Geoff I like. But Infinite Crisis hurt my head. Hit/miss. Then there's Cooke. Breaks my heart to let a Darwyn book go. Moreso when my gut tells me he catches fire two, three issues down. (And I don't even think I'll be up for his Spirit revamp this December ,which would be a damn shame) What sold me was rummaging through my boxes being struck that I don't have too many Superman books - - -just the Alan Moore one, the 50s comp ,the Hulk and Madman crossovers and this ,still the Superman take that takes. Reason being . . . I am not a fan of Superman. Not the movies, not the TV shows, not the cartoons, not the John Byrne revamp, certainly not Smallville. And I feel a bit silly for buying three monthlies of a character I am not a fan of. Or much like. I'm buying All Star Superman for Morrison/Quitely. I bought Up Up and Away for Busiek/Woods. And I keep the Busiek/Pacheco Superman for roughly the same reasons. Busiek/Pacheco. Also, Bizarro Swamp.

All New Atom: Gail on this was ecstatic with possibilities. And Byrne still has the give,artwise. But he's gone, the arc’s going around in circles , the first vivid wave of oddness is starting to leak out and Eddy Barrows’ art is an eyepain.

Batman: Son of Batman was hot, fast, pulp brilliance. One more issue with Grant - - - the Joker story with John van Fleet (mismo!) - - - then the baton gets passed to Ostrander and Mandrake. I don’t care for Ostrander. I care less for Mandrake. I sit this one out for the four issues they're on. Then I see you all again in May where hopefully my career and economy will have risen from the grave like a dead Marvel superhero.

Creeper: Crap.

Deathblow: Prime ingredients. Master chef - - -Azzarello (so not a slouch) - - - cooking it up. Gorgeous plating - - - D'Anda on 11. You bite and it tastes . . . um, OK, even good. Also tastes not just exactly how you expected it to taste . . .but just like any well-made mercenary superhero comic you've read. New dish that tastes like comfort food. Hate when that happens. Goodbye.

Detective Comics: Runs on ostensibly old-fashioned, utterly conventional tracks. Total status quo. The stand-alone format justifies the rotating artists. But only makes it prone to really , really bad lapses in art. Dini can do his Busiek Lite shtick asleep and sometimes it feels as if he is. Not bad. Not much. In boom times, this already qualifies as fanboy indulgence. Now, it's like lighting cigarettes with your legal tender. Also , like Wolverine, Batman's starting to bore me, too.

Gen 13: Again, Gail. I'm torn, really. Gen 13 has always been a guilty pleasure. But that's the point. They've never been anything but. Not even in Ellis's hands. Intriguing, yes. But my stack of Gen 13s gathering dust needs no adding to. I'm with Ms. Simone for Tranquility. This? Sorry.

JLA: Identity Crisis went over my head. Better Than Bendis is not much to hang on to as a quality. But so far, that's all that Meltzer is to me. Better Than Bendis. Only slightly at that. And here ,not even. A little levity, please, Mr. New York Times Bestselling Author. My personal JLA nadir was Grant's 1,000,000. This feels even more of a slog than that. I'll never know, though. Good.

Stormwatch PHD: Played a bit like Wisdom. Except Wisdom was weirder, naughtier , snarkier, hipper and Brit. It's either Wisdom or this. I like Mahnke and I wish him and Gage well. Tradewait possibility - - - for the art.

Teen Titans: Never got into this. Not even when Perez was on it. Judas Contract? Sleeping pill. Can’t get into this still, despite quality signifiers saying I probably should, despite overextended Geoff being much better here. Feel the cartoon, though. Feel the cartoon massive.

Wetworks: Not for Carey. Not even for Whilce. Sorry.

WildCATs: Grant phones it in, feels like. Could be wrong but then, it's taking Jim Lee forever to draw this. Why'd it still come out looking rushed? A mystery for the ages.