Tuesday 29 January 2008

Comics Ennui

I can't be the only one feeling this - a sense of "well, what's the point" about comics. The range of current titles I'm actually interested in shrinks ever more - DC's been dead to me since the Legion rereboot and all the palaver they were doing in their core universe at the time with Green Lantern, Infinite Crisis, et al, and while Marvel's never quite reached the same stage of "I can't be bothered with this any more", they're achieving the same sort of thing through salami-slicing - OMD/BND being the latest straw to snap completely (unlike a lot of people, when I said "I won't be buying any more Spider-titles", I meant exactly that. I'm stubborn that way, which is why I haven't even looked at the Legion rereboot three years later - I knew when I said it that "I won't read or buy any new Legion comics until they reverse this" almost certainly meant in practice "I'll never read or buy any new Legion comics ever again". So?), and the X-titles are straining even if they're not quite at that point yet. Even the miniseries, like Agents of Atlas, Livewires and Scorpion: Poison Tomorrow (the last technically not a mini, but...), which gave something comics-related to look forward to even if they were guaranteed to sell like crap are drying up.

Sure, there's the odd Nova even now, but right now I'm "properly" following about six titles - Nova (mid-table ongoing), Annihilation Conquest (mini), Incredible Herc (ongoing I expect to be free-falling pretty soon), Cable/Deadpool (cancelled), New Warriors (sinking), X-Men First Class (low-selling). I may or may not go back to X-Factor post-Messiah Complex, and the books I'm "casually" following - Thor, Cap, Marvel Adventures Avengers, Terror, Inc, IDW Transformers - I'm more likely to go to "not following" than "properly following".

I feel like I haven't moved away from comics, they've moved away from me...

[PS: If anyone was reading this, I'm sure they'd be thinking "what about 'independent' comics? Fact is, I read comics for superheroes - I watch TV, read books, etc for other mediums.

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