COMICS: Holy Crap

I just topped the $70 mark at the comic store. Mother of pearl! That needs to not happen again any time soon. Over half of that is two TPBs; James Kochalka's American Elf, collecting the daily strips from his website for the last, like, 87 years -- seriously, it's a fat book, and priced to match ($29.95) -- and Hard Time, which many people have been recommending to me for a while now (and it's quite a bargain -- six issues for $9.95).

But then I got nine other comic books. Criminy! A year ago, I didn't buy nine titles total. Nine in one week is pretty damn excessive. For me, anyway. I bet I couldn't even name them all without looking. Let's try:

Powers
She-Hulk
Demo (because I didn't pick it up last week)
Captain America
Fables
Challengers of the Unknown
Ex Machina
Secret Wars

Um... I'm stalling out. That's eight, one left. Damn. I can tell you I didn't get Punisher; I'm still waiting for that awful, never-ending current story arc to wrap up (I think this was its last issue).

JESUS! This is just disgraceful. I'm spending money on titles I can't even remember two minutes after looking at 'em. I need to cut back on my comics purchases, and cut back hard. Okay, I can't stand the suspense, I'm gonna go look.

It was The Authority: More Kev. Well, at least that's the last of the four issue series. That's one off my list. And I was going to drop Captain America after this one, if I still didn't like Robert Kirkman's writing, but then Dorian told me that this is Kirkman's last issue anyway. "Oh good, I can drop it!" I said. "Ed Brubaker's writing it next," he said. "Crap," I said. Guess I'm not dropping it yet.

Man, looking at the first eight -- if I had to force myself to cut half of them, it'd be a tough choice. Okay, Cap would be pretty easy. Probably Challengers would be next (I'm guessing it'd read better as a TPB, anyway), then Demo (which I like, but don't absolutely love the way some bloggers seem to), and probably Secret Wars would be the last, because one Bendis title should be enough for any one week.

I've got a lot of comic reading to do tonight. Plus about 20 hours of Farscape on tape. Not to mention the TiVo backlog. And I still haven't finished the new Stephen King, or even America (The Book). I'm poor and friendless, I guess is my point. Bummer.

Coming Attractions

This is more a note to myself than for any of you, but here's what I'm planning on talking about in the days to come.

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Inspired by Rick and his month-long tribute to his favorite horror movies, I'm going to re-watch some of the all-time worst horror movies. And frankly, the fear I'm experiencing thinking of having to watch House of 1,000 Corpses again is far more acute than any good horror movie could ever generate. Or House of the Dead, which, as I may have recently mentioned, is not just the worst movie ever, it's the worst anything ever. Hell, I may as well stick with the theme and watch House on Haunted Hill (the remake), House II: The Second Story, and, I don't know, Road House, just to make it easier to pick titles.

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More TV. Shocka! Specifically Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal.

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All the damn books I've bought recently. Stephen King's The Dark Tower, The Daily Show's America (The Book), John Moore's comic fantasy Heroics for Beginners, McSweeney's Thrilling Tales collection (I've had that one for a while, but just recently started reading it)... it would be nice if I actually finished one of these books. Then I could write about it.

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That applies to comic TPBs, too. I still haven't finished the giant Bone collection. In fact (brace yourself), I still haven't finished Blankets. I read the first dozen pages or so, set it aside for a moment, and then never picked it up again. I need to get on that.

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And, oh... everything.