Super-Acquisitions

[Permanus]

Which makes me wonder when and where you read your comics, because for me reading a comic is a way to relax with something undemanding, maybe with a coffee on a weekend afternoon if I have some spare time, and if I'm not in the mood for the newspaper or a book.

Or do you sit down with a stack of comics determined to get through them all because they need to be read?

I've noticed that when I'm reading a comic with an artist whose work I enjoy, it takes much longer because I spend so much time looking at the pictures. I usually buy a stack of new comics every week and try to save the best for last, something I've done since kidhood, so I do tend to sit down with them determined to get through them all, so that I can get to the best ones. A bit childish, I know.

[Klar Ken T5477]

I do the same thing. If I hit a comic con, and come back with a stack of silver age 'readers' I spread them all out on the floor and pick the ones I want to read first and then restack them in order of preferred readability.

[Super Monkey]

Which makes me wonder when and where you read your comics, because for me reading a comic is a way to relax with something undemanding, maybe with a coffee on a weekend afternoon if I have some spare time, and if I'm not in the mood for the newspaper or a book.

I am just like you, I read comics to relax, and only when the mood hits me. That's why it takes me months to read through a Showcase book, since I read one story at a time, maybe once a day, sometimes once a week, or even just 3 times a month, somtimes I may go through a few months without picking it up, if I am too busy.

What's the rush?

It's just pure joy when I am doing it.

Oh, and by the time I am done, I can read it again, as if it was the 1st time

[Continental Op]

>>
ADVENTURE COMICS # 306 (The Substitute Legion debuts!), 314 (Superboy is mind-controlled by Hitler!)<<

How'd Hitler do that? Guessing not with an Earth-1 Spear of Destiny (though that was a 70's-era revelation anyway)...

What was the Brainiac story about (and what made it so sexist)?

.

Well, it's complicated... basically, this evil scientist type from the Legion's era travels back in time to recruit the three most evil villains in history: Hitler, Emperor Nero, and John Dillinger. (Yes, John Dillinger came in third. That makes no sense to me at all. I mean, Dillinger was evil, yes, and he killed people, but does a guy who robbed banks really rank up there with genocidal dictators?)

Then he uses a mind-transfer device to project their minds into the bodies of Superboy, Mon-El and Ultra Boy so they can enslave the universe with their new super-powers. This guy is, of course, SURPRISED when the three worst villains in history (as HE described them) turn on him and don't want to share the universe with him...

Everything turns out okay in the end, since the villains are easily tricked into turning against themselves and knocking each other out so that the Legion can reverse the process and send them back to their own times.


The Brainiac story is also a bit complicated.... well, Brainiac recruits a sort of outer-space juvenile delinquent who has a history of seducing women throughout the galaxy, because he wants a pawn to use against Supergirl... he uses this handsome but obnoxious kid as the template for an android which he sends to break Supergirl's heart. Soon she is smitten with the guy, in both her Supergirl and Linda Danvers identities, because he treats them both like dirt.

For example, he orders (not asks) Linda to go on a date with him, and then pay for their meal herself:

"Shut up about the check! You know you'd pay TRIPLE that to go out with ME! Now you can walk YOURSELF home! I'll call you TOMORROW-- if you're LUCKY!"

Or how about this classic bit of romantic dialogue:

"How can I get through to you, Linda-- anything to do with you DISGUSTS me!"

Linda / Supergirl is anguished by this shabby treatment but is also turned on by it. She thinks things like "I've fallen for him like a ton of bricks" and "every second I'm away from him is agony!"

The story makes it clear that in no way is  he is using any kind of super-power or technology to make her feel this way; it is just his "charm" and "personality" attracting her so. Which means that the writer (Cary Bates) seems to think that women secretly love to be insulted, humiliated and verbally abused. Hope that Cary never married.

[Continental Op]

DC just released a TPB of the Justice Society that reprints most of the All-Star Comics run of the 70's plus DC SPeical #29 (their origin), which I plan on buying (though my local shop seems either unaware of this TPB or doesn't have it...).

I just bought this one. It is nice to look at but, as a purist, I am disappointed with the way they chose to reprint the issues. To me, a reprint should be exactly that... a RE-printing of what was printed before, as close to the original material as possible. In the trade paperback, they chopped out bits of the original stories, like all of the credit boxes, footnoted captions and next-issue blurbs. I know it seems excessively picky, but that removes part of the experience of revisiting the old comics.

[Continental Op]

Which makes me wonder when and where you read your comics, because for me reading a comic is a way to relax with something undemanding, maybe with a coffee on a weekend afternoon if I have some spare time, and if I'm not in the mood for the newspaper or a book.

Or do you sit down with a stack of comics determined to get through them all because they need to be read?

As a youngster, I generally read  a comic book lying stomach-down on the bed or, usually, the floor. Sometimes I would bring them outside but I learned not to do this as it was too easy for them to get wet, lost or stolen. Sometimes I would lay the comic down on the cushions of our couch and read it while kneeling on the floor in front of it... now it occurs to me that this must have looked somewhat idolatrous, as if I was praying to the shrine of the Comic Gods...

Often I would read a new comic in the back seat of our car, as my parents drove back home from the store where it was bought. When I did manage to buy a large stack of comics from Redig's Books, a bookstore that had a big selection (most groceries and drugstores didn't), my parents would never let me read them all at once. They would give me one or two at a time, sort of as "treats" when I got bored. My father would hide them in a closet and although I figured out where they were, they were too high to safely reach, so I had to wait. I quickly learned to place the comics that I was most eager to read at the top of the stack when I handed them over to him, so that I would get them first... but he seemed to figure this out and eventually he would mix them up at random.

Today I tend to read them leaning over a flat surface like a kitchen table or my writing desk. The bed or floor is too uncomfortable for my geezerous adult self...

[MatterEaterLad]

I'd usually read a new comic in my mother's car on the way home and then in a chair, then it went into the pile of my previous comics and those from about 1962-1965 that my oldest brother gave to me (well, abandoned to me)...I'd go through this pile a lot, usually on Saturday mornings before breakfast.

[TELLE]

Which makes me wonder when and where you read your comics, because for me reading a comic is a way to relax with something undemanding, maybe with a coffee on a weekend afternoon if I have some spare time, and if I'm not in the mood for the newspaper or a book.

Or do you sit down with a stack of comics determined to get through them all because they need to be read?

When I was a kid, buying between 2-10 comics books on a weekly or monthly basis, I would read the comics in order of least preference, saving the best for last.  Often with a beverage (hot chocolate during those Canadian winter months, Tahiti Treat/Cream Soda /Kool-Aid in the heat of summer).  Usually at a table or sitting up on my bed.  Rereading could take place anywhere and with less ritual.

When I was in university and getting lots of minicomics in the mail, I loved to sit on the porch of my apartment or (later) in the backyard of my house with a beer or glass of wine and open up the weird envelopes full of zines and comics.

Now that I buy only one or 2 graphic novels or classic collections per month, along with the occasional tiny horde of ancient back issues, all bets are off.

Now, my comics reading takes all forms.  Sometimes I need booze to get through a comic (like a modern superhero comic) and sometimes it just adds to the experience (Jimmy Olsen, Doug Allen's Steven, Bushmiller's Nancy).  Surprisingly some comics are more enjoyable sober!  Some comics need lots of concentration!  Some need hardly any.   Sometimes I read comics on the toilet, sometimes over breakfast, sometimes in semi-darkness, sometimes on the net.  Sometimes I curl them up and fold back the covers, other times I lay them out like relics, poring over them like Wimbledon Green with a magnifying glass.  Sometimes I laugh out loud, sharing the text with whoever's around.  Sometimes I throw the things across the room in disgust or toss them in the trash.