“When money gets tight, comics are the first thing to go.” That is true. Especially since comics went up from seventy-five cents back in the eighties. I remember seeing one month the price was a dollar and I nearly freaked the fuck out. Remember, I was a kid who was saving up his allowance to buy only a handful of books. It has been a long while (probably nearly a decade, if not longer) since I “purchased” comic books. I did a one month trial of Marvel Unlimited and it was cool. Now, I think I want to get back into comics again.

I wish I could say that it was spurned by my watch of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but it has been brewing for a period of time. Since my brother died in 2021, I lost a lot of my zeal for things that I used to love. Playing video games. Collecting comics. Watching movies. Rewatching old movies became a thing. Re-reading old books. Even, on occasion, playing old games. I haven’t touched anything new in a while.

Then I read an article online that stated people watch movies or shows they know for comfort. Life is chaotic. It changes from one moment to the next. You’re having a good time, then the next thing you know – you’re laid off. Or much worse than that, someone passes.

Getting Back into Comics

The way I see my life right now, it’s an existence of limbo. There are a few things going on right now which forces me to wait. There is nothing I can do. Nothing that I can do to make it move faster. Sitting still isn’t my strong suit. This leads me to sit around. Depressed. Mind constantly racing. Watching the same reaction videos on YouTube, but not really watching it. If that makes sense.

Over the course of the last week, something clicked inside of me. Like that switch inside of Ned’s head that made him realize who was standing before him. The decision to pour myself into these blogs, podcasts, and develop the YouTube channel. There is nothing else left for me to do. Take this nervous, anxious energy and put it to some use. Give myself an actual workday. Since no one wants to hire a fifty-year-old to do a menial part-time job. This prompted me to pick up things that were old. Things that I hadn’t touched in a while. Some of which, almost, felt foreign to me.

Recently, I started seeing a trend on TikTok about comic bros wanting to boycott Marvel and DC. Then the more I looked at these various videos, I couldn’t find a reason. Like a real reason. The writing has gone bad. They’re canceling good titles. Things like that. Nothing. All I found was “woke” used in it. These guys use that word so often, it has lost all meaning. I mean, normally it means some minority, female, probably gay (or at least bisexual) is leading the title.

So I knew nothing changed. It was just these guys being lame.

But where do I start?

That was the question I to put to Adam, when we recorded an upcoming episode of The Lazy Geeks podcast. When we would normally discuss this, that would be our hindrance. Which titles do we start with? Do we have to go back to issue one? What about these new titles?

Then it hit me: how did I do it when I was a kid? I saw Spider-Man on the cover and I grabbed it. Why? Because that is the character I saw from that sixties cartoon. It played every afternoon when I got home from school. Then they aired Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends on Saturday morning. Peter Parker was sharing a place with Iceman and Firestorm. I loved it.

This was my jam.

Then I grabbed a Batman comic because I used to watch that sixties live-action series with Adam West. Wonder Woman and Superman because of those TV shows. The Incredible Hulk from that Bill Bixby series. I started grabbing random issues and read them. Some issues were better than others, but that is how I became a collector. That’s how I collected The Transformers and G.I. Joe comics before the cartoon series came out. That is how I will approach this new phase. Just start reading and then decide. Do I continue with it or not? Is it good enough for me to go for back issues?

Do I go physical or digital?

That is the age old question. When I was a kid, the owner of a now non-existent comic book store introduced me to bags and boards. That was the same time I learned that older issues will be worth some money. I had some great old Spider-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Fantastic Four, and other issues. However, someone threw them away and I lost them. I had the first issue of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man which had the Tarantula on the cover. One of the images they had in the movie.

Since the comic bubble burst in the nineties, there was no real need to collect them. Unless you just want to. I’ll be honest, in my fifties, I don’t have room for that kind of thing. However, I thought about splitting the difference. Read monthly and back issues, digitally, and buy trades or omnibus of particular runs or storylines.

As I’ve gotten older, I am more into the aesthetic. Seeing books neatly on a shelf. I’m the kind of guy that prefers Apple TV versus Roku because of the interface. Roku seems more haphazardly put together than Apple.

This is what I think is a happy medium. Used some of my childhood experiences to get back into comics, but use some of my older knowledge to do it better. As this has been going on, I have started watching movies that I haven’t seen before. Listening to music outside of my nostalgia range. Dug out my old video games and dusted them off.

That is a lot for me. Let’s see where this goes. I’ll keep you up on my progress, if you care.