What's A Nerd To Do?

Compared to what I have seen, my standing order at my local comic store is relatively small. Most weeks I don’t get more than two or three titles. This is mainly due to financial constraints and not by choice, as I am sure that if I was capable I would have a healthy stack of comics waiting for me each week. My girlfriend, Sarah, believes that two or three comics a week is more than enough to keep a young man going, but my recent ventures into DC have made it more and more difficult to keep the size of my order at a reasonable level.

A few months ago there were only a few titles that were a must have in my mind. At the top of my list were Uncanny X-Men (a no brainer) and X-Men Legacy, cause there just isn’t enough room in one title to contain the ever growing number of mutants in the Marvel Universe. From there, my order was filled with the many tie-ins and whatever event took my fancy at the time. Not long ago there was Siege, then Second Coming and now Chaos War.

My reactions are mixed whenever I see the cover of a new ongoing title in Previews. At first there is excitement, “Uncanny X-Force?!! With Fantomex?!! Sweet!” But then reality hits you in the face and you realise that you have to pay for that new title, “Damn. Can’t I just squeeze it in? It’s only one title after all.” But it’s not just one title. It’s another comic every month for the foreseeable future. And how often will Marvel give us just the one new title. It seems that recently that Marvel has become the Hydra of the comic book world. When one title ends three more grow forth to take its place.

And then there are the one-shots. Those damned one-shots, that promise us oh so much, but oh so often leave us feeling disappointed. Not just in the comic, but in ourselves as well, for being duped into indulging in a seemingly harmless little $3.99 tie-in. A comic book cover promises us many things. Mystery, thrilling artwork and epic battles between characters that we soon find out don’t even appear beyond the tempting gloss of that cover.

So what are we to do?

Tomorrow I will walk into my local haunt. As Giuseppe fumbles around in a drawer for my order I will see three more titles teasing me from a shelf, taunting me, daring me to pick them up, flick through its pages and forego my afternoon slurpee in place of its papery goodness. And five out of ten times it will win and I will put it in the pile with the others, nestled in between my Carnage #1 and X-Men #4, and grin up at me knowing that it had gotten the better of me.

This is our curse. And our blessing. For every now and then you get an absolute gem, a comic that when you have finished reading it makes you think, “Gee, I’m glad I picked that one up.” And you read it again, and again.

Adventures in the DC Universe!

A couple of months ago I decided to broaden my horizons and wander into the scarily expansive world of DC comics. I knew that it would be no small feat to jump on at this point, what with the end of the Blackest Night event and the beginning of Brightest Day. So I did some background reading. Ok, I did a lot of background reading.

With some help over at DC Comics Database I thought I was set. I knew the characters (what I thought were the main ones, anyway). I knew where they came from. I knew their powers. Armed with this knowledge I launched myself into the DC Universe. I thought I would start off with something simple. Ease my way into it, you know? So I raided the local library and found a copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Wow! If I thought I knew nothing about DC before, I knew even less after reading the first few pages of COIE. But I soldiered on, regardless. When I encountered someone I didn’t know, I looked them up. This happened every few pages. Slowly I waded through to the end and emerged victorious. I had conquered one of DC’s biggest events and was wiser for it. Not only did i understand what happened but I wanted more, much more.

So I moved forward. A little research uncovered my next target, Infinite Crisis. This time I laid my hard earned dollars on the line and went right out and bought a copy. And I’m thankful that I did. After reading Infinite Crisis I was sold. Pandora’s Box was opened and I haven’t looked back since. I fell in love with Martian Manhunter and his bulbous head. His powers and history struck a chord in me that I have not felt since I was introduced to Nightcrawler.

Not only that but I understood completely what was going on. Admittedly I did need to freshen up on a few things, Blue Beetle and Spectre in particular, but the story flowed so smoothly from the pages that I swept through it in just a few days (I’m a slow reader). Since then I have read Infinite Crisis again and again and I see many more reads in the future.

So, where too from there? The answer was simple in my mind – Final Crisis. Filled with confidence from my enjoyment of Infinite Crisis (as well as a little influence from its shiny cover) I bought Final Crisis and raced home. As I read through my new purchase a single phrase kept popping into my head: What the hell?

What the hell was going on here? Compared to Final Crisis, COIE read like an ABC of the DC world. A is for Anti-Monitor. B is for Batman. Every page looked to me like a page of Ulysses, written in Latin, with the words smudged across the paper by a baby’s jam-covered fingers. Questions filled my brain at every turn as I found myself taking notes in an attempt to make sense of what I was seeing and that only seemed to make things worse.

So is Darkseid dead or what?

What was that place Superman went to?

Are there ‘Old Gods”?

Anti-Life Equation?

And what’s more my first love of the DC Universe, Martian Manhunter, is slaughtered in his first scene. I felt like someone had placed a nice bug juicy watermelon in front of me, then picked it up and smashed me over the head with it.

What had I gotten myself into? When I finally finished I slipped it back into its bag, sealed it off (tightly) and put it away. I thought I was getting somewhere. I thought I was making progress. Maybe I got ahead of myself and the big head that resulted in my somewhat easy comprehension of Infinite Crisis simply exploded under the pressure of Darseid’s influence. Or maybe I just didn’t ‘ease myself into it’ as much as I intended to. Either way I had learned my lesson that the knowledge of the DC Universe that I craved needed to be earned not taken. It would take much more than a bit of reading to open up those doors. But I am determined. Tomorrow I will try again with Batman. The day after, I’ll give Superman a go. And hopefully after a while I will finally understand and I will allow myself to dig my copy out and give Final Crisis another go.