Has anything ever made you drop out of comics (and what brought you back)?

[Simon Garth]

Reading Shellhead's post on the "Worst mini ever..." thread rang many bells for me - same events pushed him toward DC, while they pushed my out of comics altogether.

I was primarily a Marvel Zombie in my early years, but by mid/late 80s I was reading a fair number of First/Eclipse/other indie titles, and some of the better DC stuff.

But by the late 80s (ish), it really all went sour for me, and I lost interest from a combination of:

• Secret Wars 2 - the first was was awful, but the 2nd one was a war crime. I'm not a fanatical collector in the way that some on here are - collecting things to have a set of all the issues with pink title lettering, or whatever - but I am a fairly obsessive completist - if I start a series, it takes me a lot to stop*. But even I couldn't stomach buying the end of that series - to this day, I don't know (or care) how it ended
• Crisis on Infinite Earth - I'd got caught up in the hype and read this dreadful padded mishmash with increasing disbelief
• Started reading more DC comics in the wake of COIE (Flash, Batman, Man of Steel, Green Lantern, JLA, Teen Titans), only to find that they were all just as bad as I remembered them from previous reading (apart from Batman: Year One)
• Moore finished on Swamp Thing
• Watchmen 11 - the uber-stupid ending had me literally throwing the book across the room in disgust
• Marvel's terrible post SW2 slump - Stern's awful on Avengers, Claremont out of ideas on X-Men, Byrne crashing and..erm. Byrning on F4
• Most of the non-major titles had got into a rut as well: Nexus had totally lost its way, Cerebus was very dull, Mage book 1 had finished and no sign of book 2, Marvelman was pretty much over, V for Vendetta had finished

All this lot came together at approximately the same time, and I just said - "sod it" and stopped.

Every now and then I'd browse my local comic shop and look on bemused at what was happening - Avengers / X-men etc all back to #1?? I even lapsed and had a spate of recollecting X-Men (Australia/Fall of Mutants era), for a couple of months, buying up about 20 back issues, only to discover that most (possibly all) of them were dire.

Eventually, a couple of years ago, I started browsing TPBs in Borders, and got interested again... led to Newsarama and then to here... and finally, bought Infinite Crisis #1, my first comic for about 10-15 years.

As it turned out IC was another turkey, that I nearly didn't bother to finish, but I'm hooked again. Not buying much that would count as classic, apart from Powers, which I've loved and collected all the back issues.

So - my blathering over. Has anything ever "forced" you away from comics - and if it did, what brought you back again?

[Simon Garth]

* (forgot to add the postnote in the previous post). This series completion even extended to absolute garbage like the John Norman Gor books - these had well and truly jumped the shark by (let's be charitable) about the 6th book. I think I stopped around book 22....

[benday-dot]

I quit buying comics perhaps a little before you indicated saying "goodbye to all that." Mid-80's in my case. I was entering university at the time, and I must say comics couldn't compete with Proust, Borges, Carver, Chekhov, Bowles and all the other greats I won't further bore anybody with. In other words literature trumped comics in my newly academic mind at the time. Comics, had been with me for about 15 years at that point and they all started to seem a little the same, impressing me with nothing more than their penchant for one upmanship in terms of levels of grit and supposed realism. The ennui lasted for about another 15 years, and I only broke my hiatus not with a return to anything new (that would come a little later), but with a nostalgic eye cast back to the silver and early bronze ages of yore. What attracted me to comics as a wee lad had brought back to them all over again, with the important difference being that the second time around I had Kirby, like Virgil conducting Dante through Paradise, to acompany me on the voyage "home."

The first time around I was a bit too young to appreciate Kirby, and regarded him as passe, or primitive, now I believe I get him as well as the next fan, and he has truly captained me back on a wonderful and varied trip to silver and bronze age glory... he's brought me to Ditko, Toth, Adams, Wood and the panoply of DC 60's absurdity (the connection here being more wistful than factual).

As far as newer comics go I first found Chris Ware's dazzling brilliance while visiting the local comic shop, then the old lure coming from the wall of newly minted Marvels, followed by that of the DCs, ushered me back to some of the finer and "old familiar" mainstream titles put out today (All-Star Supes, Daredevil, Captain America, and Eternals I am finding not so bad)... Thanks for telling me your story Simon.

[Shellhead]

I already mentioned in another thread my various reasons for dropping Marvel in the 80's, several of which are the same as Simon Garth's. But for the life of me, I can't remember why I dropped DC too in the early 90's. It was probably one bad crossover too many. I kept buying Sandman until the end, but otherwise I was done by late '92 or early '93 with comics in general.

What brought me back?

Top Ten brought me back to comics.

A preview of JLA/Avengers brought me back to the Big Two.


But I'm down to buying just one Marvel comic again. This time, I was driven off by another pushy EiC. Last time it was Shooter, this time it's Quesada. Like Shooter, Quesada has a strong sense of what he wants Marvel to publish, and he is pushing that on the writers and recruiting new writers who will do it his way. So I have been driven off from Marvel again by the following:

1. Decompressed storytelling
2. Boring poster covers, and worse yet, those Civil War covers with 50% less artwork
3. A severe overdose of Wolverine
4. Major heroes being written far out of character to serve short-term story requirements. Specifically, Iron Man, Captain America, and Mr. Fantastic
5. Too many Superman rip-offs
6. The careless destruction of my favorite team of heroes, the Avengers
7. The absence of Thor, soon to be replaced with an ill-conceived riff on Smallville
8. The racism of Reggie Hudlin
9. The lack of *current* continuity between Marvel titles
10. Too many missed deadlines, with no apparent pressure on either writers or artists

While I was very unhappy with Infinite Crisis and all the tie-ins and disruptions to the regular monthly titles, 52 has been great and some of the OYL issues have been excellent. So DC is getting most of my comic money these days.

[glue]

As far as monthly purchases I'm pretty much in a constant leave-again-return-again cycle. Alot of times it's just financial, but the last time I left was INFINITE CRISIS. I collected all the minis leading up to it, but then just kinda walked away before it started. The idea of rebooting everything and then being hit with 52 didn't interest me at all. Granted, that was just a DC event, but it kinda ruined the whole thing for me.

As for what brought me back, that would be boredom and alot of relaunches/new series. There wasn't really one book in particular, and honestly if it wasn't for relaunches I'd be reading two current books (ASTONISHING X-MEN and CAPTAIN AMERICA). My DC pulls are all habit now, as none realy wow me. I'm actually enjoying Marvel books because they're all so new to me and ESSENTIAL allows me tons more to read than SHOWCASE.

[Roquefort Raider]

I quit comics when Jean Grey was brought back to life. That event just killed my willing suspension of disbelief. Because of the hiatus that followed, I missed "the Dark knight returns" and "Watchmen" when they first came out. I slowly came back thanks to Moore's swamp thing.

The second time I quit pamphlets is when I moved back to Canada, too far away from a comic shop to be bothered. Since then I only read trades and whatever I can get my greedy paws on on EBay.

(I miss my American comic shop... it was really indie-friendly).

[PanzerMega]

I started reading Marvel comics when GIJOE came out, but really got into superheroes with the Erik Larsen Amazing Spider-Man issues. Was pretty hardcore into both Marvel and DC for a bunch of years after that.

Then Zero Hour got hyped to no end, and in addition to the series itself, I also shelled out for almost all of the million tie-in comics. Well, Zero Hour sucked so bad and seemed like such a waste of money that I dropped comics the day the last issue (#0) came out.

From 20 books a month to none, just like that. That was the real zero hour.

About 5 years later a friend lent me pretty much the whole run of X-Men comics that I'd missed, and even though I thought they sucked, my curiosity was peaked and I went to a comic store for the first time in years. Grant Morrison's JLA and Kingdom Come got me hooked again.

[Kan-Man]

By the early 80s, collecting had become an obsession with me. It was aided by my best friend at the time who was equally obsessed. We'd go to conventions, shops, yard sales, you name it. It was around this time that subscription services became popular and I probably wound up buying titles I never would have before because it was so easy to do so. At first, it was great. There was no better feeling than arriving home from school and seeing that cinder block sized package waiting for me on the front step.

It was also around this time that I realized I was more interested in filling gaps in my collection than actually reading them. I'd come home from a convention with 50 or 60 new books and spent more time cataloguing them than reading them.

But I remember the final straw vividly. I was sitting with a fresh stack of new releases, reading them one by one, and at the conclusion of a particular issue I thought to myself, "that could never happen." It was the first time in over 12 years of collecting that that ever bothered me before. I quit cold turkey. Another contributing factor was that comics were not socially acceptable when I was collecting. And I really wanted to meet girls. And I really didn't want to run into any more of them with a copy of Defenders 82 in my hands.

About 15 years later I was working with a woman whose fiancee was an inker for DC. She would give me a bunch of his comps. This was the late 90s and it didn't appear I was missing much.

A few years after that, I discovered I was working with some people who were still really into the scene. I enjoyed sharing stories with them and began to feel pangs of nostalgia. They started recommending some essential titles that I had missed. I stopped collecting before Dark Knight, Watchmen, Crisis, etc. It was a bit odd to them since these were the very titles that got them collecting in the first place.

I'm still not collecting comics. I read the occassional trade and I enjoy following what's going on with DC and Marvel but I could never bring myself to pay $2 or $3 for a new issue.

The biggest kick for me is discovering this forum. Sure, it's fun to read about what Batman is up to. But nothing beats reading an ongoing thread debating the merits of Irv Novick vs Dick Dillin. It's become my favorite nostalgic outlet.

Well, I passed rambling a few exits back, so I think I'll stop here.

[moonlight_night78]

I quit buying comics about 2 years ago. When I first started collecting around the end of '88 (around age 10), it was very sporadic. The closest comic shop was a 30-minute drive, so it was only when my mom and I was in town, it would be a special treat. At the time, I never heard of COIE or Secret Wars, so I was buying old issues of Justice League. I had comics when I was younger, but they were long gone, so those are the first comics I started gettting when I started seriously collecting. Fast forward 15 years later, through thousands of comics, comics shops closing and driving all around Louisiana, I had about 90% of all DC comics from 1980-on and decent runs of the major Marvel titles (Avengers, Fantastic Four, Capt. America, Spider-Man, etc.) But my favorites by far were Justice League and Avengers.

So why did I quit...

By 2003, my collectng of Marvel was basically down to Thunderbolts and Avengers, but at DC, I was getting almost every ongoing superhero title. But then they had to go and mess things up with Avengers Disassembled and Identity Crisis/Infinite Crisis. Kill off Hawkeye and turn Thunderbolts into a Fight Club book, bye-bye Marvel. DC was worst... I had quit once before (around Zero Hour, killing off Ice was such a big mistake that even the writer Mark Waid regrets it, then Carlin and Jurgens decimates the JSA n Zero Hour), but came back for Morrison's JLA. Then DC came out with Identity Crisis/Identity Crisis and that was a wrap.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind death in comics, but the massive killing off of characters from both companies and crappy writing and followups (Civil War and 52) guarantee that I won't be coming back any time soon...

[Graham Vingoe]

I've said before that I've never quit completely at any time but I've had interludes, for want of a better term. The most recent is 1998-99. I'd started going out with my soon to be wife and didn't have the confidence to tell her that I was a 33 year old who read comics (Only about 3 friends of mine in 20 years have read comics yet alone collected them, so it is quite a rarity in my neck of the woods), so I took the easy option and stopped buying them. This lasted a year until we moved in together, and my collection came with me. The sight of 5000 or so comics is not one that is easy to disguise so I told her! That opened the door and I've collected them again ever since. Nowaday's it's a bit more erratic than before. I get about 8 titles regularly, mostly Marvel- just dropped Supergirl and the LOSH and and stick with just 52 from DC. Trades are as and when I'm interested enough in them to buy otherwise I just get them via our library.

[clayholio]

I haven't ever completely stopped, but I tapered off very, very heavily around 1997-2000. I also stopped drawing at that point, so my mind just wasn't into comics then. Plus I was trying to wrap up my degree at college, and that took up a lot of my time. I couldn't point at one book or event that made me drop out, but once Groo the Wanderer stopped going monthly, I didn't have that one guaranteed hook to get me into my LCS every couple of months or so.

[Cactusakic]

I started collecting in the late 80's. My standing order/pull list from then until the mid 90's was around 5-10 titles per month.
Then when everything went bugs#!t in the mid 90's with all the new #1's every week and the variant/gatefold/chromium covers, etc, I stopped collecting everything with the exceptions of Spawn and Daredevil.
That was it for me until around 2001 when I started getting pulled back in again by things like Vertigo's output, Kev Smith's DD and Green Arrow runs, the Ultimate line and so on.
Now my monthly pull list is up to over 120 titles and growing every month. However, lately I have been re-assessing what titles I TRULY enjoy and I plan on dropping several over the coming months.
I don't believe I will ever drop out of comics again the way I did in the mid-90's, at least not as long as there are titles like The Walking Dead, Invincible, Fell, Fear Agent, Daredevil, Ultimates, Wasteland, Y: The Last Man, Runaways, 100 Bullets and Exterminators around.

[Hintermann]

I used to be an avid comic collector as a kid in India in the 60s and by 1968 had a huge Silver Age collection of over 5000 comics. But a nasty auntie of mine 'accidentally' sold off the entire collection with scrap paper while I was away on holiday. I became very upset and disilluisioned and stopped collecting for the next 17 years. In 1985 I settled in the UK and restarted my Silver Age comic collection and it is now almost back to where I had started, albeit at a considerably higher cost and effort.

[Simon Garth]

I used to be an avid comic collector as a kid in India in the 60s and by 1968 had a huge Silver Age collection of over 5000 comics. But a nasty auntie of mine 'accidentally' sold off the entire collection with scrap paper while I was away on holiday. I became very upset and disilluisioned and stopped collecting for the next 17 years. In 1985 I settled in the UK and restarted my Silver Age comic collection and it is now almost back to where I had started, albeit at a considerably higher cost and effort.

It's amazing the number of adults who "accidentally" get rid of comics or throw them out because "you'd already read it, so I didn't think you'd want it anymore" :rolleyes:

[Hombre]

A severe overdose of Wolverine

Major heroes being written far out of character to serve short-term story requirements. Specifically, Iron Man, Captain America, and Mr. Fantastic

The careless destruction of my favorite team of heroes, the Avengers

I can certainly relate. But really you could say that of any number of heroes, not least of which T'Challa, Ororo and the X-people in general.

I think, especially with respect to the situation regarding Iron Man & Co., you have creators that have notions that they want to put into their work, and these notions trump the characters themselves, that they're supposed to stand for something.

In respect of the Wolverine situation, I don't think it's really that he's all over the place, but that he himself is also not the person he could be. When he was confirmed as joining the Avenger, and I still gave Bendis the benefit of the doubt, I was actually intrigued because he represented a chance to bring an interesting dynamic to the proceedings.

When I think of Logan, I always think of how Claremont has slowly elaborated on his complex background and his own moral dilemmas, and I usually refer to this little moment from Uncanny X-Men #152 as particularly indicative of his potential:

- Ororo... no!
- Stand aside Wolverine!
- And watch you destroy yourself? Not flamin' likely! Anyone can kill, Princess. It's easy, I know. What takes courage an' strenght... what separates the humans from the animals... is not killin'.
Some people are warriors darlin'... born to kill. That's me. And some exist to show us there's a better way. That's you. there's so much beauty in you, 'Roro. It'd be a shame to spoil it for the likes of her.

It seems such a long time ago...