How Many Issues Would You Give a Comic to Prove Itself (Reminisce, Too)?

[Pil]

As a general rule, 12 issues. If I think the series really suck, and this rarely happens, I just buy the first storyarc.

[CromagnonMan]

i think BD is also asking for recommendation of a good independent series, preferably superhero-y, with good potential for longevity.

i would say to you try Savage Dragon. Its into issue #180+ by now and each issue is fun on its own merits. very much action-oriented and with a bit of a Jack Kirby or Walt Simonson vibe. Whammo!

also, there is Supreme which has just started up again and is entertaining from what ive read.

[dupont2005]

I can think of at least one instance when my habit of trying only one or two issues didn't work: Love and Rockets. I'd read a couple non-consecutive issues, I think somewhere around #s 10 to 15, as well as a coloured story of Jaime's excepted from the L&R series, and was intrigued, but didn't become totally hooked until I read a couple 1988 collections of Gilbert's: The Reticent Heart and Duck Feet (not the Collected L&R volume #6 of the same title, but an earlier, smaller format book). Reading just one or two issues really wasn't enough to give me a feel for the world(s) Gilbert and Jaime were creating, and if I hadn't immersed myself in those two early collections of Gilbert's I might never have grown to appreciate their work to the degree it merited. As it was, I started reading the series regularly and was soon hunting for back issues and thanking the comics gods when the Collected L&R started up.

#2 was the first issue I came across and I was blown away as soon as I read it. Still my favorite single issue in the series so far.

[Schnitzy Pretzelpants]

This really depends on a number of things – mainly, I will give a book more of a chance if the writer has impressed me before. Meaning, I will allow that what seems like a hiccup or meander to be purposeful as part of a slow build. Otherwise a comic – these days anyway – has very few issues to actually grab me.

The New 52 at DC. I bought maybe 20 titles right out of the gate, and of those (from the original 52), I now only buy one of those: Birds of Prey.

The other 19 titles I mostly dropped within 3 issues. Wonder Woman I lasted 6 issues, but tired of the ‘everything you knew before is a lie approach’. Justice League, I should have dropped at issue #1, but read the entire first arc- dreadful. Pretty close to being the worst comic arc I have read. The full arc told me one thing: I should have trusted my instinct to drop it at issue #1.

These are the names that I allow some grace with in terms of plotting, and will give more than the normal number of issues, or allow a full arc to pull me in:

o Vaughn
o Hickman
o Rucka
o Waid
o Brubaker
o Sometimes Fraction
o Sometimes Remender
o Often Robinson
o Rarely (these days at least) Morrison

Names that I used to trust and now will scarcely give a chance to anymore:
o Johns - his name now is synonymous with crap for me, whereas he was actually a writer that got me back into comics after a 4 year absence.
o Azzarello – just no. He struck out on First Wave, and his Wonder Woman shows me that he has Zero interest or love for the actual character.