In his "Deus ex Comica" series of essays, Adam Besenyodi is taking a look at the impact of comic book pop culture on a personal level, from the Marvel titles' influence on his mid-'80s preteen and early teen years to the friendships formed around the books and characters, to what it's like rediscovering that world as an adult.

I missed the bursting of the comic book bubble in the '90s.  But here I am, in the throes of the post-millennial comic book culture, in my late thirties with disposable income and a collector's completist mentality.

Instead of foil-embossed and hologram-enhanced covers clogging the comic shop racks, I have walls of variants to choose from.  Variant covers are a curious thing.  Depending on the number of issues pressed, a variant might go for the same rate as the standard cover edition, or it could be tagged at ten times the cover price.

I haven't gone too crazy with these things, but I have picked up a few.  The Marko Djurdjevic variants on Thor were beautiful, and all the covers for the Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America books were really cool, too.  (Except the blank cover that is designed so you can take it to one of the ridiculously huge comic cons and have your favorite artist sketch something on it.)  All of those variants, thankfully, were available at the regular price.

Of the seven (Yes, seven!  Including a blank.) cover options for the first issue of Marvel's 2008 tent pole event, Secret Invasion, I loved the one by Leinil Yu, but at $10 to $15 in the local comic shops, it was kind of pricey.  It's also an example of why I find myself torn between buying a single copy of an issue and also picking up the various incarnations.  And this even bleeds into my buying of comics for others!  When I pick up my wife's copies of the various Whedonverse titles, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight and Angel: After the Fall, I have to restrain from picking up variants of those books as well.  This is what I struggle with every Wednesday.

This collector's completist mentality, the one that tempts me to buy multiple copies of the same comic book simply because it has different covers, where else is this logical?!  I think I've finally beat back that urge through necessity, common sense, and sheer force of will.  If you're buying variants, you're either a speculator or you have a sickness.  I'm a recovering collector, which colors these comic-related decisions I make on weekly basis.

The same sickness that makes me even consider buying a variant also impedes my ability to drop a title from my reading list, whether it's because I no longer find the title engaging, to make room on my pull list for a new title, or simply to start reading the title in trade paperback or hardcover.  That desire to have a "set," a "whole" of something, drives me to the monthlies, even though logic tells me it makes more sense to go the collected edition route.

So I've learned how to discontinue titles and be OK with it.  I dropped Immortal Iron Fist with Matt Fraction's last issue and Astonishing X-Men after Joss Whedon's run ended.  But it's an ongoing battle.  I didn't drop X-Men: First Class until I hit the 12-issue mark.  Not that I wasn't enjoying the book, I just found my tastes were shifting, and I wanted to make room on my pull list for other titles.  Yet I found myself waiting until I had collected a year's worth of issues before discontinuing the book.

On the other hand, I have finally gotten to the point where I can drop titles that I'm not enjoying even if it's mid-story arc, like X-Force and Mark Millar's run on Fantastic Four.  I gave both of these titles three issues to capture my imagination and decided they weren't worthy of capturing my dollar.  There was a time when I would have had a hard time dropping these titles if they weren't at a logical stopping point -- at the end of a story arc or a writer's run.

Ironically, these are two titles that were published with a long box worth of variants!  Each of those first three issues of X-Force had a regular cover and a "bloody variant" cover -- basically the same image but with a bunch of gore added.  And I've seen at least three different covers of that first issue (#554) of Millar's run on Fantastic Four, some of them in that fifteen dollars and up range.

I am a cataloger and an organizer and oh-so painfully Type A.  When I was a kid I had a file card box for tracking all the comics in my collection.  Today, my file card box is a software program that includes front and back cover image files and writer/artist/editor information and cover date and year data and plot outlines.  I have two databases saved, one contains only the Original Collection, the other Current Runs.  Organization.  Categorization.  Order.

I also have a spreadsheet that I use to track upcoming purchases -- both pull bag issues and one-offs I don't want to miss, along with picking up copies of things like newly released collections or an issue of ToyFare that I have been published in.  And yes, I'll write down or print off that week's list and take it with me to the local comic book shop.

You see, I like things.  It took me years to abandon compact discs for mp3s.  I have not yet let go of our DVD collection for downloaded movies on our media server.  (And as a bonus, the longer I resist that urge, the longer I get to catalog and track the physical DVDs in a software program!)  And I can't see myself leaving the printed page for electronic books of any kind -- be it a Kindle or Marvel's Digital Comic Unlimited.  Entertainment mediums are a tactile experience for me.  It's hard for me to feel "ownership" of an electronic work.  This is all a part of that collector mindset.  I know it.  I acknowledge it.  And I deal with it.

There was part of me that would respond when my parents would ask me about my growing comic book collection back in the day with an "I'm going to retire on these someday!"  That was not speculator mentality; it was a teenager's ignorance.  And the collecting of variant cover editions I'm talking about now doesn't fall into either of those delusional categories -- I completely understand that comic books are not the key ingredient in a sound retirement plan, and I have yet to purchase a comic because I think it will be worth more money down the road.  I buy comics because I like to read them, and I am a collector.

And I'm just taking things one Wednesday at a time.

Miss an installment of "Deus Ex Comica?" Here you go:

Part 1: Gateway Drugs

Part 2: Judging a Book by its Cover

Part 3: Ignoring Personal History

Part 4: "Sweet Christmas!"

Part 5: Bound for Greatness

Part 6: Marvel 1985

Part 7: A Real American Hero

Adam Besenyodi loves to talk pop culture. He is a former editor and staff writer for PopMatters, a participant in the Pop Conference and a freelance writer. Check out his blog, Random Thoughts Escaping.

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