this morning I took in a copy of the new Hero By Night hardcover trade, a new issue 1 of the ongoing HBN series, and a KISS 4K Kissmas special book into my local retailer.  The guys there were impressed with the hardcover for sure.  They were also super surprised to find out there was so much more HBN content online for FREE to go check out.  So as I’m browsing through the racks I see that the ongoing HBN series has a NEW shelftag on it like many of the DC and Marvel books surrounding it, and I also see they only have 1 left.  VERY cool.  I continued my browsing, ended up just getting 4 books, stuff I think is fun, stuff that I thought looked good for one reason or another, but mostly, there is a lot of fluff and a lot of just plain crap on the shelf.

2 of my books were all ages books, Batman Strikes (which I first started buying when Jai Nitz wrote an issue for them-because Jai is a cool guy and gave me my very FIRST coloring gig) Spiderman: Back in Black (All Ages-which is like a big GN of Marvel Adventures stuff, and has Fred Van Lente-whose work I really dig-as one of the writers), Superman/Batman #44 (pretty much just for the colors, although after reading, the art work really grew on me, will have to add it to the very short must buy list for now) and an X-Men book, Emperor Vulcan or something (because again, I really like what Brian Reber and Raul Trevino did with the colors on this book) I’ll likely get a chance to read through them in the next week or two here.  But geez…..300 books or something on the shelf, and only 4 caught my eye?  I’m sure there are many more I would enjoy, but for me a comic is a complete package, if I’m not digging the ART, STORY, COLORS and the entire package, I’m not wasting my money on it.  Maybe I’m too jaded in my older age of comic reading, or just too picky.  Either way, I’m finding that getting singles every month is a harder thing to do for me as a comic book fan, than just buying trade collections of the stuff that is GOOD.

So I need to get myself in GEAR today, go shave, get a little work done before I have to go pick the kids up from school and then JUMP on work when I get home here.  Lots of good coloring to go do the rest of the week (although I might skate off on Friday for a bit with the wife in the morning to go grocery shopping and whatnot before the holidays set in for real next week)  Rule number 13 in life should be, “Only read GOOD comics”.  that is all.