Buying Comics Today vs the "Good Old Days"
by Van Plexico

Y'know, now that I think about it, here's the main difference for me between buying comics as a kid and buying comics today.

Van in 1977:

Go to grocery store with grandparents. Go to comics rack. Look at tons of comics, including war and horror stuff from DC, superhero and SF and barbarian stuff from Marvel, and so forth. Pick up various comics and flip through them. See what art appeals to me. Read a couple of pages to see if the story appeals to me. Pick up a few random issues of comics I don't regularly buy-- heck, they cost 30 cents each! Discover I like MACHINE MAN or MARVEL TWO IN ONE and buy random issues of it. Discover that MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION lets me read *more* Avengers stories, and buy random issues of that. And so on. Leave the store with seven or eight comics every week, having discovered new writers, artists, characters, and stories that I like.

Van in 2000:

Go to comics shop. Ask for what's in my box. Pray to God Almighty that nothing is in there I don't *really* want, so I won't have to pay $2 or $3 for something I will end up flipping through and never reading. Curse when I see I'm *still* getting DAREDEVIL because I forgot to cancel it. Get annoyed when the shop owner tries to make me buy some random thing Terry Moore has done, just because SIP is on my list. Look over the shelves of new comics, but have no idea what's really there, because they're all sealed in plastic bags. Don't pick up more than maybe one random comic a month, at most, because--heck!-- they're $2 or $3 each, at least. Trip over little kids who are there to buy Pokemon cards, not comics. Pay $2 or $3 each for comics that, with certain noteable exceptions, seem to have far less story in them than the comics when I was a kid. Leave in a vaguely dissatisfied mood.

Isn't it weird how things worked out...

When I was a kid, I dreamed of someday being able to go to a store where they sold mostly comics. Now that I'm living in that world, I get a lot more enjoyment out of stopping by the magazine rack at Kroger while I'm grocery shopping, and flipping through the few random comics they have there. Who'da thunk it?

--Van