Another group of comics Axed by me

Once more it is time for a trip to the local comic book store to pick up my monthly supply of comic books. Before leaving I noticed that there was still a rather thick stack of unread books stacked up in my game room. After searching though the stack it became very apparent that some titles had been purchased over four months ago and not been touched since. It seems that it was once more time for me to cut down my “pull list” (keep in mind that I had cut the list in half around six months ago). I just cannot rationalize spending an average of 3 dollars a book if I’m not even going to read them once.

First book to go was The Mighty Avengers. After the fallout from the last several Marvel mega-events the team featured in this book has been left in shambles. The team is now led by Hank Pym (Oh yeah, give me more ant-man….its defiantly what the public wants) and is made up of what has traditionally been the supporting cast of the Avenger book line (No Captain America, no Iron Man, no Thor, not even Hawkeye, no thanks). It’s not that I haven’t been reading this book I just don’t care to read what looks like the “poor man’s Avengers”.

Next went all of the X-titles except for one (cutting out Cable, Astonishing X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and The New X-Men). It seems that most of the x-title issues can be summed up as simply big event crossovers (that you had to get every X-book to follow) or filler issues (that the x-men whine about how they got screwed over during the latest crossover event). The two exceptions to this wonderful writing formula were Astonishing X-Men and the new X-Force. Well astonishing has joined the other X-books and gone to crap after Josh Whedon quit writing the book but X-Force has stayed relatively strong and on the top of my read pile (who doesn’t like a crazy feral mutant hit team…that uses its powers for good and not evil).

Finally I took a good look at my DC titles. I cut Supergirl from the list very quickly (why have I been buying this book without having read an issue for six months) but then I had to do some deep thinking. Teen Titans…gone! Over the last year all but one of the founding members of this incarnation of the titans has either left the team or died. Keep in mind I loved Young Justice (yes I know guilty pleasure) and this incarnation of the titans so this was a hard cut but the team I loved reading about was gone. My final cut was the Justice League of America. This was an especially hard cut because it was Grant Morison’s run on JLA that had got me back into comics back in the mid-90s and I had collected the line ever since. I cannot even tell you what is wrong with this title, just that I haven’t read the last three issues that I have purchased.

After this latest round cuts, I am left purchasing only one DC title (JSA), only three Marvel titles (New Avengers, X-force, and Thor), and a small amount of books from other publishers (the books from Star Wars, Dragonlance, and Forgotten Realms lines). I personally wonder if I am outgrowing comics or if it’s just that the writing has become so bad that I cannot rationalize spending money on it.