This post stands to cap off a cranky week for me here at Chasing Amazing, so let me start by stating what should be the obvious: collecting comic books has always brought me joy. This joy goes beyond the artwork on the cover, the witty banter and the over-the-top plots and powers of heroes and super villains. For me, there's something special about every time a new issue comes in the mail. I read through it, admire it, and then place it in a protective bag, slide a pice of cardboard behind it, and tape it up for preservation. When I receive an older issue, I love the smell of the yellowing paper. If there's a crease or a chip on the cover, I love trying to imagine how it got there. Was it rolled up in someone's attic? Did some 7-year-old in the 1960s or 70s buy this issue when it first came out on the newsstand and neglect it? These are the joys of collecting.
What doesn't bring me joy is the comic book "industry." Just that word -- industry -- makes me cringe. My definition of the industry (based on nothing by wild assumptions and speculations) is the group of people who are there to determine the best way to make money off of comic books.
Granted, I don't expect anyone who's involved in a commercial enterprise to do it just to appease idealistic folks like me who seem to value artwork and the smell of paper over the nickels and dimes that are out there to be made. But I've always held firm that while I "collect" Amazing Spider-Man comics, I'm probably by definition an enthusiast. Something that I get asked quite often by people when they hear about my goal of collecting every issue of ASM is, "what are you going to do once you get them all? Sell it?" No. When I have them all, I will have them all, and my collection will just continue to grow as long as Marvel continues to pump out Amazing Spider-Man comics, or until the "industry" does something so abhorrent that I can't reconcile myself to stick with it any longer.
An example of something that extreme is what Marvel is attempting to pull off with the June issue of Ultimate Spider-Man -- a separate series that was released more than 10 years ago that's a "reimagining" of the Spider-Man universe. I dabbled with the idea of collecting this series a few times over the past 5 or 6 years, usually getting through a year or two of a subscription before losing interest. The stories are clearly geared towards teenagers and feature a more angsty Peter Parker and slicker, more powerful versions of Spdiey's classic villains. There's just a little too much polish on Ultimate Spider-Man for my liking.
But more power to Marvel and those who read Ultimate Spider-Man. If that's the Spidey/Peter you know and love, don't let a grouch like me stop you. But for their 160th issue, Marvel is revisiting a bad place -- a place that almost drove me out of comic books back when I was still a teenager. For starters, Ultimate Spider-Man #160 is being advertised as the "death of Spider-Man." Second, this "landmark" issue is being issued in two different "collectible" blue and red polybags and will only be distributed to comic book dealers directly -- no newsstands.
