Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

General Rambles

By Regie Rigby

Right.

You know what? With the exception of a minor whinge when The Boys got cancelled, I’ve been pretty damn positive so far this year. Clearly this can’t go on – I have a reputation to maintain. So, in keeping with the time of year (March is a very negative month for me, as long term readers will know) it’s most definitely snarling time.

I’ve been thinking lately, as I gaze at the ever expanding pile of unread comics in my living room, and at the as yet unopened bag of comics I picked up last Saturday, “What the bloody hell am I doing?!”

I mean, I spent nearly thirty quid in my LCS last weekend, yet I haven’t even opened the bag of comics I bought? It’s still sitting there in the hall. Was that money well spent? That’s money I could’ve spent on beer, or other forms of debauchery. What does it benefit me to have a small pile of un-ruffled paper?

I mean, if it was only last week’s comics I hadn’t read, that’d be one thing, but it isn’t. In the spirit of investigation I just measured the height of the “to read” pile in my living room. It’s seventeen inches high! That’s a lot of comics, representing a lot of money. Seriously – what’s the point? What am I getting out of it?

Objectively? I guess I’m getting nothing, except perhaps an interesting modern art installation. Maybe I could call it “stack of paper under coffee table” and sell it to one of those trendy galleries for £20,000. After all, if Damien Hirst can sell half a pickled cow, there has to be a market! Then again, maybe not.

It’s a funny thing though. I mean I can see that trundling out to my LCS and spending reasonably large wodge of cash on something that’s just going to sit around unlooked at for ages is not, on the face of it, a financially prudent thing to do. On at least one occasion in the past year, I’ve had unread single issues hanging around for so long that the stories contained therein have been available in trade paperback before I’ve got around to reading the original “floppy” versions.

When the trade paperback came with additional bonus material, and cost rather less than the original comics it reprinted, you have to wonder if it wouldn’t have been wiser to have waited a bit and bought the trade. The experience of reading the story would have been no different. Nor would it have been delayed. Indeed, it would have had the added advantage of not cluttering up my house for six months or more. I have to ask again – why am I buying these comics and spending money I don’t need to.

Well, maybe I’m not feeling as negative as I thought, because not only do I not regret any of this apparent wastefulness (which, given that I’m a proud Yorkshireman, with the inherent desire for thrift which that implies is worth noting) I fully intend to continue spending on comics in exactly the same way. More than that – with the exception of odd moments of ponderous confusion – even in the grip of doubts like the ones detailed above, I’ve never really contemplated cutting down, or altering my comics habit.

There may be no practical reason for doing this, but life, my foolish friends is about a lot more than mere practicality. I’m happy to continue adding to the increasingly teetering pile of comics that it my “to read” pile because it means something to me. It represents something far more important than simple cash. It represents hope, and belief in a calmer, more peaceful future where there will indeed be time to sit down with a beer and read each and every one of them.

Then, of course there’s always the worry that if you leave the “floppies” on the shelf and wait for the trade, the trade might never come. I’ve missed out on a couple of stories I wanted to read in this way, and I’m not anxious to do that again – on at least one occasion I’ve been forced to rectify the omission at a later date by hunting down the single issues on e-bay at vastly inflated prices. Besides, if I’m honest, I prefer to read comics in the good old fashioned “floppy” format.

Yes, I know OGNs and TPBs are the wave of the future. I know that page for page the 22 page comic is much more expensive, and that since letters pages have almost totally disappeared from most US comic books there isn’t really much to be lost by getting the collected edition. They even print floppies on the same infernally bright and glossy paper that so often gets used in reprint collections. There really is not objective advantage in terms of content or quality.

Don’t care.

Disposable as they can sometimes appear, old fashioned comics are, for me, just the best format for the delivery of comics stories. They’re lightweight (in literal terms, obviously) and they’re flexible. Just to slip back into whinge mode for a second, am I the only person that really doesn’t like square binding on comics? Sometimes, in order to see the full page of art clearly, you have to really open the pages out flat. When the spine is stapled, this is not a problem and causes no damage. When the comic is square bound, you run the risk of cracking the spine, with irreparable consequences for the book. (My first copy of Watchmen literally fell to pieces as a result of this.) Square biding might well look better on the shelf, but my comics are for reading, not for show!

Besides, I’m an old sentimentalist at heart. The American sized 22 page comic has always been a symbol for me. It’s sort of iconic in a way that a graphic novel (especially >shudder< a hard backed graphic novel) simply isn’t. A stack of comics looks like a stack of comics. A shelf full of comics looks like a shelf full of comics. A shelf full of Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks looks like any other shelf of books. I’m not knocking the whole format – some stories (Pride of Baghdad springs to mind) need to be presented as whole works all in one go.

But the medium really is geared around the “traditional” comic, and I don’t think that’s purely for commercial reasons. There is something about the way we (or at least I) read comics that lends itself to a loose bundle of stapled paper. And that’s why, although its existence is further evidence of my total lack of free time at the moment, I’m still pleased to have a large pile of such stapled bundles of paper on my living room floor.