Alan Moore, �WildC.A.T.S.� (multiple titles)
- Homecoming (Started August 15 � Finished August 15, 2003; 205 pages)
- Gang War (Started August 15 � Finished August 16, 2003; 176 pages)
I had an odd realization the other day. I figured out after looking on my shelves at home that before I worked at this bookstore, I had less than five graphic novels in my collection. I don�t mean individual issues of something such as Daredevil, as I have all of those. What I�m talking about are the bound collections of comics, most often involving reprints from individual issues, others having a limited series printed as a book. The reason I didn�t have any of these graphic novels was simple � they�re fucking expensive, and I�m a cheap bastard.
Even at a used store such as the one I work at, these ain�t cheap. But since I started working here, not only are these collections usually half of the original cover price, but I get an employee discount of 50 percent off our price. This means that for the price of less than two original comics, I get a collection that usually consists of eight to 12 issues.
This, despite my being a cheap bastard, has made me more willing to check out other things that I may not have thought about picking up before. And so now I look on the six shelves that surround the walls in my room, noticing that I�m almost out of space yet again, and I realize that the five graphic novels that I had has now grown to 95.
Plus another 25 waiting on my shelf to be read.
Not to mention the 12 or so that I have waiting for me at work.
That�s the problem with these things. Every fifth person that comes in to sell their books might (if I�m lucky � or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) have one thing out their entire collection that I�m interested in. But when somebody decides to get rid of his or her graphic novel collection, there is usually at least a half-dozen issues that I might want to pick up, simply because they�re cheap enough.
That�s also why August has been heavy on reviewing these things � I can usually finish them in two hours, and in some cases they�re as big as a book that would take me three days to drudge through.
Meanwhile, my box at work has become stuffed with crap that I want to get (and yes, there are some actual books in there as well), and I feel bad for hoarding so many books for myself. I�ve put some things back, but only when I�m fairly confident that another copy will come in eventually.
Other times, I�ve been able to show remarkable restraint as I try to catch up. The other day, some big Kerouac anthology came in that I had never seen before. I held it up to my boss and proclaimed solemnly, �I don�t have this � and I don�t care.�
So that, along with all the strife I�ve had to deal with in terms of school, work, my car, and my upcoming vacation have made me reluctant to delve into anything too deep. I just thought you might like to know.
Anyhoo, this was more stuff by Alan Moore, which meant I was required to pick it up. Frankly, I don�t know how I noticed this, as I had never heard of it before, and Moore�s name doesn�t appear anywhere on the cover or spine. I only discovered his name was attached to the project while I was hunting for a page that didn�t have a black border so I could write a price in pencil. If I hadn�t been doing the pricing that day, I most likely would have never purchased these.
I like that the publisher, or perhaps Alan Moore, didn�t feel the need to try and sell the series by plastering his name all over it. Like the first film promo they showed for the Daredevil movie (which didn�t mention any of the actor�s names even though they had several �name� actors), they emphasized the characters more than who was behind it. But perhaps this is a bad analogy, as I just wrote how I probably wouldn�t have picked this up if Moore�s name weren�t attached.
Never mind.
Then again, even with Moore as the writer, this is pretty substandard stuff. Like with most collaborations of superhero teams, there�s simply too much going on. Worse, is that Moore decided to have this team hook up with another group called The Authority (reviewed here. That�s a hell of a lot of characters to try and keep track of, and I didn�t do a very good job of it.
But the worst thing about picking up issues like this is that they are rarely complete For instance, these two collections reprinted the individual issues from #21-34. So, assuming the other issues did come into the store, as I wouldn�t pay new prices for this stuff, I�m probably going to be jumping all over the story lines once again. And once again, I won�t be able to figure out what the hell is going on.
But I�ve finished all of these issues that I have for now, so I can get on with the three-dozen-plus random collections I have left.
