Drunken Comics Rage

Over the weekend I reread the third collection of the current Hal Jordan Green Lantern book.  It brings together something like issues 14-21.  I say reread because, well, I read it once already.  Why twice?  I’m glad you asked.

The three of you who have been reading this site regularly may have figured out that unlike the other knuckleheads here at Drunken Comics Rage I don’t get comics weekly.  I get my fix in large doses by buying the collections: six issue or (preferably) twelve issue collections, often in hardback form.  Not only does this help me avoid the whole bags-and-boards thing and let me put ‘em on the shelf like my thousands of other books, but it also makes it easy for me to treat them like books…drag ‘em around with me all the time, read them over lunch, whatever.  Good stuff.

The problem with that:  I’m a fast and voracious reader.  I usually have a pretty good list of books queued up, nonetheless comics, so it rarely appeals to me to spend the time rereading something.  Although I s’pose the graphic element of a comic book makes rereading those different.  Anyway…when I’m reading a comic collection, if I don’t watch myself I read the damned thing too fast.  Then not only am I disappointed when I’m done, but my cheap ass is bitter that I got only a couple hours of entertainment out of that $12-20, instead of the many more hours I get from an $8 novel.  So, I try to drag ‘em out.  The upside is I (theoretically) make the enjoyment last longer; the downside, as I’m coming to realize, is that I almost definitely miss a few things here and there in the process, because I disrupt the flow of the story.

We have been doing this Drunken Comics Rage blog thing long enough now that I’ve noticed when I crack a comic collection I am starting to think “What am I gonna write on the blog about this?”  And then it dawned on me: go ahead and read the damn thing at whatever pace you enjoy, then try going BACK and reading it again later to see what you might have missed and think about what the fine readers of DCR might want to know about it.  So this is what I did with the third Green Lantern collection…and it worked.

So what’s my point?  Well, to start with, I’m wondering if I’m the only one who thinks about trivial shit like this as much as I do.  That aside, this is a warning that over the next week or so I’ll be putting up my thoughts on this wee Green Lantern collection, and that my new ploy to reread the thing is going to probably result in you getting drug through two or three posts on it.  Consider yourself warned.  And hey, it’ll break this up into a couple of parts to keep the size reasonable and give you an excuse to come back and waste time at work reading them.  I’m here for you, I really am.

The downside?  Well, I might lose some credibility when I blow a few thousands words on what amounts to a 5-6 issue comic book collection, then give you two paragraphs on something massive like Annihilation Conquest because I can’t generate the time or enthusiasm.  So, when that happens, be sure to ask for a full refund.  Or mock me.  Or both.  It’s all good.

Watch this space for more.

Filed under: DC Comics, General Comics Rage, Monkey Rage