Comic Obsession - Why?

I have a little bit of a comic problem, I can't quite let them go. I'm not "Comic Book Guy", never was, but I've always gone back to the rack and bought comics, even after managing to kick them for a while.

I am talking about them like an addictive substance, maybe that's a little bit of other parts of my life coming through but it's mostly because the shoe fits. One of the things that irritates me about comics most is the way they constantly mix metaphors. Ha Ha.

Still, I've gotten something from them through the years and have been in line for most of the real attempts at making my old heroes into motion pictures( The Hulk, Elektra and a couple of others don't qualify for me). I've been reading comics since the '70's, with steady gaps in my following back then too. I just can't stick with anything it seems. I had Hulk #182, where Wolverine first appears, had it for years, but when I was ten, I thought it would be cool to cut out the little figure and play with them, yea, I did that. I had the entire first appearance of Venom, and the X-men's when Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Rogue first appeared. Are my geek credentials there for you yet? I had the Joker killing Robin, and Ghost Rider when he was fun.

I had a select set of comics I liked, and followed them semi-constantly over the years, but as a comic fan, eventually you realize they are constantly bending you over. I started getting pissed when Marvel came up with their endless series of crossovers. The first big one was "the Secret Wars," where all the heroes went off to fight and you ended up having to buy extra comics just to follow it. Then, it was the Phoenix saga, recently condensed and made into a movie, which stretched me to my limits on what I would buy and ended just as stupidly as the movie.

That ended it for me with Marvel for a while. I switched to DC, and the Flash, Justice League, Green Lantern, and the big one, Batman. I'd always followed DC a little, but those always seemed like the types of stories that just got churned out. Yea, I know that nearly no comic, and none of the popular ones were any great leaps in story-telling, but they absolutely had their moments. For instance, when Flash went on trial for the alleged murder of one of his villains. And, the Justice League made me laugh out loud on a regular basis.

Then I got tired and dropped out for a long time. Now I'm back.
It all started when I saw an advertisement somewhere about a new crossover, Civil War, from Marvel that promised to deliver real consequences, and set the heroes against each other over a government act for all heroes to register. Yes, it was a rehash of the whole mutants vs. government plots of virtually every X-men title, but only to start. I was prepared to be disappointed, but found my way to the comic book store and began following it.

It wasn't bad, and seeing the heroes I had followed, pitted against each other and showing something resembling real, complicated reactions to the issues. I'm not of the opinion that my superheroes have to have feelings, and almost any time they have tried to mix them into a comic, it's been melodramatic and boring, but it was done well. Well enough to nearly pull me back in.

Add to that they have brought back one of my early favorites, Nova, given him his own comic, and a few new characters that I like, and I am back more than I ever was before. Oddly, maturity has made me more of a comics fan.

I've been collecting comics again now for a couple years, all of them nicely bagged and boxed, and spent a good amount of time this last month building a database and adding them to it.

Then there's the whole deal of starting a blog about it and writing an overly long introductory post.
It's safe to say I'm obsessed.