Destroy All Wednesdays

Every since I've been buying more than a couple of different comic titles, I've been heading to my Local Comic Shop every Wednesday, the day new issues would come out. There were several reasons for this weekly ritual. First, as many of the titles I got were inter-related, their publication order mattered somewhat. Events that were depicted in, for example, Avengers would be reflected over in Fantasic Four and it only made sense if you read them in that order. Second, it was dreadfully easy to stumble across story spoilers that would ruin my enjoyment of the comic; by reading the comics earlier, I would be less prone to having plot points divulged. Third, there was something of a fanboy mentality that kicked in and "demanded" that I be one of the first people to read a given comic.

There were a few other ancillary reasons, but that covers the most of it.

But it occurred to me this morning that most of those reasons aren't really valid for my comic-buying habits.

1. The titles I'm buying now are wholly independent. What happens in Gødland has zero bearing on what happens in Pirates of Coney Island even though they're from the same publisher. As long as I read the individual title's issues in order, it's completely irrelevant what order I read the titles in.

2. The stuff I'm buying is largely not in the mainstream any longer. Instead of potentially 110,000+ people knowing about and spoiling the latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man, there are only around 2,300 people who could possibly spoil the last issue of Pirates vs. Ninjas. My odds of accidentally stumbling across spoiler information are hugely reduced simply by the fact that there are fewer people who could even relay any information about the stories I read.

3. I like to think I've matured a bit, and it's no longer "critical" for me to be the first "in the know" about what's happened to Green Arrow. I'd still like to keep generally abreast of significant character developments -- like whether or not Captain America is still dead this month -- but if I'm running a late and don't hear an update on his condition for a few months, I'm not going to be that concerned.

So there's really no reason for me to be a regular Wednesday customer any longer. Indeed, the only reason for me to continue returning on a weekly basis is simply to spread my comic book spending out more evenly over the course of a month, instead of dropping huge piles of cash on sporadic trips.

You know, it's quite a liberating revelation, really. Wednesdays are always chaotic in a comic shop, but I realize now that I can make Thursdays (for example) my regular comic day and avoid the traffic and conjestion in my LCS. I can stay a while longer for more intelligent conversations. I can make things a tad easier on my LCS by reducing their typical Wednesday stress and break up the monotony of any other day, which is almost certainly much slower.

I'm really starting to dig this non-marvel/non-DC approach.

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