Buying By The Seat Of My Pants
A Bluesky discussion about the size of creator credits on the covers of comics led to a side discussion positing that most people who buy comics already know exactly what comics are out in a given week and the names of the creators behind them.
“If you like creator X, you already know that X is working on book Y, so there’s no reason for X to be prominently featured on the cover,” basically.
Which led me to make this point:
This led to some questions about my blind buying – both from others and from myself – and as I had some additional thoughts on the subject, I decided to write a Reference post because it’s easier than trying to parcel it all out in a thread.
I don’t read Previews, use any kind of app to keep track of new releases, or even visit comics news sites regularly. Every so often, I will tune in to the livestream my comic shop does on the morning – or sometimes eve – of New Comic Book Day, but that’s pretty rare.
(I also largely avoid Comics YouTube, because the almighty algorithm assumes that I want Nazi content the very second I click on any kind of comics-related video.)
Now, in a given month, I do have some idea of which comics I’m going to get. I do, after all, have a Pull List of comics that I provided that the shop sets aside for me. (My box number is 145; I even remember that in my dreams. Yes, I frequently dream about going to the comic shop.)
But I don’t really pay attention to scheduling – which is often a fool’s errand anyway – so on any given Wednesday I don’t know which of the books on my list is going to have a new issue in my box.
A typical trip to the shop for me goes like this:
- I walk in the door and there’s a good chance someone is already waiting to hand me the books from my box
- I flip through the stack and see what the week has brought me
- I walk over to the shelves with all of the week’s new comics and l look to see if anything not in my stack catches my eye or if there’s a variant cover for any of the comics already in hand that I also want/want instead
Sometimes, I do know that there are other things that I want, and I deliberately look for them. That’s generally due to someone posting about it on Bluesky. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I knew to look for the latest Criminal book from Brubaker and Phillips because prior to heading to the shop I saw a post from Sean Phillips mentioning that it was out that day.
Other times, I’ll have missed something during my browsing, and then after getting home I’ll see someone post about it, so the next week I’ll try to remember to look for it on the not-new comics shelves.
I do frequently miss things when browsing because I arrive at the shop a few minutes after it opens and it’s usually very busy, which means there are a lot of people standing in front of the new comics, many of whom, lacking certain social graces and/or situational awareness, will stand in one spot and not move for several minutes, giving the shelves a much more thorough scanning than I ever have.
A ridiculously thorough scanning, if you ask me, though given how often I miss things, I’m probably wrong.
I go to the comic shop on my lunch break, and I stop to do most of the week’s grocery shopping on the way back. The round-trip drive alone can take up to twenty-five minutes depending on traffic, so I don’t have a lot of time to waste.
Especially given that there are several people there at that time who buy massive stacks of comics and take forever to get rung up who I want to avoid getting behind in line.
Of course, the fact that I do miss comics sometimes is a big part of the reason that the Mail Call feature exists.
While it does happen, I’m actually a bit less likely to miss a first issue than I am subsequent issues. What often happens is that I’ll see a shiny new comic and buy it, bring it home, read it, like it, and then forget to ask to have it added to my box.
Then, because I don’t pay attention to schedules, I’ll miss the next one, and then kind of forget about it until I happen to see the next issue after that. If I’m lucky, the shop will still have the previous issue, but if not, well, like I said, that’s part of what the Mail Call is for.
I guess the question is why do I do it this way? There are so many ways to keep track of what is coming out when, and even though I tend to be lazy, most of them don’t require that much effort.
And honestly, trying, at least a little, to keep track is part of why I follow different creators, publishers, and news sites on social media, though it’s very easy to miss things in the firehouse of information.
Why not, you know, just pay a little bit more attention?
I think a big part of it is simply habit. It’s how I’ve always done it. When I first got into comics there was no real way for me to keep track of what was coming out other than house ads or editorials in the comics I bought.
Hell, most of my comic-buying for a long time was done completely blind.
Part of it might be just that I like the element of surprise.
But overall…yeah, it’s laziness, I think.
And the thing is, there really aren’t major consequences for my laziness. If I miss something, I can almost always buy a copy of it online.
Or I can just tradewait, which is something that I do with a lot of books – and should do with more – anyway.
And in the absolute worst case if it’s a DC book, I can just wait a month and read it on DC Universe Infinite Ultra, even though my preference is for physical media when it comes to comics.
As with a lot of things at this point in my life, the only real answer to the question “Why am I like this?’ tends to be, “I don’t really know…but whatever the reason, I’m probably not going to stop being this way.”
Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.
