{"id":1437,"date":"2024-06-24T19:20:56","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T23:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/?p=1437"},"modified":"2025-07-31T19:31:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T23:31:36","slug":"the-hiatus-or-there-and-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/2024\/06\/24\/the-hiatus-or-there-and-back-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hiatus Or There And Back Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I started writing these Reference posts to give myself something to point to whenever I mention a commonly-used term or topic in my writings about comics, both here and on social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things I bring up that may need some clarification, such as mystery packs<\/a> or the ages<\/a> to which comics I once owned have been lost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collectively, with some of the other posts in this category, they provide a kind of summary of my history with comics, a kind of Legend of Jon\u2014Who He is and How He Came to Be!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
I was too lazy to edit this so that it was my name and face.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I had thought that I pretty well covered everything I needed to with the posts I have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a post about why I started reading comics, posts about how I got the comics I read, and a post about how and why I lost many of those comics I had collected over the years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realized, however, that there is one other thing I mention frequently that I should probably get into for the sake of completeness: the time that buying comics stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I refer to as the hiatus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
I will buy comics no more.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the simplest terms, that’s the period in my life in which I had given up on buying comics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is easy enough to understand and wouldn’t really seem to require much of an explanation beyond simply saying, “For over a decade I pretty much stopped buying comics,” but I want to get into why that happened, how it wasn’t a total<\/em> break from comics, and how I got back into the habit of picking up new comics every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Golden Years<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the benefits of my time as a college student was that I lived in a city with an actual comic shop within walking distance of where I lived. (Well, it was a fairly lengthy walk, but nothing I couldn’t manage.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, part of the way through my college years a second<\/em> comic shop that was also within walking distance opened up, and while it wasn’t my go-to shop, it did help supplement my comic-buying needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s worth noting as well that during this time comics were still fairly ubiquitous and could be picked up at grocery stores, Walmart, gas stations, etc., so even if I somehow missed something at either shop there was still a chance I could find it elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a case of “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I got married the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, so for the last three years of my time in school I lived in the city year-round, not returning back to my former home 100 miles away during breaks, thereby having permanent access to the comic shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, I was also a college student with a part-time job that only paid ten cents above minimum wage, so I had some definite constraints on what I could afford to buy, but even so, it was a comic-buying paradise compared to what had come before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The End of an Era<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Still, as expenses mounted, I did have to winnow myself down to a very small number of regular purchases and occasional one-off purchases, particularly after I graduated and I no longer had my student job and my then-wife had become the sole breadwinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That necessitated a move to a cheaper apartment the next city over, which meant that the comic shop was no longer in walking distance, though it was still just a short drive away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A job change for my wife meant moving even further away, but the comic shop was still a reasonable drive away, so my somewhat-limited comic-buying continuted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After an insultingly short amount of time in our new location the wife’s job change also led to a husband<\/em> change, so, having no means of supporting myself, I had no choice but to return to my former home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was once again hours away from the nearest comic shop, and one of the main comics I was buying was not one that was sold outside of comic shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point I did go on a road trip to the old comic shop – arriving just a day after they’d decided I wasn’t going to show up for the comics in my box and had put them all back on the shelves – and I picked up as much of what I’d missed as I could, but I knew that I had reached the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regular trips to the comic shop just weren’t feasible, and beyond that…well, there was a lot of turmoil in my life, and the depressed thought that kept repeating in my head was, “I might as well jut give up everything<\/em> I love.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life had lost its color, its flavor. Nothing felt the same, or made me feel the way it once did. On my best days I was simply numb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I picked up a couple of comics from Walmart, mostly out of habit, and I would occasionally thumb through others to pass the time, but it was clear that it was over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, comics just disappeared from the places I’d used to find them, but I’d already stopped looking for them, so it hardly mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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