How often do you cull the pull list?
random73
Posts: 2,318
Periodically i need to cut back my pull list. I generally try to keep it at about 7 titles and i base it on what i am enjoying the most every month. What books am i reading first and what books stay at the bottom of the stack with a, "meh". inevitably the number of titles creeps up and i have to make another cut. I'm up to 17 now. Now admittedly severaly of these are new titles that i havn't gotten issue #1 of yet becasue of the DCBS order time. how ofter do you cats cull your list?
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Now that there's no Legion of Superheroes, there's nothing left on my "Buy Always" list.
Since getting back into comics, I started with seven or eight titles and over that first year my list grew to about 30-35 titles. That doesn't include going back to grab titles that I missed/overlooked or minis. Even going through DCBS it was too much. Since cutting back from those numbers I've been bouncing between 12-20 titles a month, every few months something would be added and/or dropped.
I just recently dropped back down to seven titles. I'm in a bit of a burn out and wanted to redistribute my hobby funds. When I put that money back into comics, I'm sure I'll be back up to bouncing 15-20 titles a month.
Case in point; before Nu52 I had approximately 6 DC titles on my pull list. With the "reboot" I tried a bunch of the first wave to see what appealed to me. I added about 8 titles to my pull list (about 50% of what I tried out). Within 14 months DC axed 7 of those books leaving me with only JL. I culled that on my own, and now I don't have any DC on my list at all!
There are always a few things that will be on my always list: Ghost Rider, Hulk, and Knights of the Dinner Table. Over the past 9 years Ghost Rider has either been cancelled or mostly really good, Hulk has been great to really good, and KoDT is always awesome.
Now my Ebay followed searches is another beast altogether. No telling what run fillers I may come across on there, or how much it will cost. I really need to get that debit stream under control...
Also... last I checked DCBS doesn't ship to Canada (but that was a while ago).
Curious, since you mention being from Canada and obviously you're a fan of Guardian. What do you think, if anything, about the new version of Captain Canuck?
Captain Canuck?
There have been many versions of Captain Canuck over the years; all of them pretty terrible. That is part of why I like Guardian, he always felt like a better version of the Canadian Captain.
However, I haven't seen this new incarnation. It looks like it might warrant some further investigation.
This latest incarnation of Canada's longest-running comic book superhero appears quite good. At least these webisodes do.
And a pretty good interview with Kalman Andrasofszky, the newest writer and artist to reinvent Captain Canuck can be found here
Unless you count digital, which I have been buying increasingly. But even there I've become much more selective. I'd say that I have bought books I didn't like until financial situations motivated me to drop them. And that's how I used to roll. Now I only read something if I like it, and stop when I don't.
As a matter of fact, I was just talking with a friend this past week and literally said the words, "I think it is time to cull the herd again."
My monthly budget is $30 (before once a month shipping). It used to be much higher, but I needed to drop it down quite a bit, and the $30 is a nice, comfortable area for me each month. As of this morning, my pull list hits at exactly $29.17 (thanks to the DCBS discount) for 14 titles.
Yeah, under the budget, but a little too close. I don't mind going over every once in a while, because most of the time I'm down between the $20 and $25 marks. Up this high doesn't give me that buffer, so I'm going to start shedding titles.
I can already think of one title that will be gone, because it is new and already disappointing in the first three issues. After that, I have two "bubble" books that I hem and haw about every month anyway. I could reduce by $6 without trying hard.
To say nothing of the fact that two of the titles are relatively new and untested, since I've only read the first issues. That's another potential $4, if they don't satisfy.
I always read my books "least excited about" to "most excited about," and when it starts getting hard to slog through the first books to get to the last, I know the time has come to get rid of titles.
Funny, I just realized, back when I was getting a lot more books, it was actually HARDER to get rid of titles because mediocre had more room to hide, because there was always a terrible issue or two of other books that made them seem better. With under 15 books, mediocre has little to hide behind.