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Murdonian Size Effort -- Advice needed
I've been collecting comics in one form or the other for close to 30 years. I've accumulated a lot: Essentials, Masterworks, Archives, Microfiche, single issues, Showcases, Chronicles, digital comics, you name it. I decided this year to, as well as keep up with current books weekly, to a historical as published reading of comics, starting with the DC Comics of 1935 (all 5 I have access to) and continue from there. I'm currently in March of 1938. The only publisher is DC Comics (The earliest Marvel and Dell I have access to, I think is 1939; Quality, Fawcett, and Fox 1940), the only comics are More Fun, New Adventure, and Detective. Stand-out features are Slam Bradley, Speed Saunders, Spy, Steve Conrad, Dr. Occult, The Golden Dragon, and Slam Bradley, and fear of the 'yellow peril' is in overdrive as 90% of the threats in the strips seem to come from an Asian threat.
Here is where I need advice. Listening to the spotlights has really made me yearn for the stories mentioned, but at the rate I'm going, I'm a good 10 years (or so it feels) from hitting the 60's. Should I diver from my course? Try to have three different tracts: Current, Silver Age Marvel, and all time?
What would you do?
Here is where I need advice. Listening to the spotlights has really made me yearn for the stories mentioned, but at the rate I'm going, I'm a good 10 years (or so it feels) from hitting the 60's. Should I diver from my course? Try to have three different tracts: Current, Silver Age Marvel, and all time?
What would you do?
Comments
what are you going to do when the genres all go nuts in the 50s? Horror, Crime, Romance, Funny Animal, TV, Movie, Superhero, etc . . . at one point, there will be a lot of books to track -- many in genres that may not appeal to you.
You're in the easy stage now. :)
It's a very cool project but all current comics start more or less in the 60's (save Detective and Action) with their universes. There is a fairly hard break between gold and silver for most books, so you could skip gold and start from silver to present.
How much material do you have? Are you buying new stuff to fill in holes or are you just reading what you already have?
What is your reading schedule like? Sticking too hard to the chronological schedule may lead to burn out and boredom.
Remember... comics are JUNK publications, especially from the 30's to the late 50's... no slam on comics, but they were, in large part, disposable entertainment, written by the uninterested and uninvested, for an audience of what they perceived to be immature and unintelligent.
In the Golden Age, you are only going to encounter the diamond in the rough about .05 % of the time, in my opinion. Move into the 60's and you'll hit that about 5% of the time... 70's about 10%, etc...
My point being, I would hit the high spots, the greatest stories ever told, the Spirit, etc... We only have so much time on this world, and there are a LOT of junk stories. Think about if you were an architecture fanatic, and decided to , instead of visiting the greatest architectural sites known to man, you were going to do it all by some other criteria, which means you have 20 years of strip malls and high-rise college dormatory buildings to see first, before you get to the Pyramids or Notre Dame Cathedral.
Based on the comments here, I've tried to break it up. Thursdays and Fridays I normally reserve for current books, then the rest of the week I alternate between Golden Age (I'm in May, 1938) and Marvel Silver Age (Feb. 1960).
Extreme geek cred hangs in the balance.