Sunday, October 16, 2011

My affair with comic books

On a recent business trip to Montreal, a co-worker and I stopped by a book store on our walk home from the trade. This was where my affair with comic books began…

It takes nearly no convincing to get me into a book store because I have a chronic book buying habit. I don’t read the books nearly as quickly as I buy them, so I have a large shelf at home of unread books that will probably take me my lifetime to get through. (See photo)



So it’s no surprise that my impulsive buying kicked in immediately when I started looking through the comic section. I left the bookstore that day with four new paperback comics. Suffice it to say, they did not sit on my “to read” shelf for long. This newly discovered realm of fiction has stories that are much faster to read and offers the visuals that you don’t get with books.

The comics I picked up were Astonishing X-Men Volume 1: Gifted, The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye, The Sandman Volume 1: Preludes & Nocturnes and The Wonder Woman Chronicles Volume One.
To give you an idea of how quickly I got sucked in, within the few weeks since that bookstore visit I have read several other comics… For Walking Dead alone I am up to Volume 9 (just finished).

My conclusion to this is that I think more people should read comic books. They are fast to read, the artwork offers a great visual supplement to the story, and the stories themselves are generally full of surprises and twists. Also, the stories are often interconnected, which I love. I find it so enjoyable putting the pieces together from different stories and seeing the connections as they happen. You feel like you have “inside information”.

The moral of the story here for all you book lovers (because you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t) is to read comic books. If you don’t want to dive in like I did, at least give one a shot. I hope that you will be as pleased with what you find as I was.