Last month, I wrote about my frustrations in engaging with the comics community both as a critic and as a fan in recent months and, if I’m being honest, recent years. This is a sentiment that has been building for a while now and has been affecting my writing here at Multiversity as well as my reading habits outside of here.
Once upon a time, I had a pull list so long I could scarcely afford it. I was, at my best (or worst, depending on the perspective), pulling no less than 30 titles a month from Marvel Comics alone. That’s not even counting the rest of the publishers I was buying from. It was, in hindsight, an unsustainable habit, but it was one that I didn’t realise at the time because I cared more about reading the comics I loved than the damage it was doing to my bank account.
Eventually, that pull list dwindled, little by little, as I excised more and more comics from my life until I wasn’t buying any new comics. This was late 2015 and I was still a full time reviewer for Multiversity. If you look back across my backcatalogue of reviews, you can almost pinpoint the moment I stopped caring about staying current with comics as I moved from reviewing issues the kicked off or closed out arcs to almost exclusively talking about whatever new #1 was out that week.
As much as I can defend my decision to spotlight new series each week, that would be undercut by the fact that many of those are series I read the first issue of, liked a lot and then never followed up on. This would be a pattern for me for over a year until I moved into a new position here at Multiversity as one of the editors. Taking a more behind the scenes position as well as starting full time employment cut down what little time I already had to write about comics and I eventually left the review team.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it’s the setup to this: I haven’t genuinely followed through on a comic series since 2015. That’s two years of reading first issues and then letting them fall by the wayside, wishing I could just stick with something and maybe, just maybe, even start writing longform reviews that speak to more than just the market value of a twenty page floppie. That’s what brings me to Alice’s Missing Years.
I feel like I’ve been under a rock the past two years, hearing about the goings on in comics without actually reading anything. Commenting on the last news from Marvel and DC while barely paying attention and promoting new series from creators I enjoy without supporting them past the first issue. It’s been eating me up inside and that, almost more than anything else, has been pushing me away from comics and comics writing.
So it’s time to shit or get off the pot. I cannot continue to complain about the state of comics with contributing something more positive to the environment. That’s what Alice’s Missing Years is all about, it is a monthly segment where I look back at a series I missed out on or fell away from over the past couple of years. Part review, part retrospective, part essay, this is where I look back on the comics I regret missing out on and talk about them.
The first series I’ll look at next month is “Mayday.” Published by Black Mask Studios, written by Curt Pires with art from Chris Peterson and Alex Diotto, this was a series I looked at prior to the first issue’s release, bought all four issues and then… never read them to completion.
I’ll admit, a mixture of depression and being incredibly broke came into play, but I feel like it’s time to plug that gap in my reading. It’s time to go back and explore Alice’s Missing Years.
