Welcome back to Stack Week, that time every year when iFanboy calls its staff onto the carpet to share all the volumes they’ve left unread around the house even as they went off to buy more books. The shame prods everyone to finish their reading, and besides, confession is good for the soul. Come commiserate, won’t you?
The trailer opens on a quiet suburban street. The sun is shining and the lawns are well manicured, but the music tells us all is not well. A piano in a minor key whispers to the audience that something in this sleepy subdivision is not as it should be. Beneath the domestic bliss, something is… unread.
In a world… where a well-timed Borders coupon can change a weekend forever…
An ordinary man with an ordinary life… is about to learn the dark side of the future.
[children’s choir eerily sing-songing “la-la-la-las” on the soundtrack]
“Honey, come to bed.”
“I can’t! I have too much reading to do!”
“Reading? But I thought you said you’d finished all those books that were on the coffee table.”
“’Books’?! I’m not talking about your ‘books’!”
[smash-cut to a closeup of his monitor; we pan across an open folder, listing file after file after file, spanning into infinity; music builds to a discordant crescendo; blackness]
iStack.® Tomorrow will pwn you.
A few weeks ago, I decided enough was enough.
Once again, I had allowed an embarrassing pile to take up residence in my living room and ensconce itself on the coffee table right between me and the television, like a sign around my neck that said in bold letters “Jim spends $50 a week on books so he has something to prop his feet up on while he catches up with Jimmy Fallon.” Every day, for at least a few minutes, I would look at it and say, “Really?”
“Really? You scoured the internet for an affordable copy of the Howard the Duck Omnibus for eighteen months, then you found it and let it sit there for another eighteen months? And counting?” “Really? You begged for a review copy of that graphic novel, set it down, and forgot it existed until you read someone else’s review of it on the website? Nice job, Ebert.”
One day, something inside me clicked, specifically the part of my brain that reminded me “Stack Week is coming.” I got it in my head that, when the time came, I would have no Stack this year. (What I was going to write about, I have no idea; maybe I thought it would be a 1,000-word column entitled “Nyah-Nyah-Nyah-Nyah.”) I set myself to feverishly reading the whole blessed thing. I beat Howard. I devoured it all. I triumphantly jogged a lap around the house as Freddie Mercury sang of my champion status.
Then I remembered the iStack.
You see, kiddies, before Marvel had ever settled on its current digital strategy, the decision was made to put decades and decades of Marvel comics on DVD-ROM in PDF form for everyone to enjoy and squirrel away. As a lover of physically possessing hard copies of things, I bought all of these discs while the buyin’ was good, and today they festoon my office and my hard drive. 40 Years of X-Men. 40 Years of Captain America. 40 Years of Spider-Man and Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk and The Fantastic Four and the Ever-Loving Avengers. I’ve got them all. Now all I have to do is read them.
I will never read them.
These discs were on my Stack during the very first Stack Week three years ago. Since that week, when I described how daunting a prospect it was to read them, I have read exactly—hang on—let me think about this—I want to get this right—hang on one sec none of them.
Not an issue. Not a page. In a pinch, the discs have been incredibly valuable for Top 5s and Great Moments in Comics History—“If only I could find that issue where Ronald Reagan turned into a giant snake monster and Captain America beat the $&^% out of him with a flagpole”—but beyond research, they’ve been a nonstarter.
It’s just too much to contemplate. The physical media wouldn’t fill half a shoebox and sit in a lone folder on my hard drive, but they represent 3,500 comics. Thirty-five hundred. I am only one man, Internet.
Spider-Man is my favorite character in comics. When I got his disc, I decided I was going to read every Spider-Man comic on that disc. It suddenly occurs to me that the last time I opened an issue, I was living over in The Hoover Apartment and going on a couple of dates a week with a girl named Holly. Holly and I now have two children, one of whom is almost four. The Hoover Apartment was three residences ago.
I will die without having finished the iStack, no matter how much that frustrates me.
It is as awesome as it is maddening to know that I have the Kree-Skrull War along with The Korvac Saga (Whatever That Even Is), Bloodties, Atlantis Attacks, and That One Where The Avengers Go On Letterman sitting right next to my e-mail and Twitter at any given moment. It’s all so… virtual. There are months at a time when I forget this Stack is even there; the folder has become visual white noise between Skype and Movie Magic Screenwriter (equally unused). I don’t have bound pages with weight holding me accountable. No space is occupied. It’s all sort of… imaginary.
Maybe 2011 is a year to dedicate to whittling this iStack down. Maybe I’ll get a mobile device ideal for decade-reading. Or maybe I’ll try uploading PDFs to my phone, as Jack Kirby intended his art to be seen.
Jim Mroczkowski tried finishing the Silver Age return of Captain America and, my God, Stan, Animal Farm in its entirety was a quicker read. Show, don’t tell, my yakkity brother.
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If you spend 10 minutes reading each of those digital issues (and given the verbose nature of the time it would probably take more than 10 minutes) it will take you approx. 583 hours (24 days) to read all of them. Wow.
(RE: Kirby) We could power a small country by harvesting the massive energy output spewing from Mr. Kirby’s grave due to the centrifugal force coming from the constant spinning this industry is causing.
On second read that might be a bit confusing. I’m saying this industry is causing Kirby to spin in his grave for many, many reasons.
I willl take them off if you’ll pay international shipping. 😀
I read every issue of Amazing Spider-Man on that disc. It was easy, and excellent. I don’t know if you can truly be a super fan or expert critic of Spider-Man until you’ve read that in entirety.
I also read about 150 issues of Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Avengers on those disc. I then read the first 10 issues of every other series digitally, and every Ultimate X-Men on dvd-rom as well.
Point is, it can be done. And it’s the best value you can get.
(Out of all of them, Stan’s Spider-Man & Fantastic Four runs are the best of them all in quality, start with those 2)
And you should probably give up buying as many comics as you do now, and just read those dvd-roms. There’s a logic that says “What you have not read, is new to you, and you have 3,500 NEW comics waiting for you at home, no purchase necessary.” It will save your budget, and is the screaming voice of reason. Do it.
Send em over jim. I’ll read em for you!
I hate to say it, but if I had that Avenger’s DVD I would be selling it in a heartbeat. That thing goes for around $300 on Ebay/Amazon used.
A few years ago I started reading the Essentials I’ve picked up over the years. With Amazing Spider-Man I gave up around issue 160 and that was after forcing myself through the last 20 or so issues. With the Fantastic Four I gave up around issue 80, even though Kirby was getting better and better. Most recently, through the Omnibus, Essentials and my own comics I have gone from Giant-Sized X-Men to Uncanny x-Men 300.
You know what? Totally not worth it. It was fun for the most part, but too often felt like work. Sure, I read a lot of good comics in there, but I also read a lot of bad comics, most notably Uncanny X-Men 281-286. Pee-yew! When people talk about bad comics from the 90s, these must be the issues everything thinks of: co-plotted by Jim Lee and Wilce Portacio, “drawn” by Portacio and scripted by John Byrne.
In any case, I don’t think you need to worry about only using those digital volumes for research. If you ever get a hankering to read a specific story, they will be right there, and that should be a comforting thought.
“Giant-Sized X-Men to Uncanny x-Men 300.
You know what? Totally not worth it. It was fun for the most part, but too often felt like work.”
Yes, this is how I feel about Claremont’s run of X-Men. The tv show took what was there, and made it watchable, while the execution of the comics was bad despite having great ideas and characters.
Stan Lee’s scripting is actually the best of the old era. Very smooth dialogue, strong, consistent characterizations, and few caption boxes, contrary to some beliefs. Also, he always paired himself with the best artists. Some of his succesors, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway were poor scriptors in comparison.
Point being, if you read the Stan Lee stuff, you’re reading gold, always. If it’s another author, you enter dangerous territory. (Usually boring and poorly done)
Recently, I picked up a DVD-ROM collection of STAR TREK comics, which claimed to contain every single issue from every single publisher from 1967 to 2002. Of course, they seem to have left off the legendary (to me, at least) STAR TREK/X-MEN crossover from 1996 but whatever. I’ll have to live with the hundreds and hundreds of comics they did include.
I have no idea how they’re selling this collection as cheaply as they are, but I’m enjoying reading through the early NEXT GENERATION comics. There is a watermark on each page (it’s the original emblem worn by the crew of the Original Series) but it’s a small price to pay for all this stuff. I, too, wish I had a portable media device to view them on. A desktop computer is a bit cumbersome.
Like you Jim, I jumped on these when they first came out (I have the X-men & Avengers one) and read about 5 issues in total. The best part about having them as PDF’s is that EVERYTHING is included, ads, promos. Maybe you just need to go on a nice long trip with a laptop, and pop those suckers in on the plane!
as always when these come up, I am right there with you, Jim. I even have a list of each run broken down into arcs and creative teams and such. plus, I don’t even have a working disc drive in my laptop. but one day, I will conquer these beasts.
@JeffR Thanks for the tip on that Star-Trek DVD! 6.99 ius a total steal.
@jmstump I can’t believe it never occurred to me to see what these were going for. They have no copy protection on them whatsoever, by the way.
Jimski – you need an iPad. It’s the only way you’ll get through those.
several times i’ve sent jim and email that is more or less “do what now?” with regards to x-men or avengers history. those dvds have come in handy (to me).
I picked up Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, Avengers, Hulk and Iron Man a few years ago when they were still marginally affordable. Was reading them on my netbook. Now I just sync them to my iPad … and they look soooo doggone pretty on the iPad. I just load a few at a time and read them when I feel like it. Who knows how long it will take me. But I love some of those Silver Age stories. Some of the B stories in Tales of Suspense are really interesting–and I was especially surprised to discover the prose short fiction that Lee would include in some of those early issues. I have an entirely new appreciation for Stan Lee reading those extras. My one regret is that I haven’t been diligent about reading all the letters pages.
The ads and Stan’s Soapboxes are worth the price of admission.
LOL … indeed they are … along with his Twitter feed. 😉
@cahubble09 >forgive me for being a total noob, but can I also dump them (pdf files) onto my Itouch? what app do you recommend to read them ? thanks
@Jesse1125: The Marvel DVDs are .PDF files so any .PDF reader might work, although my .PDF reader tended to crash … I assume because it’s designed primarily for text. I use ComicZeal … found it in the app store. Searched for “comic reader”. Right now it is the highest rated app (from what I can see) with 4+ stars over 200+ ratings. I like it because it lets you organize your collections and view at multiple magnifications without too much difficulty. Advancing through pages is sometimes a little sluggish but it allows you to do so with multiple ways (tap/drag, directional arrows, etc.). It remembers where you are in each book, so you can read multiple books and come back to them whenever you want. AND (perhaps most important) it doesn’t crash. You should be able to import your books through iTunes in the applications tab of the sync interface. I’m not sure what else might be out there. Found this review website with a Google search that might give you some other ideas: http://iphonecomicbookreader.com/.
@Jesse1125: p.s. The only problem you might come across is the size of the screen on the iPod. PDFs aren’t designed for guided viewing, so magnifying/zooming and traversing through each panel might be tedious. When I still owned an iPod Touch, I did most of my viewingon my netbook … but kept a few on the iPod for breaks at work.
@Jesse1125: p.s.s. I’m a noob too …