The other night, as I sat through my third consecutive Daily Show of the evening, I couldn’t help reflecting on how I’d let comic books damage my brain.
If I have one media weak spot, it’s late night talk shows. At this point in my life I watch very little “regular” television—I still haven’t gotten started with Mad Men or Doctor Who or twenty other shows that will change my life if I but open my dried up little heart to them—but every night my DVR spreads out like a tuna net and grabs hours and hours of Conan and Fallon and Ferguson and Stewart like I’m being quizzed in the morning on current events and movie openings. The shows that even their creators think of as the TV equivalent of snacking somehow became a staple before I realized what I was doing.
Of course, when you capture hours and hours of talk shows, they have a way of piling up, and before you know it you’re having Colbert Report marathons the way other people have them for Lord of the Rings movies. I was plowing through one of these the other night when I randomly thought, “You know, I think I’ve seen every television show Conan O’Brien has done since he took over The Tonight Show. I have watched every hour he has produced. All the Conans have been in front of my eyes.”
“Super impressive,” said my critical internal monologue. “Now, quick: tell me what your favorite joke was from last night’s monologue.”
“Um… Well, I…”
“Name two guests Jon Stewart had on last week. You watched every episode, sometimes staying up late to do so, because you didn’t want to miss anything. Any two guests. Any one.”
I deleted the rest of the shows on my DVR.
It’s not (just) that I’m forgetful. It’s that in the attempt to “keep up,” I end up gorging on media just to tick the box that says “I watched/heard/read it” instead of drinking in and savoring whatever I was supposed to be getting out of it. I realized this week that I wasn’t so much watching these shows as I was completing my brain’s show collection. I was “owning” the experience of watching them all but not getting anything out of it. No matter how much I think I’ve left it behind, I still have a little of that Completist’s Disease kicking around in me.
I am not immune to the obsessive collector streak that runs through comics. Far from it. I realize that over the years, I have written articles exhorting people to jump right into the middle of series and drop unsatisfying books mercilessly rather than continuing to buy them for the sake of keeping a collection unbroken or “waiting until they get good again.” The unspoken subtext of those articles is that I’m not just saying those things to you; I’m saying them to myself. My name is Jim, and I am a recovering completist.
I’m not someone who keeps buying a bad book just because I always have. My weakness comes out in other ways. I got the first volume of Scalped from the library; I bought volumes 2 – 7. Every time I look at my bookshelf and see that little “1” missing from the row of spines, it drives me crazy. The odds that I will go back and reread all of Scalped hover at around 4%, but that missing volume calls out to me like the Telltale Heart of my office. Even as I’m going through the longboxes in my office and playing America’s #1 recession-era sensation, Resell or Recycle, I will glance over and say, “When I sell off all this stuff I’m never going to look at again, I should go ahead and buy that trade.” Years of completist training at work.
Does having a completist personality attract people to comics, or do comics turn you into this person? I can’t speak for everyone, but I know where I got my neuroses training, and it was in a used bookstore. When a boy at a pivotal stage of his journey into manhood is given Transformers #1-3 (of 4) and asks, “Jeepers, mister, why don’tcha give me the ending too?” only to be told, “These books were published months and months ago, see? To get #4, you gotta forsake your family and leave these lands on a quest through all the back issue bins your Schwinn can take you to, so amscray,” it has a way of shaping his mental landscape forever. When that boy finally gets Transformers #4, and the last page of it says, “Surprise cliffhanger! We decided to make this an ongoing series while you were hunting this down and published, like, six more issues you’ll have to find to catch up.* Enjoy living before trades and the internet!” that boy is slowly turned into a kind of hellhound. That boy should have said “oh, forget this” and gone home to play Atari, but between the thrill of the stories and the Thrill of the Hunt the whole exercise might as well have been designed by the CIA to create an army of obsessive-compulsive manhunters. It was like going to addict school.
At least it never went any further than media. Thank God I never started drinking, or right now I would be in a refrigerator box in an alley behind a blood bank, warming my hands by a barrel fire and shouting, “I got all the gins! I win!”
As the school and TV seasons end, it seems like as good a time as any to rededicate yourself to slowing down and savoring the good things instead of “keeping up.” Life is enough of a treadmill without turning your downtime into a competition. Besides, even if you do catch up, the next Wednesday’s right around the corner.
*Jim Mroczkowski wants to emphasize that this did happen, and it blew his tiny mind. The hunting for back issues was maddening at times, but imagine how glorious it would be to live in a time when the limited series suddenly became ongoing, instead of the other way around. Alas.
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Funny you should write this because I recently deleted a bunch of Daily Shows off my DVR because I just don’t have the time.
Amen, brother! The most salient article on iFanboy in a long time, for me anyway – precipitated firstly by a lack of time, then lack of money, and dwindling shelf space, I’m really taking stock, looking around at all my accumulated stuff and pondering ‘Did I really need all those unread books just to have the full run?’
I’m trying to scour the completist mentality from my brain. It hasn’t done me any good – and I don’t think being able to say I’ve read every issue of X-Men ever produced is really a life goal I want to pursue. It has to become quality over quantity for me. I’ve got boxes of single issues that I strived and spent an unreasonable amount on eBay trying to secure full runs of… looking back, a few years later, it hasn’t enriched my life in any way. They haven’t even been out of the box – because I have them in trade.
Though you really should check out Doctor Who – just the better episodes. Screw completism, there’s some gubbins amongst them, but the good episodes are really good.
Always make time for the doctor
I rember being a kid trying to find back issues in the late 80’s. It always seemed that everybody else was looking for the same issue too.
I’m lucky in that while I do have OCD, it seems to have left my comic reading alone.
I buy what I’m going to read and nothing else. For instance, I’m skipping this arc of B&R because I don’t like how Winnick writes Batman, but will be back to see what Hines can do. I’m always very very glad that I’m not compelled to buy everything. It saves me a LOT of money/sanity.
I had a very similar experience with Transformers as a youngster. I’m not sure it was that particular issue, but it may well have been.
I also had an issue later with G.I. Joe. There was a three issue Snake Eyes arc and I couldn’t find one of the issues for MONTHS. It drove me mad (obviously).
Whats a back issue bin?
As time goes by and the era(or error) of “Con Exclusives” becomes prominent, that completist mentallity is becoming more and more maddening. I’ve long since given up getting every comic I’ve ever wanted but there are tons of toys released(seemingly weekly) that I would love to get my hands on but are only released at a con(some going so far as being released at a certain time on a certain day). I can’t imagine being a comic book completist in in this current era. The last con I went to had something like 13 exclusive covers for certain issues. It’s got to kill a completist every time Hero Initiative does something.
Also: the Shockwave cover is bad ass.
Good article, I see myself in it for sure. I have noticed that as events have sprawled across entire lines, I have thought ‘well, I can’t read everything so I’ll read nothing’ which is probably the opposite of what Marvel/DC intend. I should just pick up the books that look interesting and wiki the rest (if that).
I really enjoyed part one of this article too.
I have that gene. My Amazon wishlist is out of control, luckily i have some self restraint with purchasing so i don’t become the victim of a Mortal Kombat finishing move from the wife for spending more than i already do.
Right now i’m almost out of bookshelf space for comic related stuff. I’m not buying more shelving, so i have to get creative, and i think i can stand to get rid of half of what i have and not miss any of it. Now if only i could find somewhere to resell it to and get some sort of value for it.
@wallythegreenmoney eBay is your friend.
Great article. I used to be one of “those” people. It was mainly with event and crossover comics “Atlantis Attacks, that sounds awesome, I have to get them all.” I think it was the Mutant Massacre storyline that started it with me (although that was actually good).
I’ve since shaken that addiction (after No Man’s Land) and now only read what I want and collect what I know I’ll re-read. I love my library, they have the entire Goon series there. I read it and that’s enough for me.
@Diabhol –correction-a way that i could sell them without spending the next 6 months of my life trying to onesy-and twosey it on an ebay type deal. My A.D.D. and hatred of post office lines does not allow me to be very good at ebay.
I’d rather just trade with another like minded person, though there are some bookstores that take them. I dunno, will figure out soon.
@wallythegreenmonster what are you looking to get rid of?
Hi Completists Anonymous. My name is Azrael1213 and I am a completist…
Do you guys think it’s completist or just being a collector that makes me want to go out and buy the Absolute Sandman, Deluxe Ex Machina, etc (the best edition!) of a comic that I’ve already read. Is it bad that this extends to box sets in other media as well? (I’ll be damned if I’m not waiting patiently for the Smallville complete series to be released on blu-ray, despite whatever WB says to the contrary.)
Recording The Daily Show is a must as John Stewart is just hilarious!
The competist in me just would not let me drop Secret Wars 2 (ugh)
It’s baffling to me that people would want to buy every cover of an issue. It’s the same comic book on the inside, yes? The exact same content? Then why buy it again? It’s 90% likely that all those various covers will be included in the trade. If you want to see them all, you might as well wait until then. It’ll be much cheaper.
Having said that, I am a bit of a completist in terms of storylines. For example, I tracked down plenty of complete runs of shorter works, like Guy Gardner and Action Comics Weekly and all of the random D&D series that DC and TSR put out together in the late-80s. Believe me that these runs took YEARS to put together. Now I just need to find the time to read them all…
@RocketRacoon -That is the problem! i know i could get rid of so much stuff, but when asked to sit down and do it, i just can’t find anything! me=total hoarder!!!!!!
I buy the trades for my bookshelf (rarely double dip though) but then i rarely go back and read them again. its a sickness i tells ya! If there was a trade trading club i’d be so down.
The only time this bug has bitten me hard was a couple years ago when I decided I wanted to own the No Man’s Land run. There are so very many issues in the No Man’s Land story. So so many.
It’s worse for TV shows though. I hate not starting a show from the beginning, and it ends up ruining many of them, because many of them are awful at the beginning. It’s the main reason I hate Buffy and Dr. Who.
@MisterShaw –i’m the same way with shows, but now i just netflix or on demand them. I’m sure i’ve saved hundreds of dollars every year by not buying the box sets.
I use a database program to track my comics. Maybe that’s a little compulsive, but when you can export your “haves” and “wants” over to your smart-phone and have it with you all the time, it’s pretty convenient.
My “want” list is now at 698. Yep, almost 700 books marked as “want.” I would bet that 100 are ones I really want to a fair degree. I lost about a short-box worth of comics to some water damage. The others I probably added when I added the whole “run” of some book and marked those as not in my collection. I probably won’t even buy most of them, unless I hit a $0.25 sale at a convention or something.
But still… 698. A want list that big sounds like a clinical disorder in the works.
i recently had a weird moment when i found issue’s 1 and 2 of Slingers, I know I have the rest of the issues somewhere in my home and it’s driving me crazy
I have had Completism my whole life — I could never start a book series or TV series without starting at the beginning. Comics with their tidy numbers has certainly fed the problem! However, I’m coming to realize that since I’m mostly a comic reader, not a collector, there’s hope yet that I can get rid of some of these long boxes…
It’s maddening, and yet I try to keep up. Unclenching has been a helpful strategy, of late.
My eight long boxes and may wife say I fit the description! 😛
While it’s true that often we buy trades for completion’s sake, what about when you want to lend a book to a friend you’re trying to turn into a comic book fan? If you know a person who would love Scalped and you talk to them about it and get them really excited and then they say “Can I borrow the first one to see what it’s like?” For me it’s the same as with any book. If I want it, I buy it and it goes on the reading pile. When I finish a book I will look at the pile and decide what I fancy reading next, I pick it up and start it. The pile will never end. But reading stories is a passtime whose joy is in the doing, not the ending. So slow down and enjoy the next one. And the one after that…