Thirty By Thirty #3 - Stop Buying Comic Books

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known."

1 Corinthians 13:11-12

In the spring of 2001, I dropped out of college. Specifically I'd had my fill of the small liberal arts institution I was attending in Wisconsin and decided to move home mid-semester. I moved in with my grandfather for the summer, got a job downtown at a production company and started riding the 156 bus to work. Most days I'd have a little extra time on my way to my stop and I'd duck my head into Big Brain Comics which was located on 10th St at the time.

When I was growing up I read a lot of comic books. My grandmother would buy old issues at garage sales and bring them to our family cabin in Central Minnesota. For the most part they were Archie comics with people being more willing to part with them I'd guess than X-men books. But occasionally there would be a superhero book mixed in. This was providential, of course, because when I was nine the first Michael Keaton Batman movie was released. Suddenly there was an entire realm of knowledge to dive directly into face-first.

Now fast forward back to 2001 when I'm living with my grandfather. I'd wanted to get back into comic books for a while but getting comics in Green Bay was inconvenient if you were like me and lacked a car. Now I was walking past a comic book store everyday on my way to the bus. After doing a little poking around, I took the plunge.

Even though the movie was still a year away, the character I was most interested in was Spider-man. Seeing there was a new title which was less than a year old I bought my first issue of Ultimate Spider-man written by Brian Michael Bendis. I was instantly hooked. I started adding other Bendis titles like DareDevil and other Ultimate titles like Ultimate Marvel Team-Ups. Little did I know there was a comic book renaissance going on which would explode a year later when that first Spider-man movie would push comic books into the collective conscience. I expanded my titles and reading further and further, again discovering new knowledge to drink up.

But like all good things, there needed to be an end. My favorite series "Y: The Last Man" ended in January of 2008. Most of the books I was reading out of habit instead of really wanting to read them. I wasn't spending a lot of money keeping up but it felt more like responsibility than entertainment. So I decided I was going to follow the series "100 Bullets" to its conclusion and that would be it.

The 100th and final issue of "100 Bullets" came out this April. I went into Big Brain (now on Washington Ave but again on my commute home) bought the last issue and put it on the stack of comic books I need to catch up on. I'll probably keep reading comics from time-to-time in graphic novels. The days of buying individual issues though has ended.

I threw the "growing up" tag on this post even though I dislike that phrase. "Growing on" would be a better way to describe setting aside comic books. I've benefited from reading comic books because they taught me a love of reading and of voluminous knowledge and itt would be foolish to lose that message as I separate from the medium.

Thirty By Thirty #2 - Read A Murakami Book

(It's not that I'm falling behind. It's that most of the things I want to do are more conducive to good weather and full employment. What I'm falling behind on is documenting.)

I've recently been thinking about who my favorite authors are and I'm coming to the realization they are almost all authors who are my contemporaries. Not necessarily my peers as they are usually older than me and most definitely more accomplished than me but my contemporaries because they are writing about now. If I had to name my five favorite authors three of them [1] would be writers who are producing excellent work right now while there are many more [2] who I hold a great deal of respect.

I find this to be a thrilling realization. Part of this may be passing beyond the saturation point [3] where the canon has revealed the majority of what it's going to or maybe it's because the level of access to writing is just higher right now [4]. More likely though is the simplest explanation. Right now is just a really good time for literature.

Case in point is the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Often praised as one of the great post-modern authors and perhaps the greatest author Japan has produced since the war, Murakami has written 12 novels since 1979. Still his 2002 book "Kafka On The Shore" (English Translation 2005) stands amongst his greatest work. He's not slowing down and he's not resting on his laurels.

"Kafka" details the travel stories of two men in Japan with possibly intertwining stories. Murakami uses dream sequences, the supernatural and American advertising figures to suggest a world which isn't real. Which in the end is true. It's a fiction book detailing the lives of fictional characters.

What was so amazing about the book is how the suggestion of unreality in the fictional world pointed back at the reality of the world around you the reader. Murakami may have a character who wears a white suit and a small goatee named Colonel Sanders. He also has his characters taking naps, preparing food and using the bathroom. With these little anchors linking his world back to the real world, he suggest the reader take a deeper awareness of their own life.

Part of the idea behind Thirty By Thirty is to experience new things like reading an author I had not before. It's also about doing things which remind me to be aware of my own life. For that reason I am glad not only to have read "Kafka On the Shore" but also to be living in an era with a wealth of literature.

[1] Klosterman, Gladwell and Simmons
[4] Chang, Pollack, Hornby, Sedaris, Ruiz-Zafon, Martel, Jacobs, Moore, July, Auster, Azzerad, Thompson, Roumeiu, Bendis, Mack, Johns, Morrison