It had grown too far, like an untended vine. So I trimmed it back, quite severely actually. Cut from 85 items to a mere 50, my Amazon Wish List is much easier to maintain. Maybe you should do the same?
On a not really related note, I’ve been undergoing a renewed interest in comic books, and not just because of my own amateur superheroics. I tend to be very fair-weather these days, primarilly because of the steep price of modern comics. I don’t want to sound old and nostalgic, but I look back with fondness on the days of 75 cent comic books. Now they’re almost three dollars a piece, which makes waiting for the eventual trade collection a very viable option. But something is coming in the fall. Or coming back. Someone, actually. DC Comics is resurrecting Hal Jordan and returning his power ring. Admittedly, Hal is nowhere near as well-known an alter-ego as Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne, but the anticipation echoes my excitement over last year’s 1602, so I cannot wait to see what they’re going to do in Green Lantern: Rebirth.
In the meantime, I just read the first two issues of a seven part mini-series called Identity Crisis. If someone were to take a look at my favorite comics over the last 20 years, they would notice a distinct trend. When heroes are forced to face or share their humanity, that’s when I get hooked. It all started with the literally world-shattering Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, because until then I’d never considered just what it might be like for a superhero to face death, chaos, fear or hopelessness. At the same time, Crisis placed so much emphasis on regaining resolve and rising to overcome, even in the face of insurmountable odds. Identity Crisis is nowhere near as cosmically expansive in scope, but it retains that great humanity. The plot orbits the tragic death in the JLA family and the efforts not only to discover the killer’s identity, but also to cope with such loss. The art is stunning and the writing is exceptional.
