Mainstream bullshit.

I have been having more and more problems with mainstream comics, but mine focus on inconsistent creative teams. It seems that great comic book runs are always interrupted by shitty creative teams that put the titles on autopilot. It is always the generic artist and the writer that wants to bring somebody back from the dead. When you pick up an independent comic, the series is usually maintained by the person that created it, and the titles are allowed to grow without stale jumps in between.

When I got back into collecting a couple years ago, I jumped right back into the titles that I collected as a kid: Batman and X-Men. Batman was in the middle of the Hush arc, and Astonishing X-Men had just started. A year after that, DC brought Jason Todd back to life, which was bullshit, and the two flagship X-Men titles were consistently awful. And now, Grant Morrison is in charge of Batman, and the X-titles are all pretty good. But, to rely on that temporary quality would be asking for a huge letdown.

This occasional disappointment has formed different habits in my collecting. I seek out creators more than I do characters, which leaves me with the drive to drop a title when the art and writing become bad. Though the collector in me wants to catch the whole run, which clearly expresses the power of the big comic book franchises — the reason that marvel and DC can get away with lackluster work. It is comparable to licensed video games. The developers put less work into them because the property sells the game, not the quality.

For now, I will enjoy the my mainstream comics and their qualified craftsmen (the last issue of Batman was a perfect example of what a good team can do with an almost 70 year old series), and I will continue to look for well made independent comics, made by people that care.