Defective Comics

When I wasn't spoiling Star Wars for myself, I rooted around in my closet and found a stack of comics I haven't read, some of which were still in the blue plastic bag Mile High uses. My first instinct was that I needed to hurry and get those books into Mylar. When that trauma died down, I examined my find. Inside one bag was the latest issue of Detective Comics, the one I worried about just yesterday.

So which is worse? Feeling too overwhelmed with activities to take 10 minutes to find a comic shop, or not remembering you already found said comic shop and bought the book you were looking for?

Ah, Crap!

As I stated a few days ago, I read Star Wars novels. I finished Tempest last night, and I must say I'm enjoying this whole Legacy of the Force series. I still have six more books to read in the series, which makes what happened last night all the more upsetting.

I had 20 minutes to kill, so I flipped through this month's issue of Wired and started reading the article by Chris Baker about Leland Chee, the Star Wars continuity guru. It's an interesting article about Chee's job policing everything Star Wars and making sure there are no inconsistencies. At the bottom of one two-page spread is a timeline of the various Star Wars tales. I just sort of soaked it in, reading a few of the key moments when my eyes unknowingly fell on the part about the series I'm reading. And just like that, I know the outcome of the series I'm reading. I know who dies and I know who kills him.

Wonderful.

This spoiler isn't nearly as bad as the time I went to watch The Usual Suspects for the first time at a friend's house. Just an hour before I left, I was watching an Atlanta Braves game when the camera man panned the crowd to Kevin Spacey and the commentator said, "Look, Keyser Soze." At the time I didn't even know what that meant, but ten minutes into the film and I knew the answer to that riddle.

Wonderful.

I told Stephanie I had read a huge spoiler from the Star Wars books and she said, "Good, now you don't have to read them anymore."

No, I'll keep reading, but it'll be all about the journey instead of any revelations or excitement about the climax of the story. But I've learned my lesson. From now on, I read my stories, whether they be novels or comics, as they come out instead of waiting for the entire story arc to conclude.

Simplify Your Life

You ever get the feeling that you're just too busy? That you've taken too much on and you're snowed under with all the responsibility? That's how I'm feeling today. You'd think this realization would rear its ugly head when I noticed that my to-do list features items like work over time to keep the bosses happy, mow the lawn, paint the office, get finalized scripts to Evan, put together a final pitch package for Dear Santa, contact Danielle and Charles about their art samples, and prepare for all three fantasy football drafts.

No, I realized I'm too busy when I found out that the latest issue of Detective Comics came out three weeks ago and I didn't pick it up. It seems so inconsequential, but I was totally looking forward to that issue and I just completely spaced it. When you have too much on your plate to drive the three miles to the comic shop to pick up a comic, you've go issues.

Now I have to either get one of the remaining and totally inferior copies of the comic, which just isn't acceptable, or I forget it all together. It's actually gotten to the point where I'm considering just selling off all of my comics, relieving my office of some clutter, and sticking to the trades that are lining my bookcases, waiting to be read.

Funny how just last week I was all excited to be reading again, and now I'm swamped. I need more hours in the day. Don't get me wrong, most of the items on my list are fun things that I look forward to doing, but with so much happening at once, even reading a comic or playing a game of Madden 09 suddenly seems like a chore that I have to rush through so I can get to one of the other items.

Sigh. Hobbies aren't meant to be stressful.