I know that I’ve tried to catalogue the individual comics that I’ve read here either in individual entries or groups of small reviews, but I’ve spent the last several days reading a huge stack of comics. While reading, I thought about doing those reviews but then realized the entry or entires would be incredibly tedious to write. So there’s kind of this … rambling narrative.

The point of making my way through these books was to clear off the clutter that was on the dresser in my guestroom, which I did alongside reorganizing and culling books from my shortboxes. The books were purchased at the usual places–The Baltimore Comic-Con and my LCS’ quarter-bin sales. Getting rid of them wouldn’t be too big of a deal because a number of them were in beat-up condition, so making a decision was easy.

Actually, if I’m being honest, getting rid of the comics has become easier and easier, especially since so many of them are recent books that probably would end up in the same quarter bins I grabbed them from in the first place.

The pile was a mix of Marvel, DC, and independents and from various eras. I dove into the Marvels pretty quickly, reading fairly recent X-Men and Spider-Man comics as well as old random issues of Rom and Power Man and Iron Fist. I think the only comic that I coud not get through was an issue of Spider-Boy. And while the issues of the other Spidey titles and the X-books were entertaining, I couldn’t find anything to make me want to read current or recent Marvel (and I’ve cancelled my Marvel Unlimited subscription, so I can’t read through what I’d missed). As far as the other Marvel books were concerned, they were also fun to read and I’m hanging onto a few.

DC and the indie books had similar results. There were actually a few DC books I’d already read on DC Infinite, so those were easy choices. Others were first issues of series from Image and Boom. In those cases, I read the issue and decided whether or not hunting down the remainder of the series would be a good idea. And in some cases with DC, there were huge chunks of Vertigo titles from back in the mid-2010s, and I made the same decision.

So what will I be tracking down? Most are in the horror/sci-fi/dystopian genres. There’s Sheltered, which is about a doomsday prepper camp where by the end of the first issue, things start to go horribly wrong. Ghostlore is a well-written Cullen Bunn horror book that begins with a car accident and someone being able to see ghosts. I like Bunn’s work and am curious about how the rest of it goes. James Tynion’s adaptation of Dracula is a four-issue miniseries and I”ve got issues 2 and 4. I’m a huge fan of the novel and enjoy the various comics adapations (I own three) and I’ve read quite a bit of Tynion’s work, all of which I’ve enjoyed.

The two titles that I grabbed most of and were the best of the lot are both DC books–Vertigo and Hill House Comics–are Clean Room and Coffin Hill. The first is a Gail Simone-written horror book about the leader of a Scientology-esque cult leader who can see how grotesque aliens (or something demonic … I haven’t read the whole series yet) have either attached themselves to or taken the place of regular people. There’s a journalist out to investigate her and she gets sucked into the group and the conspiracy. Coffin Hill is a story about a town with a legacy of witchcraft where the latest in a long line of witches is pushed into a confrontation/battle that ultimately involves the first of that line. I read both last night and today and while I still need a good portion of each series, they were riveting. I’m actually curious about what else is in the Vertigo and Hill House stables; I missed a lot of those books years ago, but if they’re that available, they’ll be worth checking out.

Overall, I’ve purged a whole shopping bag full of books and that’s in addition to another bag full of novels and trades as well as the DVDs and VHS tapes I’m going to be working my way through this weekend. It feels good to do this as I wind down the year and get started on yet another year of trying to make progress in this project.