A change is in the air, kids.
I have written in years past about slowly making the transition to digital comics, and while I have made a partial transition, I'm still dropping a good chunk of change at the LCS every week on print books. I'm also running out of places to keep them.
I've also been falling out of love with a lot of the comics I've enjoyed for years, particularly Marvel books, which at one time made up about 75% of my purchases. In reading news about Marvel's upcoming "Generations" event and "Make Mine Marvel" reboot, I am not excited at all for the future of Marvel's comics.
I'm currently reading more DC than Marvel books (by at least a 2:1 ratio), but that is about to change as well. DC is putting the cover price of their monthlies back up to $3.99, which means I'll be dropping most of them.
There are rumors swirling of DC partnering with Amazon for a digital subscription service, which interests me, both as a Prime member and ComiXology user.
And that fact is, most of the other publishers I read--BOOM!, Dark Horse, Image, Action Lab--I'm reading digitally.
So, for all of those reasons and more, I am winding down my print comic collecting. My plan is to be entirely digital by the end of 2017, with the exception of any Spider-Man titles I am still reading.
I'm also going to be donating/giving away chunks of my current collection, and selling others. By the end of the year, I want my print collection to be down to just my Spidey titles, my 2099 titles, and a small number of other books I want to keep forever.
That's not to say that I won't buy a trade in the future here or there. But those purchases will be of titles I want to keep on my bookshelf after having read digitally.
Between the price of floppies and the lackluster output from some of my longtime favorites, my love for print comic collecting is gone. Time to move on.