So here's the deal.

For the past five months or so, I was chatting with one of the guys at my local comic book shop, and he was telling me all about how he was going through all of the old Justice League stuff, from the earliest pages to the Satellite era to the Detroit League, reading other comics in that same era as well (passing through Infinity Inc., the Justice Society revival, etc.) Even though I wasn't all that interested in the Silver Age stuff, I thought that hey, it might be fun to do a complete run-through of every comic I owned.

This thought, like many others, was quickly forgotten as I found a shiny moving object.

But then, for some reason, it kept coming back to me. It would be the perfect excuse to drop a ton of cash to grab all the trades I've been wanting, and to read all the comics I sort of tossed aside to make room for newer stuff, and maybe even to reorganize everything. Of course, such a task was pretty ridiculous. Who the hell would ever want to do that?

My sister was riveted by the idea.

So now the two of us are planning to read through everything. At first, I was content to just do everything from Post-Crisis onward. But then I bought the DC Universe: Complete Stories of Alan Moore trade-paperback. Mostly to get the Killing Joke, and so that I could actually read some Alan Moore comics (yes, I'm horrible for never reading them in the past. Sue me.)

Then I made the mistake of reading "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow." It was about the most awesome thing I'd seen in awhile. I grew up as a Superman fan, and during the 90's the only titles I collected were S-Family titles, so seeing the Superman mythos come to a conclusion like that...it was powerful. Of course, it was a completely different Superman than the one I had grown up reading--so now I was interested in Superman's Silver Age stories.

From there, it was a short jump to placing a seventy dollar order for a ton of Showcases on Ebay.

I've more or less "finalized" the list of comics I plan to purchase, for my reading pleasure, and my sister is continuously laughing at me when she sees me adding five new trades to my list every month when the new solicits come out. I can usually spend about a hundred dollars a month on ordering comics, though, and that doesn't count the new comics that come out weekly. So the list, while huge, is still most definitely manageable. It'll take awhile, but I think I can move through it and actually "complete" my DC collection, at least for the time being.

So here's the deal. I'm going to read a considerable chunk of stories--perhaps a full Showcase, perhaps a couple of trades, perhaps a few arcs of single issues, or some combination. Then I'll post on this blog, in the completely arrogant assumption that everyone on the internet is fascinated by my funnybook experiences. And we may even get my sister to chime in a few times--and she doesn't have the annoyingly continuity-obsessed mind that I do, so her views will probably be different.

I'm usually pretty objective about stuff. I have a tendency to love it when obscure characters (at least ones I've heard about somewhat) reappear, but other than that I like to think that I won't be unreasonably biased. If I'm able to find fault in some of my favorite writers and artists, then I can probably give a decent opinion of the stuff I read.

But if it has Ice in it, then all bets are off. I'll probably buy the comic for you and tie you down until you've read it.