April Fools! I've actually read things for two of my goals. In the non-superhero and/or non-Big Two goal, I read Persepolis. For Spider-Man, I read two Amazing Spider-Man Epic Collections - Ghosts of the Past and Venom, as well as floppies of the issue that fall between those two TPBs.

A few days before the midpoint of the year, here's my progress.

Buying Goals

- I have such a backlog of unread comics and trades that I probably shouldn't making specific buying goals. So my one goals is to buy fewer stories/issues than I read this year.
Probably going in the wrong direction. I've bought a few TPBs this year, plus an Omnibus. I just made an order for 30+ comics from Lone Star, so there's good chance that my purchases have exceeded my reading.

Reading Goals

- Re-read (or read) some stuff from each of the four main classic X-Men comics: Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, and Excalibur. For most of those it'll be re-reading, but I haven't read that much Excalibur before and have never read some of the later issues of New Mutants.
I've read Excalibur #1-34, The Sword is Drawn, Weird War III, and the Excalibur serial from Marvel Comics Presents #31-38. Must of this is stuff I haven't read before, so I want to do some re-reading.
- Binge all or part of Captain America #258-285
Not yet.
- Read one or more of the TPBs & comics I have of late 1980s Spider-Man
I read Amazing Spider-Man #259-310 & Annuals #18-19, 22; the Spider-Man vs. Wolverine one-shot; Spectacular Spider-Man #130-133, 137-150; Web of Spider-Man #1, 6, 29-33, 36; and possibly a spare issue or two I forgot.
- Read some or all of Avengers #278-300
Read it all.
- Pick a couple of periods from Legion of Super-Heroes that I haven't read that much of to binge: maybe the beginning of 5YL or Earthwar
Read Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #239-240 (from just before Earthwar) and Legion of Super-Heroes #1-12 from the 5 Years Later era.
- Make a dent in the Batman Archives/Omnibi I have
Nope.
- Read more stuff that's non-Big Two and/or non-super hero. Not gonna lock myself into specific titles, so I have maximum wiggle room.
Read Persepolis. Also read Nexus (miniseries) #1-3 and Nexus (ongoing) #1-3, 19-25.
- Maybe some Byrne Fantastic Four
Not yet.
- Read whatever Marvel Comics Presents and/or Action Comics Weekly that I'm in the mood for
In two birds with one stone mode, of course I read the Excalibur serial from MCP #31-38.

With Hourman finishing up soon, I think I'm finally going to do this. My plan is to review one issue of every classic jungle comic series I can find: JUNGLE COMICS, JUNGLE JIM, JUNGLE WAR, JUNGLE ACTION, SHEENA, SHANNA, KAÄNGA, KA-ZAR, KORAK...there's a ton of them! I'm going to try to find the "jungle gems" and the "jungle junk"...coming soon!

I put all of mine in stone.  It takes me all year to carve them.  That's why they never get accomplished.  My next year's resolution is to put them on paper.

I don't think I am going to accomplish anything inthe last few days of the year that would radically alter my assessment of my success with this year's goals, so it's time for The Reckoning!



I wound up getting more than I anticipated. I also started a new collecting goal (recreating my childhood collection) that I did not anticipate. I did stick mostly to stuff I was actively collecting at the beginning of the year, I got a number of Disney Ducks (Scrooge & Donald), a little Usagi and Groo, a fair chunk of Kubert war stuff, but not much Scooby. I wound up putting a lot more effort and resources into making progress on the 70s and 90s Ghost Rider series than I anticipated (they were in the misc. other short series, they just got prioritized more than I anticipated a the beginning of the year, as did D&D related comics). I did also add a handful of affordable red dress covers. I did also manage to get 2 issues of Fast Willie Jackson, a series I never thought I would see in the wild at an affordable price.



I made a lot of progress on this, but not in the way I anticipated. I scrapped the organization system I had been using (dividing books by publisher essentially, Marvel/DC/Indy) and implemented a new one that simply divided books into 2 categories-short series (i.e. series/characters that ran for 50 issues or less) and longterm series/characters (i.e. series that ran for more than 50 issues or characters who have had multiple series over the years totaling more than 50 issues). I also have a small number of special collections-DC War for example. Within each division books are simply in alphabetical order by title character. Short series have dividers by letter, longterm series have dividers for each title/character. I have completed everything up through the letter T and am working on books starting with U, but am currently waiting to get more supplies. I have purged a number of books as I have gone through. The only stuff I have left to go through (which will make their own sections with what I keep) is the Batbooks and Superbooks. I need to cut down what I have on those, but I am not sure where the wheat and chafe will be separated, so I will tackle that once everything else is done. I am pleased with the progress I have made though, considering how difficult bags and boards were to come by early in the year and how expensive supplies currently are, so with my limited budget, I have done well on this.



I ended up not setting up at any shows. I did bulk out most of my remaining rpg and CCG inventory, and am working on bulking the purged comics and toys, but that will bleed into 2023. A lot of what I got from bulking out funded the curating and what comics I did buy in '22. I did go to a few shows this year. I attended both Champion City shows, 2 Jim and Dan Shows and Gem City. I often brought a handful of books to trade at each show, and used the windfall for walkaround money or to get specific books at the shows.



I read a lot of stuff this year. I made some headway in my Marvel read that grew out of what I had been reading in Unlimited and was inspired by Wolk's All the Marvels that I read early in the year. I ended up reading 61 trades/OGNs, I surpassed the 1500 individual issue goal (I was at 1645 at the end of November and am at somewhere near 100 for December), and I hit my Goodreads goal of 87, with 19 being prose (novels, short stories & non-fiction), so I hit all my quantitative goals for reading in the year. I even took an extended dip in the Steampunk pool. I may slightly alter how I measure prose reading goals for '23, looking at page goals rather than book goals as I have some longer books I want to dive into and that makes it difficult to reach some of the qualitative goals if I use book count. We'll see, I have a few days to decide yet.



For the most part, I hit the mark, completing or making significant progress on all of the goals except for setting up at cons, and I did an end around on those moving the inventory other ways. So not a bad year in those terms (though the year presented plenty of other challenges in other ways).

I've been contemplating '23 goals, and they may include some other aspects of geek culture, like movies and TV, that I haven't included before because I have a huge backlog of stuff I want to get to and setting quantitative goals is a good motivating factor, and also because as part of the basement refit I did to accommodate the curating, I have a nice viewing set up down there now so I can watch things as I work on bagging, boarding, organizing, purging comics etc. But we'll see. I am not ready to make my goals concrete just yet. Give me a couple of days and I will be.

-M