X Stands for Stupid

My craptastic collection of crazy comics

"Whoa," you say. "I don't know a thing about comics. I'm hittin' me the 'back' button." Hang on, trooper. I don't know a thing about comics either (as this column will attest). This is more about collecting stupid stuff. Perhaps you've crammed a shoebox full of letters from people who no longer love you or stacked several years' worth of subscriptions to Time magazine thinking, "Yeah, I'm totally gonna catch up on politics and the news someday...Reagan's still president, right? Heh, he was the Gipper."

I'm moving. And despite the amount of junk I have thrown out over the years, I have accumulated still more junk that must get the axe. To wit: a trunk of old comic books collected during the early 90s, a time a friend of mine informs me is universally judged the worst era of comics. Here's a telling sample:

Uncanny Xmen 278-295
X-Factor assorted mid-70s
Batman vs Predator 1-3 complete (if there was a Batman vs Street Mime I would've bought that too)
Spawn 1
X-Force 1-19 (I hate you Liefeld)
X-men 1-16
Spiderman Torment (the McFarlane arc)
Spiderman Saga 1-3 (I know, I know, I keep forgetting the hyphen in Spider-man. I don't need to get a house call from the dorkstapo, okay?)
Amazing Spiderman assorted mid-350s and 360s
Death's Head II #1 (I think it's about the story of a plucky garage band and their tumultuous rise...and meteoric fall. And another thing...I'm sick of the phrase 'meteoric rise.' I'm using the metaphor correctly here. It's 'meteoric fall.' Meteors fall. If you've ever seen a meteor rise, you were probably hanging upside down on the playground jungle gym. Why, man, why?)

Let's play a game. I took a picture of a notable comic from the voluminous collection of Team Awesome's very own Frank. Can you guess which one is my crappy comic?

Oh god, here we go, Spider-man 2099 #1 (Cancel the longevity treatments, because the future is decidedly lame.)
more assorted Amazing SM
assorted Classic X-men
A few assorted New Mutants 87, 93, 100, 7?, Summer Special???
Wolverine late 40s, early 50s (The secret of Wolverine's past finally revealed!!! Seriously! No, for real this time! Okay, you're right, we're just stringing you along.)
Cable 1
Assorted crappy early Image comics like Cyber Force, Youngblood, etc. (I hate you even more, Liefeld.)
Hardware 1 (Okay, this one I think I can defend. In high school, I wrote and drew a comic book—a series of mind-numbingly violent comic strips, to be accurate—with a friend of mine in lieu of paying attention in class. It was called Hardware and we harbored a pipe dream that we would someday publish these poorly drawn and miserably plotted craplets. So to see a comic with our beloved moniker, we were immediately both crestfallen and curious. I don't think I made it past page three.)
Book of collected original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Hmm, this I'm keeping...the first arc was pretty good...(flip, flip, flip) okay, no, this is crap.)
Wow, unopened X-cutioner's Song crossover comics in their original polybag. Yep, I totally remember NOT reading these.
X-men Adventures 1 (Yep, pretty much anything with an 'X' in the title published in the early 90s is in this godawful heap.)
Random Deathlok, Thor, Ghost Rider, Darkhawk, and even crappier comics.

I've used the word crap a lot in this column. I don't regret one instance of it. Admittedly, I don't consider myself a comic book expert, but I feel confident enough in my body of knowledge of that particular world to say that this is the single most crappy assemblage of comic books ever. Spawn #1 aside, this collection is so unremarkable as to be the literary equivalent to a plain, flavorless muffin. Buttered with coyote poo. After they got into the dumpster behind your local Taco Bell.

I want to go back in time and beat myself up. My brother too. He had a hand in this. I spent actual dollars on these things. Money I could have instead spent on matches to burn the rest of the money. I think I would've enjoyed that more.

What in the HELL do I do with this stuff? If I owned a house, I would keep this pile of forest-killings as a testament to my own stupidity. Instead I'll make do with the phone number of a girl I should have called weeks ago. I should bronze this scrap of paper as a trophy to utter stupidity. Gah, stupid, stupid, stupid. Hmm...ah, what have I got to lose? Where's the phone? Lessee, 5, 5, 5--what the...Argh!