Introduction

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved comics. When I was a kid, I devoured collections of Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes. My trips to the library would have me coming home with The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy, Peter Bagge's the Bradleys, and The Complete Crumb Comics (I was a weird kid). One Halloween (1998 to be exact) while trick or treating some kind soul dropped a copy of The Uncanny X-Men issue 239 into my bag, and I instantly became a huge superhero comic fan, particularly for Wolverine, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. This continued through the 90s, until I became more of a music and film fan. Then I'd read comics on and off, but never with the voracity that I did as a kid.

I'm current back on a comic kick. This will probably die off in a few months, but right now I'm reading a ton of stuff. I found out that the 1001 *Insert Random Bullshit* Before You Die series has a book out about comics. I've previously written about this series and how frustrating it is for someone to try to actually finish these lists. What typically happens is that the people who put these books together throw a bunch of titles in and don't even both to consider availability. Therefore, in their Films book there are a bunch of films that you either can't get in English or just can't get at all in any format. Their Novels book really pissed me off because they included a series that's only available in Korean, and partially available in a hard to find French translation. Honestly, I don't even think the asshole who included that one even read the fucking thing. As far as I can tell, only the the Albums one can actually be finished.

This hard to find aspect, unfortunately, also applies to the Comics edition. Starting with the second entry, I had to do an interlibrary loan to try to get it, and lord knows if I'll be able to find some of the foreign works included in this book. In fact, when I started doing a little research, I found that the fifth entry, Balthazar's Feast, is impossible to find anywhere, and in the synopsis he doesn't even talk the fucking book itself, just the author. In those cases, I may just find other works by the same author, typically going for whatever gets the most attention in the book's write-ups. I'm also going to leave a blank spot for those and move on to what is obtainable until I can find something to fill those slots, and try to work my way through this collection for as long as my interest allows. I will also on occasion provide information on how to find these books, either online (for pd versions) or through bookstores.

On last bit: Some of the entries are infuriatingly vague. One will just say "Batman" and not include issue numbers, so you don't know which issues you're supposed to read. On these occasions I will make a judgement on what I think is enough and go from there. For Batman, using just the first issue would be perfect, since it introduces some main characters and is probably one of the best first issues I've seen. The second issue, however, kind of sucks ass. So yeah, it'll just be whatever I deem fit to include.