Armageddon it: I still need more comic in my diet

I've been going through a hard purge of my comic books lately, refining and sharpening the collection to bare essentials - if it's not a total work of utter genius, or if I don't have some deeply embarrassing sentimental attachment to it, it's out.

So even though when I went to the big Armageddon geek convention in town this past weekend, you would think I wouldn't be too tempted to load up on more of this stuff, not when I'm clearing so much of it out.

But you'd be wrong, professor. Dead wrong!

Somewhere deep into the $3 bin of comics that Harley Yee was selling, I realised that my life had been incomplete without the Patchwork Man issue of House of Secrets and that I definitely needed some more Jonah Hex and Blackhawk comics in my diet.

It's been a rough fucking year and I need some bright and colourful optimism, so I found myself craving the comfort food of old Legion of Super Heroes, Bob Haney's Brave & Bold and as much of Curt Swan's Superman as I can eat. I want to chow down on old Flash and Batman comics with bonus back-ups, and I did always want to read the issue of Detective Comics where Black Canary ditched the fishnets.

I'm hungering for the dopiest DC shit from the seventies - comics starring Metamorpho and the goddamn Green Team - and, sadly, I have an unending, Galactus-level appetite for dumb Marvel comics from the early 90s - Thor annuals and extra-sized Quasar and Ron Lim's Silver Surfer, which is still the shiniest.

I got some vegetables in my diet, with some insanely pretty small press stuff from the local kids - the standard of the art in these things just blows my mind - but the most excited I got at the whole convention was finding a Johnny Nemo comic by Milligan and Ewins, and a couple of 2000ad annuals from the 1980s, because they are never, ever on the menu.

And for desert, I always have room for the stupidest superhero satire from years ago, full of references and in-jokes that are dusty as hell. I'm one issue closer to a complete collection of Not Brand Echh, and my one big regret of the weekend is that I didn't get the giant-sized Plop that was there.

I also had to get the issue of Green Lantern where a cute little kid explodes in the vacuum of space, because holy shit, he fucking explodes in space.

I always got a bit mad around cheap comics, and once I come down from that dorky high, there is always a bit of  regret and some tiny shame that I'm still so addicted to this stuff.

A lot of it - especially that 90s Marvel - will probably fall victim to the purge. I have a table at a small comic mart last week, and it's likely these will be on those tables, selling for the same price I bought them for.

But for now, I get to gorge on these things, and I'm still hungry. I'm always hungry.