Getting in all in the mail

New Zealand went into another lockdown the other week. All the fast food and furniture and shoe shops are closed. All of the bookstores and comic shops are closed. I still have to go into the office, but it's fucking quiet out there, and probably will be for another couple of weeks.

That's the main reason why I probably have more books and comics coming in the post than ever before, with multiple wins on the local auction sites and ebay purchases coming from Greece and Scotland. All the money saved by not splashing out on takeaways and movies and shit is going into these things. The books themselves are never that expensive, but it's all about the postage costs to get it to the arse end of the world.

I've always been a shelf junkie, getting things from the local stores is always more preferable, but that's just not an option right now. These recent purchases have literally been the very first things I've ever bought on ebay.

But I'm quietly obsessed with getting all the 2000ad and Judge Dredd annuals from the 1980s that I never, ever saw when they came out. I've got three in the past month, and have another four on the way. It's getting to be a bit of an addiction.

And also, it has been a hard year on the geo-political scene and in everybody's individual lives. Just a lot of bad shit, and it's been a fucking exhausting year all round. A slightly bent copy of the Judge Dredd 1992 Yearbook isn't going to fix all that, but it surely won't hurt.