All Paths Lead to Indecision

As I've mentioned recently, there are a few titles I've been buying I'm thinking about no longer buying. This is not a new problem. The question of when to give up on a comic is one I repeatedly struggle with, so much so I did a bunch of posts about just how often I went on buying comics after I stopped enjoying them.

Sometimes it's out of inertia; I've been buying the book, so I just keep on buying it. The fact most of the things I buy don't run very long these days actually helps on that score. Now it's more often I see things in the series I enjoy, and so I see ways the series could turn around, or come together in a really satisfying fashion. "If there could just be more of that, and less of this other thing I don't enjoy." Or, "These individual pieces aren't too interesting, but they might be combined in an interesting way."

But that leads back around to me potentially buying something I don't enjoy for a long time. But it's not too hard to tell the difference between the books where I finish one issue and I'm excited to see the next, and the books where I finish and my reaction is, "Well, this might pay off eventually." 

Simple enough to drop the books in the latter category, except sometimes those books do pay off. The question is how long of a leash do I use, because, again, I find myself potentially buying some dissatisfying book way too long. Like Hulk when Dr. Strange banished him to the Crossroads, I just keep ending up in the same place. I gave Batgirls 6 issues, but it's, in theory, an ongoing series. Letting it finish the initial story arc seemed fair, but doesn't really work for mini-series like Iron Fist or Ice Canyon Monster (assuming another issue of the latter ever shows up.) I don't know what Distorted is, so what's fair there?

So I'm tentatively going with the vague definition of enough issues to get a sense of the story. If I'm still guessing about what they're trying to do, it's can get a little more rope. It plays into my tendency to hope things will come together in an enjoyable way, but I'm not planning to sit around and wait forever for it to happen. At a certain point, I'll have a sense of what kind of story they want to tell, and I can decide if I give a crap.

Although I was thinking about this during a long, work-related drive yesterday, and realized this benefits the slow-paced books. Like She-Hulk, where 3 issues in, not a lot has happened. The plot is more theoretical than anything else at this point, which leaves my imagination free to run wild with all sorts of possibilities. But She-Hulk is, like Batgirls, an ongoing series, so I can see where it stands at the end of the first arc.

Guess I'll see how long this half-assed system holds.