What to read?

What comic to read next? That is what I'm thinking about tonight. You think it would be an easy question to answer but somehow I make it complicated. I'll break it down into categories for you.

The first category is obvious. Get a comic from my new comic pile. Those are the latest ones I've purchased that I haven't cracked open yet. That pile isn't usually big. Tonight it has five comics in it. Sometimes I like to know I have some new comics to read so I don't want the pile to get down to zero. I don't buy very many of new comics so I don't want to read them all at once. It's a little way of having something to look forward to.

The second category is new graphic novels. Anything like the Rick Geary books or "George Sprott" by Seth that I might have lying around. They stand on their own and are not part of any series. They are new stories from a favorite author/artist. Sometimes I let these sit around for a little while too. It took me a few weeks to get to reading "George Sprott" because I enjoyed the idea of having a new book by Seth to read. They don't come out very often. I get to graphic novels by cartoonists I'm unfamiliar with quicker because I want to see if they are good. A strange little habit.

The third category is new collections of comics. Hard bound or trade paperback they are the way I read a lot of mainstream superhero stuff from Marvel or DC these days. I buy the latest Hercules series this way plus I've kept up with some of the Spider-Man books as they come out in collected form. "Young Liars" and "Criminal" are two other books I buy when they bind them all together. Sometimes when I want to check out what's been going on in a mainstream book the I don't regularly read so I grab a collected. Sometimes they sit on my shelf for a while because I'm not in the habit of reading the series. I have a few collected things I haven't read lined up. I could pick any one of them.

Category four is collections of old comics. Some of them I've read the originals before and some of them I haven't. I've got Creepies. Eeries, a volume of Herbie, a couple of Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Demon. That's just off the top of my head without looking. There always seems to be less of a rush to get to these. Maybe because, even if the printing is new, the comics are old. They've been around for decades. What's one more week? They can wait. Who's ever in a rush to read a twenty year old comic book?

The final category is, of course, all the comics that have been sitting on my shelf for years. The collection. Sure I've read them all before but some not for decades. I have plenty to pick and choose form. Too many some say. All sorts of genres and subject matter. I could pick for nostalgia, style, curiosity, artist, writer, character, or any other reason I can think of. I have a lot of comics. So what should I read?