After reading a ton of books in prior years I fell off doing a lot of reading in 2022, so for 2023 I made it a priority to read more again, and as part of that I began tracking my reading. Because I wanted to keep it simple, and I sort of strongly dislike using sites like Goodreads, I made myself a spreadsheet with three tabs to track my reading; the first tab tracking the book-books I read this year, the second tab tracking single issue comic books (“floppies”), and the third tab tracking comic collections, trades paperback, omnibuses, graphic novels, etc.

Comic books by the numbers for the past year: I read 273 floppies, and 55 collections last year (I did not bother to keep track of how many single issues were in each trade/omnibus, because I am lazy). Marvel was far and away the publisher I read the most, which should shock no one who knows me, but I did start reading a lot more DC books in the past year, and there’s a loooooooong tail of Indies that I read, in part thanks to my love of long box diving, and in part because I love supporting people who make cool stuff. I even started dabbling in some manga last year, reading the Akira series, and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, both of which were excellent in different ways.

Some of my favorite series that were published last year, that were consistently putting out top notch issues, included Ryan North’s Fantastic Four, Tom King’s Human Target, Kyle Higgins’ and Joe Clark’s Deep Cuts, and Cullen Bunn’s Door to Door Night by Night.

I also did a lot of long box diving last year, picking up 50¢ issues of books I’ve never heard of from the 80s and early 90s, most of them from long defunct small presses. Did you know they made comics from Sliders and Alien Nation? I also found titles that were clear Ninja Turtles rip-offs, comics that ended up being Australian softcore trucker pornography, a post-apocalyptic retelling of the Christian allegory “Pilgrims Progress, and Batman fighting the spirit of jazz. Longboxes are truly a land of contrasts.

If you’re curious about the rest of the comics I read, you can view the Book Tracker spreadsheet on the web.