I Have No Pull List.

I have no pull list.

I love comics. Comics are poems of movies, or dreams of novels. They are one of the biggest--if not the single biggest--inspiration for my art. But I had to let them go.

...well, the monthly issues anyway. I'm a trade paperback guy now. I suspect I will remain one. When my wife and I moved this year, one of the things I had to lug were some longboxes. Now, granted, I don't have nearly as many as some of my friends, but still--there's nothing like lugging heavy-ass longboxes up flights of narrow stairs to get you thinking about this hobby.

Sure, I pull out issues every now and then. I do. My comics are not hermetically sealed. I do not buy them as a collector--they're there to be read. The only reason they're in longboxes is because there's no other way to store them effectively without destroying them.

But you can put a trade paperback on a shelf. On a shelf! How sweet is that? Easier to sneak on business trips too. Much easier to loan out.

Have you ever tried loaning a non-comics friend a set of individual issues to read, hoping to engage them in the hobby? Yeah, how'd that work out? In my experience, trade paperbacks convert the non-believer more often then a slick stack of plastic-wrapped individual issues.

Downsides: I miss the monthly drip-drip of comics goodness, I cannot find a good source that shows me the release schedules of trades ONLY (without also listing every individual title coming out), and then there's the whole "paced for trades" problem afflicting the industry.

So...how does everyone feel about trades versus monthly issues? Does anybody know of a real easy way for me to stay on top of the release schedules of trades? How do people feel about how trades have affected the pace of storytelling in the industry?