Archie Comics Fan Forum

General Category => General Discussion => General Comics => Topic started by: DeCarlo Rules on July 04, 2016, 01:57:03 AM

Title: How many comics have you read?
Post by: DeCarlo Rules on July 04, 2016, 01:57:03 AM
For some reason this was a topic that popped into my head today, and I started to think about how I'd estimate that number, because... well, for me at least, it's a little like someone asking me how many TV programs I've watched in my lifetime, or how many hamburgers or slices of pizza I've eaten in my lifetime. Nobody (or practically nobody) keeps count of these things from the time they first started reading comics. You might know how many comics you OWN, but that's not quite exactly the same thing as how many you've READ. I mean different comics, not reading the same one over again. Then you have to ask, well what is meant by "a comic book"? Does one of those 16-page Halloween ComicFest issues count as "1 comic book" and one Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest count as "1 comic book" also? That doesn't seem right, and I have read comics in about as many different formats as there exist. But really I'm thinking of the standard format floppy comic of approximately 20-25 story pages as "1 comic book" so whatever the equivalent of that is. An Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest would be equal to about 40 or 50 standard comic books, so let's split the difference and say 45 comics. So there's the yardstick I'm going to use.

I then tried to figure out how long I've been reading comics, and how many years, and then how many weeks, that amounted to. Then I tried to estimate on average (conservatively) how many standard-size comics I'd read over that time in a typical week. Of course the average number of comics I read per week might be different now than it was at another time when I was reading more comics or less comics, so I tried to take that into account as well.

Long story short, the number of distinct standard page count comics that I've read over the course of my lifetime after doing the mental guesstimation and the math turned out to be about 40,000 -- or about 1 million pages of comics. That sounds like an exaggeration I'm sure, but after double-checking all my estimates, I feel confident that that's still on the conservative end of an estimation (it might even conceivably be 1.5 times that in actuality, but there's no way for me to be sure).
Title: Re: How many comics have you read?
Post by: Archie Comics Collector(Kalell) on July 04, 2016, 02:05:21 AM
Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on July 04, 2016, 01:57:03 AM
For some reason this was a topic that popped into my head today, and I started to think about how I'd estimate that number, because... well, for me at least, it's a little like someone asking me how many TV programs I've watched in my lifetime, or how many hamburgers or slices of pizza I've eaten in my lifetime. Nobody (or practically nobody) keeps count of these things from the time they first started reading comics. You might know how many comics you OWN, but that not quite exactly the same thing as how many you've READ. I mean different comics, not the reading the same one over again. Then you have to ask, well what is meant by "a comic book"? Does one of those 16-page Halloween ComicFest issues count as "1 comic book" and one Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest count as "1 comic book" also? That doesn't seem right, and I have read comics in about as many different formats as there exist. But really I'm thinking of the standard format floppy comic of approximately 20-25 story pages as "1 comic book" so whatever the equivalent of that is. An Archie 1000 Page Comics Digest would be equal to about 40 or 50 standard comic books, so let's split the difference and say 45 comics. So there's the yardstick I'm going to use.

I then tried to figure out how long I've been reading comics, and how many years, and then how many weeks, that amounted to. Then I tried to estimate on average (conservatively) how many standard-size comics I'd read over that time in a typical week. Of course the average number of comics I read per week might be different now than it was at another time when I was reading more comics or less comics, so I tried to take that into account as well.

Long story short, the number of distinct standard page count comics that I've read over the course of my lifetime after doing the mental guesstimation and the math turned out to be about 40,000 -- or about 1 million pages of comics. That sounds like an exaggeration I'm sure, but after double-checking all my estimates, I feel confident that that's still on the conservative end of an estimation (it might even conceivably be 1.5 times that in actuality, but there's no way for me to be sure).

Impressive! I only wish I was able to read the huge amount of EC Comics, current Archie Comics and other material that I keep trying to get to.
Title: Re: How many comics have you read?
Post by: chancebond on July 05, 2016, 01:20:42 AM
at 40 a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year, times 10 years...   145k  give or take...
Title: Re: How many comics have you read?
Post by: The_DoubleGreatest on July 05, 2016, 03:04:49 AM
Incalculable.
Title: Re: How many comics have you read?
Post by: steveinthecity on September 07, 2016, 02:30:43 AM
Quote from: The_DoubleGreatest on July 05, 2016, 03:04:49 AM
Incalculable.
Squared.

I can say however, um, with some authority that I haven't read enough.

Considering all the variables, 1,000 at minimum per year doesn't seem unreasonable.
Title: Re: How many comics have you read?
Post by: Archiecomicxfan215 on September 07, 2016, 05:12:55 PM
Uh, probably over 1000 for sure if its stories..
Title: Re: How many comics have you read?
Post by: BettyReggie on September 07, 2016, 08:14:59 PM
I have no idea but I also read lots of graphic novels from the library. It's a good idea to save money that way.
Title: Re: How many comics have you read?
Post by: rusty on September 07, 2016, 09:10:03 PM
Somewhere north of 100,000.   I have around 80,000 comics in my collection and have sold or borrowed from  the library at least 20,000 others.  It could be even higher than that, but I'd have to sit down and go through the Overstreet and make a list.