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Reading comics can be fun. Reading good comics can be better. Reading great comics is the best.

When I first started reading comics, every issue of every book I ever read was good. I couldn’t find a flaw, couldn’t complain about the artwork, couldn’t complain about the story; I just enjoyed the book. One day it happened, though. I found a book that I didn’t like; it was a bad book. This one book changed my reading habits in a very subtle way.

A problem with this and other “bad books” is that I can’t remember the title or the story. Most everyone can remember great stories and great titles, but sometimes you just can’t remember bad books.

This happens for a few reasons, one of which could be that the story is so bad that it’s not worth remembering. Another reason could be that the story is so awful that you don’t want to remember it, like putting up some sort of mental block that prevents you from accessing the title of the book and story. Well, maybe not.

Some stories are so bad that in your mind they stick out like a sore thumb. Some stick out as the worst of the worst, and these become the gauge for determining whether a book is bad or good; on a scale of 1-to-5, this book should be the 0. It’s that kind of awful book that you can remember.

Sadly my bad story wasn’t that kind of story. But like I mentioned before, my bad story became a gauge. That’s how it worked for me.

Once I had figured out what a bad story can be, I was able to tell what a good story could be. I knew that what I was reading was good and was very enjoyable. I also knew what I didn’t like. I carried around a new set of eyes for what I read, then came some trouble. I was always looking at stories as a critic. Always judging and always comparing.

I had found my “gold standard” for books as well as my “coal standard” and compared everything to it. I didn’t want to try anything outside of my gold standard. I was no longer judging books on their own, I was comparing them to a book, that in my eyes, could never be bad.

Then I got stuck. Reading books for enjoyment became a small matter while staying away from bad books became a priority. In my mind anything that wasn’t my gold standard was automatically a bad book. All or nothing.

I can’t quite say what broke me of this habit. Maybe I got bored with my “gold standard,” or maybe I had really, finally broken down and admitted that my “gold standard” wasn’t perfect all the time. Either way it opened me up to being a reader again and not a critic.

Bad books exist, there is no way around that. At times one needs to learn how to recognize bad books because knowing what is bad can steer you in the direction of what is good. What is considered good isn’t always going to stay that way. Take thought-balloons; they use to be good and now they’re bad.

I can predict that bad today might be good tomorrow. Bad books serve a purpose in many ways, and the best way is helping us to find what we like.