Where To Start?

Many years ago, I used to be an avid comic book collector. Some of my fondest memories when I was a kid were going to visit my grandfather at his barber shop. He always had comics mixed in with the other magazines. And if there wasn't anything interesting he would always give my brother and I a dollar and we would run around the corner to this little store and by the latest issues of Superman, Batman, Spider-man or The Fantastic Four. As I go older I kept buying comics, until buy became collecting. Then came a number of things that slowly over time weened me off of hardcore collecting. The first was the early 1990's and the greed of the comic company's, with multiple covers and variants of variants. It became almost a chore to go to the comic shop. Then our son was born. Now anyone who has been a parent knows how fast any "extra income" disappears with kids. Over the years, I still read and buy comics. I tend to stick to my favorite artists, writers and titles, only venturing into something new from time to time if it jumps out at me. When I do get into a series, I tend to pick up the collected volume trade books from where ever I see them. Comic shop, book store, make no difference to me.

Here is my conundrum. The last few months I have had the urge to get back into collecting a little. But, truth be told, I don't have the first idea of where to start. The books I pick up are still the ones drawn by my favorite artists (I always go for the art primarily, as I am a bit of an artist myself). But as I have gotten older I find that a lot of my favorite artists have now, over the years, become marquee artists, doing special editions, covers, mini-series and the like. Very few work on regular series anymore.

Then on top of that, there is just the material itself. Now just because I haven't been collecting does not mean that I don't keep up with whats happening. I was a little tempted to get back into the game when DC did their New 52 reboot. I picked up a couple of the books, but really wasn't very impressed. The only thing that I have enjoyed from the New 52 has been the "Court of Owls" story line in Batman. I have heard good things about Aquaman and Wonder Woman, but haven't read anything myself yet. Nothing DC is doing right now is very appealing to me. As for Marvel Comics, I have kind of the same problem. My "go to" books are all over the place. There are more Avengers books than I can count. Spider-man is really Doctor Octopus now? and I am not sure what is going on with The Fantastic Four. The AvsX series looked interesting but I was late getting on that bandwagon, so I will wait till the collected trade book(s) come out.

All in all the whole thing is leaving me a little lost. Where is the best place to get back into the game? I guess I will just have to pick a book or two and dive right in.