A month and a half ago, I set out to read all of the books that have won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. There are twenty-two of them, and when I started, I had read about two and a third of them.

I think things are going fairly well.

Now, I’ve read two and a third and a half of them, and also the first four volumes of Sandman comics/graphic novels/whatever. No, Sandman is not on the list.

I’d like to pretend I don’t know how I missed reading Sandman all this time, but the truth is, I know exactly how it happened. There are pictures (not diagrams) and also… it’s a comic book. Did I mention it’s a comic book?

Well, that would pretty well guarantee that a library near me was not stocking it. Not when it first came out, anyway. And it also guarantees that my parents were not wasting their money on it, even if I did happen to escape and find it while I was being shepherded toward  the “real” books.

Don’t waste your eyes! wails the ghost of my great-grandfather from beyond the grave.

Nope. The only comic books I ever saw as a kid were Classic Comics versions of Dickens and Shakespeare. And even those didn’t come home with me. Why would they? I was smart enough to read the real thing.

It’s taken me a long, long time, and a whole lot of really smart people and a whole lot of “bumping into” references to Sandman to get me past that. Well, eventually, I broke down. And besides, they’re on my e-reader, so I can pretend I’m reading War and Peace, if anybody asks.

And, now, I’m going through them like water. A few select comic books, that is. I’m never going to have shelves and shelves of them.

But I was surprised.

I’ve actually been crying over comic books.

I’ve actually been thinking about comic books.

Oh, dear.