Happy November! I can hardly believe the year is coming to an end already. Needless to say, it's been a weird and wild one.
This week's comics are absolutely stellar, with only three DC, nine Marvel, and four independent publisher releases. Of those, two are from X of Swords, three are by Kelly Thompson, and two are from Black Label. I've done another trio of spotlights this week, showing off comic book representation! For the spotlight on people of color in comics, I'm discussing Grag Pak's Agents of Atlas, the first all-Asian superhero team! Then, after the reveal of Kate Pryde's bisexuality a few issues of Marauders ago, I'm discussing the sexuality of the X-Men, and how that changes through the years. Finally, with her three upstanding comic releases this week, I talk about writer Kelly Thompson, and how she chooses to be fresh with her characters without tearing them down or tormenting them first--something very common (and usually masculinity driven) in cape comics. Without further ado, Continue Reading for more comics talk!
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This is a longer week for comics by just a bit, with a total of eighteen pulls! Amazingly, in my opinion, exactly half are independent publishers, including Image, BOOM!, Dynamite, Titan, Aftershock, and Dark Horse Comics. I think that covers most the major indie publishers, missing maybe just IDW and one or two big players in the game.
I have all three spotlights ready to go this week! For the spotlight on people of color in comics, I'm discussing award-winning writer and educator Eve L. Ewing and her Champions book, starring a few highly representative teenage heroes. For queer topics in comics, I'm back with Far Sector, this time talking about main character Jo's omnisexuality! And last, for the spotlight on women in comics, I go over Adventureman's Claire Temple and her impressive sisters! Girl power, always and forever. This week also features what I'm going to call my Big Week of Big Books (suggestions welcome), after the continual plethora side-by-side favorites and mostly indie releases--Inkblot, Spy Island, Lonely Receiver, We Only Find Them When They're Dead, Black Widow, and Horizon Zero Dawn have been coming out on the same days, and it makes for an exciting week of reads! Continue Reading for all this and more discussion on this week's comic releases!
I was really trying to avoid this, this week, but life has required me to stop and catch up with non-SSG things, so I didn't have time to do the pull list and spotlights the way i normally would. Instead, I'll do a VERY brief overview of what I'm reading, what I'm excited for, and who the spotlights were going to be on. Next week, however, already has me excited about writing the week's pull blurbs, so I have no doubt I'll get those done, no problem.
Here's the very brief, non-pretty rundown of this week in comics: fifteen comics seven indie 3 dawn of x 1 other marvel 2 DC Again, I'm not doing blurbs for this week's pulls, just some very quick-and-dirty chat about select comics from my list. Continue reading for the most basic pull list I've ever done!
Welcome to another big week in comics! I feel like I've been going pretty hard on these pull lists each week, and I hope the new formatting helps with the added features. Feedback is always appreciated!
One thing that stood out to me about this week's pull list is that a solid third of them are #4's. I'm not sure why this struck me as odd, but I wanted to share. You might have also noticed I read a good deal of limited series'. This week alone, there is the Death Metal event tie-in, the fourth of five for Star and Ludocrats, and the final issues of Dead Earth, the X-Men tie-in to Empyre, and Ant-Man. I'm also picking up the final book of the once-ongoing Harley Quinn series, where the notoriously self-contained book is going canon for it's bonus-sized final issue. A lot of independent publishers often prefer short story contracts, to keep their releases fresh and new, offering more all the time. Since I'm actively trying to expand the ratio of indie comics I read, it makes sense that I'm reading more limited series', as well. I'm also still doing the spotlights on representation in comics, which I plan to continue for the foreseeable future. This week, I'm discussing comic writer Ta Nehisi Coates, pop culture's response to Harley Quinn's multi-faceted sexuality, and a spotlight on the women of comics showcasing writer Karla Pacheco and her new Spider-Woman series. You may also notice a number of these "blurbs" are smaller than my usual pull list writing. This is due to a larger number of commitments over the weekend, pressing myself for time, and the fact that for some of these, I've either talked them to death already, or the story isn't capturing me as well as it used to. If the shortness of those blurbs is off putting, apologies, I'm a little overdue for a pull list cleanup. Continue Reading for all this and more! Ok, this is getting embarrassing. There's only so many weeks I can get away with having a mostly-Marvel pull list before it starts to look like I'm a massive Marvel stan (a term I hate and immediately regret using). Don't get me wrong, I obviously really like Marvel, but my Marvel-heavy pull lists are more of a comment on the current state of the comics industry than my personal taste. Go to any twitter page/message board/Reddit sub, you'll see a surprising amount of comic book fans reporting confusing and lazy editing, writing, and events at DC Comics in the past year or so. I'm sad to say it's a pattern I noticed as well, and the reason I only have a handful of DC books on my subscription list at all. And, of those, they're almost entirely Black Label books--the publishing house under DC where they put all their out-of-canon hero stories and non-cape comics. For these reasons, I've been working on adding more independent publisher content to by subscription list. There's a lot of new indie books starting in 2020, so now is the perfect tie to spread my comic-reading wings. And, if you've been keeping up, none of this is news. These are trends I've been writing about for months now, and it's only getting more obvious. Publishing giant disappointments aside, there's always amazing comics still coming out. INCLUDING some great DC books ;). Continue reading to see what I have this week! NEW Comic Books for JANUARY 1ST, 2020!12/29/2019 Happy New Year! I've been AWOL for a week or two, as last week didn't have much by way of comics, and I was still pretty swamped with work and hobbies through the holidays. Plus, what an INSANE week we had just before Christmas, with average pull lists of dedicated readers reaching over twenty books that Wednesday. Thea year is starting off a little easier on our wallets than that, but that's not to say the books being released are any less interesting. In fact, the year starts off strong this week with three new series' that I'll be reading, among the other pulls. Last year, one of my goals was the broaden my comic book reading list--add variety. I feel like this year I've done a great job of that, and because of it, I've been reading some really excellent books. This year, I'll grow off that sentiment, and say my comic book reading goal is to not waste my time (and money) on series' that aren't what I wished for. In short, I'll be continuing to read just as much and more, but I'll get a little picky. If I'm not feeling a series, that's fine, there are plenty more to replace it with. Adding on to that as well, I already have a few creator-owned titles on my list for their debut in March, so I expect my comic pull list t be very rounded out by the end of 2020. With all that out of the way, continue reading to find out what's good for the first week of comics in 2020! |
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