Checked out the first three hardbound collections of Marvel NOW!'s Avengers (technically, Avengers Vol. 5) from the library; the first eleven issues were written by Jonathan Hickman, but #12-17 were co-written by Nick Spencer.

While I was pleasantly surprised by Hickman's run on Fantastic Four and its spin-off FF (which technically stands for " ( Read more... )

Well, at least it's the funniest thing that Marv Wolfman ever wrote.

From Tales of the New Teen Titans, Vol. 1, #4 (Sept. 1982), page 2, panels 4 & 5, collected in DC Archive Editions: The New Teen Titans Archives, Vol. 3 (NY: DC Comics [a Warner Brothers Entertainment Company], 2006; ISBN: 978-1-4012-1144-8; 227 pps.), pencils by George Perez, ( Read more... )

I've been occasionally reading some back issues of comic books that I haven't read before.

Today I read Vol. 1, #4 (Dec. 1981) of All-Star Squadron, written by Roy Thomas (shortly after he left Marvel for DC for the first time); this is the comic that was set during World War II on DC's Earth-Two, which to my mind was more interesting than DC's ( Read more... )

I recently read The Spirit, Book One (NY: DC Comics; 2007; ISBN: 9781401214616), which collects the first six issues of DC's 2006 relaunch of The Spirit, Will Eisner's famously rumpled and often humorous dead-man-walking, fedora-wearing, masked and trenchcoated crime-fighter, written and penciled by Canadian cartoonist Darwyn Cooke, and the one- ( Read more... )

Ever since I purchased it on Sunday, 2 October 2011 until I finally finished it on Sunday, 28 October 2012, I've been reading Essential Marvel Horror, Vol. 1 (NY: Marvel Publishing, Inc. [a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment, Inc.], 2006; ISBN: 978-0-7851-2196-X; 648 pps.), a b&w "phone book" omnibus reprinting various color and black & white comic ( Read more... )

I finally found something that Warren Ellis has written that I actually, honestly, no-shit like: Planetary.

Yeah, it only lasted 27 issues, and it took eleven years to play out; but with Planetary, Ellis has finally hit my sweet spot of bleeding edge conspiracy theory and pastiches / mash-ups of previously existing fictional worlds. Planetary ( Read more... )

After reading a bunch of the trade paperbacks collecting Wildstorm's (an imprint of DC Comics) The Authority series, I've jumped back to read the available TPs collecting The Authority's predecessors, Stormwatch, a multinational, superpowered (don't-call-'em-superheroes) team run by the United Nations that will, on occasion, bite the hand of (our ( Read more... )

I read The Incredible Hulks: Fall of the Hulks thanks to inter-library loan; this is the deluxe hardcover collecting (most of...) the "Fall of the Hulks" crossover storyline running through Marvel Comics' Hulk family of titles in 2009-10.

Much as I mostly enjoy the Hulk titles (excluding Skaar, Son of Hulk; and what's up with Red She-Hulk being ( Read more... )

I've been reading the two trade paperbacks collecting the first 16 issues of Volume 1 of The Authority, Wildstorm's (an imprint of DC Comics) superhero offshoot of Stormwatch (which I've not read yet); The Authority was first written by Warren Ellis (who, despite having read the first four TPs collecting his Transmetropolitan series, I've yet to ( Read more... )

I recently finished reading, thanks to inter-library loans, Brian Azzarello's run on Hellblazer, the still-running DC comic book featuring the trenchcoated Liverpudlian iconoclastic magician, John Constantine.

As much as I dug Azzarello's 100 Bullets series for DC's Vertigo imprint (which Hellblazer shares, or shared; which is why Constantine ( Read more... )