FanGirl and I were meant to kick off our Batwoman Book Club today, but the video streaming gods were set against us. While we get the kinks worked out of our new process to get the full book club video up later this week, here’s a quick discussion of the material we’ll be covering this month.
comic books
Crushing Comics includes definitive comic book guides, essays about characters and titles, collecting strategies, comic reviews, and more!
Crushing Comics S01E080 – X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha
I’m down to just three more bricks of comic books, but this first one is huge – it’s got over a half a dozen X-Men hardcovers inside! In the first of a three-part unwrapping, I dig into X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha, and discuss why this might be my favorite modern period of X-Men comics.
Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.
Episode 80 features X-Men: Nation X and X-Necrosha, covered in guides to Uncanny X-Men and X-Force, respectively.
The Pull List: Action Comics, Avengers, Calexit, Detective Comics, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Terrifics, Thanos, & more!
This week The Pull List is holding steady at a still-staggering 32 comic books.
I’m not sure if I was being a moody reader or if every company shipped some bunk books this week, but the average rating for the week was 2.70 – a full third of a point lower than the past few weeks. While that means most of the books were still better than average, it’s not by a whole lot.
Artwork from Thanos #16, line art by Geoff Shaw with color art by Antonio Fabela.
Here’s what I pulled this week, with *s on adds (whether I just caught up with them or started them fresh):
- DC Comics
- Action Comics #998
- Detective Comics #975
- The Flash #41
- * Mera – Queen of Atlantis #1
- Milk Wars: JLA/Doom Patrol Special
- Raven: Daughter of Darkness #2
- * Suicide Squad #36
- Teen Titans #17
- The Silencer #2
- * The Terrifics #1
- Wonder Woman #41
- Image Comics
- * The Beef #1
- Days of Hate #2
- Gasolina #6
- Twisted Romance #4
- Void Trip #4
- Marvel Comics
- All-New Wolverine #31
- Avengers #682
- Captain Marvel #129
- * Champions #17
- Legion #2
- * Lockjaw #1
- Moon Knight #192
- Thanos #16
- X-Men Blue #22
- Smaller Publishers: Aftershock, Black Mask, Boom! Studios, Dark Horse, Titan
- Abbott #2, Boom! Studios
- * Alisik #1, Titan Books / Statix Press
- Backways #3, Aftershock Comics
- * Calexit #2, Black Mask Studios
- Hungry Ghosts #2, Dark Horse / Berger Books
- * Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Coronation #1, Boom! Studios
- * The Wilds #1, Black Mask Studios
Picks of the Pull
Big Two (Marvel/DC) Issue of the Week:
Detective Comics (2016) #975
A great-looking, contemplative issue that brings together the members of the Bat-Family we don’t usually see in this book – Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Damian.
Batman has pulled these trusted lieutenants together as an inner council to decide Batwoman’s fate as a member of the Bat-family, yet in some ways their conversation is also a litigation of Bruce and his methods as the head of this dysfunctional household. Meanwhile, Batwoman holds herself accountable for her own actions, with a surprising result.
This isn’t an issue that’s going to appeal to a more casual reader – it looks amazing, but it has hardly any conflict. However, for someone who has been reading from the start this pierces right to the heart of this title and the ideological divide between Batwoman and Batman that has been brewing all along.
Part of what makes it so power is that Batwoman also has an avowed “no kills” philosophy, but she is willing to make exceptions when other lives hang in the balance. Batman won’t make exceptions, so he gets to watches thousands of Gothamites die from his moral high ground.
It’s heartbreaking to think of this book writing by someone other than Tynion or with a cast other than this one. Everything about it works so incredibly well. Yet, we’re in the “disassembled” phase, and there’s certainly more conflict to come before Tynion moves on.
Best Small-Pub Issue of the Week:
The Wilds (2018) #1, Black Mask Studios
A strong and sombre new zombie comic, The Wilds is definitely a descendent of Walking Dead but with a completely different tone – due in no small part to its pair of woman creators, Vita Ayala and Emily Pearson.
We get the same old zombie-pocked landscape with isolated camps trading resources and doing their best to survive, except the zombies are walking plant life – humans who have turned into semi-sentient flower pots. It makes for strangely calming, beautiful zombies to see all of their typical goriest bits covered in blooming flowers.
Pearson’s art evokes such masters of the modern form as Allred and Noto, employing their same plain, truthful faces and uncomplicated backgrounds.
Beneath the flowery dressing, this is the familiar story of a single senior errand runner who thinks it might be time to get out of the game, and how an act of compassion on her last journey might spell the end of the safety of her heavily fortified compound. There’s no slam bang action beats in this one, but the strange stillness of it is pulling me towards reading more.
This Week In X: All-New Wolverine, Legion, & X-Men Blue
It’s the ninth week of new comics in 2018, and This Week in X we have an unusually light week of X-Men. There are just three new titles and three collections to cover, although one of those collections is a really big deal to me!
- All-New Wolverine (2016) #31 is a fun-filled one-off team-up of Honey Badger and Deadpool.
- Legion (2018) #2 is a comic book that does not star Legion nor appeal to his fans from any medium.
- X-Men: Blue (2017) #22 finds some character moments in this symbiote space saga, but skimps on details.
Learn more about how each of those series reached their current issues and hear which ones I’d recommend picking up. Plus, learn what new X-collections are out this week, including Legion – Son of X, New Mutants, and Weapon X!
Indie Series Spotlight: Suicide Risk by Mike Carey, Elena Casagrande, & Andrew Elder (Ep01)
This is the pilot for the fourth video series on my YouTube channel – Indie Series Spotlight!
After months of opening my massive collection of Marvel oversized hardcovers, I realized I was really missing talking about my love of comics not released by Marvel. Since returning to comic reading in 2012, I’ve become a massive fan of independent and creator-owned comics – they occupy a full third of my comic reading time, and they dominated my list of favorite comics in 2017.
In this new show, I’ll be sharing my indie comics love with you one series at a time. Each series will be something I strongly recommend to new readers – including folks who have never read a comic before in their lives! For each series, I’ll start by giving a general pitch of the title and then get into spoiler territory for readers who need even more convincing.
First up: Suicide Risk by Mike Carey, Elena Casagrande, & Andrew Elder. I picked this series up out of blind devotion to Mike Carey, who I love from his work on X-Men: Legacy and Unwritten, not realizing it would become one of my favorite indie comic runs of all time! It’s hard to discuss this series’ massive scope without spoiling it, but it spans genres from police procedural to massive action movie!
I hope you’ll enjoy this new show, because I’ve got over a year’s worth of indie series mapped out to discuss!
Indie Comics Spotlight Episode #1 features Suicide Risk Volumes 1-6, which are currently available as part of the Comixology Unlimited library!