Manifest Destiny Vol.4: Sasquatch

Continuing on with this wonderful series by Chris Dingess and Matthew Roberts

Usagi Yojimbo Vol.9-17

Why am I reading these backwards????? I fucked up when i decided to read randomly from Volume 18. Then I jumped ahead, and now jumping back. Really bad planning. Shoulda just started from the beginning!

Usagi Yojimbo Vol.21-30

The Walking Dead Vol.25-26

Jason has been complaining that he's getting bored of watching The Walking Dead on AMC because he felt like ti was getting into a rut with the same old problems happening over nad over and over again...
Funny, that's the same problem I'm beginning to have with the COMIC! Rick just making the same dumb mistakes over and over again... really waiting for this thing to pick up.

Marvels 1-4

Once again re-reading this awesome mini series. 
I can still remember seeing the photo-realisitic image of Giant man walking across the skyline in the latest issue of PREVIEWS that Jason picked up and spazzing, "H-holy FUCK! that's TOTALLY how Goliath would look if he was real!"

When issues 1 and 2 came out, I remember it was super hard to find them...can't even remember where I got it from now, but it was expensive, I didn't pay cover price for it. I remember after work at Light Inc, we found a comic store on Queen Street and I went in and asked, "Do you have "Marvels"? To which the guy said, "yeah, Marvels and DC...what title you looking for?"
No, we explained....the actual comic called Marvels. LOL.

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.

Yes, reading this awesome classic ONCE again!!!

Usagi Yojimbo Vol.18-20

Just decided to dive in randomly in the Usagi series, this arc with Usagi travelling with his son Jotaro is becoming one of my big favorites.

Sugar & Spike: Metahuman Investigators

Very interesting idea (of a grown up Sugar and Spike investigating the early Silver Age DC Comics' more embarrassing stories) brought down by irritating writing. I HATE THIS HIPSTER DIALOG SHLOCK

Avengers 1.1

Picked this up reimagining/reboot  because it featured one of my all time favorite AVENGERS line ups, but man, I just hate these newfangled "cool" writers like Mark Waid who write like they're the hippest guys in the world, focusing more on hipster dialog than actual character development. I can barely stand it from Peter David, and I LIKE him!
Will try for a few more issues, but if he continues to write Scarlet Witch like this then forget it.

Violent Love #1

East Of West Vol.3-6

Sixth Trade in the awesome series EAST OF WEST came out and I thought I'd  go back a few books to brush up on the storylines and so began re-reading the series from Book 3.

Odd and the Frost Giants

Neil Gaiman: Midnight Days

Batman #404-407: "Batman: Year One"

Love And Rockets #1

Los Bros Hernandez returning to the "magazine" style format that they originally used during L&R's Classic Run with a brand new series of All-New Material!

Amazing Spider-Man Annual #3

For some reason I've always been missing this Annual from my Spider-Man collection, and one night decided, what the hey, let's order it. Always great to read the classic silver age stuff.

Troll Bridge

The Dark Knight Returns #1-4

Couldn't have read the Untold Legend of The Batman without also reading what I consider the "companion piece"to  Batman's origin,  the "alternate universe" final days of an aged and retired Batman in Frank Miller's awesome "The Dark Knight Returns"!

The Untold Legend of The Batman #1-3

This mini series was the first  comic to tell me the awesome tale of batman's origins, and to this day it's still the one I consider the "true" telling of his history, despite many, many takes on it later.

Harrow County Vol.3 "Snake Doctor"

100 Bullets, Vol.1-13

Just acquired the last four books of the 100 Bullets series (books 10-13) so I'm reading the whole thing from the beginning starting with First Shot, Last Call...

Sex Criminals, Vol.1-3

Picked up the third installment of the excellent Image Comics series SEX CRIMINALS "The Hard Way"  but decided to re-read the first two books again first to refresh my memory!

Black Hole

As a huge fan of Charles Burns' excellent EL BORBAH stories, I've always been meaning to check out Black Hole, and now that I've started reading it, i'm happily surprised to find it is a mesmerizing and intriguing tale indeed!

Welcome Back, Vol.1: Help, I'm Alive

Sorry Gerg, I just didn't like this one. Well, it was better than We Can Never Go Home, but the manic shift in art style really put me off. Enough of these hipster misfit kids with guns. They're Not Like Us already has the lock on that genre and they ROCK it.

We Can Never Go Home

Argh, man how I hated slogging through this series. Another recommendation from Gerg, this comic was written by the same guy who wrote that "4 Kids Go into A Bank"comic (also recommended by Gerg) which I hated, and I think by now it's safe to say that I just don't like this guy's writing.

Injection, Vol.2

Just finished up part two of Wallen Ellis/Declan Shalvey's moody and atmospheric sci-fi/supernatural mystery INJECTION. I first began collecting this series as monthly comics, but the flow of this strip really doesn't suit an issue-by-monthly-issue structure, so after the first arc ended with issue 5, I decided to wait for the trade paperbacks to come out instead from that point on.
Seems to work better because I really enjoyed reading through this second installment! I mentioned in an earlier post about how similar this series was to Ellis' previous work "FreakAngels", where a bunch of gifted Youths "broke" the world with their powers and then spent the rest of their lives trying to fix it, in INJECTION, five brilliant scientists created an A.I. computer program that now is setting about trying to invade the Physical world with making nightmares come true! Actually, it's a lot more complicated then that, but you get the gist. A Solid Series!!!
PS: On excellent colorist Jordie Bellaire's blog, she lamented the lack of respect colorists tend to get for their work: the writers and artists get all the glory, but the colorist is an integral part of the team.
And with her colors in both INJECTION and my other fave strip THEY'RE NOT LIKE US, she really shows what she mean, GREAT, atmospheric colors that really set the mood and tone for each scene. In light of her declaration of the importance of colorists, I'm going to start tagging colorists along with Artists and Writers in this blog when I can...I deeply agree they should be lauded just as much!

East Of West, Vol.4-5

My GOSH, this series just keeps getting better and BETTER! Usually I read a little bit of a comic each day as I have my coffee or have my lunch, but EAST of WEST is one book that I just HAVE to take into the reading room, sit back in a chair, and take my time reading it all the way through!
The Image Comcis site says the next installment of the series, Vol.6 is due to release in October, oohh man, can I stand the suspense??!

East Of West, Vol.3: There Is No Us

Continuing on with and Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta's awesome Series EAST OF WEST with the third Trade paperback in the series, THERE IS NO US. Can't believe my friend Gerg dropped this comic from his monthly pulls because he thought it moved "too slow",don't know how he arrived at that conclusion, Holy CRAP, these chapters are just EXPLODING with excitement!!!
Really love the intricate and dialog heavy style of this series; some comics take me less than 10 minutes to read as they're mostly splash pages with minimal talking, but East Of West really draws yo in to the story and when I reach the conclusion of a chapter, i'm always amazed to say "wow, that last chapter was only ONE issue?" So dense story-wise!
And the art is so rich and beautiful, the illustrations by Nick Dragotta are some of the best ever, lush and ambient landscapes, powerful action sequences and most of all the wonderful characters with so much detall put into their features, they're just bursting with charisma and coolness!
And speaking of art, this cover may be my favorite East Of West yet, featuring an awesomely alluring Crow!

East Of West, Vol.2: We Are All One

After trying out the East of West series by buying the fist volume, I was so floored by the intricate story, intriguing characters and beautiful, beautiful art, that I KNEW I had to continue reading this one, and just this week the second book in the series arrived, "We Are All One", damn, so good!!!

The Wicked+The Divine, Vol.2: Fandemonium

Picked up the trade paperback of The Wicked+The Divine "Fandemonium" and only when  began to read it did I realize I had every individual issue in it and that i'd read it all before!

D'oh, somehow i thought this trade was starting the next arc (which i didn't pick up monthly)...looks like I'll have to get the third volume!

Nowhere Men, Vol.1: Fates Worse Than Death

Right now my second favorite running series is the Eric Stephenson/Simon Gane title THEY'RE NOT LIKE US (right behind the Vaughan/Staples title SAGA. of course) but the series has been on extended hiatus since April and it doesn't look like anything new scheduled in the near future.
So, to get my fix I decided to turn to a title that features at least 3/4ths of the team from They're Not Like Us, (Eric Stephenson (Story),  Jordie Bellaire(Colors) and Fonographiks (Letters), with Nate Bellegarde doing the illustrations), the series NOWHERE MEN.
So far, the story of four genius scientists who created World Corp, and the subsequent inventions and events they created that changed the world for better or worse is a interesting read, and almost perfect timing since the follow-up trade paperback is due for release in a few months!

Outcast,Vol.1-3

Don't know how the Netflix series is doing, but I really LOVE the comic series that it's based on! As usual, before I read the new Trade, i had to go back and re-read the first two books to refresh my memory of the storyline....

Usagi Yojimbo, Vol.30: Thieves and Spies

Just finished reading the 30th trade paperback in the LONG running Stan Sakai series of the lone wandering Rabbit Bodyguard Ronin Usagi Yojimbo. Like the others before these books are great to read on a relaxing afternoon. Can't believe I've been reading Usagi for well over 20 years now, and still going strong!

Ivar, Timewalker, Vol.2: Breaking History

 Just finished the second installment of the fun title IVAR,TIMEWALKER, the story of a woman named Seela Nethi who discovers Time Travel...and becomes the target of a bunch of Time-traveling villains including her own future self! Fortunately she has the help of the titular Ivar and his two similarly invincible brothers to guide her along....

Also re-read the first trade, "Making History" to brush up on the story...been so long since I read it!

Ghost World

Funny, though I've been a big fan of both Daniel Clowes (Lloyd Llewllyn is a fave) and the Thora Birch/Scarlett Johansson movie, I've never read the original GHOST WORLD Graphic Novel til now! Excellent Book, amazed how much they were able to recreate in the movie!!!

Plutona

I had my eye on Plutona from its very first issue, but after skimming through the intro in issue 1, I decided to wait until the trade paperback came out so I could read it all at once. MAN, what a wait that was!!!! But finally the trade did indeed come out and it was quite worth it!
The story of a group of troubled highschoolers (middle -schoolers?) who come across the seemingly dead body of their town's resident super-heroine Plutona changes their lives and creates a divide between the friends in a way they can never come back from!
As shown in Sweet Tooth, Jeff Lemire certainly knows how to write from the mind of youngsterws, and with Emi Lenox's wonderful storybook art, create a very surreal fantasy story.

Snotgirl #1

When I went in to pick up the Plutona Trade Paperback and the latest Usagi Yojimbo Collection, I saw the first issue of Snotgirl with artwork by Bryan Lee O'Malley.  Though the story line (of a girl who is a Dazzling Fashion Blogger online but a Hay-Fevered Runny-Nosed Insecure girl in real life) intrigued me, I'm not a big fan of O'malley's art, and so passed it up. Only when I got home I found out O'Malley wasn't the interior artist, and the girl they got to do inside illustrations was Leslie Hung, someone who absolutely EXCELS in drawing beautiful gals!!! I also found that the O'Malley cover I saw was a variant, and that the real cover was done by Hung herserf, and so I made a mad rush BACK to the comic store to pick it up!!! As you can see, it.is.freaking.beautiful!!!
Interesting story so far, we'll see if this one goes anywhere...

Rat Queens, Vol.1: Sass and Sorcery

My friend Gerg is responsible for introducing me to more comic titles than I can count, some I loved and some I really didn't like, but there were a handful of comics that he personally collected but didn't bother trying to get me to read them as he felt they "weren't your type of comics", and one of his very favorites was Kurtis J. Weibe and Roc Uphurch's RAT QUEENS, a sword and sorcery tale concerning four kick-butt fantasy maidens and their loves and battles in the time of middle-earth...
Normally I wouldn't have bothered checking this out, but it was part of the half-off sale at the local comic store so I took a chance...and i'm glad I did, this comic is GREAT fun! Now, to look for the rest!

iZombie, Vol.1: Dead to The World

My first exposure to iZombie was an issue where Gilbert Hernandez had done a guest spot. I love Los Bros Hernandez and so my comic shop held an issue for me in case I was interested. I bought it and read it but didn't get around to really readin ti til i saw a used copy of the first Trade Paperback "Dead to the World" on sale.
WOW, was it  Good!!! Interesting storylines, characters , and artwork: Michael Allred looks like he's channeling Charles Burns or Chris "Coop" Cooper with his illustartions and wierd charicature characters. And is it just me or does main character Gwen. the titular "zombie" of the strip look not just a little like Blondie's Debbie Harry?