Comic Book Sabbath

Well, as most of you should know, a new Batman movie is out this week. And in this funky new religion of mine, that means a high holiday. So the blog this week will be a little late, as I'm going to be watching a full marathon of the Nolan films tomorrow. But please come back for the next update, we have a week of female led books, plus recommendations of new series, and my take on announcements from Comic-Con. It promises to be a big week. See you after the movie.

The Pull List: Batman Earth One  - DC Batman #11  - DC The Walking Dead #100 - Image Well, there was no post last week. The 4th of July holiday kind of got in the way. Not that comics weren't delivered, but I was spending the holiday in St. George with my girlfriend and didn't get around to my comics until Thursday. And to be blunt about it, getting my comics on a different day really threw me off. I was surprised by how much it threw me off.  The title of this blog, Comic Book Sabbath, is a play on a joke I had with one of my ENGL 2010 classes. A student was worried that they wouldn't have enough time to get their homework done over the weekend because of "The Sabbath". My response, well I come into work every day on my sabbath. And a joke about my holy day started. This joke has gotten a bit out of control, I have even built up a Wednesday ritual involving when I go to the shop, where I go to eat afterwards, the people I see are even usually the same peop...

The Pull List: Justice League Dark #10 - DC Also Read: American Vampire #28 - Vertigo American Vampire: Lord of Nightmares #1 - Vertigo Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft #1-#6, Head Games #1-#6, Crown of Shadows #1-#6, Keys to the Kingdom #1-#6, Clockworks #1-#6  - IDW My pull list for the forth week of each month is usually pretty weak. It is my version of Fast Sunday. (In the Mormon church, one Sunday a month is Fast Sunday, which means you don't eat anything for a few meals. In my head, Wednesday is the sabbath and a small pull list is like fasting.) And last weeks experience of going without any superhero books really did carry over into this weeks reading. I'm not going to spend time with Justice League Dark , if you want to know about the series, check my post from four weeks ago. When I teach my English 2010 comics class, I am sure to point out to my students (especially those who have no experience with comics) that the medium of comics and graphic novel...

The Pull List: X-Men #51 - Marvel (Thumbed Through) The Punisher #12 - Marvel (Not Read) Birds of Prey #10 - DC (Not Read) Batwoman #10 - DC (Not Read) Wonder Woman #10  - DC (Not Read) Before Watchmen: Comedian #1  - DC (Not Read) The Walking Dead #99  - Image What I Did Read: The Massive #1 - Dark Horse Morning Glories #1 - #19 - Image Scalped #1 - #50  - Vertigo Last week I made a goal for myself, no superhero comics. I didn't realize how difficult that was going to be. Yes, superhero is the primary genre that people think of when comics comes up. It is also the genre that got me into the medium and the main money maker of the big two. But come on, I know there is more than just that. I only teach one Superhero book a semester in my Writing About Graphic Narratives class, I'm the one that recommends the non superhero stuff to students. I guess that's why I was so surprised when I looked at the potential for this week. Aside...

The Pull List: X-Men #30 - Marvel Comics Ultimate Comics X-Men #13  - Marvel Comics The Massive #1  Dark Horse Comics (Not yet read) Batman #10  - DC Comics Batgirl #10 - DC Comics This week was a pretty unique week. I actually matched my number of DC titles with Marvel titles. And this can all be attributed to one person; Brian Wood. It seems more and more that Brian Wood is the big name that showing up in comics. He is now on these big two titles and you may of heard about him recently. Hold on a second while I put on my hipster glasses, a deep V t-shirt and a scarf. I have been reading Brian Wood way before he was writing X-men books. Okay, hipster me goes back in the box. Here at SUU, they have 4000 level English classes that are variable topic, major authors. You get Hemingway, Faulkner etc. If I was teaching one of those it would be ENGL 4430  Brian Wood. Okay, I would probably name it a bit different, but I will someday teach a Brian Wood Class. ...

The Pull List: Before Watchmen - Minutement #1 -  DC Comics Earth 2 #2 - DC Comics Animal Man #10 - DC Comics Swamp Thing #10 - DC Comics The Boys #67  - Dynamite (Not Read) I started reading The Boys  around Christmas time and tore through the series and the attached miniseries over the break. If a series catches my attention, I can burn through it pretty quick. And that's what happened with this series. The only problem with this method of getting caught up on new things is, I'll read through 60+ issues of a series and be caught up to the regular monthly releases. So I got caught up on The Boys  and now have to wait four weeks to get a new issue and this week, I couldn't get my hands on the new issue. I've actually never run into this problem. I can usually get what I want to read when I want to read it, but the thing is, I'm not as irritated as I thought I would be about not getting to it. The series has been really great and Ennis has stated that he wil...

The Pull List: Batman Annual #1  - DC Animal Man Annual #1 - DC The Walking Dead #98 - Image Also Read: America's Got Powers #2 - Image The Manhattan Projects #1-3 - Image Ravagers #1  - DC Green River Killer: A True Detective Story - Dark Horse A couple of quick notes before I dive into this weeks readings. I made the comment last week that Marvel and DC were trying to make June a very gay month. I then realized that June is Pride month, which means that the big two are probably pandering just a bit. I'm actually curious if they planned that all out in advance. It also looks as though my prediction on DC's new gay character is spot on with the golden age Green Lantern, Alan Scott coming out next month in James Robinson's   Earth 2 #2. So next week we should have confirmation of that. The second thing, you all saw correctly, there are no Marvel books at all this week. Not only didn't they get any dollars, but they also didn't get any of my attenti...

The Pull List: Astonishing  X-Men #50  - Marvel Justice League Dark #9  - DC Also Read: All-Star Western #9 - DC Aquaman #9 -DC Because of the new DC Comics reboot, everything this week, and for the most part this month, is a number nine, but before that, we need to talk about the X-men. I started my comic reading in the 90s on X-men books and really tried to keep with them, but I fell off that train a while ago...well, more like disembarked. There were just so many X-books and mutants it was getting too hard to keep up, plus I couldn't get a full story line because of all the crossovers going on at Marvel. I have jumped back onto an X-book when a writer I really enjoyed showed up. I read through Grant Morrison's run, Warren Ellis' and Joss Whedon's work with the characters were also enjoyable. And a writer I like is what brought me to Astonishing X-Men . Marjorie Liu  started up writing duties on issue #48 and #50 has been all the buzz of late. This is th...

Before I really jumped into this new blog adventure, I did want to take a moment and explain what it is that I'm trying to do here. The first reason for starting this is pretty simple, in a few short months I will be starting my PhD studies at the University of Nottingham and will spend the next three years working on a dissertation that focuses on critical theory and comic books. With that in mind, I wanted to get back in the habit of writing about comics. Though I have spent a lot of time teaching and dealing with comics in the last few years, I definitely haven't been writing about them. Grading lots of papers about them, but not really doing enough of my own work with them. My second reason is a bit more complicated. While teaching comics, I started to see all the different ways that comics are read, the ways that people connect to them and what their particular tastes are. I wanted to investigate my own reading habits and look at why I read what I read, why my weekly...