THE UNBOXING - FEBRUARY 2014

My second box of the year is a big one. As I think I've mentioned before, I have a large blind spot in my comic book knowledge when it comes to DC stuff. I've read plenty of mini-series and one-shots, but barely any ongoing series. So, since DC has been making a surprising effort to get some of their classic material into print, I've been biting. Among this month's books are SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL volume 8, continuing a reprint series DC began several years ago, and GREEN LANTERN: SECTOR 2814 volume 3.

My understanding is that one more Superman volume will finish John Byrne's run from the eighties, and whenever that comes to pass, I'll probably finally open the books and read them through. I bought volumes 1 through 7 on sale last year, and I'm watiing eagerly to read the whole set. The Green Lantern series, I believe, completes the original pre-CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS run of that series under that title. It was re-titled as GREEN LANTERN CORPS for the remainder of its existence, and one volume of that run is already in print. I'm uncertain how I will proceed with these books, but I'll get to them eventually.

On the Marvel front, this month brings the following:

• GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY BY JIM VALENTINO, volume 1
  
• WOLVERINE BY LARRY HAMA & MARC SILVESTRI, volume 2
  
• X-MEN: PHALANX COVENANT
  
• X-MEN: ROAD TO ONSLAUGHT, volume 1

I've heard good things about Valentino's GUARDIANS being a highlight of the early nineties, so this is something I look forward to reading. But first I plan to tackle the Guardians' earlier appearances in the two GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: TOMORROW'S AVENGERS trades which I acquired last year. I doubt I'll get to these books for several months, at least. Maybe not even until next year.

Considering my nineties X-MEN love, I've read very little of Larry Hama's WOLVERINE. This is something I intend to rectify via the Hama/Silvestri volumes, but there's still a great deal of Hama's run uncollected in color. I hope to see the Hama/Silvestri series transition into a Hama/Texiera line and then a Hama/Kubert and a Hama/Yu line, but I guess sales will determine if something like this happens. For now these books sit on my shelf, not even flipped through (so as not to spoil myself on anything). I'll get to them when I get to them, but your guess is as good as mine as to when that might happen.

The other two X-Men volumes fill some holes in the main nineties X-line, as detailed in my post regarding X-Men Collected Editions last month. I will certainly give these both a good perusing -- "Phalanx Covenant" is my favorite of the nineties X-crossovers -- but I doubt I'll read them in their entirety for a while yet. My true goal is to have the entire Lobdell era collected then sit down and read it all at once, so it may still be a few years until these books get read.

Lastly, I just want to mention the super job Marvel did on two of these books. The PHALANX COVENANT volume features, beneath the dustjacket, a full, textless version of the wrap-around cover. And the back of the ROAD TO ONSLAUGHT volume has a textless version of Terry Dodson's cover to the X-MEN '95 annual, one of my very favorite Mr. Sinister stories.

And that's it for February. What will March bring? Even I'm not entirely sure yet.