THE UNBOXING - JULY 2016

It's a double dose of Marvel's THUNDERBOLTS this month, with both THUNDERBOLTS CLASSIC Volume 2 and HAWKEYE AND THE THUNDERBOLTS Volume 2! As I noted a few months back, once Marvel issues their rerelease of THUNDERBOLTS CLASSIC volume 3 in the near future, I'll have what I consider to be the definitive THUNDERBOLTS run -- Busiek, Nicieza and Bagley through issue 50 -- collected in five nifty trades on my bookcase. I'm very happy about this development.

Another Marvel book which pleases me is INFINITY WATCH Volume 2. Thanks to this volume, the entirety of the nineties' WARLOCK AND THE INFINITY WATCH series has been reprinted, including the full run by Jim Starlin. Some may recall that I never "unboxed" Volume 1, and that's true; the reason is that all of its contents, INFINITY WATCH 1 - 22, have been reprinted over the past decade or so in the INFINITY GAUNTLET AFTERMATH, INFINITY WAR, INFINITY WAR AFTERMATH, INFINITY CRUSADE vol. 1, and INFINITY CRUSADE vol. 2 collections, while issues 23 - 25 can be found in the THOR: BLOOD AND THUNDER trade paperback. And since most all those issues are parts of large crossovers, I'm perfectly content to own them as components of those larger collections rather than on their own, keeping those books alongside this collection (containing INFINITY WATCH 26 - 42) to complete the set. (Note that the two INFINITY CRUSADE books are currently out of print and ridiculously expensive these days, but the rest are all available at reasonable prices.)

Finally, from DC, we have SUPERMAN: PANIC IN THE SKY. DC has been doing a decent job of collecting various events from the post-CRISIS, post John Byrne era in the Superman titles, and this is another in that trend. It's a story I've heard about for years (its name was used for a classic JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED episode), but I've never read it. For now it goes on the shelf with my other post-CRISIS Superman books, ready to read when the time is right.

Of course, all the above pales in comparison with the other package I received this month; a BABY BOY! (Sorry, no Amazon link for that one.) He was born just a week or so back and currently all my time and energy is devoted to him. As noted last week, I have posts scheduled to keep going up like clockwork as usual, so you shouldn't notice I'm preoccupied, but there may be delays in responding to comments as I adjust to this new addition to the family.