And that's another (calendar) year in the books, folks! It's hard for me to believe, but I'm still going after ten years of this thing! Yes, it's true -- I stopped making blog anniversary posts some time back, but if I hadn't, I would've celebrated a full decade of NOT A HOAX! back in August. I started this site in 2013 as a way to "discuss" comics I was reading, even if it meant hollaring into a void (but thankfully I've had many readers and commenters in all this time, so that hasn't been the case). First it was Marvel's CAPTAIN BRITAIN and EXCALIBUR, then it was IRON MAN by Michelinie, Layton, and Romita Jr., then Spider-Man by Roger Stern, and then on and on and on, running a gamut of creators, publishers, and content.
Now, I hesitate to say at this point that I'm still "going strong" after ten-plus years. There have been points, particularly when my son was a newborn and toddler, where I was barely able to hang on by a thread! And I've long since moved away from more than a single post a week; even when I think I'll be able to manage more, something always happens to prevent it. But I'm okay with that! I'd rather be going one post a week after ten years than not at all.
So as usual for these year-end posts, let's have a quick rundown of what we covered in the past year, as well as the now-annual tradition (down from once a month many years ago) of The Unboxing.
The first part of that is pretty straightforward, of course. It was the Avengers. That's pretty much it. I started reading the Bob Harras/Steve Epting/Tom Palmer run late last year and it carried us through November of this year as well. Then we wrapped things up with James Bond in December, closing a hole which has bothered me for several years, as the Bond newspaper strips were my only cancelled/unfinished series in all this time.
NOTE
Showing posts with label Year in Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Year in Review. Show all posts
Monday, January 1, 2024
Monday, January 2, 2023
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We interrupt our regularly scheduled AVENGERS coverage for the annual "State of the Blog" address. And my friends, for the first time in years, I can report that things are looking great around here. Mind you, I'm still only doing one post a week. At this point, that seems unlikely to change for a while (but at the same time, I never say never). One a week seems to really work for me. It's manageable alongside my personal commitments and professional workload, not to mention my desire to occasionally read something for fun that I don't want to write about! I don't feel deadline pressure to get too much done when I'm doing posts at this frequency. All I need to do in order to stay on schedule is read and write about one single issue each week -- and to get ahead of schedule, I only need to read/write two posts a week and I've doubled my output!
Which is exactly what happened this past year -- I started reading the Bob Harras/Steve Epting AVENGERS somewhere around... May, maybe? And I was was so into it that I plowed through at a rate of several issues each week, until I was finished with it by the end of summer! That's more than fifty issues of the core title, plus a few annuals, mini-series, etc. -- all fully read, written up, and ready to post. Which means there will be absolutely no interruption to my posting schedule for well over a year at this point! And beyond that, I have also started the next long-term project to come after AVENGERS! I'm going a bit slower on this one, mainly because I have the luxury to do so -- but nonetheless, you heard right, folks -- it's the second day of 2023, and I'm already a few months into 2024 in terms of fully written posts. Such a massive cushion is unheard of in the history of this blog.
Now again, I've found that one post a week works great for me, but given how far ahead of schedule I am, don't be surprised to see some posts come back on Fridays, as well. Probably just randomly here and there, when something strikes my fancy and I don't want to wait a year or two for it to trickle out as part of the ongoing schedule!
At some point in these New Year's posts, I usually do a recap of the year in review. But given that I've kept to exactly one post a week this year for the first time ever (seriously; check out the sidebar -- precisely fifty-two posts in 2022!), it's fairly linear and straightforward. We opened the year by continuing up our look at INVADERS, and that took us halfway through the year. Subsequently it was a very brief excursion into the world of SKULL THE SLAYER, followed by another short run -- the 1980s TRANSFORMERS manga. Which brings us to the ongoing AVENGERS by Bob Harras, Steve Epting, & Tom Palmer run. And next year's year in review will be solely that run, unless I do manage to crank out a few Friday posts over the next fifty-two weeks!
One last order of business... though I discontinued THE UNBOXING (first informally in 2021 and then defnitively at the start of this year) due to the simple fact that I wasn't buying as many trade paperbacks and hardcovers, I did note last year that I would turn it into an annual feature as part of these year in review posts. So here we go! It was another very light year... and as I've said in the past, it's not for lack of interest on my part. While my "runs I'd like to own as hardcovers" list had shrunk considerably over the years, there are still a number of books I would buy if Marvel (or in some cases, DC) would just release them! But that's a topic for its own post someday. For now, here are the Marvel titles that I procured over the past year:
Thus we reach the end of our recap/look forward. Next week it's back to the Avengers, smack in the middle of "Operation: Galactic Storm", as we continue into 2023!
Which is exactly what happened this past year -- I started reading the Bob Harras/Steve Epting AVENGERS somewhere around... May, maybe? And I was was so into it that I plowed through at a rate of several issues each week, until I was finished with it by the end of summer! That's more than fifty issues of the core title, plus a few annuals, mini-series, etc. -- all fully read, written up, and ready to post. Which means there will be absolutely no interruption to my posting schedule for well over a year at this point! And beyond that, I have also started the next long-term project to come after AVENGERS! I'm going a bit slower on this one, mainly because I have the luxury to do so -- but nonetheless, you heard right, folks -- it's the second day of 2023, and I'm already a few months into 2024 in terms of fully written posts. Such a massive cushion is unheard of in the history of this blog.
Now again, I've found that one post a week works great for me, but given how far ahead of schedule I am, don't be surprised to see some posts come back on Fridays, as well. Probably just randomly here and there, when something strikes my fancy and I don't want to wait a year or two for it to trickle out as part of the ongoing schedule!
At some point in these New Year's posts, I usually do a recap of the year in review. But given that I've kept to exactly one post a week this year for the first time ever (seriously; check out the sidebar -- precisely fifty-two posts in 2022!), it's fairly linear and straightforward. We opened the year by continuing up our look at INVADERS, and that took us halfway through the year. Subsequently it was a very brief excursion into the world of SKULL THE SLAYER, followed by another short run -- the 1980s TRANSFORMERS manga. Which brings us to the ongoing AVENGERS by Bob Harras, Steve Epting, & Tom Palmer run. And next year's year in review will be solely that run, unless I do manage to crank out a few Friday posts over the next fifty-two weeks!
One last order of business... though I discontinued THE UNBOXING (first informally in 2021 and then defnitively at the start of this year) due to the simple fact that I wasn't buying as many trade paperbacks and hardcovers, I did note last year that I would turn it into an annual feature as part of these year in review posts. So here we go! It was another very light year... and as I've said in the past, it's not for lack of interest on my part. While my "runs I'd like to own as hardcovers" list had shrunk considerably over the years, there are still a number of books I would buy if Marvel (or in some cases, DC) would just release them! But that's a topic for its own post someday. For now, here are the Marvel titles that I procured over the past year:
- AVENGERS: THE GATHERING OMNIBUS: Not much to say about this leadoff volume here, since I'm covering its contents on a weekly basis as we speak. But picking it up way back at the beginning of 2021 with a Christmas gift card was sort of the impetus for blogging about the run it collects!
- MOON KNIGHT OMNIBUS volume 2: I can't get enough Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz MOON KNIGHT, and this volume concludes their run on the character. I've been a Moon Knight fan since I discovered him circa 1999 or so, but really only of the material written by his creator, Moench. So don't expect me to pick up the MARC SPECTOR: MOON KNIGHT Omnibus, reprinting Chuck Dixon's nineties take on the character, when it releases later this year (but I likely would buy it in Epic Collection format).
- THUNDERBOLTS OMNIBUS vol. 2: Last year around this time, I revealed that I had Unboxed the first book in this series. Now it's book 2, which came along earlier in the year. And next year I'll be raving about volume 3, which is coming in a few months! It's no secret that I love late nineties Marvel, and the tandem of the Kurt Busiek/George Pérez AVENGERS and Busiek/Fabian Nicieza/Mark Bagley THUNDERBOLTS is the cream of that crop for me. So the fact that Marvel has fast-tracked THUNDERBOLTS, reprinting the entirety of the classic series in three books across three years, is like a dream come true for me. My only complaint is that it took them so long to get around to it!
- WARLOCK BY JIM STARLIN GALLERY EDITION: I'm not exaggerating when I say that I adore this material. I've quintuple dipped on it over the years. I bought it as reprint comics in the nineties, when I first got into Starlin's "Infinity" stuff. I bought the Marvel Masterworks volume in the 00s. I bought it in Omnibus format in 2019's THANOS WARS: INIFINTIY ORIGIN volume. And now, this year, I purchased it again in the extra-oversized Gallery Edition format! Starlin's WARLOCK is, and ever shall be, one of my all-time favorite comic runs. This is the first and, so far, only Gallery Edition I own, but I plan to pick up one more later this year: the SPIDER-MAN BY JEPH LOEB & TIME SALE volume, which will reprint the duo's SPIDER-MAN: BLUE in that special format (and this one will be a triple-dip for me on the single best Spider-Man mini-series ever made).
Thus we reach the end of our recap/look forward. Next week it's back to the Avengers, smack in the middle of "Operation: Galactic Storm", as we continue into 2023!
Monday, January 3, 2022
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Hey, gang! We're taking a week off from the Invaders for my annual "Year in Review"/"State of the Blog" post -- and I have to say, things are looking pretty good around here at the moment. Though it seems like a lifetime ago, when the year started, I was still watching the first season of AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES. That took us all the way through March, and I somehow managed to get back to my old schedule of posts on Mondays and Fridays for that entire first quarter of the year! The Fridays brought us looks at a few DRAGON BALL SUPER volumes, followed by Marck Schultz's XENOZOIC TALES and some European comics (namely, RIC HOCHET, MISS OCTOBER, and BOB MORANE) -- all of which can be found on the Manga Reviews and Miscellaneous Reviews pages linked at right. From there, it was back to one post a week for the rest of the year, with a focus on 1970s Marvel: the Sons of the Tiger and White Tiger, followed by the still-ongoing INVADERS.
And like I said, I think things are looking good at the moment. I actually finished the INVADERS series a few months ago, and that backlog of posts is scheduled to go up all the way through June. I think this is the furthest ahead I've been on the blog since the end of 2016, when I had the entirety of Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL, in the queue before the year even began! I've even finished and moved beyond the project that will follow INVADERS at this point, though I won't give it away just yet.
So what this means is that, at some point, Friday posts will return again. i don't know exactly when, and I'm not sure I'll keep up Fridays all year, but I think I can at least manage a full quarter of them like I did last year.
Unfortunately, there was one casualty to my posting schedule this year. I've quietly discontiued The Unboxing. I did one in January, and then before I knew it, I realized it was October and I hadn't done another! As I've mentioned before, this was due to a couple of reasons: the first being that, quite simply, Marvel hasn't put out that many books I've wanted lately! Yeah, I still grab things in digital sales at Comixology, but even that happens less frequently than it used to.
And as far as physical volumes? Well, I've basically quit trade paperbacks at this point, preferring to "Omnibus wait", since nearly everything I'm after reaches that prestige format eventually. And I'll admit that I did Unbox a few Omnibuses this year -- specifically, for those who might be curious, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN volume 5, CAPTAIN AMERICA BY DAN JURGENS, THUNDERBOLTS volume 1, and UNCANNY X-MEN volume 4 -- but I just never found the time to photograph them and write up posts.
(And by the way, for those who are into such things, watch for the THUNDERBOLTS OMNIBUS vol. 2, coming in just a month or so! I love that Marvel is fast-tracking this long-overdue series.)
Huh. My year in review turned into a mini-Unboxing all its own. Heck, maybe that's what I'll do from now on: one annual Unboxing every January, to cover whatever I acquired throughout the year. It's just crazy enough to work...!
Anyway, that about sums it up, folks! Watch for our manga announcement this Friday, and then we'll return to our regularly scheduled INVADERS coverage one week from today!
And like I said, I think things are looking good at the moment. I actually finished the INVADERS series a few months ago, and that backlog of posts is scheduled to go up all the way through June. I think this is the furthest ahead I've been on the blog since the end of 2016, when I had the entirety of Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL, in the queue before the year even began! I've even finished and moved beyond the project that will follow INVADERS at this point, though I won't give it away just yet.
So what this means is that, at some point, Friday posts will return again. i don't know exactly when, and I'm not sure I'll keep up Fridays all year, but I think I can at least manage a full quarter of them like I did last year.
Unfortunately, there was one casualty to my posting schedule this year. I've quietly discontiued The Unboxing. I did one in January, and then before I knew it, I realized it was October and I hadn't done another! As I've mentioned before, this was due to a couple of reasons: the first being that, quite simply, Marvel hasn't put out that many books I've wanted lately! Yeah, I still grab things in digital sales at Comixology, but even that happens less frequently than it used to.
And as far as physical volumes? Well, I've basically quit trade paperbacks at this point, preferring to "Omnibus wait", since nearly everything I'm after reaches that prestige format eventually. And I'll admit that I did Unbox a few Omnibuses this year -- specifically, for those who might be curious, AMAZING SPIDER-MAN volume 5, CAPTAIN AMERICA BY DAN JURGENS, THUNDERBOLTS volume 1, and UNCANNY X-MEN volume 4 -- but I just never found the time to photograph them and write up posts.
(And by the way, for those who are into such things, watch for the THUNDERBOLTS OMNIBUS vol. 2, coming in just a month or so! I love that Marvel is fast-tracking this long-overdue series.)
Huh. My year in review turned into a mini-Unboxing all its own. Heck, maybe that's what I'll do from now on: one annual Unboxing every January, to cover whatever I acquired throughout the year. It's just crazy enough to work...!
Anyway, that about sums it up, folks! Watch for our manga announcement this Friday, and then we'll return to our regularly scheduled INVADERS coverage one week from today!
Friday, January 1, 2021
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
As is tradition, the time is upon us for the annual Year in Review post, with a glance at what's upcoming. And I don't think I need to mention that it's been an... interesting and unusual year in the real world. But fortunately for all of us, this blog is about as far divorced from reality as is possible! So with that in mind, let's recap the past year's worth of posts.
It's been no secret that I had trouble keeping up my normal twice-weekly posting schedule beginning the middle of 2019. So 2020 started out with (mostly) one post per week, on Mondays -- and as I try to do every year, I opened things up with some manga, looking at DRAGON BALL SUPER and a couple of other DB items of note. That was followed with a "Springtime Grab Bag" consisting of a European comic series called LADY S and an assortment of items from DC, Dynamite, Dark Horse (by way of Marvel), and IDW, running a gamut of characters such as Conan, Red Sonja, Wonder Woman, He-Man and the ThunderCats, and the Transformers and the crew of the starship Enterprise.
Then we looked at Joe Casey's AVENGERS mini-series from the mid-to-late-00s, EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES I and II, and AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN. After that, we stuck with Marvel, but went a different direction, examining several years worth of Spider-Man newspaper strips by Stan Lee and a variety of artistic collaborators.
The newspaper strip motif continued as we moved into the adventures of SECRET AGENT X-9 by Alex Raymond, and then checked in on that strip again decades later after it had become SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. That strip wrapped up last month, which led into a Monday hiatus for the final few weeks of the year as I geared up for 2021.
And around the same time I started looking at X-9, I also finally brought back Friday posts, looking for the first time ever at a TV series on an episode-by-episode basis -- and in keeping with the subject matter of this blog, it was a comic book-inspired show, AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES. In fact, that run of reviews is still ongoing (we haven't even finished season one yet), and should contnue well into 2021. But beginning next week, when we look at the comic book tie-in mini-series, I'm moving it to Mondays for the rest of the run, which should free up Fridays for other posts, assuming I can keep the twice-weekly schedule going.
As far as that schedule goes, my plan is to start off with a repeat of the year we just looked back on: that is to say, we'll continue DRAGON BALL SUPER and get through all volumes available to date, which should take us into February -- and then I want to look at another European series. I have a few in my digital backlog, so I just need to choose one (or maybe two). After that it will be springtime, and I think I want to get back to looking at a comic series issue-by-issue, after more than a year of not doing so. But rather than a specific run from an ongoing title, I'm thinking maybe I'll just cover the entirety of a series that only ran a couple years before being cancelled. I have a few candidates in mind, all Marvel, but I haven't settled on which to look at just yet.
After that, who can say? Though my time is more limited than ever before, I still enjoy running this blog, and I look forward to another year of whatever I wind up posting about. Thanks to everyone who reads along, and I hope you'll stick with me as we continue!
It's been no secret that I had trouble keeping up my normal twice-weekly posting schedule beginning the middle of 2019. So 2020 started out with (mostly) one post per week, on Mondays -- and as I try to do every year, I opened things up with some manga, looking at DRAGON BALL SUPER and a couple of other DB items of note. That was followed with a "Springtime Grab Bag" consisting of a European comic series called LADY S and an assortment of items from DC, Dynamite, Dark Horse (by way of Marvel), and IDW, running a gamut of characters such as Conan, Red Sonja, Wonder Woman, He-Man and the ThunderCats, and the Transformers and the crew of the starship Enterprise.
Then we looked at Joe Casey's AVENGERS mini-series from the mid-to-late-00s, EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES I and II, and AVENGERS: THE ORIGIN. After that, we stuck with Marvel, but went a different direction, examining several years worth of Spider-Man newspaper strips by Stan Lee and a variety of artistic collaborators.
The newspaper strip motif continued as we moved into the adventures of SECRET AGENT X-9 by Alex Raymond, and then checked in on that strip again decades later after it had become SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN by Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson. That strip wrapped up last month, which led into a Monday hiatus for the final few weeks of the year as I geared up for 2021.
And around the same time I started looking at X-9, I also finally brought back Friday posts, looking for the first time ever at a TV series on an episode-by-episode basis -- and in keeping with the subject matter of this blog, it was a comic book-inspired show, AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES. In fact, that run of reviews is still ongoing (we haven't even finished season one yet), and should contnue well into 2021. But beginning next week, when we look at the comic book tie-in mini-series, I'm moving it to Mondays for the rest of the run, which should free up Fridays for other posts, assuming I can keep the twice-weekly schedule going.
As far as that schedule goes, my plan is to start off with a repeat of the year we just looked back on: that is to say, we'll continue DRAGON BALL SUPER and get through all volumes available to date, which should take us into February -- and then I want to look at another European series. I have a few in my digital backlog, so I just need to choose one (or maybe two). After that it will be springtime, and I think I want to get back to looking at a comic series issue-by-issue, after more than a year of not doing so. But rather than a specific run from an ongoing title, I'm thinking maybe I'll just cover the entirety of a series that only ran a couple years before being cancelled. I have a few candidates in mind, all Marvel, but I haven't settled on which to look at just yet.
After that, who can say? Though my time is more limited than ever before, I still enjoy running this blog, and I look forward to another year of whatever I wind up posting about. Thanks to everyone who reads along, and I hope you'll stick with me as we continue!
Monday, December 30, 2019
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
(A couple days early...)
It's time again -- already -- for that annual tradition where I put up a combination "Year in Review"/"Looking to the Future" post. And this year, there's not all that much to review. I had started off with some pretty high hopes, but it became evident very early on that I just wasn't meeting my posting deadlines like I used to. I began my Mondays this year by finishing off the DC post-CRISIS Superman and Wonder Woman runs that had filled all of 2018. Then, immediately after, I stayed in the DC Universe for Batman in the Seventies, which filled up Mondays for the remainder of the year (ending just last week).
But it was the Friday posts, the "grab bag" sort of stuff that I do to supplement the usually much longer Monday series, where I fell short. I began the year as always, with a manga series -- in this case, GUNSMITH CATS: BURST, the sequel to GUNSMITH CATS, which I had looked at in early 2018. After that I jumped into the world of European comics with RAPTORS, and then it was a mixed bag of Marvel stuff with CAPTAIN AMERICA: SENTINEL OF LIBERTY, SPIDER-MAN: LIFELINE, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE 1940s NEWSPAPER STRIP, and X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN vol. 1 and vol. 2.
And then -- things fell apart. I announced I was taking a brief hiatus, which I called my "Spring Break", with the intention to return on Fridays over the summer. That never happened. Come August, I came clean and stated that I had nothing in the pipeline for the fall, either. Life and other hobbies had eaten into my blogging time to a considerable extent, and while I was able to keep up with my Monday posts, that was the best I could manage.
Which brings us to today. Monday posts will continue as usual, but for now, Fridays will remain the empty void they have become over the past several months, aside from things like announcements, The Unboxing, or whatever else may pop into my mind. This is a little frustrating for me because Fridays used to be my way to read and post about other smaller things when I was in the middle of doing longer runs on Mondays. However at this this point, I'm thinking that what I may do is alternate -- start into a long run, but break periodically for something else before getting back to it.
At any rate, I intend to begin the year with a manga series, as has become tradition, and then I'm going to go into some European comics after that, around the beginning of March. Following those, I will jump into my next long-term Monday series, and we'll see how far it takes us. So -- one week from today comes our first announcement of the year (the manga series), and then the following Monday, we'll dive right into the first volume. I may have drastically cut down on my output, but I don't intend to go away anytime soon... so thanks, as always, for sticking around and continuing to follow along with whatever random stuff I happen to read.
It's time again -- already -- for that annual tradition where I put up a combination "Year in Review"/"Looking to the Future" post. And this year, there's not all that much to review. I had started off with some pretty high hopes, but it became evident very early on that I just wasn't meeting my posting deadlines like I used to. I began my Mondays this year by finishing off the DC post-CRISIS Superman and Wonder Woman runs that had filled all of 2018. Then, immediately after, I stayed in the DC Universe for Batman in the Seventies, which filled up Mondays for the remainder of the year (ending just last week).
But it was the Friday posts, the "grab bag" sort of stuff that I do to supplement the usually much longer Monday series, where I fell short. I began the year as always, with a manga series -- in this case, GUNSMITH CATS: BURST, the sequel to GUNSMITH CATS, which I had looked at in early 2018. After that I jumped into the world of European comics with RAPTORS, and then it was a mixed bag of Marvel stuff with CAPTAIN AMERICA: SENTINEL OF LIBERTY, SPIDER-MAN: LIFELINE, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE 1940s NEWSPAPER STRIP, and X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN vol. 1 and vol. 2.
And then -- things fell apart. I announced I was taking a brief hiatus, which I called my "Spring Break", with the intention to return on Fridays over the summer. That never happened. Come August, I came clean and stated that I had nothing in the pipeline for the fall, either. Life and other hobbies had eaten into my blogging time to a considerable extent, and while I was able to keep up with my Monday posts, that was the best I could manage.
Which brings us to today. Monday posts will continue as usual, but for now, Fridays will remain the empty void they have become over the past several months, aside from things like announcements, The Unboxing, or whatever else may pop into my mind. This is a little frustrating for me because Fridays used to be my way to read and post about other smaller things when I was in the middle of doing longer runs on Mondays. However at this this point, I'm thinking that what I may do is alternate -- start into a long run, but break periodically for something else before getting back to it.
At any rate, I intend to begin the year with a manga series, as has become tradition, and then I'm going to go into some European comics after that, around the beginning of March. Following those, I will jump into my next long-term Monday series, and we'll see how far it takes us. So -- one week from today comes our first announcement of the year (the manga series), and then the following Monday, we'll dive right into the first volume. I may have drastically cut down on my output, but I don't intend to go away anytime soon... so thanks, as always, for sticking around and continuing to follow along with whatever random stuff I happen to read.
Monday, December 31, 2018
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
As I do every year at this time (at least for the past couple years, anyway), I'm taking a week off from "real" posting. This annual "Year in Review" post and one announcement on Friday will be all you'll see from me this week. Then, next Monday, we'll resume Superman and Wonder Woman for the rest of January, and Fridays will be dedicated to something new.
So where are we right now? I've spent the entire year's worth of Mondays in DC-land, looking at the post-CRISIS adventures of John Byrne's Superman and George Pérez's Wonder Woman -- and, as noted above, that stuff will continue for one more month before reaching its conclusion. Fridays, meanwhile, were a mixed bag as usual. We started things off with Kenichi Sonoda's GUNSMITH CATS manga, then looked at X-MEN '92 from Marvel. This was followed by a mixed bag of material from Dark Horse, IDW, and Image, then a look at the KELLY GREEN graphic novels from the eighties by newspapet strip greats Leonard Starr and Stan Drake.
Then it was summertime -- and in 2018, that became the season of my greatest failure since starting this blog. I had planned on nine weeks of James Bond newspaper strips from Britain, but wound up getting through only about half that run before I was forced, for the first time ever, to cancel a review series mid-run. The reasons are provided if you follow that link, and I do still intend to get back to the Bond strips eventually, though at present your guess as to when is as good as mine.
But I did manage to stay on track afterward, through the fall, with a few months dedicated to MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE mini-comics and comic strips. After that it was the European comic GYPSY, by Enrico Marini and Thierry Smolderen, both delivered on-schedule and under budget (which, considering the budget was $0, is rather impressive).
And that brings us to today. I'll admit I'm nowhere near as far ahead as I usually like to be at this time of year. In general, if at all possible, my preference has long been to be three months ahead of schedule at minimum. And there were times in the past when I was even further ahead than that! But that hasn't been the case for a couple years now, and I find myself working with much tighter deadlines than ever before. Still, I've got no intention of stopping, though going forward I make no promises that I might not miss a deadline here or there -- but hopefully I'll never again need to cancel a review series midway through!
So, what's to come in 2019? Last year at this time I made some suggestions that never materialized, such as a look at some UDON comics and the return of my semi-monthly X-Men collected edition posts, but those never happened. I do still want to get the X-Men back in circulation though, especially since Marvel has been showing the mutants a lot of love in recent months as far as reprints go. Beyond that, The Unboxing will continue as always on Sundays.
After we finish up with Superman and Wonder Woman at the end of January, I'll announce the next series of Monday posts, which may come as a surprise. Fridays will start the year with manga, and it's not a secret that last year I stated my intention to look at the GUNSMITH CATS sequel series, GUNSMITH CATS: BURST -- so look forward to that in January and part of February. Once BURST finishes, I've got some more European comics lined up, followed by a smattering of miniseries from Marvel, and then we'll see what comes next!
Oh, and I may give the blog header one more makeover early in the year, but since I just updated it last January, I don't want to get carried away. It'll probably just be some minor font-tweaks (and maybe a new head or two).
Finally, I need to thank everyone who drops by here to read my posts, comment (or not), and provide support. It's nice to know there are people who share some of my interests and who like reading my ramblings a couple times a week!
So where are we right now? I've spent the entire year's worth of Mondays in DC-land, looking at the post-CRISIS adventures of John Byrne's Superman and George Pérez's Wonder Woman -- and, as noted above, that stuff will continue for one more month before reaching its conclusion. Fridays, meanwhile, were a mixed bag as usual. We started things off with Kenichi Sonoda's GUNSMITH CATS manga, then looked at X-MEN '92 from Marvel. This was followed by a mixed bag of material from Dark Horse, IDW, and Image, then a look at the KELLY GREEN graphic novels from the eighties by newspapet strip greats Leonard Starr and Stan Drake.
Then it was summertime -- and in 2018, that became the season of my greatest failure since starting this blog. I had planned on nine weeks of James Bond newspaper strips from Britain, but wound up getting through only about half that run before I was forced, for the first time ever, to cancel a review series mid-run. The reasons are provided if you follow that link, and I do still intend to get back to the Bond strips eventually, though at present your guess as to when is as good as mine.
But I did manage to stay on track afterward, through the fall, with a few months dedicated to MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE mini-comics and comic strips. After that it was the European comic GYPSY, by Enrico Marini and Thierry Smolderen, both delivered on-schedule and under budget (which, considering the budget was $0, is rather impressive).
And that brings us to today. I'll admit I'm nowhere near as far ahead as I usually like to be at this time of year. In general, if at all possible, my preference has long been to be three months ahead of schedule at minimum. And there were times in the past when I was even further ahead than that! But that hasn't been the case for a couple years now, and I find myself working with much tighter deadlines than ever before. Still, I've got no intention of stopping, though going forward I make no promises that I might not miss a deadline here or there -- but hopefully I'll never again need to cancel a review series midway through!
So, what's to come in 2019? Last year at this time I made some suggestions that never materialized, such as a look at some UDON comics and the return of my semi-monthly X-Men collected edition posts, but those never happened. I do still want to get the X-Men back in circulation though, especially since Marvel has been showing the mutants a lot of love in recent months as far as reprints go. Beyond that, The Unboxing will continue as always on Sundays.
After we finish up with Superman and Wonder Woman at the end of January, I'll announce the next series of Monday posts, which may come as a surprise. Fridays will start the year with manga, and it's not a secret that last year I stated my intention to look at the GUNSMITH CATS sequel series, GUNSMITH CATS: BURST -- so look forward to that in January and part of February. Once BURST finishes, I've got some more European comics lined up, followed by a smattering of miniseries from Marvel, and then we'll see what comes next!
Oh, and I may give the blog header one more makeover early in the year, but since I just updated it last January, I don't want to get carried away. It'll probably just be some minor font-tweaks (and maybe a new head or two).
Finally, I need to thank everyone who drops by here to read my posts, comment (or not), and provide support. It's nice to know there are people who share some of my interests and who like reading my ramblings a couple times a week!
Sunday, December 31, 2017
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
2018 hits tomorrow, so as usual it's time to reflect on the past year and look forward to what the next will bring.
After cutting Wednesdays from my regular posting schedule back in mid-2016, I stuck with a Monday-Friday (and occasional Sunday) format in 2017, too. Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL, supplemented by a Black Widow serial from Ralph Macchio and George Pérez, filled Mondays from January through September, at which point the Spider-Man newspaper strip by Stan Lee and John Romita took over for, more or less, the remainder of the year.
Fridays, meanwhile, continued my tradition of starting most years with a manga series by covering the adaptation of BIG O by Hitoshi Ariga. Following that, we jumped to DC Comics for GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, then an Aquaman serial called "Death of a Prince", which took us into May. At that point it was an IDW grab bag consisting of several stories including Dave Stevens' THE ROCKETEER and Darwyn Cooke's adaptations of some of Donald E. Westlake's PARKER novels. Then came this year's summertime project, a look at the FLASH GORDON comic strips by his creator, Alex Raymond. Fridays in the fall and winter switched, as usual (and probably for the last time) to the Transformers, by way of Devil's Due Press's various G.I. JOE VS. THE TRANSFORMERS mini-series.
After cutting Wednesdays from my regular posting schedule back in mid-2016, I stuck with a Monday-Friday (and occasional Sunday) format in 2017, too. Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL, supplemented by a Black Widow serial from Ralph Macchio and George Pérez, filled Mondays from January through September, at which point the Spider-Man newspaper strip by Stan Lee and John Romita took over for, more or less, the remainder of the year.
Fridays, meanwhile, continued my tradition of starting most years with a manga series by covering the adaptation of BIG O by Hitoshi Ariga. Following that, we jumped to DC Comics for GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, then an Aquaman serial called "Death of a Prince", which took us into May. At that point it was an IDW grab bag consisting of several stories including Dave Stevens' THE ROCKETEER and Darwyn Cooke's adaptations of some of Donald E. Westlake's PARKER novels. Then came this year's summertime project, a look at the FLASH GORDON comic strips by his creator, Alex Raymond. Fridays in the fall and winter switched, as usual (and probably for the last time) to the Transformers, by way of Devil's Due Press's various G.I. JOE VS. THE TRANSFORMERS mini-series.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Here we are once again. I had another pretty productive year, dedicating the entirety of my Monday and Wednesday postings to John Byrne's FANTASTIC FOUR. Of course I stopped doing Wednesday posts about halfway through the year to make certain I'd have enough of a backlog to keep going after my son was born in July. Things have worked out well and I intend to keep doing Mondays only for the foreseeable future.
Fridays will remain in the rotation as well, and this year's Fridays covered a plethora of items. My Dreamwave TRANSFORMERS posts from Fall of 2015 carried over into January, and that was followed by the conclusion of my three years'-long look at GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN. From there it was an assortment of books from various publishers covering things as varied as THE LEGEND OF ZELDA, Walter Simonson's RAGNAROK, Terry Dodson's MUSE and RED ONE, and a MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE graphic novel from my childhood. Conan and Red Sonja followed these various items, then we looked at the Marvel work of Alan Davis and a couple other Marvel books before jumping into The Summer of ROBOTECH. And when ROBOTECH wrapped up, it was back to Dreamwave's TRANSFORMERS for the remainder of the year.
This year, Fridays should be just as varied. With GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN finished, I have a new manga project to look at through February, which will be announced next week. After that I have about two solid months of vintage DC planned, followed by an assortment of IDW items I picked up in a digital sale last year. Then we'll have this year's "Summer of...", which is something I've wanted to read for a long time and which I'm really looking forward to finally examining. Then the Fall TRANSFORMERS tradition will continue, with another continuity from a publisher other than Dreamwave, Marvel, or IDW.
Mondays, meanwhile, should be Marvel-centric for the entirety of 2017. Thanks to the great state of California (a statement I'm not sure I've ever uttered before now), I spent the final six weeks of 2016 on paid paternity leave, and during feedings and naptimes I binged on yet another classic Marvel run, and I've already written up posts for every single issue. So my Mondays are already filled through September, which I think is the furthest ahead I've ever managed to work since I started this blog. I'll announce that project this Wednesday, following a final look back at John Byrne's FANTASTIC FOUR tomorrow.
Then there are Sundays, where The Unboxing will continue every month. I've also got two more X-Men collections to review, THE TRIAL OF GAMBIT and OPERATION: ZERO TOLERANCE, in January and February, which will conclude that monthly project I started back in October of 2015. At the moment I have no plans for something new to take the X-Men series' place, but we'll see if I come up with anything. Of course anything else that strikes my fancy will pop up on Sundays as well, though currently there's nothing slated for the near future.
So thank you once again for your patronage over the past year. I continue to have fun writing up these posts and I hope they bring some small amount of entertainment to those who read them!
Fridays will remain in the rotation as well, and this year's Fridays covered a plethora of items. My Dreamwave TRANSFORMERS posts from Fall of 2015 carried over into January, and that was followed by the conclusion of my three years'-long look at GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN. From there it was an assortment of books from various publishers covering things as varied as THE LEGEND OF ZELDA, Walter Simonson's RAGNAROK, Terry Dodson's MUSE and RED ONE, and a MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE graphic novel from my childhood. Conan and Red Sonja followed these various items, then we looked at the Marvel work of Alan Davis and a couple other Marvel books before jumping into The Summer of ROBOTECH. And when ROBOTECH wrapped up, it was back to Dreamwave's TRANSFORMERS for the remainder of the year.
This year, Fridays should be just as varied. With GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN finished, I have a new manga project to look at through February, which will be announced next week. After that I have about two solid months of vintage DC planned, followed by an assortment of IDW items I picked up in a digital sale last year. Then we'll have this year's "Summer of...", which is something I've wanted to read for a long time and which I'm really looking forward to finally examining. Then the Fall TRANSFORMERS tradition will continue, with another continuity from a publisher other than Dreamwave, Marvel, or IDW.
Mondays, meanwhile, should be Marvel-centric for the entirety of 2017. Thanks to the great state of California (a statement I'm not sure I've ever uttered before now), I spent the final six weeks of 2016 on paid paternity leave, and during feedings and naptimes I binged on yet another classic Marvel run, and I've already written up posts for every single issue. So my Mondays are already filled through September, which I think is the furthest ahead I've ever managed to work since I started this blog. I'll announce that project this Wednesday, following a final look back at John Byrne's FANTASTIC FOUR tomorrow.
Then there are Sundays, where The Unboxing will continue every month. I've also got two more X-Men collections to review, THE TRIAL OF GAMBIT and OPERATION: ZERO TOLERANCE, in January and February, which will conclude that monthly project I started back in October of 2015. At the moment I have no plans for something new to take the X-Men series' place, but we'll see if I come up with anything. Of course anything else that strikes my fancy will pop up on Sundays as well, though currently there's nothing slated for the near future.
So thank you once again for your patronage over the past year. I continue to have fun writing up these posts and I hope they bring some small amount of entertainment to those who read them!
Sunday, January 3, 2016
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I'd say it was a pretty good year around here. I started with some DC, covering the full initial Marv Wolfman/George Pérez run on NEW TEEN TITANS, at roughly two issues a post, in a less "in-depth" format than I normally do for my Marvel stuff. But the in-depth style stuck around as well, first with MOON KNIGHT on Fridays in the spring and then with IRON FIST and MARVEL TEAM-UP by Chris Claremont and John Byrne for a good chunk of the middle of the year. After that we looked at "The Evolutionary War" from 1988, and now we've closed out the year the same way it began, with less-structured DC material in the (pleasing) form of POWER GIRL as drawn by Amanda Conner.
Along the way, I filled up my Fridays with some Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Marvel stuff and GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN early on, followed by the afore-mentioned early MOON KNIGHT by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz. As last year, there were some odd mini-series from Marvel Unlimited, and then we moved into our summer popcorn season with UDON Studios' STREET FIGHTER, following the tradition begun last year with DANGER GIRL. A year's worth of Fridays were then capped off with another round of TRANSFORMERS comics, this time from the brief Dreamwave GENERATION ONE era.
On top of all that, I kept up my regularly scheduled "Unboxings" one Sunday a month, and I decided to review one X-MEN collected edition per month as well, which will continue through 2016 and perhaps even a bit into 2017.
Along the way, I filled up my Fridays with some Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale Marvel stuff and GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN early on, followed by the afore-mentioned early MOON KNIGHT by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz. As last year, there were some odd mini-series from Marvel Unlimited, and then we moved into our summer popcorn season with UDON Studios' STREET FIGHTER, following the tradition begun last year with DANGER GIRL. A year's worth of Fridays were then capped off with another round of TRANSFORMERS comics, this time from the brief Dreamwave GENERATION ONE era.
On top of all that, I kept up my regularly scheduled "Unboxings" one Sunday a month, and I decided to review one X-MEN collected edition per month as well, which will continue through 2016 and perhaps even a bit into 2017.
Friday, January 2, 2015
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I've been doing a lot of in-depth reviews for the past year-plus (meaning issue-by-issue posts including plot descriptions, continuity notes, panel screenshots, etc.). We had IRON MAN by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, then CAPTAIN AMERICA by Roger Stern and John Byrne, and of course the long SPIDER-MAN by Roger Stern series. I need a break from these, so I've decided that for the next few months, my Monday-Wednesday posts will be more in the vein of my normal Friday posts -- meaning semi-essays without category breakdowns, excessive scans/screenshots, and other bells and whistles. But this series will continue the trend of being based upon a long run of issues, in this case something from DC which I've wanted to read for quite some time. I think I've mentioned this before, but the official announcement will come on Monday.
The Friday posts for the duration of this DC project will follow much the same pattern as 2014: a mishmash of items with some loose organizational themes. January will bring four consecutive Fridays on four related Marvel limited series, and that announcement is coming this Sunday. Then February will find the next three GUNDAM: THE ORIGIN volumes reviewed (remember, this is a long-term project covering a few volumes per year). March will probably bring the next two installments of AME-COMI GIRLS, and then I'll move into weekly reviews of a Marvel series which is near and dear to me. After a month or two of that, we'll follow up with various one-shots and limited series, as last Spring. These will once again be composed mostly of items from Marvel Unlimited.
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