THE UNBOXING - MAY 2014

This month's box is small in content but large in quality, thanks to the long, long, long awaited UNCANNY X-MEN OMNIBUS volume 2. Volume 1 was one of Marvel's very first Omnibus collections and was released eight years ago, in 2006. Let's put that in perspective. The time between the releases of volumes 1 and 2 is longer than the amount of time the X-Men were in reprints in the seventies. It's longer than the amount of years' worth of issues contained in both books together, even taking into account that UNCANNY X-MEN was bi-monthly for much of the first volume! It's a long time!

But it's here at last, and mostly worth the wait. Since I probably won't be writing about this run of issues individually for quite some time, if ever, due to the huge number of sites and blogs that have already done so, I've decided that for now I'll compose a single, stand-alone post about the book itself for next weekend. For now, though, I'm just pleased to have this titanic tome nestled snugly beside volume 1 in my overcrowded bookcase.

The only other arrival this month is TRANSFORMERS: REGENERATION ONE volume 4, which concludes IDW's commitment to finishing out the original Marvel TRANSFORMERS series. As I noted when volume 3 arrived, I will read both 3 and 4 together and then blog about them in a series of posts as I did with the first two volumes last year. Currently, my plan is to get these posts started exactly one year after I began the previous round, which would start us off in September -- so watch for that a few months from now.

And that's it! I'm back from the honeymoon, rested, refreshed, and ready to continue blabbing about comic books.