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!