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!
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year, Matt!
I know you tend to deal with process stuff in your first post of the year, so I’ve been saving this question: Why is Nick Fury next to the Hulk in your header image? The X-Men had tie-ins to Power Man and Iron Fist in the classic “All-New” era. Moon Knight, Spider-Man, and Daredevil continue the street-level crimefighting theme. Spidey likewise has shared history from early on with the Fantastic Four, not to mention Pete and Ben holding down the related Marvel Team-Up and Two-in-One for so long. She-Hulk was a member of the FF and the Silver Surfer is obviously connected to them as well. Then Warlock continues the cosmic theme with, I assume, Strange Tales linking him and Fury. Obviously, coming from the other side, Hulk was a founding member of the Avengers, but the only bridge I can make between him and Fury is SHIELD’s Hulkbuster project.
As for your “quintuple dipping” Warlock, I can relate. I’m a massive fan of Hellboy (and Mignola’s work in general) with his first miniseries, Seed of Destruction, lining my shelves in collected form several ways. There’s its original trade paperback; a later numbered one; its half of the first massive, hardcover Hellboy Library Edition; its part of the softcover omnibus series; and finally, launching it over subsequent early duplicate trade paperbacks, a small hardcover packaged with a figurine. I bought the original issues when published, natch.
I’m amazed by your blogpost lead time. Even were I able to get that far ahead, I doubt I could hold onto material so long before sharing, which is not at all a criticism of your own disposition.
Yeesh. I’m sorry about all the deleted comments. The end quotes on my HTML kept getting automatically switched from reg’lar to “smart” and screwing things up. I guess that’s what I get for daring to plug my own, frustratingly idle domain. 8^)
DeleteObviously, Nick Fury is next to Hulk due to the (1990s) funeral of Nick Fury taking place during Peter David’s run on the Incredible Hulk.
DeleteNick Fury was really and truly dead, and they had his funeral in the pages of Incredible Hulk. The Hulk and Fury: always connected now.
Blam, you're pretty much dead-on about my attempted logical flow of the headshots up there. Fury is the outlier, however -- and there's sort of a reason for that, too! The original version of this header, which was used from (checks notes) 2017 to 2019, didn't even have him -- so it went from Warlock to the Hulk, with the logic being that story they were both in that one story on Counter-Earth.
Delete(Though in retrospect, perhaps I should've connected Warlock to the FF given his origins in their series, then Warlock to Surfer via the "cosmic" theme, then the Surfer to the Hulk via the Defenders!)
But then one day I decided I wanted to squeeze Fury in there too, and I didn't really want to break up the flow anywhere else. So since Warlock to Hulk felt the most tenuous connection as it was, there went Fury.
(This is also the reason Daredevil is so low and Spider-Man so high. Originally there were more side-by-side and only slightly breaking out of the box border, but when I added Fury, that meant moving all the other heads a bit to make room for him!)
At one point I considered swapping Hulk and Fury, but Hulk's head is so doggone big that it would've shoved Fury so far to the right that he'd have honorary Avengers membership!
And now you know -- the secrets behind the blog!
I'm considering freshening up the whole thing, by the way, but we'll see if I find the time to do it.
And Anonymous, your logic works well enough for me!
Oh, and speaking to the lead time -- like I said, I normally don't have anywhere near this much. And in years past, if I did have such a cushion, I would likely just do the AVENGERS stuff twice a week, like in the old days. But I've come to learn that every time I do that, something comes up to cut into my time, throws my schedule out of whack, and before I know it, I'm cranking these things out at the last minute every week! So this time, I'm playing it safe... for now, anyway.
DeleteI also realized when citing Strange Tales that you don’t have Doctor Strange up there, and without racking my brain he’s the only Marvel star of a certain vintage missing (save the villains you feature in October); Namor perhaps, too, but he just doesn’t strike me as the head-shot type. 8^)
Delete