THE UNBOXING - JULY 2020

After a couple months off, The Unboxing returns with two books and a few digital items. First, from Marvel, it's the SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK BY JOHN BYRNE OMNIBUS. I own this run in four formats now -- original comic books, two trade paperbacks, digital versions of those trades, and now this Omnibus. I can't help it; I love Byrne's She-Hulk! Heck, if IDW was ever to offer an Artist's Edition of pages from this run, I'd buy that, too!

Which turns out to be a nice segue to our next book, from IDW: DAVE COCKRUM'S X-MEN ARTIFACT EDITION. Prior to buying this, I owned exactly one Artist/Artifact Edition, which hit The Unboxing just about two years ago, and that was the JOHN BYRNE'S X-MEN ARTIFACT EDITION... so you can see where my tastes lie. Further, since I don't buy these things very often, I went ahead and splurged on the signed and numbered limited edition, which has a "virgin" wraparound cover, as well as a Chris Claremont autograph. I did the same thing with the Byrne book a couple years ago -- it was a Comic-Con exclusive, signed and numbered by Byrne.

THE UNBOXING - JULY 2018

I'm getting this one in just under the wire for the month, but there's a reason: I picked something up at Comic-Con that I wanted to include for our July Unboxing. First, however, a quick Digital Unboxing: You'll recall that just last month, I grabbed digital versions of a bunch of Dark Horse's USAGI YOJIMBO SAGA books, with plans to get the remaining, earlier Usagi stuff from Fantagraphics whenever they had a sale. Well, that time came sooner than expected, with a linewide Comixology/Amazon sale of the publisher's wares just this month. As such, I picked up USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 1: THE RONIN, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 2: SAMURAI, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 3: THE WANDERER'S ROAD, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 4: THE DRAGON BELLOW CONSPIRACY, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 5: LONE GOAT AND KID, USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 6: CIRCLES, and USAGI YOJIMBO BOOK 7: GEN' STORY, making me (as far as I know) the proud owner of all collected Usagi stories to date.

I also took advantage of a Viz sale to grab DRAGON BALL SUPER vol. 1, vol. 2, and vol. 3, adapting the ongoing TV series into a manga format (which is totally the opposite of the original DRAGON BALL/DRAGON BALL Z, which was a manga adapted to television.

And now the biggy: from IDW (in cooperation with Marvel), the John Byrne's X-Men Artifact Edition. There have been a few of IDW's "Artist Edition" books which have intrigued me; specifically the John Romita Spider-Man books and the Walter Simonson Thor book, but I've always balked a bit at the price and considered them non-essential items. This, however, is the first in the series which really piqued my interest, and which I considered a must-have.

So since I had wanted the book anyway, when I saw IDW offering an SDCC exclusive version with an alternate cover, signed and hand-numbered by Byrne himself, I jumped to pre-order, and picked it up the first day of the show. I've only skimmed it so far, but it's really nice -- and it's huge! This is the first Artist Edition book I've seen in person, and even though I know how big comic book art pages are, it's still larger than I expected. I can't wait to really sit down and peruse this thing.

But for now, that's it. Will there be an Unboxing in August? Last year that started a three-month stretch of nothing. This time, I guess we'll find out together.