Chad’s Comments (group member since Mar 22, 2018)

Chad’s comments from the I Read Comic Books group.

I also have a stack of Monstress GN to reread from the library.

The Krakoan era is very hit and miss. I suggest sticking with certain authors. Jonathan Hickman, Gerry Duggan, Kieron Gillen, Al Ewing. There's a ton of ancillary titles and most of it is garbage. I started off buying all of it every week and quickly learned my mistake, that I was just throwing away money on certain titles. If you have Marvel Unlimited, that's probably the best way to read all of it. I think COVID messed up a lot of Hickman's plans. Those initial HoX/PoX miniseries are really cool. The first X-Men and Marauders books are excellent. You really start to feel a slide in quality once Hickman left the main X-Men book to work on the Inferno miniseries. Half of the other titles were terrible by then. You could feel by that point how limited his involvement was. Most of the creators other than Duggan and Ewing had left. Marauders went from my favorite X-Men comic when Duggan was writing it to one of worst things Marvel has ever published when Steve Orlando took over and turned it into something completely different.

Today's trip to my LCS.

BTW, Geoff Johns is personally trying to get me in trouble with my wife by launching three new comics today.

Void Rivals #8
Captain America #8
Redcoat #1
Geiger #1
Rook Exodus #1
Avengers #12
Birds of Prey #8
Doctor Strange #14
Immortal Thor #9
X-Men #33

Maybe next year we could do something where we pick a kickstarter or zoop campaign that's due to come out later in the year and then do it as the book of the month when it comes out. We just need to pick creators that can meet their deadlines. There are a lot of campaigns that don't seem to come out until several years later.

Bone, Stray Bullets and Stray Toasters are great ideas. They were all kind of Kickstarters way before there was Kickstarter. I'd throw Cerebus (even though Dave Sim turned into a misogynistic a-hole), Elfquest, Strangers in Paradise (really almost anything by Terry Moore) and A Distant Soil in there too. Even the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run from the 80's were self-published.

I think that would be fine Evilblacksheep except it doesn't come out until September.

Invincible is terrific. There are 3 omnibus editions that collect the whole run. I got our library to buy them for their digital collection which makes them way easier to read. Those things are tomes. It does get better too after the first year of stories. I've read through all of it more than once except for the last 6 issues because then it would be over.

Speaking of Kickstarter, two of the guys that work at my LCS had a kickstarter campaign kick off today by coincidence. I have the first 2 issues they did (They are thick anthologies where they did one of the 5 stories in each.) and they are pretty good. Very much influenced by Power Rangers and manga. This new kickstarter has both of their stories from the first 2 anthologies along with 2 excerpts from new stories they are working on.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...

White Ash was the first thing I thought of. It was originally a Kickstarter campaign and then Scout picked it up. It's excellent.

Here's my review. It's spoiler free.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

One issue of a season 2 came out in 2021 and still haven't seen another one. Not sure what happened but any exposure I can give these guys I will. It's so damn good.

Last week's adventures in comics.

A Fire Among Clouds (Codex Black, #1) ★★
This was kind of terrible. It's basically a manga set in Mesoamerica. A boy and a girl become friends as they quest around Mexico. The boy gains the power to fly from falling in a hole. He gathers a bunch of feathers in his hat and suddenly gains the power to fly. WTF? There's a ton of nonsensical writing like this.

Nights Volume 1 ★★
This is set in an alternate 2003 where Florida is part of Spain and there are only 31 states. I'm not sure why that's even noted though because it doesn't play into the story at all and everything culture wise seems to be the same as actual history. The real change is that vampires and ghosts are real and not considered dangerous or scary. There's not much of a through story. It's about a teenager who has to go live with his older cousin after his parents died. There he has a vampire and a ghost for roommates. I guess this would be considered a slacker comedy. I just considered it not all that interesting and a bit pointless.

Usagi Yojimbo: 40th Anniversary Reader ★★★★
If you're an Usagi reader, you aren't going to find anything new here. If you're not, this is a pretty good introduction to Usagi Yojimbo's world. The one really interesting thing is the whole volume is in color which is pretty rare.

The Riddler: Year One ★★★
This started out as the bible Paul Dano used for his Riddler character in The Batman. It actually starts off pretty strong with Nashton finding some discrepancies while working in an accounting firm and figuring out what turns into the plot of the movie. But those fourth and fifth issues go off the rails. Four is the Riddler's childhood while the fifth issue is just Charles Manson's scribbles as he descends into madness. It was so goddamn hard to read. I hated it so much I would like to give Mr. Dano a personal F.U. for making me read it. I don't think I retained any of it as I was just so freaking mad at trying to figure out how to read this absolute nonsense with really no art to speak of. Besides that it settles in about just as well for me as Emo Batman did.

Crave ★★
This was kind of stupid. It's basically a cut Black Mirror episode. It's about a dating app running through a school that is answering everyone's desires, to the point where teens are all having sex right in the hallways of the school. There is the downside that everyone saw coming. It hits about every trope it can. I just don't get the love for Maria Llovet. Her comics aren't very good.

Hotelitor: Luxury-Class Defense and Hospitality Unit ★★★
This was pretty goofy. Why would anyone put a hotel inside of Voltron? Well, for whatever reason, Josh Hicks did. Then he has them get lost in space and take on evil corporations. You know, like giant hotel mechas do.

Killer Queens 2: Kings, Not Wings! ★★★
An all LGBTQ creative team leads a story about two bounty hunters, one a woman, the other a gay man. They get involved in this sci-fi universe when a Prince escapes their home world because their father is a toxic male jerk who wants to cut their wings off. It's not bad. Nowhere near as good as Booher's Canto was, but not bad.

Mirka Andolfo's Mercy: The Fair Lady, The Frost, and The Fiend ★★★
So much of this just leaves you hanging. There's a distinct lack of world building or explanation. It reminds me of John Carpenter's The Thing if it had been set 100 years earlier. It's about this small town where this Lady and her aide arrive. They are secretly some kinds of monsters and this thing is filled with body horror. Andolfo's art is fantastic. Her storytelling is severely lacking though.

Scoop, Vol. 1: Breaking News ★★★
A teenage girl gets an internship at the worst TV station in Miami. There she gets involved in a wacky case involving time travel after reporting on a murder for the station.

Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories Vol. 3: Light and Shadows ★★★
Four single issue stories with a through line of what happens to a stuffed animal. It's fine.

A Fox in My Brain ★★★★
A comic written and drawn by a French woman suffering from a bipolar disorder. She does a great job of making the art seem playful while also getting the points across of how it affects her. Her cyclothymia is represented as this fox who tries to talk her into making snap decisions or feeding off her lows. I thought she did a great job of conveying what it's like to have a disorder like this.

X-Force, Vol. 9 ★★
X-Force moves to the North Pole after Fall of X, but this book continues to be all about Beast. X-Force brings a clone of Beast back with only his memories up until he was part of the New Defenders and they go after one another in a half-baked finale. Percy tries to make some magic with the return team-up of Beast and Wonder Man but I don't think Percy knew much about Wonder Man these days. He was completely out of character and a weakling who for some reason couldn't breathe underwater even though Wonder Man doesn't breathe at all since Kurt Busiek resurrected him in Avengers. I give Percy's run 4 raspberries. If I had 4 middle fingers, I'd give him those too.

Batman: Urban Legends, Vol. 6 ★★★
This wraps up the Urban Legends Batman anthology title with some middling stories. Standouts are Jamal Campbell's Nightwing story. He's making his case to take over as artist on that title with this story. Michael Cho's Wheelman story was interesting. The rest are lackluster at best.

The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol 7: Armed and Dangerous ★★
Man, I was excited when I heard Zeb Wells was taking over Spider-Man. These days, not so much. This insane publishing schedule is really hurting the books. Doc Ock returns and it's terrible. He gets some new arms because his old arms have went traitor on him. Then in the final oversized issue, the wedding of Tombstone's daughter and Robbie Robertson is finally happening. It's all just a lead in to Gang War and then little teasers for the gazillion Spider-related spinoff books. Marvel is going to milk Spider-Man straight into the ground with the way they are overusing him and all his spinoffs. Sony should be happy though with all the additional characters they can make awful movies of though.

The Amazing Spider-Man, Vol 8: Spider Man's First Hunt ★★★
The Goblin Queen and Kraven team up to try and give Norman Osborn his sins back. (It's been a whole deal for awhile now.) Of course, it goes wrong and then we get an inversion of Kraven's Last Hunt. Then Rek-Rap is back for some nonsense. I hate this character. I pretty much hate anything to do with Madeline Pryor or Limbo at this point. The art for all of this is really good with Patrick Gleason on the first story and Ed McGuiness the second one.

Anna ★
I wanted to like this because I like to support Fantagraphics but this was stupid with some real fugly art. It's about 3 generations of Anna who are really tall. That's the whole story. Then it's page after page of legs turned every which way as they spill out of baby carriages and the like.

The Asiri Volume 1 ★★★
A version of Wakanda created by a Nigerian creative team. It's some solid Afrofuturist comics. My only problem with it is there are a lot of characters with little introduction to keep track of, especially with that unexplained cold open.

Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent ★★★★★
Tom Taylor revisits some of his greatest hits with his most bleak series, Injustice, colliding with his most positive one in Jon Kent. There's some other little Easter eggs along the way too for Taylor fans. Ultraman is touring the multiverse killing Supermen when Jon gets recruited to take him down. He winds up in the Injustice universe where he decides to determine for himself what is going on in this world. I love Taylor's approach here and how Jon continues to be one of the most powerful heroes while always being reluctant to turn to violence to solve his problems. It's a cool take on Superman, especially when juxtaposed with the bleakness of a Superman who has failed in his mission and given in to authoritarianism.

Batman Incorporated, Vol. 2: Joker Incorporated ★★★
The Joker starts his own international team of Jokers just to mess with Batman Incorporated. There's not a lot of characterization here as the story is action driven.

Spider-Man 2099: Dark Genesis ★
Here's a shocker, another shitty comic from Steve Orlando. I really don't understand why Marvel keeps giving this guy work. The last thing Spider-Man 2099 needed was a super generic Carnage 2099. Let's just make Marvel's characters more and more derivative instead of doing something original. This story is just bad in every way.

Trick Pony ★
The art in this is so freaking bad. It looks like a little person riding the horse on the cover. It's about a washed up, gay, rodeo cowboy who is riding home to see his sick father. Along the way are all these magical realism interludes with him confronting his past failed relationships. The storytelling is so jumbled and confusing though as it's hard to make heads or tails of the story. Oof, these Comixology Originals are starting to feel like the comics that every other company said no to first.

Batman: Gotham After Midnight ★★
An OK Batman story that's more about the parade of villains then it is about the rudimentary story of its new bland villain, Midnight. Batman is the world's biggest dummy in this instead of the world's greatest detective. He doesn't even figure out who Midnight is until the issue after they already died. Then he finally does his research and figures out who was punching people's hearts out with a cane.

British Ice ★★
This doesn't seem to have much to say other than "Colonialism is bad." It's about a British man in their version of the state department. He's sent to a remote island in the Arctic circle in 1984 to maintain British control of it. As you go along you eventually find out what happened before but for such a short book it sure feels like pulling teeth to get there. The story moves so slow. Maybe it's the massive amounts of dialogue instead of showing us things, there's a whole lot of tell instead.

Killing Red Sonja ★★
The story is fine but oof! That art is terrible! It looks like sketches on cocktail napkins that were then colored with crayons. It is terrible. This is not about Red Sonja at all. It's about the boy emperor whose father Sonja killed in volume 2.

Today's trip to my LCS.

The Goon: Them That Don't Stay Dead #1 <-- Powell has moved his Albatross Funny Books over as an imprint for Dark Horse.
Batman: Dark Age #1 <-- Mark Russell and Mike Allred's followup to Superman: Space Age
G.O.D.S. #6
Duke #4
Incredible Hulk #10
Rise of the Powers of X #3
Ultimate Spider-Man #3
Wolverine #46
X-Force #50
Zorro: Man of the Dead #3

Last week's adventures in comics.

When the Lake Burns ★★
While the art was solid, this story was stupid. Kids decide to see if a legend is true when a local lake in the woods catches fire. They've heard anything put in the fire turns to gold. When they test it out find out everything just burns, they just keep burning more and more things, including things like their skateboard (and ultimately much worse). These are the dumbest kids ever put to paper.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Jennika II ★★★
This is really 2 3 issue stories by two different creative teams. The first half is by Brahm Revel who made the first Jennika miniseries and it is terrible. Poory story. Terrible art.

Ronda Pattison and Jodi Nishijima do the 2nd story and it is much better. Jennika gets involved with a woman who was mutated and her human son. The problem being that Jennika killed the kid's father when she worked for The Foot.

Star Trek: Year Five, Book 4: Experienced in Loss ★★★
An appropriate ending to this series with the Tholians and Gary 7. I'm not at all down with Gary 7's whole deal but I really liked Bright Eyes and how they affected the Tholians.

Edenfrost ★★★★★
This was excellent. It's about a young brother and sister who have to go on the run after their parents are killed. It's set in Ukraine after World War I. They are Jewish and being chased by some soldiers. What the soldiers don't know is that the kids can summon a golem. The art is outstanding. A love finding these kinds of gems in independent comics.

Grim, Vol. 3: Lust for Life ★★★
The team goes to Hell in order to get back Marcel while some bigger concept is unleashed. It's a bit more unfocused and scattered than the first two volumes. Flaviano and Rico Renzi continue to do the Lord's work on art.

Fables: The Deluxe Edition Book Sixteen ★★★★
It was so nice to have Fables back even if it took 2 years for the 12 issues to come out and with Willingham's falling out with DC, we probably won't see any more (at least from this creative team which is the reason it was so good.) This is mainly about the Cubs, Bigby and Snow's children as they become adults. There's a new big bad that acts more or less like Prince Brandish, just less interesting. I do wish we at least got some backstory to flesh him out more. Some other old favorites are along for the ride as well, along with some new characters. It was really nice to visit this world again.

The Heart That Fed: A Father, a Son, and the Long Shadow of War ★★★★
The memoir of a Vietnam vet and how his time there affected the rest of his life, written and drawn by his son. It's very interesting.

BRZRKR: Bloodlines, Volume 1 ★★
Two stories of random civilizations that Keanu wiped out with his bloodlust. First he fights Cthullu in Atlantis and it's ridiculous. Then he destroys another ancient civilization by being the world's biggest dummy. There's one part where he hatches from an egg and I was just wondering WTF.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Jennika--The Fifth Turtle ★★★
This is a mixed bag of comics featuring the newest Ninja Turtle, Jennika. It contains the story in the regular comics about how she transformed from a human into a mutant. It also includes the two solo Jennika miniseries of middling quality. It goes like this. The comics by Brahm Revel are terrible. Everything else is good.

Critical Role: The Mighty Nein Origins: Beauregard Lionett ★★★
Not bad but could have used some more pages to flesh this out more. Was her father's business actually failing or was she just trying to grow it? They didn't really show much of her father not listening to her either. Just her sneakily doing her own thing regardless of the consequences.

Mangilaluk: A graphic memoir about friendship, perseverance, and resiliency ★★★
An Inuit man talks about his life. First abandoned as a baby, then being sent away to a school by a family who seemingly no longer wanted him. It's a REALLY sad read about a man who has lived all his life without being wanted or loved.

Eve of Extinction ★★
This has all of the nuance of a video game plot. Actually, most video games these days have better world building. The rain turns men into mutants. That's the breath of the storytelling. Now a mom, stepmother, and their daughter have to survive through a rainy Houston night.

Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol. 4: Return to Kingdom Come ★★★★
First up, Mark Waid and Travis Moore show us the first time Batman and Superman met. Then Waid returns to the world of Kingdom Come with Dan Mora in tow. It's many years earlier in both the world of Kingdom Come and Superman's and Batman's career. They finally find Thunder Boy from volume 2 on Earth-22 and look to find him. But they also find the threat of Gog.

DeadEndia: The Divine Order ★★★★
This series is just insane. It's got a lot of Adventure Time and Rick and Morty in it without the meanness of Rick and Morty. Just the insanity and fun. The world has been divided into 13 worlds with the demons being the good guys that the humans are helping and the angels continue to separate planes of existence. All the while the good guys are trying to finally fix this world.

The Witcher, Vol. 8: Wild Animals ★★★
This is one of those stories where no one's really in the right and Geralt is caught in the middle. He washes up on this island and gets stuck between two factions. One thinks that all life including animals and monsters should be treated like humans. The other is the opposite.

Operation Sunshine Volume 1: Blood Run ★★
I didn't realize the guys from The Last Podcast on the Left wrote this. Even David Rubin's always terrific art couldn't save this turkey. It's something about vampires and there's two kinds and they are going to steal something. Reading this is like reading something that was translated into Russian with Google Translate and then translated back into English.

Canary ★★★
This starts off pretty strong as a weird Western where random people across the Old West are doing awful things out of nowhere. The main character is a marshall popularized in the pulps. He wears this kerchief with a design on it that I didn't know what it was supposed to be until it was finally called out that it was a coffin. He is called to bring a geologist back to Canary where he used to live, to check out a mine that's went deeper than any other. It's all a slow burn for the first 4 issues. Then the last 2 feel like we missed about 6 issues. There's all of a sudden this supernatural element as things spin out of control and none of it is explained well. It felt like going to see an old movie and they missed one of the reels.

The Cull Volume 1 ★★★★★
This was terrific. It's about a group of friends who go out in the middle of the night to "make a film". In reality, they've found a portal and think that the little brother that is missing may have went through it as well. Mattia de Iulis does a fantastic job of making this alien world look alien. It very much has a Stranger Things vibe to it crossed with The Mist.

The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos Volume 1 ★★★★
I do like this take that fits in with some of the classic movie monsters. Making Christopher Chaos a burgeoning mad scientist works for me as well. I could use some more world building around this. I'm still not sure what's going on with the bad guys or why the other people in this have powers. Still it's a lot of fun.

Wonder Woman, Vol. 4: Revenge of the Gods ★★
Good lord, this book is an exercise in frustration. It's starts with part 2 of the story started in the last volume with more of Hera's nonsense. Then we get two Revenge of the Gods tie ins which make zero sense without reading that miniseries. The last two issues are jam issues having to do with everyone dreaming. Everything about this is crap. You can't bring in Tom King soon enough.

Today's trip to my LCS.

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees #4
World's Finest #25
Cobra Commander #3
Invincible Iron Man #16
Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong #6
Nightwing #112
Resurrection of Magneto #3
Titans #9
X-Men Forever #1

Shane wrote: "@nancy One of my friends lent me many volumes of her epic elfqudsf collection in High School. I just started a reread with the first arc of the original quest - always scary to go back to things yo..."

Elfquest is a blank spot in my comic book reading. I tried reading the last couple of minis Dark Horse put out and I had no idea what was going on and way too many characters to learn about. I figured a new #1 is a good jumping on point but that is certainly not the case with Elfquest. They may as well have been speaking another language.

kaitlphere wrote: "Chad, I think it was you who mentioned that you enjoyed Berlin. I didn't particularly like the first volume but I keep thinking about the story. I ended up getting the omnibus from the library. It's a brick but I plan to read the entire thing (probably slowly)."

Yep, Berlin was me. I think it reads pretty well with the whole story in front of you. It is a tome.

Last week's adventures in comics.

X-Men: Hellfire Gala (2023) #1 ★★★★
Basically 80 pages of the X-Men getting f***ed (and not in a good way).

Fall Through ★★
The art's cool but the story is hard to follow. The panels don't always align to tell the story coherently and the lettering is all over the place. The crux of the story is about a small time punk band on tour in the 90's. Often struggling with basics like finding a place to stay while on the road because they can't afford hotels. Nate Powell has done better.

We Kill Monsters ★★★
Two mechanic brothers get attacked one night by some kind of creature. One of them gets infected by the creature and grows a monster arm. That creature was only the beginning and the monsters keep coming in this small town. It's pretty predictable but it's fun.

Neozoic ★★
A series with a ton of potential. It's set in a world where dinosaurs never died out and humans live in a walled city. There's another race of albinos (who are evil, I guess) and a girl who can control the dinosaurs with mind powers. My problems are that the storytelling isn't very good and neither is the worldbuilding.

Rivers of London Vol. 11: Here Be Dragons ★★★
These little bonus comics for the Rivers of London novels are pretty good. This one is better than the previous one. It's about a wyvern attacking London. Along the way the fae and Jimi Hendrix gets involved.

Abbott: 1979 ★★★
It's now 1979. Elena Abbott has been through the ringer fighting the Umbra for 6 years, who has possessed her lover among others. Elena's at her rock bottom as she has to stiffen up and fight back. There could be more story here. It's a bit stretched out to go 5 issues and could have used some side plots.

The Atonement Bell ★★★
St. Louis is a terrific place to set this kind of spooky story. I grew up there and there's a ton of creepy folklore in the area to keep you awake at night. The story is about a boy and his mother who come to St. Louis over the holidays to visit her sister and nephew. While there they become the target of a coven that's been in the area for centuries. Good art, good story.

Transformers, Vol. 1: Robots in Disguise ★★★★★
So excited about this. It's the same premise as the original cartoon but at the same time it's its own thing. A long time stalwart of the cartoons kicks it almost right off the bat. It's really good.

Code 45 ★★★★
I thought this was pretty good. It's about a woman who gets a job working in the subway system in Montreal as a driver. When she gets transferred to the night shift, she starts seeing strange things about a dragon in the tunnels and none of her coworkers will talk about it.

The Quarry ★★★
A short story about a teenager and the ex-girlfriend of his brother who are trying to cope with the loss of his brother on their first Christmas without him.

Star Trek: Year Five, Book 2: The Wine-Dark Deep ★★★
Volume 2 was just alright. It had some goofy stuff in it like Mr. Sulu instantly falling in love with a fishperson. It was just bizarre even if you insert modern sensibilities into the story. They seem to be trying a little too hard to tie everything into previous episodes as well.

Star Trek: Year Five, Book 3: Weaker than Man ★★
Too much reliance on the original episodes. In fact, I'd recommend watching the whole series again before reading these. I'd rather see some stand alone new stories, instead of the return of Gary 7, yet again and Harry Mudd.

Trve Kvlt ★
Who would have thought a comic about fast food workers and Satanists could be this boring but this creative team has managed it. Everyone in this book suffers from verbal diarrhea. The dialogue just drones on and on, page after page. This one character is all gung ho about working at fast food. She loves it and loves to talk about it for pages and pages. There's a ton of reused panels to make the book even more monotonous. Nothing like seeing the same panel repeated 9 times while a character talks about the technical details of working at a religious themed McDonalds ad nauseum.

Yellow Cab ★★
I'm not real sure why Chaboute decided to adapt this story into a comic. It's really dull. It's about a French filmmaker who decides to become a cab driver in New York in order to gain material for a new project.

The War of the Worlds: Infestation ★★★
Not bad for an independent comic from the 90's. It takes the premise that the martians weren't killed by germs at the end of War of the Worlds but continued to ravage the planet. What's left of humanity is struggling to fight back.

You Wish ★★★★
Avery and her father live alone in the middle of nowhere running a gas station. Then one day she finds a magical lamp and everything changes. A terrific all ages adventure with fun art.

New 52 era Green Arrow is real bad. Have you read the 80s stuff from Mike Grell and later Chuck Dixon? It's solid. And I really like the stuff Judd Winnick did before the New 52 started. I enjoyed the Kevin Smith and Brad Meltzer stuff too.

The Superman comics from the New 52 weren't great either, even with Grant Morrison writing one of them for awhile. The books are plagued with a ton of crossovers that are put together terribly in the collections. You have to read the event collection to get the whole story. The collections for each individual comic will only have a quarter of each crossover so you have no idea what's going on. They also did this weird thing where Superman and Lois were never together and he hooks up with Wonder Woman instead. They do this whole character assassination on Lois. Then Rebirth happens and they do this whole "These are not the droids you are looking for" thing and hand wave it all away. The current Superman books are really good though,

Eli wrote: "Any fav New 52 runs you would recommend?"

Snyder and Capullo's Batman run.
Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's Wonder Woman.
All of Geoff Johns' stuff. Green Lantern, Aquaman, Justice League, Forever Evil. That Green Lantern run actually predates the New 52. I guess in space the New 52 didn't take effect. Just start when Geoff Johns fixes Hal Jordan a few years before and move forward.
The companion Green Lantern Corps book is good too.
Batman and Robin by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason. These guys worked on Green Lantern Corps too.
Francis Manapul's art on Flash and then Detective Comics is just terrific. The art may be better than some of the stories actually.
Scott Snyder did a very good Swamp Thing book.
Ditto, for Jeff Lemire and Animal Man.

Those are off the top of my head. I'm sure there are some others I'm forgetting. I'm read all of it good or bad through my library and DC Infinite. There is also a ton of garbage in the New 52 era.

Eli wrote: "I finished Gail Simone's New 52 Batgirl run yesterday. It was pretty good, especially regarding the ending of that run. I know I'm super super behind on superhero comics, but I got to the party lat..."

The new 52 stuff is pretty good. I mean, can you go wrong with Gail Simone? The Batgirl of Burnside stuff to follow that is terrible. It's very twee.

Big trip to the LCS today. My wife is going to kill me when she sees how much money I spent.

Abbott 1979 #5
Avengers: Twilight #4
Fables #162 <-- Probably the last ever issue with Bill Willingham's falling out with DC.
Fall of the House of X #3
House of Slaughter #21
Immortal Thor #8
Wolverine #45
Transformers #6
Helen of Wyndhorn #1 <-- New Dark Horse comic from Tom King and Bilquis Evely
Batman / Dylan Dog #1
Outsiders #5
Ultimate Black Panther #1
Ultimate Black Panther #2
Thundercats #2
Unknown Heroes Anthology #1 <-- 2 of the guys working at my LCS have a story in this so I felt I needed to support this Kickstarter.
Unknown Heroes Anthology #2 <-- They got a bunch of physical copies for the store. They have a new book hitting Kickstarter on April 1st if anyone is interested.

Kait, if you liked Buzzkill, The Paybacks is set in the same universe. Characters from both books show up in Cates's Crossover book too.