News broke a week ago last Friday — because everyone was ready for the weekend and therefore not ready to vent some outrage — that DC would be ending its exclusive partnership with Diamond Comics Distributors.  You know, the distributor that has had a virtual monopoly on serialized comics distribution in the U.S. since the […]

Savor this round of Previews Picks from DC.  With Friday’s news that they were ending their distribution agreement with Diamond, this will likely be the last “Previews” picks you’ll read.  Not that I won’t cover their solicitations if they’re made available.  But something tells me that I have more of these columns behind me than […]

Image’s solicitations are also a mix of old and new titles.  Among the new, however, is one that I’ve been waiting a while to see… Above-the-Board Recommendation: Cruel Summer HC Like a lot of other people, I’ve been waiting for the latest “Criminal” series from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips to be collected.  While twelve […]

This is going to be a weird round of “Previews Picks,” as you might have guessed.  With the comics industry slowly working its way out of shutdown, August’s Previews are going to look veeeeeeeery similar to June’s.  With a few exceptions sneaking in here and there.  In Marvel’s case, there are only two: Maestro #1 […]

Most of the chapters in this volume are focused around our protagonists, yet it doesn’t feel like they’re the ones moving the story forward here.  Their stories are still good fun, starting off with a two-parter which shows us what effects stepping into the changeling ring at the end of the previous volume had on […]

I’ve waxed poetic about Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s “Batman” run enough on this blog that you all should know I think it’s pretty great.  So it should come as no surprise that I was really looking forward to this volume which was billed as their last word on the character — well before the […]

The first volume of the flagship series of the “Dawn of X” era has arrived.  As written by “House of X/Powers of X” mastermind Jonathan Hickman, it’s not unreasonable to expect that the stories being told within this series will be driving the line as a whole.  So the expectation is that we’d be getting […]

The history of the Marvel Universe is a living, breathing thing that changes with each new comic published.  It’ll look different from one year to the next, and possibly even unrecognizable between decades.  So the idea that someone was going to do a comic that was going to outline it all, up to the point […]

I wasn’t sure why we needed another random “Amazing Spider-Man” one-shot when this was solicited, but the creative team attached to it sold me on the idea of picking it up (eventually).  Contributing to this story are (deep breath):  Jonathan Hickman, Chris Bachao, Gerry Duggan, Greg Smallwood, (current Spider-Writer) Nick Spencer, Mike Allred, Kelly Thompson, […]