What Are You Reading?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know, reading through Jack Kirby's Mr. Miracle run, I was kind of surprised to see Darkseid's Furies become allies to Scott and Barda, since I've only ever seen them as villains in the DC animated series and features. They work surprisingly well alongside the good guys, though.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I don't know how to feel about people who watched Black Panther picking up copies of the Hudlin run. Maybe they'll get some laughs from that one issue where Wakanda refuses to give up the cure for cancer, or the arc where Storm meets Skrull Martin Luther King Jr.

And I just read the Dastardly and Muttley comic by Garth Ennis. I've got to say, I've never expected a comic about Dick Dastardly to make me feel so many emotions before.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm really enjoying Dan Jurgens's Batman Beyond Rebirth run. It feels like a natural extension of the animated series.

I've also been having my eye on the first volume of Nextwave by Warren Ellis. I was really tempted to buy it, but I have too many other back volumes of other comics to work my way through first before I can justify buying more.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The guys at Sequart have made a documentary all about Claremont's run on the X-Men.
Here's the trailer.

[Dr. Insomniac]

So are there any good comic websites left anymore? CBR has gone down the drains. BleedingCool somehow became even more like TMZ than before. ComicsAlliance was in the pits even before it got closed down. I could use a site that still knows how to type pretty about comics.

[Avaitor]

I ordered last month's Loot Anime box since it had Astro Boy and Robotech stuff in it. I got a nice light-up figure and poster for the former and a beanie for the latter, along with a Psycho-Pass shirt (which reminds me that I need to finish at least the first series), and in what ultimately made me happiest for the purchase, the first volume of Battle Angel Alita!

I read it way back in high school when I saw that my school's library had it, and I've been wanting to read it again for ages, but the original series has been out of print for ages. I have heard that it was relicensed now that the movie is actually happening, but almost forgot until I got this exclusive cover!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm almost done reading Scott Snyder's mainline Batman run. Perhaps it's from lowered expectations given how unimpressed I was with most of his material, but the Jim Gordon arc was surprisingly decent, all things considered. I expected it to be a lot dumber than what we actually got, though as I understand it, this was more co-written with James Tynion than a solo affair from Snyder, but perhaps I misunderstood. At any rate, it was nothing all that great, but it was mostly better than what came before. Still, it's a vastly overrated run IMO, and I can't help but shake the feeling that Snyder tried way too hard to ape Grant Morrison's unique writing style. I'm not even talking about how his run rips off a lot of story elements from Morrison's run, but rather that it feels like he's trying to make his work come off just as metatextual as Morrison's, but it feels far more forced in his case.

At any rate, after I'm done with this I'm debating on whether to jump into Mark Waid's Daredevil run or finally start out on Nextwave.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, does anyone know the best way to go about collecting Ed Brubaker's Captain America run? I want to read the whole thing but don't want to buy single issues and the actual volumes are pretty small at about 5 or 6 issues each. Is the run available at all in omnibus format?

[Dr. Insomniac]

Here's the reading order. There were omnibuses, but the first volume went out of print a while ago.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Got the Winter Soldier hardcover. I also already read The Death of Captain America arc a few years ago, and my TPB of it is back at the house in New Jersey. I'll have to collect the other volumes separately.

Currently, though, I'm reading this: https://youtu.be/Xuosmf1_mKs

[Dr. Insomniac]

Nextwave is love.

I've been reading Promethea after years of it collecting dust on my shelf. There's an entire issue dedicated to explaining how tarot cards work while the bottom of each page is about Aleister Crowley. It's got wonderful art, but I'm not sure if I can make sense of the story.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been wanting to read more Superman stories by Grant Morrison, and was considering collecting his Action Comics run, but that's where it gets a bit tricky for me. His stuff is either fairly accessible or insanely rooted in decades-worth of comic book lore that it's impossible to comprehend his stories unless you've somehow managed to read everything he's referencing. So, I was wondering if his Action Comics run was the former or the latter.

[Dr. Insomniac]

It's the former, since it was meant to be a sort of reboot for Superman as per the New 52.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

That's good to know. I'll give it a look at some point, though I'm also deciding between that or one of Warren Ellis's original series as my next read (probably Transmetropolitan).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I've recently read through Ed Brubaker's Captain America run all the way up through the Death of Captain America arc. I haven't read any issues featuring Bucky as Captain America, but I did read Brubaker's subsequent Winter Soldier run, which I actually liked better than his Captain America material. His Captain America run was good, but I'm just a bit spoiled by the MCU interpretation of the character which I feels manages to surpass the source material in regards to The Winter Soldier and Civil War story-lines.

I also read through all of Batman and Robin Eternal, which was a pretty mediocre story arc overall, with both some low points and occasionally good moments throughout. But seriously, what is it with The New 52 era of Batman comics trying so hard to push Harper Row as the next major Batman character? Unless I'm missing something, she has been consistently uninteresting in every appearance that she's ever made so far among what I've read.

Lately I've been wanting to read through Walt Simonson's run on Thor, since I've heard unanimous praise about how legendary and iconic it is, but I was wondering if it's something that you can only get into after reading a good chunk of Thor's preceding material, or if it's easy enough to pick up as a jumping off point. I'll leave it up to the resident comic experts on this board to let me know which.