What Are You Reading?

[Markness]

I read a trade of the first 8 issues of The Mighty Thor by Dan Jurgens and John Romita Jr. It's a good starting point for new Thor readers without having to go back many decades and the art has a nice roughness to it. I bought the follow up trade and look forward to more.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The Hickman era of X-Men concluded yesterday.

Revealing the Quiet Council went from Charles and Erik's opportunity to turn Mutantdom around to their own ironic Circle of Hell they can never escape from (hence the title Inferno), and the irony that Artificial Intelligent life feels just as stigmatized by Mutant supremacy as Mutants were by humans, ends this all on a philosophically bleak note. Curious what Gillen will do now he's got the baton.

[Markness]

So trying to live away from humans was a failed experiment?

I honestly want to see Apocalypse and X-Man (Nate Grey) again.

[Dr. Insomniac]

If anything, the experiment's gone too well. Hickman said the reason he's leaving was because his original plans were hampered by his co-writers enjoying the new Krakoa status quo too much to write it out

[Markness]

I'll have to re-read some storylines, then. Depression eats my memories. 

I do remember Apocalypse saying he will meet Professor X and Magneto again. Under what terms, though? Considering him being a historical enemy of the X-Men, I don't think it will go good. He's reunited with his old family so he doesn't need to play nice.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I think the flashforward in Inferno's third part was Hickman's way of going "Okay, before I go, here's what I was going to do with Apocalypse, the Children of the Vault, the Phalanx, etc. before I decided to leave early". Along with all the other original but unexecuted plans he laid out in this interview.

[Markness]

Do you think there's a chance we will see X-Man/Nate Grey again? It's going to sound odd but he's honestly my favorite mutant character.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Probably. It's X-Men, and all sorts of unexpected characters have come back in the Krakoa era.

[Markness]

I am glad M/Penance got some attention. Her brother Emplate I think should've gotten some page time. I don't think he can resist draining her mutant energy for much longer.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I just want to say that I've grown an unexpected appreciation for Len Wein over the last few years. It's funny, most comic book writers that I like I discover by reading their creator-owned series or superhero runs based on recommendations. With Len Wein, though, it's more like all of the classic stuff that I have read, I took notice that he would do a few issues here and there in-between major runs, but they always stood out to me for having a generally more well thought-out story structure than some of his contemporaries. LIke, for as much as Chris Claremont gets credit for really establishing the identity of the X-Men as a series more than Lee and Kirby, it was Len Wein with Giant-Sized X-Men and the first few issues that really did a great job of kicking off a new status-quo before passing the reigns off to Claremont. And yeah, of course the guy who wrote the series consistently for nearly two-decades deserves the credit that he gets, but I don't think that Len's contribution should be overlooked either. And again, his FF story arc and other issues he did were the best that I've read since after the Lee/Kirby era, which I have mostly slogged through over the past year and a half since it lacked any real structure and various writers didn't seem to know what to do with it (even usually good ones from that era, like Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway). Likewise, the same is true of various other Marvel and DC books that I've read over the last few years. I'm not sure if he's more popular than I realize among classic comic book fans and I just miss out on those conversations, but aside from the Comic Tropes episode on him after his passing, I hardly see him brought up that much in conversations of classic writers. At any rate, it's just an observation on my part.

I've recently started reading Middlewest and am absolutely loving it. It's right up my alley in terms of what I like to see from a Fantasy story. I'll probably finish it over the next couple of nights  since it's a fairly brief read. I've also been enjoying Animosity quite a bit and it's darkly satirical social commentary along with a genuinely interesting story that can be as humorous as it is morbid.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I don't hear much discussion of Len Wein besides "Oh yeah, the guy who edited Watchmen". Which is a total shame for someone who created Logan, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, and Swamp Thing. Sure, most of the characters he made found their voice once other writers like Claremont took over, but he still set up the building blocks there. And Giant-Sized X-Men is at least a more recognizable ancestor to modern X-Men than Lee and Kirby's iteration.

Speaking of X-Men, I've been reading Gillen's run. On one hand, I love what it does with Mr. Sinister while providing a ton of building blocks bridging the 2000s era of X-Men with the current one. But then it gets bogged down by AvX taking over the plot, and Cyclops turns evil for no reason.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This video does a pretty good job of examining how there was more to his writing sensibilities than what's on the surface: https://youtu.be/qxFsu2T7O2w

And this interview with him really delves into a bit more of his thought process and personal history of how he came to love comics: https://youtu.be/ivo96u0irNA

You can really tell that he was a person who loved what he did and took writing comics seriously, well before stuff like Alan Moore's Watchmen or Neil Gaiman's The Sandman made people more widely accept the medium as a legitimate artform.

As for X-Men, I LOVE HOX/POX, and the first few issues of Hickman's run that I read. That said, I made the mistake of trying to follow and sequentially read every ongoing X-book, and some just aren't my cup of tea. I think I'll try to go back and read through all of Hickman's run and Marauders as well, both of which I really was enjoying. I might do the same for Excalibur which I was lukewarm to but had the potential to get better. The others weren't really doing it for me, though.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Out of all the recent X-Books, besides the ones I already mentioned like Way of X and Marauders, I really liked SWORD. SWORD's a lovely combination of Al Ewing writing favorite characters of mine like Storm, Magneto, and Abigail Brand, and it's a shame I haven't heard much discussion of it even though it's the Immortal Hulk guy working on a handful of popular X-Men members. It's actually confusing why none of the acclaim IH's gotten is helping his other books find popularity. He wrote a GOTG run I've heard nothing but good things about, and that got canned after only 18 issues. Though Marvel re-titling SWORD to X-Men Red might help it find some more attention. Doesn't help anybody getting into the comics via the MCU won't understand why the comic version of SWORD looks almost nothing like Wandavision's.

[Markness]

I read the second trade collection of Dan Jurgens' The Mighty Thor. I am liking it more and more with each page turn.

I read the last two volumes of Murciélago. Barnes & Noble, or at least the one I regularly go to, are no longer going to put it on their shelves. Could it be content or that it's a niche manga?

[Dr. Insomniac]

Since X-Men's no longer my source for Hickman, this site suddenly reminded me I hadn't read his first comic The Nightly News yet. A very rough, angry, unfiltered take on mid-2000s mainstream news media. Its layout is so unconventional it's almost unhinged. I'm kind of into it, but I'm also glad Hickman focuses on writing most of his own comics instead of drawing them too.