Shipping This Week! - 04.09.01

This week = Y, and that's it. What's anyone else getting? Is Scratch, or Swamp Thing, or Captain America vs The Falcon good?

MY LIST O' GOODNESS: Avengers, Thor (because I MUST KNOW how the Avengers are Disassembled!), Birds of Prey, Y, CA & Falcon, Ultimate Spidey. Also curious about Gambit & Jubliee, because of the folks writing them (John Layman on the former, Robert Kirkman on the latter), and, sure, maybe some of that residual Marvel Zombification from my mid-pubescent years still lingers.

I like _CA & The Falcon_, though I think a lot of my like comes from having Priest muck around in a high(er) profile sandbox. Also, Joe Bennett's art is fantastic. I'm mildly perturbed that Bart Sears decided to get all stupid w/ the first 4 issues of the series - if JB was around from the get-go, things (like the first TPB, duh) would definitely look a lot better.

I believe Tep is the go-to-guy regarding _Swamp Thing_. As for _Scratch_, I've been wary of anything Sam Kieth's done since the first issue of the 2nd _Zero Girl_ mini doggled my boon, and I'm especially wary of the way the mini's been presented - "it's a werewolf story! and look kids Batman's in it, too!"

Is CA & The Falcon as good as Black Panther? I fear that I've picked up the "all Priest comics are doomed, better not bother" meme.

Though there is a little love thang happening between Cap & the Scarlet Witch, which seems a heretical from a straight-laced status-quo-loving fanboy perspective, but not from an accepted-spandex-mores & tropes perspective. Though maybe they're the same perspective.

Bah, now I've set my expectations too high. I think I'll wait until they're lower, and buy the first CA&F TPB.

Okay, for me this week ... well, nothing's a must-have except Y and Swamp Thing, and Ultimate Spidey will arrive by subscription. Swamp Thing has been good so far, but the first arc was purely a "wrapping up loose ends from previous books, clearing the deck and getting ready to go" arc -- a good one, mind you, although Constantine seemed a little off somehow (but I haven't read his book in years, so for all I know it's perfectly consistent) -- so it's hard to tell where the book's going from here and if it'll be great. My hopes are higher than they've been since the Nancy Collins run, though.

Things I may flip through: Gambit, Jubilee, depending on the creative teams. I liked Fabian Nicieza's Gambit, although my dream writer for the character would be Priest.

I haven't read Scratch, but anyone with a jones for Sam Keith should get the third Maxx tpb if they haven't got it -- it came out about a month ago, iirc.

Does Swamp Thing switch teams with the new arc, or is Diggle staying on?

ALSO - if any of you phreaks are really curious about the newest issue of Uncanny, please allow me to indulge in a li'l ego-boostin' self-promotin' and post a link to my site, which features a little blah blah about the issue in question & a link to Mile High Comics' free online preview of the book.

Also, yay UXM blah blah/preview!

Yeah - given that the Ultimate Marvel universe is a modern retelling / reimagining of the "real" Marvel universe, then, yeah, repetition repetition repetition the rest are paste etc.

This encapsulates a lot of what I think about Astonishing -- I've been getting the urge to reread the relevant Essentials volumes lately, and that's clearly why. Barring a brief period in Alan Davis's run before the last Claremont comeback, it's the first X-team-book since the 80s that I've actively looked forward to every month, and one of the few Marvel titles I think about when not actually reading it, if you see what I mean.

(In that sense, it also hits the nostalgia chord so many of these toy/cartoon tie-in revivals -- Thundercats, Micronauts, et al -- aim for and mostly miss.)

BTW, Tep, the X thread has begun. You can have first dibs.