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Serenity Leaves On The Wind

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Just finished volume 3 of Demon Knights. Unfortunately, it's the last volume as DC cancelled the series. It's symptomatic of the reason I don't read many DC's anymore. I've tried to support the non-traditional, non-superhero books they've put out, but they'd rather replace them with more Batbooks than allow the higher-selling titles support more experimental critically-acclaimed ones.

There was a significant creative team change in this volume, with Paul Cornell exiting as writer and Robert Venditti taking over. While I preferred Cornell's take, Venditti does a serviceable job. The artwork takes a slight downturn, but is still better than a lot of books out there.

Anyone who enjoys the Vandal Savage character should check these trades out as the book had probably the most fun portrayal of him that DC's done.

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Trying to catch up on my backlog of trades. I just finished Sword of Sorcery v.1. This was DC's new 52 attempt to do some of its fantasy characters, led by a reboot of Amethyst. This main feature is pretty solid, much different from the old 80's series. The character is treated in much less of a fairy tale fashion, with supporting characters and villains done in a more three-dimensional manner. The Aaron Lopresti art is beautiful, making it a shame that the book didn't attract a larger audience and was cancelled after issue 8. Still, this is a pretty solid and complete read, while leaving the concept open to continuation.

The back-up features from the series are included, as well, though these are more forgettable. They're resurrections of DC's Stalker and Beowulf. Beowulf is the better of the two, but underserved by it's brevity. It's basically a futuristic reinterpretation of the Beowulf story, with ties to the DC universe. Stalker, about an immortal mercenary, is nothing of note.

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Nailbiter

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good book :) (y)

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I used to collect comics when I was a kid in the late '80s and early '90s until it got way too expensive to keep up with all of my monthly titles. Since then I'd pick up a TPB or graphic novel every now and then, but largely kept up my interest in that world through movies and video games. I've always said that I'd jump back into comics when I got a tablet, but I still don't own one.

And then the other day when I was visiting my mom I went to the library with her. Wow. My library doesn't carry comics, but hers does. Over the next few days I went to three libraries in her county system and picked up the following:

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Of these, so far I've read:

The Killing Joke
Criminal: Lawless
Criminal: Bad Night
Criminal: Coward

Crime noir is my fiction genre of choice and I absolutely loved those Criminal books.

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Yeah, the Criminal and Parker books especially are great in that genre.

Have you read 100 Bullets?

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I haven't read 100 Bullets, but I saw that the library had some volumes of it. I wasn't sure if there was a storyline I'd miss out on by picking some random books. I did a little research with Criminal and figured I was fine since those just share a city, tangential characters, and other little details. Once I plow through this big stack I'll check 100 Bullets out.

As for Parker, that's my favorite book series (I'm about halfway through them) and have loved what I've seen online of the comic adaptation. I've come very close to treating myself with the Martini Edition collection, but never pulled the trigger. This is the first time I've seen the art in the flesh and it's beautiful.

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I liked the Parker volume I read, but Criminal remains on my to-read list. Fatale is another one I've been meaning to read.

When I think of Criminal, I think of the stink Brubaker was putting up for people to buy floppies instead of trades, and now we're talking about borrowing them from the library. :lol:

The last time I went to the library, they had a ton of stuff and I kinda went nuts. I should visit again, but I'm sure I'd need a new card, which sounds like a hassle. Before I just threw them onto my kid's card. :lol:

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So after first starting about 6 months ago, I finally got through Civil War. All of it. Including every single tie-in. Even the stuff that barely tied-in, like the Huston/Finch Moon Knight revamp (side note: wtf is the deal with that series? Bizarre stuff.) It didn't actually take me 6 months to read all of it. I had read about half of it in a relatively short amount of time a few months back and finished the second half this week after a few months off. What I really wanted to do was continue on with Brubaker's Captain America and figured I couldn't until I had finished Civil War.

There was a lot I liked about it, but my biggest take away is that it's tough to do a story like this that brings all of the real world implications of being a super-hero to the surface. It just makes it that much harder for me as a reader to go back to the status quo when it's all over. Unless Marvel is really going to commit (or did commit seeing as how this is from 8 years ago) to wrestling with these sorts of ideas long term, eventually things will go back to normal and we'll be expected to just sweep those ideas under the rug of suspension of disbelief. This sort of deconstruction has merit, and is often interesting, but to me just works better in a less open ended sandbox (see: Watchmen).

Some other quick notes:


- When reading all of the tie-ins, there's a lot of redundancy. Especially considering that in the grand scheme of things, despite it's scope, not a lot happens in Civil War. It's mostly just a lot of posturing by the two sides. Oh, and Black Goliath dies. That's about it.

- Civil War: Frontline was by far my favorite of the tie-ins. I also liked how writers with multiple books tied their stories together a little more tightly. JMS did this with Amazing Spider-Man and FF. Marc Guggenheim did it with Wolverine and Blade. Despite some of the redundancy, I was impressed at just how tight most of the continuity was between the various tie-ins.

- Speaking of Wolverine, at one point in his tie-in issues he is blown up and all that is left is his skeleton, Days of Future Past style. In that particular story, this killed him dead. As we all know, Wolverine is not immortal. He may have enhanced healing, but most of the things that would kill you and me should still kill him. Having every ounce of flesh and blood burned off of your skeleton is one of those things. Here he regenerates his entire body in about 2 pages. I've been complaining that Wolverine's healing has become too powerful for awhile now, but I've never seen anything like this. This almost made me want to stop reading all comics forever. Ugh. So bad. Many years ago, Wolverine used to be a good character.

- I kept having to remind myself that this was published before the Iron Man movie. Civil War was by far the most important he had ever been in the greater context of the Marvel Universe up until that point. Sure he was a cornerstone of the Avengers, but he never really mattered that much in the way that Spider-Man, or the Hulk, or Captain America, or the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four mattered.

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The problem I had with Civil War is the problem with most far reaching stories in a place as vast as the Marvel Universe; superhero conflicts had endangered the lives of millions for many, many years, why all of a sudden did the Stamford incident with the New Warriors change all that? Because it was televised? The actions of some of the pro-registration side were pretty sickening too... the thor clone, having the Thunderbolts hunt down heroes, Reed alienating his family, pretty much everything that Iron Man did, etc.

Tony's redemption was a bit of a cop out, but it was still well written and really one of the only ways to do it.

I know people hate on Bendis, but having him at the helm for a long time really helped the Marvel Universe have some direction. For better or worse, his New Avengers was an integral part of nearly every crossover. Civil War was actually a great opportunity to explore some relationships, the why's and how's of having costumed vigilantes be above the law, and some other things. Some writers integrated it really well (I mean, for an event-mandated change, Brubaker rolled with the punches), others didn't, which is why I didn't read every single crossover, but it made a lot of sense that it would impact any title taking place in the US. It's actually kind of a shame that they made it obvious which side was supposed to be "the good guys".

I'd say Tony's elevation kinda happened when Bendis introduced his Illuminati in New Avengers. Somewhere along the way he got like Reed Richards-level brainpower, though, which is hard to reconcile if you remember him from the 80's and early 90's.

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That's sort of my point. When reading mainstream super-hero comics, we have all pretty much learned not to think about that kind of stuff because thinking about it would just ruin the fantasy.

The story had this really weird dynamic where the pro-registration side was clearly positioned as the bad guys, but the writers had to go above and beyond to make them the bad guys by having them do all sorts of f'd up stuff because thinking about the issue for more than two seconds would reveal that they were probably right.

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Tell that to the critics of Man of Steel. ;)

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Man, if you thought Iron Man and Mr. Fantastic came off like a-holes in Civil War, then have I got something for you. You could maybe, sort of, kind of make an argument for what they did in sending Hulk off into space, but the twist at the end is completely without justification. Although to be honest, I wasn't sure if that development was intentional or not. I assume it will be addressed in World War Hulk.

As for the story itself, overall it was good fun. This is actually the most Hulk I've ever read, so I have no clue how it fits within the canon of Hulk stories, but I enjoyed it. It was perhaps dragged out a little too long, but that's par for the course with 21st century comics. Marvel especially. My only real complaint is that at various times I found myself getting a little lost story-wise. It wasn't a matter of the plot being too convoluted or anything. It was more like the storytelling wasn't always clear. Whether it was bad layouts or last minute dialog changes after the art was done, I couldn't say. I didn't dig too deep into the issue, but the feeling was definitely there at times.

I have to say that at the end of this thing I couldn't wait to dive into World War Hulk. Never have I wanted so badly to see Hulk smash. Still, I'll probably hold off a bit as I think I need to get caught up on Annihilation and The Initiative before going any further.

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So I wrote a whole big thing about how much I enjoyed The Death of Captain America (issues #25-42), but my browser crashed and I lost it. Here's the short version. I love how accessible it is to new readers and at the same time honoring past continuity. I love that despite it's 'grim & gritty' look and feel that it doesn't shy away from goofy comic book stuff like Red Skull's rubber skull mask or anything about Arnim Zola. I love that Brubaker defied all odds and made bringing Bucky back a good thing and that I hope that if the MCU goes in this direction that it lives up to source material. I can't wait to see where Brubaker goes next.

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I loved Planet Hulk, but was lukewarm on World War Hulk... the only good thing to come out of that, IMHO, was that they changed they gave a series to Hercules and Amadeus Cho.

The plot point you mention does get resolve in WWH, though. But then the arrogance of the Illuminati comes back to bite them in the butt in the next series of crossovers.

I got the latest Bru Cap omnibus, but I'm going to wait until I re-read the rest of his run first. And that's gotta wait because I finally picked up the Annihilation omni and I want to re-read that.

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I was going to move onto Annihilation next, but I made the decision to instead go back to the very beginning of "cosmic Marvel" and start with the original Jim Starlin Captain Marvel/Warlock/Thanos stories. I ordered the Avengers vs. Thanos tpb, the Infinity Guantlet Omnibus, and the Infinity Guantlet aftermath tpb. While I wait for those I'm re-reading the Kree/Skrull war. This all will of course not only set me up nicely for Annihilation, but also serve as a lead in for Secret Invasion.

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I recently read Avengers vs Thanos and the Warlock collection and am working on the IG Omni. Need to post about those at some point.

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There are good comments in this thread, it was fun reading some of the reactions to Marvel's recent stories.:lol:

I will say the one thing I haven't liked about Marvel's recent revisionism is turning Tony Stark into the world's smartest man. We have a pretty good grasp of the world's most intelligent people and none of them would fit Tony's character as depicted in comics.

Reed Richards was always a much better fit for that title in Marvel and they have taken it away since the Fantastic Four aren't very popular anymore.

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As smart as Tony's become, I still think Reed is considered smarter, isn't he? But comic book scientists are like magicians, they just do (or make) whatever the story calls for. Pym, Richards or Stark are always coming up with stuff out of nowhere to make the story work.

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So my journey through Marvel's last decade has taken a detour as I gear up for Annihilation and Secret Invasion. I decided to go back to the beginning, so to speak, and read (or re-read in some cases) the early days of Marvel cosmic. I started with the issue #'s 17-21 of the original Captain Marvel series which lead directly into the Kree Skrull War.

Captain Marvel #17 was Marvel's attempt to revamp the struggling character so that they could continue publishing his book and keep the Captain Marvel copyright out of DC's hands. It's both the debut of the now familiar red and blue costume and the beginning of his connection with Rick Jones (which was a blatant rip-off of the Billy Batson/Captain Marvel relationship). The first issue starts of promisingly enough, but after an issue or two I wanted to strangle Rick Jones. Apparently I was not alone as the title was basically canceled after issue #21. Still, it's required reading for anyone with an interest in the character.

After Captain Marvel was canceled, Roy Thomas (the writer behind the revamp) took the story to the pages of the Avengers. The Kree Skrull War is often considered to be ground zero for Marvel 'event' comics. The storyline runs for 9 issues, but it doesn't play out the way one would expect a similar story to play out today. Each issue is more or less a self-contained story, as one would expect from comics written in 1971. In fact it's a little frustrating because a couple of issues in we're given a pretty good idea of the scope of what's going on and yet the Avengers are arguing over whether or not they should save the galaxy from impending doom or track down Black Bolt, whose wandering the streets, lost in San Francisco (or something). While the Inhumans thread actually ends up being somewhat relevant, it wasn't tied in so smoothly.

The other problem I had with the story is that some of the characters are woefully underwritten. While the 'second tier' Avengers like Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Vision are given some personality, Captain America, Iron Man and Thor might as well have been faceless automatons. They're totally bland and pretty much just exist to give orders to the others. Maybe this is what they were like in all of these early Avengers stories, but I haven't read much from this era.

All that said, by the time the story reaches it's climax and the various threads start coming together, things get pretty good. Although, I did feel like the climax was a little rushed. While I get tired of modern comics and their decompression, this thing could have used one more issue. Overall it's a fun slice of early Marvel and absolutely relevant to the Marvel Universe for decades to come. It should be required reading for anyone interested in a quick history of Marvel. It's also got Neal Adams art, which is always a good thing.

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And now for something completely different, I decided to read Kraven's Last Hunt, because why not. I had never read this before and really knew nothing about it other than it was considered one of the great Spider-Man stories. Holy moly was I not ready for this! This has got to be one of the darkest, if not the darkest Spider-Man storylines ever. It felt more like a Batman story than a Spider-Man story. And wouldn't you know it, come to find out that J.M. DeMatteis actually conceived of it as a Batman story, but DC wouldn't allow it. It really isn't like any Spider-Man story that I've ever read. It's a great read with dark and moody art, but I can't say this is how I prefer my Spider-Man. Still, kudos for doing something different. I'm certainly not going to shake some of the imagery from this for a while. Not being a big Spidey fan, can I assume that Marvel actually stuck with the ending as it relates to Kraven? Or was it all retconned like 2 years later?

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Did you read Peter David's Captain Marvel run? Basically Mar-vell's son, Genis, also ends up being bonded with Rick Jones, with trademark David humor.

I remember re-reading Kree/Skrull war many years later, and being a bit shocked at how short it was. I think it was shortly after the longish Avengers crossover Galactic Storm, (and even that pales in comparison to modern day crossovers.)

I also felt the treatment of the Kree and other Galactic civilizations and their technology changed with the winds. On one hand, they created the Inhumans, on the other hand, when it comes down to battling with earthlings they're basically blue skinned aliens with laser guns. You look at Grant Morrison's Noh Varr and the technology he deals with is basically on a completely different level than even Richards or Stark.

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My impression from that era (and it's a little earlier than when I started reading regularly so I had to catch up with Kree-Skrull War and the John Buscema Avengers later) is that the big characters already had their own books and so were in less need of fleshing out than someone like the Vision, who only appeared in The Avengers..

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I have not read that yet. I'll get to it eventually.

It takes a long time to get going, but then it's over just as it starts to get really interesting.

Yeah, that was my assumption as well. I just assume Roy Thomas and whoever else was writing the book found the less popular characters to be a little fresher.

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I as a reader found them fresher. :) One of my favorite eras for the Avengers was the early days when it was just Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch. Not as much raw power, of course, but I found it interesting.

It's kind of like focusing on Red Tornado (not as interesting as the Vision) and Black Canary in the Justice League of that same (or nearly the same) era.

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I finished up Parker: The Hunter last night. Such a wonderful adaptation. I love, love, love the era-appropriate art.

Today I'll be starting The Score.

Hey, I'm well within my rights. :) Having been out of the scene for so long, I'm not aware of what he said, but one of the reasons I got out of comics in the early '90s was that issues were getting too expensive. I now look at how high they've climbed and I can't imagine shelling out $4 a pop across multiple titles each month.

http://www.comichron.com/vitalstatis...verprices.html

The audience for comics is aging, right? I think I heard that somewhere. I can't help but think that kids are being priced out of them. Of course, I haven't been a kid for decades. Maybe their amount of disposable income has grown, too. (I saw on the news last night that a study shows that "the tooth fairy" now doles out close to an average $5 per tooth, which blew my mind.)

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Yeah, but when I was a kid my $1 from the tooth fairy would buy me five comics. Today's $5 buys only one.

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Brubaker included a bunch of extras in the Criminal issues that weren't reprinted in the collections, I think.

We've had this discussion before, but it's all about value as well. You spend four bucks for a single comic, and you don't even get a complete story; with decompression, you probably spend less than 10 minutes on it. And then you have to store it. Aside from that, even when I give my kids comics, which they consider free, they would rather play with the ipad or whatever, unless we have "reading time."

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Next stop on the Marvel cosmic train: Warlock. I was going to jump ahead to the Jim Starlin revamp, but I figured why not just start at the beginning. The first issue started out well enough with the High Evolutionary setting the table for lots of cosmic goodness, but things quickly turn into a pretty bizarre Jesus allegory. I knew that this was the case, but I was surprised to see just how blatant it was. I get what Roy Thomas was going for, and there are kernels of interesting ideas here (I think the idea of a superhero inspiring a sort of cult following is a legitimate hook for a series), but he never does anything much with the concept beyond telling Bible stories with comic book characters. Still, over the course of 13 issues (2 Marvel Premiere, 8 Warlock, 3 Hulk) a fairly coherent and self contained story is told. The Bible allegories ease up after the first couple of issues (although it comes back with a vengeance in the finale) and what we're left with is a nice slice of something a little different from the typical Marvel fare. It's not required reading or anything, but I'm glad I didn't just skip it.

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^ I now own pretty much every Marvel 'cosmic' book digitally and plan to do a massive marathon some July.

Right now, I'm alternating Nexus and Bone collections.

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It is one of the best Spider-Man stories exactly because it doesn't feel like any other Spider-Man story. I remember reading Kraven's Last Hunt when it first came out and thinking, "This would be an excellent Batman tale."

I am pretty sure it loosely exists in Spider-Man's official history with some alterations to how it read and its impact on Kraven.

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I've never been a huge Spider-man fan, but I loved this story.

It had to win an award right? I'm walking to my bookshelves to read it now...

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I read the entire Locke & Key series over the past few days.

About to finally start Preacher after planning to do so for so long.

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It exists in official Marvel canon as is. Kraven actually remained dead until they finally brought him back in 2010's Grim Hunt storyline. So they actually kept him dead for about 23 years, a pretty surprising level of restraint honestly.

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The X-Files: Season 10 vols. 1, 2 & 3, The X-Files: Year Zero, The X-Files: Conspiracy

Thanks to Scribd, I went on an IDW binge this weekend. First up was X-Files. For those who aren't familiar, IDW's new series is branded 'season 10' and picks up the continuity from the show starting in present day. In other words, it's been 10+ years since Mulder and Scully left the FBI and the 2012 alien invasion CSM warned them about in the series finale never happened. Right off the bat it is obvious for whom this series is written. Absolutely no attempt is made to introduce these characters to a new audience. Absolutely no attempt is made to recap even the major bullet points of the ridiculous mythology despite the fact that the show ended so long ago that most fans probably don't even remember what happened. Absolutely no attempt is made to learn from the mistakes of the show and keep said mythology streamlined and followable. Nope, this series is for hardcore X-Philes only. I wasn't even done with the first arc and already I was having a hard time keeping everything straight. The whole thing is so fan-servicey that at a certain point I just started expecting every character that ever appeared on the show to make appearance no matter whether they were dead or alive the last time we saw them. Even the handful of stand alone, monster-of-the-week issues reference old episodes. And you know what? I loved every single second of it. I haven't had this much fun reading a comic in a long time. I didn't realize how much I missed the X-Files until I started reading these. Scribd doesn't have the two most recent issues and who knows when they will be added, so I might even subscribe on Comixology. At the very least I'll pick up the digital collections next time there is an IDW sale.

The spin-off miniseries were a little bit more hit or miss for me. The Year Zero series, which looks back at the very first x-file the FBI ever investigated (and even gives an explanation for the term 'x-file') was pretty good. It was one of the few stories they've done so far that had little to tie it into the tv show, so it makes a for a nice standalone read. The Conspiracy series, on the other hand, which has the lone gunmen meeting up with other IDW properties like the Ghostbusters, the Transformers, the Ninja Turtles, and the Crow can easily be skipped. In fact, I couldn't find the Crow issue on Scribd (finding stuff of Scribd is like going a wild goose chase sometimes, but that's a discussion for another thread) and decided to do just that and skip it. The whole thing is sort of fun in a goofy lone gunmen way, but the story, which seems like a decent story if you ask me, is undermined by the crossover gimmick. Sure, seeing Frohike hit on Janine the secretary or Langly become "ninja buddies" with Bumblebee is kind of fun in the geekiest of ways, but a lot of it was just eye-rolling. Unless the events of this series end up having some sort of impact on the main series going forward, I can't imagine adding this to my collection.

I'll post my thoughts on the current IDW Ninja Turtles series, which I also read a good chunk of, when I get the chance.

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Thanks for the review Rocket! I used to be hardcore into X-Files and plan to get into the comics someday.

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I was a big X-fan back in the day and read some of the comics. A bunch were in the IDW IST sale but I resisted as I believe I still have some on my shelf.

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I just finished Saga vol. 4. It's one of the only series I'm current with but it's starting to lose me a bit. Maybe it's because the multiple storylines are more conducive to monthly reading than trades. I still like it, and it would've helped to reread the previous volume before starting. I liked the look and feel of the hardcover volume so much I might switch to that in the future, though it'd be even more waiting.

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Batman Dark Knight, Dark City. Even better than I remember as a kid.

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Chew Volume 9: Chicken Tenders

Loved this one, but was furious about the last panel...that better be a good pay off John Layman!

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Girl Genius Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse TP