Trevor

What's a Comic Book Challenge?

- monthly threads to encourage more reading and discussion
- a way to figure out "what do I read next?"
- motivation to try different genres
- motivation to keep reading and make progress on our unread piles
- a place to get recommendations

How does it work?

- we pick a genre (or company, or title, or whatever) for a month
- we post in this thread and talk about what we plan to read and read throughout the month
- you could keep a spoilered list in one post and update it all month, or post as you read
- in theory the lists could be kept in a separate thread to allow for fancier formatting while avoiding clutter

What makes it a "challenge"?

- well, unofficially, the goal is to read 100 comics a month, but that isn't stressed
- the group discussion will challenge and encourage you to read more (the main goal of most participants I imagine)

Who can participate?

- anyone and everyone!
- you don't have to list your reading or even post at all to participate, but what's the fun in that?
- quasi-technically, anyone on the planet who reads a qualifying book for the month is a participant, whether they know it or not

When does it start and end?

- it begins at dusk the night before the 1st of the month, and ends at dawn the following 1st
- this bonus time allows for possible "double counting" cross-Challenge content
- content eligible for both Challenges has the bonus of being able to be counted for all 24 hours of the last/first days of the month for both Challenges

Who wins?

- there are no losers, the person who reads one page a month is equal to the person who reads 20 books a day

Trevor

majorjoe23

Last year was a breeze, but I'm not sure I have as much horror to read this year. I need to check my shelves, and I know I have some digital options.

Trevor

Comixology will likely have several horror related sales between now and late October.

Also, libraries.

Trevor

Lining up some manga/horror and slice-of-life/horror to read tomorrow for double credit.

This was a pretty lost month for me, barely read anything.

But with horror being my favorite genre, I'm hoping to avoid watching a crazy amount of films next month (for a change) and concentrate my free time on reading. Have a probably crazy goal of 300 books, but 100 is more likely. I have some old and new Creepy and Eerie loaded in my Dark Horse app, and a nice hodge podge of stuff on Comixology to go along with a pile of old House of Mystery and Unexpected floppies.

And maybe this year I'll actually read that Man-Thing Omnibus that I barely touched last year.

Dimension X

I doubt I'll read anything since I'll be busy watching movies, and I found a copy of The Nightmares on Elm Street that I hope to read for the optional spot on the checklist, but I'll grab this spot.

Do individual issues reprinted in a Showcase Presents count, or do I have to read the whole book to list it?

Trevor

You can count however you want, but generally every 20 pages = 1 for collections.

terrycloth

Im hoping to get caught up with the current run of Justice League this week finally and want to read Green Latern rebirth - current after but will def fit in some horror between that and movies.

i actually have a long box FULL of trades and floppies iv picked up since last challenge i kept together so i didnt have to search this year for material just realized how much I had (atleast i read twd so thats one less thing)

The Complete Crawlspace, Ghosted, Nailbiter, Outcast, 30 Days of night, Hellblazer,

i do have uber think that would be horror related?

davidh777

10/31
1. Tomb of Dracula #1 (Marvel Famous Firsts: 1970s vol. 1)

I count each issue individually in a collection.

Trevor

Oh, you're right! I was more thinking big graphic novels or collections where the material isn't just simple re-packagings of exact single issues.

terrycloth

1. Ghosted 1-3
2. Justice League 35-39 Amazo Virus

majorjoe23

Oct 30-31
Swamp Thing 164-166

Total books read 82

mrm1138

As a quick suggestion, if you have a Marvel Unlimited subscription, you can read all but two issues of The Tomb of Dracula.

majorjoe23

I've started reading the Complete Dracula by Dynamite and holy crap, the artist doesn't know how to lay out a panel or transition from one to the next. In so many of them I end up thinking "What is happening here?"

But a lot of the panels are also very small. I'm wondering if the script was just to loaded and he's trying to make it all work in the space he has. But it is not working.

majorjoe23

I thought I had run out of physical horror books to read, but this morning I remembered I bought the complete run of Spectre about 10 years ago, but never read it. I need to dig through the attic today.

ntnon

Justice League Dark was at the library, so I read it. Not great, not awful. Zatanna and Madame Xanadu's characterisation seemed off, but John Constantine was good... if a lot more powerful than I recall. I need to read/re-read/buy Hellblazer sometime...

terrycloth

i felt the same way when i read the first volume of JL D i was more interested in the characters but felt the story was so so luckily i kept reading vol 2 when Lemire took over it got a lot better

Trevor

All of Hellblazer, and a bunch of other Vertigo, is on sale at Comixology this week.

ntnon

Good to know. Hopefully the library'll get that, too.

There were several very-creepy drawings of Enchantress (the understated toothy grin on the cover spooked us a bit for starters) which helped heighten the 'Dark-ness', but the plot was... messy. Even for a "how they got together" it was messy and full of very vague rationales and hazy logic.

The plus point to that was that JC seemed as annoyed and irritated by the confused plot and just cut through it all!

ntnon

I still can't quite bring myself to pay for bytes and theoretical ownership.. so I'm keeping an eye on the bulky new collections and hoping to pick them up at a reasonable price now that they're collecting the series as a whole.

Trevor

Yeah, it bothers me too. According to their end user license agreements, Apple and Comixology and Vudu and all these digital things we buy could disappear.

But what keeps me going is the following:

1 - Space. Five years ago I had 50 long boxes of comics and really can't fit too many more. But I want more. So since then I've gone mainly digital and more than doubled my number of owned books, but little increased physical space.

2 - Trust. Call me overly optimistic, but I don't think Amazon or the rest of these big companies will screw us over here.

3 - If my trust proves in error, everything is on the Internet. As much as I'd never download anything illegally, if a company screws me and deletes content I've paid for from my virtual cloud, I'll download what I've paid for with no qualms.

ntnon

Space is a very big concern, so I'm sure I'll be won tound eventually! There's also a psychological block of paying (often) the SAME PRICE for an imaginary product... but sales may help compensate for that.

Trevor

Yeah, I can't imagine paying $4.99 (or even $2.99) for a digital comic. But then, I've always been a patient reader, and/or discount comic buyer, so I haven't paid cover price for a comic since the 75 cent days. My price point for comics is pretty much one dollar, physical or digital. With sales and patience, I've never missed out on a comic I want to read.

Back in topic, I've decided that if anything can get me back into the comic reading mode for this Challenge, it's Swamp Thing. I started my omnibus of the recent Scott Synder run, was enjoying it, but decided to get retro. I picked up most of the old Swamp Thing series on Comixology back when they had that "everything is half price" glitch, so I've downloaded the old Wein/Wrightson run and hope to read that today.

davidh777

The funny thing is that there's always been a romantic notion of the independent comic and comic shop, but when it comes to paying for content and relying on it to be in a cloud somewhere forever, a plucky independent is pretty much the last thing you want. The Amazon deal made me feel a lot better about Comixology.

ntnon

Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's Arkham Asylum is (allegedly) the biggest-selling OGN of all time, one of the more celebrated Batman stories, a landmark of its time, etc., etc.

I did not like it when I read it c.15 years ago, when I was in the middle of thoroughly enjoying Morrison's JLA, Invisibles and Animal Man, and hoping they'd finish collecting Doom Patrol so I could enjoy that also. Then New X-Men was excellent but polarising, The Filth I didn't get, but could objwctively see was reasonable, and Seaguy went downhill from #2. And then Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis made me overhaul my opinion of GM (aided by his no-show in London when we'd trekked there specially) dramatically because they weren't just "not good" but actually didn't make sense...

Recently, my loathing of Damien's existence was challenged, so I checked the library and got three volumes of Batman and Son, Batman RIP and two volumes of All Star Superman. ASS is actually very good. Not-Morrison Damien wasn't awful but wasn't good - New52 sits poorly with me as an idea, and I am not sold any harder having sampled a bit - but Batman RIP was AWFUL. Really nonsense-level bad. Not Batman. Not enjoyable.

So I decided to torture myself further and/or give things a second chance and also ordered in Final Crisis, Batman & Robin 1-3 and Arkham Asylum. Which latter was first up for being pseudo-horror.

And it was no better than when I first read it. Difficult to read (literally - even at Deluxe size, the Joker's words are tough to make out), fragmented and hard to follow, and NOT BATMAN. Batman doesn't act like that. He would never say "he had it coming" when someone dies, as the most egregious example.

I could probably go on, but I'm already losing coherence...

Any fans want to try and win me round...?!