PixlBit

I took some time off comics for the first few months of the year because I was busy with other things but I've slowly eased back into them. First was The Infinity Gauntlet, which people seem to just love. And, ya know, it was pretty interesting. But to be honest I'm not very familiar with the important characters in that story. I'd never read anything with Thanos or the Silver Surfer in it and only Marvel 1602 when it comes to Dr. Strange (hardly his typical fare, I think). And Adam Warlock? Never heard of him. But it was still a good story...just not, like, AMAZING.

That was a couple months ago. More recently I read X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga. I enjoyed that one a lot. I still find Chris Claremont's wordy style oddly humorous but man, he does spin a good yarn. I can see how this challenged the level of sophistication and seriousness of comics at the time. I can't imagine the noble suicide had come up in comics very often up to that point (probably hasn't come up that much since then either I'm guessing). Anyway, I stuck with X-Men after that and read Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. Man, I love the punchiness of his writing! I read through that whole thing in one day. Good stuff. The art was great too. Some of those splash pages O_O It was interesting reading The Dark Phoenix Saga, where Kitty Pryde made here debut, and then jumping to Astonishing, where she's an integral part of the team and a leader at the school. Always liked her. Anyway, I'd like to read Grant Morrison's X-Men run but last time I checked my library didn't carry all the volumes. If I'm going to start it, I want to be able to read the whole thing (and clearly I'm not going to pay for all that ).

Even more recently my wife and I have been watching the original Star Wars trilogy because she'd never seen them before (finished Return of the Jedi tonight, actually) and that got me curious about Star Wars comics. I read the first volume of Star Wars Empire—a relatively simple story about an attempted coup from within the Empire—and am currently reading Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison. It's a pre-episode IV story (not that that matters now) which starts with another attempted coup that leaves the emperor badly wounded. Darth Vader takes him to an abandoned Jedi prison to hide out and recuperate. I haven't gotten quite that far yet but it's very interesting so far. And I have a stack of three more Star Wars TPs waiting to be read next.Yay, library! Though it doesn't carry Dark Empire or SW Tales, two things I'd really like to read.

That about covers comics. When I have my fill of Star Wars, I think I'll get back to some more Batman. Maybe Sandman too. We'll see. There is no shortage of stuff to read!