To be a collector is to ignore a thousand red flags at one point or another. To be a comic collector is to ignore a billion. Right now, I've got about 150 single issues sitting near my desk, and I'm about to add 12 more this Wednesday. My typical routine is:
There's probably not a better sign to just make the digital jump than the drudgery of organizing a stack of unread books. Yet, here we are. I can't be the only crazy man living life like this... right? Speaking of, this week is another stacked week of releases. I'm probably most excited to check out Deniz Camp's latest creator owned work, Assorted Crisis Events. I've REALLY been enjoying his work on The Ultimates, and while I've yet to check out 20th Century Men, I'm excited to jump in on the ground floor of a new Camp series. What I'm not crazy excited about is yet another X-Men crossover. Fun fact, the first time I ever fell behind on my reading pile was during 2020's X of Swords crossover. Jonathan Hickman's House of X is what got me into comics, and I was excited to see what the first event of the Krakoa era had in store. But trying to read 3 issues a week for a single story IN ADDITION to everything else on the list (looking at you Dark Knights: Death Metal) just proved to be a task too difficult for this comics fan. Here we are, nearly 5 years later, and it's that time again. The Krakoa experiment has given way to the From The Ashes era. Part of the promotional push for the current slate was the team expressing that you only need to read the titles you're interested in. While there's a shared state of affairs, there's no unifying plot, and each book is doing its own thing. Then issue 2 of Jed McKay's X-Men featured one side of a conversation you had to read Gail Simone's Uncanny X-Men to complete. Then, we had a 4 part crossover in those aforementioned titles. And now? Now it's time for X-Manhunt. Charles Xavier is on the loose, making questionable decisions as usual. And he's running through every book in the X-Men line to state his case. Is it good? I'm not sure yet. I haven't made it to my comic shop to pick up the first 3 issues (all released on 3/5/25). Man.. I miss when monthly comics were actually monthly. I could sit back and wait for the trade, but that's not coming until November! And here I go ignoring those flags again. Read Something Dope Today, BJ KICKS |
Celebrating everything Dope about comics. Curated by BJ KICKS.
Not long ago, I wrote about a series of "Dope Comics With Something to Say." As a general rule, I love it when comic creators find a way to put real world perspectives in the pages of funny books. After all, learning through literature has been a thing since we were sitting in a circle hearing Mother Goose rhymes. But a few recent reads have had me flip-flopping on my position a bit, and now I'm scratching my head trying to articulate myself. I already told you how I felt about Tom King's...
These days, I'm not spending as much time in front of the camera. But the consolation prize is I get to spend more time talking comics in other forums, like our Discord community. Last week, someone asked everyone for their Top 3 comics on the pull list at the moment. After thinking about it for a while, I came to a shocking conclusion. Comics have been in a great place for the past 18 months or so. We've got the Energon Universe at Skybound, the Ultimate Universe at Marvel, and the Absolute...
Spring Cleaning isn't fun. It's especially not fun when you just moved, and you're not really cleaning. Instead, I'm finally unpacking the last 15% of boxes in the house. Stuff we didn't need at all right away, that I now have to find a good place in the house for. Thankfully, we finally bought a minivan, so the inevitable trips to Goodwill and the local trash dump will be that much easier. I've got less than 4 weeks until I have to return to my day job, and I'm determined to have a catalog...