Second Patreon round: Pull list and Absolute Comics
Me: Well, at least I'll be able to get the 2023 best-of list out under the wire for the first third of 2024.
My library: One of the last two 2023 books you were waiting on that you figured you'd have to edit into the list someday after the fact is now waiting for you.
Me: Look forward to it in May 2024, everyone!
Recently read River's Edge, The Naked Tree, and Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam for 2023, I enjoyed them to varying degrees but they didn't make the list. I also gave Blood of the Virgin the old college try but ended up bailing hard after about a hundred pages. From this year I liked Adam de Souza's The Gulf, a lovely little OGN on the private utopias we try and fail to make for ourselves. This baby is probably a shoe-in for one of my favorites of the year, as is this. Less topically I went back and checked out some of Paco Roca's work given his 2023 and 2024 presence with Wrinkles and The House, both good but I preferred the former.
Outside comics I've been continuing to enjoy A Gentleman in Moscow, and thanks to Justin Martin for recommending Annie Dillard's Total Eclipse and Octavia Butler's Bloodchild.
Cathal Donovan O'Neill
What’s currently on the pull list, and how’re you feeling about them?
In which I bare my shame. I won't elaborate on ones I'll be discussing in the 2023 list or already have in other newsletters, and special note to the comics I pick up on behalf of my dad, which are The Bat-Man: First Knight, Batman: Space Age, Helen of Wyndhorn, The Penguin, Ultimate Black Panther, and Wonder Woman.
Current ongoings
Achewood
Adventureman: Current in the loosest sense, but it remains up my alley.
Akane-banashi
The Amazing Spider-Man
Batman/Superman: World's Finest: I'd personally rank the arcs thus far Heir to the Kingdom < Devil Nezha < Newmazo < the 'filler' stories < Strange Visitor.
Chainsaw Man: Ok I'm just now gonna be starting it soon but I'll catch up now that I've got the full thing.
Choujin X: The description I saw floating on Twitter that got me to check it out of 'if Grant Morrison did a shonen' was pretty wildly overpromising, but this is agreeably gnarly as Ishida leans harder into the horror of it all, I might check out his prior Tokyo Ghoul sometime.
Correspondence From The End Of The Universe: Quite enjoyed the first volume of this but haven't been able to track any down since, this might be a lost cause.
Dandadan
Detective Comics: Last year had Ivan Reis's best work and this final year kicks off with Federici, my boy Doctor Hurt, and the outrageous levelup of Javier Fernandez who I already liked a great deal, it didn't quite squeeze into my favorites of 2023 but I think it'll end up among my top picks this year as the centerpiece of Batman's 85th.
Dragon Ball Super: Way behind - wanna finish Tournament of Power as the actual anime before really getting into the manga and the subsequent new stuff - but wishing Toyotaro the best.
Ethernet Cable Girlfriend: Cam Marshall's followup comics project after Matchmaker, enjoying it a lot.
Fantastic Four: I like what Iban Coello's doing here but I can't help wishing it had either a more straightforwardly mainstream or totally idiosyncratic visual take, because what Ryan North's doing here should be getting way more eyes on it.
The Flash: Basically a shoe-in as one of the absolute best of 2024, I deeply and truly did not believe anyone would ever be able to salvage this title but Spurrier and Deodato have pulled out some miracles.
Girl Juice
Go! Go! Loser Ranger: It was losing me during the examination arc but now that they're going on missions it's making me recall what drew me in in the first place, and the most recent development really seems likely to move it into high gear.
Ice Cream Man: Formula as it gets, but it's a good formula.
The Immortal Thor: I feel bad, because having just written at length about Ewing, I feel like I can fully understand why he went along with marketing this as an Immortal pseudo-sequel and some of the creative choices he made in regards to that framing, and why they were a terrible mistake. But it's still Ewing writing a solo cape ongoing, so it's still broadly very good. Hoping Jan Bazaldua proves to be a good fit as the new regular artist!
Patreon misc. by Kate Beaton and Lucy Knisley: No ongoing comics as such, but these are the two comics folks I'm following on Patreon who instead put up occasional one-offs/diary comics type material, always good stuff.
Public Domain: Glad this comes back soon, the opening arc was definitely the most I've enjoyed Zdarsky in the last several years.
Ultimate Spider-Man
Ultimate X-Men: I appreciate that Momoko went 'ok, teens get mysterious powers but they're in danger because of it, got it, I'll do one of those' and seems to just be going from there with it.
Vengeance of the Moon Knight: I had a theory - not about the identity of the new Moon Knight, but about the larger structure of this volume - and I was very gratified to be right.
Venom but at this point only the Al Ewing issues: Bastard has a hold on me. Even Ewing seems to have finally found a Marvel character he can't make himself care about in one Edward Brock Jr., but he's throwing everything he can in here to keep himself engaged until he can get off and every now and then that results in an absolute hoot.
Current limited series
Batman: Off-World: Also a hoot.
The Black Monday Murders: STILL NOT TECHNICALLY CANCELLED TO MY KNOWELDGE, though in any case I hope Tomm Coker's doing well.
The Boxer: Everyone should still be getting this.
Clementine
Dawnrunner: First issue was absolutely fire with the second following suit, and even having known he's a GOAT on cover art, I hadn't been prepared for Evan Cagle's levelup when I last saw him on the Midnighter and Apollo pages of Superman and The Authority.
The Department of Truth: As a middle school conspiracy buff this is as For Me as any cape comic, glad to see it come back.
Fall of the House of X: The one title I'm buying purely out of a sense of obligation. I actually followed a bunch of goddamn X-Men comics for 5 years, I'm seeing this through to the end.
G.O.D.S.: This feels like Hickman doing a normal Marvel soapy cape thing in a way he's generally way too far along in his career to bother with, except clearly he got paid solidly to workshop potential movie stuff here. I won't miss it too tremendously, but that not even Hickman and Schiti can get a new thing off the ground with Marvel's backing bodes poorly.
Kneel Before Zod: The logline of wiping out some of the last of Bendis-era Superman was incredibly offputting, but in reality this has been far more interesting than promoted.
Man's Best: My first Pichetshote besides The Good Asian and my first Lonergan besides Hedra, I'm very curious where this one goes.
My Dog Is A Death God: Pure schmaltz, but I'm occasionally in that market, and my impression is this will be short.
The One Hand/The Six Fingers: Loving them thoroughly, can't wait to sit down with this whole fascinating little experiment once it's done.
Rare Flavours: I'm not clicking with it as much as their previous collaboration in The Many Deaths of Laila Starr - perhaps a reread once it's done will change that - but still quite liking it.
Red Hood: The Hill: Fairly faux-Priest, but better faux-Priest than no Priest.
Rise of the Powers of X + X-Men: Forever: Everybody involved is doing their best and frequently wringing good work out of the circumstances but there's basically no way this much resembles what was initially pitched, right
Saga: Yes, I'm still getting it.
Saint John: So good, painfully torn between 'glad Schkade and the Wagners are getting all the time they need with this' and 'god I wish this was a monthly, this is the perfect kind of comic for the format'.
Spectregraph: Wasn't sure if I'd go for it but picked up the first issue on a whim and I enjoyed it, at four issues this should be fun.
Spider-Man: Shadow of the Green Goblin: Nice little standalone Spidey thing by the steadiest of hands, sure.
Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor: FINALLY it sounds like we'll be getting #2 and #3 fairly soon.
Universal Monsters: Creature From The Black Lagoon Lives!: Never watched or read anything with the Creature before, but V and Watters, so.
The Wrong Earth: Dead Ringers: Been following this since the beginning way back in 2018, always happy when it comes back.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Incredibly glad this classic is being translated and released here; I'm curious whether there'll be anything resembling an 'ending' as such or if it'll simply stop, the beauty of the comic being such that it should work equally well either way.
Webcomics + Library reading
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures: Every third one of these or so is okay, for the price of 'free' that's worth a weekly check in.
Blue Period: I thought Chainsaw Man was going to be my only big catchup purchase but I have had had Vol. 5 on hold at my library since November, I might bite the bullet because this is as good as it gets.
Boyfriends: One of the Webtoons go-tos, and I hope Ray has a successful career on the other side of this contract.
Castle Swimmer
Clinic of Horrors: Nice casual read, though I don't know if it'll be able to hang in there with the change in artist when Pokurimio was so core to its identity.
Crow Time
Dragon Ball Kakumei/Dragon Ball Multiverse: Both incredibly dumb and I'm way behind Kakumei anyway, but these are my Dragon Ball fan comics of choice.
The End of Ma'at: Recently stumbled on this and the art goes hard, quality action comics.
Everything Will Be The Same Ever Again: COME BACK TO US.
The Fabled Warrior: Had a really good first act, what I felt was a kind of meandering second, and oops it's actually ending soon.
Flash Gordon: Schkade revived/took over the daily strip, it completely rules, get on this immediately.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
Girls With Horns: Been awhile since this updated and I've definitely forgotten who everyone is but I like it.
Heartstopper
Hell's Paradise: Jigokuraku
High Class Homos: On the 'well, I find it charming' list.
I Want To Be A Cute Anime Girl: Ditto.
The Lazy Lord Masters the Sword: Another one like Fabled Warrior that's strayed from a more interesting initial premise into genericism, but I'm somewhat invested at this point.
My Dragon Girlfriend: I'm thinking letting this go for awhile without checking in and then catching back up, it reads a lot better in huge chunks.
Nix of Nothing: Read a bit and fell off, I'll catch back up sometime.
Of Dark Lords and Cabbages: Behind Castle Swimmer probably the best of the Webtoons bunch I've read in terms of crafting a engaging longform drama around its romance.
Plus One: Shortform gag comic that just launched, I'll give it a chance.
The Rock Cocks: Marge Simpson voice you know, this stopped being a hardcore sex comic so gradually, I didn't even notice.
RWBY Doodleverse: The title given on Webtoon to AG_Nonsuch's assorted charming RWBY fancomic shorts; so glad it sounds like the show has prospective buyers and should be able to reach a natural conclusion.
Scoob and Shag: Man it's great this thing even exists.
To Your Eternity
Vinland Saga
The Way of the Househusband
Upcoming
Absolute Power: That's the power of Mora y'all, never has there been more of a 'oh no oh no oh no we have steered ourselves into a CORNER and need to clear all this slop off the deck at once' event comic premise and he makes this look like the coolest thing ever, and if ever there was someone to handle this nonsense like a pro it would be Waid.
Action Comics: I'll check that Simone/Barrows arc, it seems like it'll be Waid/Henry rounding out the year after that, and fingers crossed it'll be some interesting folks properly taking over in 2025.
Aliens vs. Avengers: What an off the wall creative pairing for this of all assignments! But between Hickman of course now that we have reason to think about it being a Ridley Scott guy, the Xenomorph/Brood 'overlap' for the X-boy, his stuff with the Builders hitting right next to Prometheus, and that he's mentioned feeling in interviews he didn't properly service the former half of the Avengers/New Avengers combo, I can see him having a ton of fun with getting to mow through Marvel's biggest leads while letting him get in an actual tightly-crafted big story with that group. Plus it's his second post-return Marvel title driven by the Fox acquisition! Ribic's if anything the bigger surprise, but I suppose 'if this does well it's going to sell huge in TPBs forever' is as fine a motivator as any.
The Boy Wonder: Hell yeah Juni Ba! And kicking off on my birthday!
Death in the Family - Robin Lives: Hahahahaha ok, I do wanna see what DeMatteis does with it though. Odd pick when Starlin and Winnick are both still, y'know, around.
Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor: Watters on Doctor Who, let's gooooooooo.
The Domain: Regardless of whether it's even good I'm a sucker for these kinds of things - Marvel 100th Anniversary, fake reader letters in 1963 and Amalgam Comics, I've always wanted to track down those Marvels Comics one-shots they put out in 2000, Solid Blood #17, etc., you do something 'meta' in relation to the direct market publishing format or its traditions and I'm there.
Doom: Hell yes hell yes hell yes.
Future: Not familiar with Tommi Musturi's work but this sounds right up my alley.
Get Fury: Ennis set up the idea of some truly heinous shit going down in Castle's second tour way back in Born in 2000 and we're finally getting at least part of it, THAT'S longform comics storytelling bay-beeeeeee.
Green Lantern: Dark: Glad to see Tate Brombal getting to take a swing!
Head Trauma: Zoe Thorogood's prospective next original title about a guy whose intrusive thoughts come to life, I will be there like a shot.
Jupiter's Legacy: Finale: This will be purchased extremely secondhand but dammit this stupidass series has occupied an extremely specific place in my head for over a decade and I need to see how it'll fumble the ball one last time, so I can exorcise at least part of my childhood love for Millar once and for all.
Kommix: Extremely enticing premise.
Lore Remastered: I know virtually nothing about it but it sounds potentially interesting and I've seen some people very happy it's finally getting reprinted.
Loving, Ohio/The Wendy Award/A Witch's Guide to Burning: All ones I know very little about but have been recommended by friends I trust.
Magus Minor: 2025 YA OGN from Deniz Camp and Naomi Franquiz, I'll be there.
My Adventures With Superman: Only wish it was an ongoing, but that'd obviously clash with the nature of the show.
The Nice House by the Sea: Happy to see it back!
The Power Fantasy: Very real chance this'll be the best serialized title of the year. Funny thing: I went 'oh damn, Gillen/Wijngaard!' and 'oh damn, post-Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt Gillen capes outside the big two!', it took me a full minute to remember they were the Thunderbolt team and that that was how Wijngaard came to my attention in the first place.
Remote Space: I think this is a creative debut but it's one of the dwindling number of Image titles in recent years with a premise that makes me go 'well that could be something' and it's just four issues so I'll give it a shot.
The Solitary Gourmet/They Were 11!: Pair of classic manga getting translated and published stateside I'll be checking out.
Spider-Man: Reign II: Sean Dillon converted me to the ways of unironically liking Spider-Man: Reign, I gotta actually purchase that for keeps sometime and I'll most definitely be getting this.
Tokyo These Days: I ordered Volume 1 recently, if I like that half as much as Ritesh Babu it'll certainly become one I follow.
The Ultimates: I've yet to be sold on Juan Frigeri (though the trustworthy Harry Kassen said to me he's leveled up recently) but getting Camp on here is a simultaneous 'I can't believe he's getting this sizeable a gig this early, fantastic' and 'I can't believe Marvel actually got him and for this of all projects, god willing they'll find out fast how hard they lucked out'.
Venomverse Reborn/Venom War: Seeing this thing through to the end, and in my defense, apparently Adam Warren is coming back to do a followup to his beautifully wild Venom: The End in the former.
We Called Them Giants: Gillen/Hans OGN, can't possibly ask for more.
X-Men #35/Uncanny X-Men #700 + X-Men: The Wedding Special: Looking forward to being someone who definitively doesn't care about the X-Men again in the wake of this.
Zatanna: Bring Down The House: I run hot and cold at best on Tamaki's big two work, but Rodriguez makes this a must-read.
And in the field of untitled upcoming work, there's whatever DC-era-spanning Superfriends type project Jacob Edgar's doing, Juni Ba's potential Superman book after The Boy Wonder, whatever books Camp and Stipan Morian are working on, Ram V and Dan Watters' further DC work, the promised upcoming DC Webtoons and 'Absolute Comics', the presumptive continuation of Wonder Woman: Historia since Gunn seems to maybe be drawing from that for his DCU, JH (Ji-hun Jeong)'s story about a retired runner he mentioned having in mind and any potential translations/physical releases of his other works (Mosquito Wars, I Have Something To Tell You, and Apocalypse Romance), and Morrison's further Xanaduum shorts INCLUDING NEW QUITELY.
Justin Martin
Hopes for Absolute DC? On one hand, Ultimate is increasingly the only part of Marvel worth reading, so I get the urge to go there, but on the other: DC reboots constantly and already has plenty of current and defunct alt-universe titles. What would you do, both in terms of individual titles and overall purpose/format, if you were given carte blanche for Absolute DC?
DC has been defined in the last 20 years by its history of failed Ultimates, hasn't it? All-Star, which to me was the most reasonable crack at it as a direct inverse of Ultimate more suited to DC's strengths (standalone perennials instead of interlinked ongoings, classic instead of hyper-modern, beloved veterans instead of young guns), came out of the gate with two books in All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder and All-Star Superman that were equally impossible to follow up on in completely different ways. Dan DiDio pretty much confirmed in an interview that the Earth One books were meant to be an 'Ultimate DC' opposite a planned mainline generational shift after Final Crisis that didn't go through, which would explain why the ostensible mass-market bookstore initiative would have a dorkass branding like 'Earth One'. Then New 52 trying to lift from Ultimate wholesale, then 5G's failure, during which Snyder pitched an 'Ultimate DC' which this will presumably repurpose some ideas from.
Now? DC's mainline is full neo-classic, World's Finest as a burgeoning mini-imprint goes even further in that direction and really already seemed to be serving as the latest and perhaps most successful faux-Ultimate ('World's Finest' is even a declaration of import in the same way as 'Ultimate' and 'Absolute'!), Black Label is there for the bookstore crowd, they're putting out plenty of YA OGNs, they've got the Webtoons strips, and the Compact Comics initiative seems to be their play for a casual readership. As far as pared-back accessible new 21st century takes go these are gonna be competing against The Batman and My Adventures With Superman, neither of which I'd want to be the comics bro trying to one-up, and the very Gunn DCU this clearly wants to springboard off of! The latter of which also seems to want to do plenty of worldbuilding continuity shit in a way the MCU only ever really feigned at, presumably on the basis that the people who are up for a new Cinematic Universe at this point past the big names are the kinds of people who want that kind of stuff (hence nothing but Superman and The Brave and the Bold necessarily being big-budget propositions), so that'd be competition for even more prospective territory.
Word is this'll kick off with a couple more titles than the current Ultimate line and a lot of creative freedom, so I'm expecting a pretty Gunn-reflective lineup - Snyder on Superman, some poor doomed soul on Batman, The Authority, Swamp Thing, etc. - in the hopes of catching the ever-hallucinated curious audience coming in from the movies. And I'll probably like some of them! But compared to how the original Ultimate emerged at the direst hour for Marvel, and the new model seems to be Hickman pitching an MCU 2.0 (whether or not he particularly expects that to happen, I'm sure that comes with a nicer paycheck than the average current big two gig), there's just no obvious mandate for what this does that something else isn't already doing or doesn't supersede.
Obviously I have my own take on 'okay but HERE'S how you do an equivalent to Ultimate for DC' because all of us have one that we think would succeed where everyone else's would fail, but that's also one I'll be keeping to myself. As I will the 'okay if you literally just tried to transpose the Ultimate hardcore realism onto the DC folks, but not terribly' pitch I spitballed while thinking about this, as it overlaps with ideas I care about more (plus that'd be pretty close to just posting fanfiction on here). So if I was trying to do something with the concept of 'fresh slate DC' that doesn't obviously overlap with anything else they're doing right now?
Make it for kids.
DC's seemingly doing fine on the middle school front, but those are conspicuously reconfiguring the characters to feel more 'YA' - lotsa '___ in high school' titles. That's definitely viable but I dunno, thinking back to being a kid I kind of preferred the idea I was reading 'real' adventures instead of some toned-down kiddie side version for us to be sequestered away with; that's obviously not a remotely universal experience, but there's probably a market to be served in trying to recapture that lightning where the 90s cartoon tie-ins were the decades' best Superman and Batman ongoings.
Keep the Absolute branding so the kids can trust it's a BIG DEAL (heck, the adults will buy it on that front too), start off with a tidy Superman/Wonder Woman/Batman/Green Lantern core of titles, and get some quality creators in there who'd be able to thread the needle appropriately so that it's appropriate for kids but doesn't feel like a kid thing. Maybe once a year have Dan Mora do an Absolute Justice League OGN - with some continuity-weaving whiz like Ewing or Waid - to tie incidental threads from the individual books into a 'season finale' so everybody feels rewarded for following these without having to burden down the ongoings themselves with heavy duty continuity maintenance. Sell 'em cheap as a loss-leader/bundled with branded merch if you're trying to build a future direct market base with these - not likely, but at least TRY - or make them all Webtoons with the Absolute branding signifying they play in the same setting. Just feels more viable than trying to beat everything else going on at all their own games.
Justin Martin
Superhero comics are a genre where -- cf. Jon Kent, Hickman X-Men -- nothing ever seems to end, or even crescendo in a satisfying way. Other than pure inertia, how do you find ways to keep reading, hoping, and finding enjoyment, knowing that even seemingly-guaranteed home-runs often get scuttled halfway in?
In an environment where Hickman seems to have literally designed his new Marvel imprint around the amount of time he can historically go before orders from above wreck the whole thing, no kidding. Sometimes we get a little miracle though, like V's Detective Comics looking to conclude its multi-year arc pretty much exactly as he seemed to have envisioned it. Elsewhere you've got North and Cabello's Fantastic Four embracing the power of the single issue, or Spurrier and Deodato's The Flash taking full advantage of the freedom of a character that's fallen way by the wayside, and any number of limited-run projects that don't have to worry about those constraints for the most part. I do think we're in the waning days of the direct market, and that we may never see a truly remarkable run on any number of familiar figures with the kind of freedom once enjoyed by your Morrisons and Hickmans as things contract, calcify, and desperately try to milk the loudest lifers. And that's heartbreaking - seeing extraordinary creative forces given a broad canvas to work on these massive figures is maybe the most powerful pleasure of the endeavor, and one rarely captured in the same way elsewhere. But even in the ruins as the sun goes down, there are just about always beauties to be unearthed.