By Zack Quaintance — Welcome to another new feature we’re launching for 2020. The hope with this one is that every Friday, I’ll look back at the week in comics (both at the news and the books I read), and list 3 comics things I like and don’t like. Tip of the cap as we get started with this to my favorite writer in the NBA world, Zach Lowe, who does the same thing for basketball but with 10 (!!) things.

Anyway, let’s do this!

1. Black Hammer doesn’t just live on, it might also be the new Hellboy

It was a good week and change for Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer universe. The core book that launched it concluded last year, but this past Wednesday the universe rolled on with Skulldigger and Skeleton Boy #2 by Jeff Lemire and Tonci Zonjic, who is easily one of the best artists working in the medium right now. This second of six issues was even better than the first, taking the Punisher-Batman pastiche to a new, character-driven level that I really really liked.

In addition, we also got an announcement that Lemire’s next Black Hammer series would be a collaboration with a Tyler Crook on a mini-series about Colonel Weird. Somewhere in between this one-two punch, it occurred to me that Black Hammer is sure starting to look a whole lot like Hellboy used to (even bringing in the same artists!), where it tells one giant story in a shared universe with subtle connections spread out between all killer-no filler mini-series. And I like all of that quite a bit.

2. Leah Williams and the future of the X-Men

I liked some stuff about the X-Men this week, which surprised me, because no new X-Men titles actually came out (the first time this has happened since House of X #1 in July, I believe), and the Dawn of X relaunch that has been going full bore hit a point where I started to feel just a bit of exhaustion with it. There’s just too many books. But! Marvel announced a pair of X-Men things I like a lot.

First of all, writer Leah Williams is getting a shot at reviving a classic X-Men title: X-Factor. Not only that, but her forthcoming story (a collaboration with David Baldeon) will involve The Five, which is the group of mutants integral to the X-Men’s new revival concept. I like that, I like it a lot. In addition, probably my favorite stand-alone Marvel story, X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills, is getting a re-issue with new material from its original team Chris Claremont and Brett Anderson. Part of that will be a new framing sequence set in the present day. Yesss.

3. The crushing feeling of obligation associated with giant tie-in lists

I read Iron Man 2020 this week from Dan Slott, Pete Woods, and team, and I enjoyed it well enough. Slott is doing fine work with Tony Stark, telling a timely story about robotics and artificial intelligence and the increasingly blurry point at which sentient consciousness gives way to contrived processing. The issue that came out this week incorporated all of those themes in a book with some truly fantastic Blade Runner-esque futuristic artwork from Woods…and then at the end it hit me upside the head with a checklist of 18 (!!) issues (pictured here).

I don’t want to read 18 issues about Iron Man 2020. That’s just so much story, and so much cost. If each of those books retails at $3.99 (which they won’t), this is a $72 barrier of entry. Now, the counter-point to this is that I could just ignore the entries on the list I’m not interested in…but how do I know what’s essential? And also, I read/collect superhero comics. I’m more than a little compulsive and definitely a completionist. The effect of a checklist like this is that I finished a comic I liked…and immediately shifted to ugh my head hurts. Not a cool feeling, at all…I’m still recovering from ignoring the checklists for Absolute Carnage and 2020.

Read this week’s comic book reviews here!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.