By Zack Quaintance — The first month of the year has been a bit of a comedown for the direct market, which rushed out all the product it could for Christmas/the end of the year, with December 18 ranking as the busiest day for new release comics I can remember in many many years. It was, to be quite frank, a nice laid-back way to start the year. That said! There was quite a bit of good stuff, with strong continuations for the new line of X-Men comics as well as plenty of creator-owned excellence