By Zack Quaintance — Here we are, worse for the ware and kind of late with this week’s Top Comics to Buy, but we’re here nonetheless. It’s a relatively sparse week with a few key titles to really sustain us, kind of like a fine dining experience where your food looks little but tastes amazing and when you leave, you leave satisfied. That’s the best I can do, lay off me, I’m tired.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I thought the year for comics started slowly, but now we’re back into a high volume of quality releases in terms of both the ongoing stuff and the new series launch. Our committee (of one) favors ongoing on the weekly Top Comics to Buy list, assuming that many readers are going to give new #1s a shot regardless. This week, however, we should note that there are a couple of strong new series dropping with Amethyst #1 and Finger Guns #1, both of which are well worth your money.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Forgive me if I’m a bit hazy this morning (because I’m sure you can tell), but I was up late last night watching the NBA All-Star Game. What I found most interesting about it was that after many years of the game being sort of a throwaway contest, the league tweaked the rules this year, putting prize money for charity at stake and adding a wrinkle where the fourth quarter is played to a set total, rather than to a time limit.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Our Top Comics to Buy committee (of one) doesn’t typically go in for debut issues on this list. It’s hard to get a good sense of whether a series is really worth reading from just a debut alone. So, we like to sit back and give it an issue or two before we give it the august honor (super important) of appearing on this list. All of that is to say it really speaks to how much we liked Tartarus and Undone By Blood, both of which have debut issues appearing on this week’s list.
Read MoreBy Allison Senecal — Welcome back to Thirsty Thursdays! It’s been quite the hiatus but we all know you can’t talk about Elektra-in-a-Blindfold (her saint name) unless you’re well-rested. I won’t be making up any lost ground, so sorry if you missed all the horny $%#@ from December.
Read MoreBy 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
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — January is always a month of newsness. It certainly was around this blog, with a pair of new features rolling out, those being the Things I Liked and Didn’t Like update as well as the One Hot Panel thing, which is named after a mostly bad RHCP album for some reason I’m not even entirely sure about.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Love is in the comics air this week with the new releases, which include a DC Comics anthology just brimming with talented creators old and new, as well as love/sex adjacent comics like Going to the Chapel and Money Shot. All in all, it’s a strong week with a bit more of a thematic focus than most Wednesdays, one that will start setting the mood for next week’s holiday.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — After a few quieter weeks to start the year, the unstoppable flow of excellent new comics has returned. This is a heavy week on basically all fronts, from new superhero stuff to new creator-owned monthlies to new collected volumes/original graphic novels. Basically, whatever you’re into in the world of comics, there is probably something you’ll like coming at you this week.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — January continues to feel like a bit of a subdued month for new comics, which his maybe hinting at an understated year for the industry....which is just fine. I know I’ve been enjoying the chance to breathe a little bit, with a weekly stack that comes out closer to 25 books rather than 40. It’s also giving me the chance to really savor some of the indie stuff more, enjoying what has become a pattern of excellent endings again this week.
Read MoreBy Alex Batts — Tom King’s run on Batman has come to an end. Nope, to me it still doesn’t feel real. But alas, the critically-acclaimed scribe’s work on the main Batman title ended late last year with the release of Batman #85 (though King’s work on the Caped Crusader isn’t completely finished, with Batman/Catwoman set to hit sometime in 2020). Now that the Gotham mist has cleared, King’s run on the Dark Knight has been one for the ages, while it has left some (alright, many) fans divided, there is a lot to love about it. When it started back in 2016, I doubted anyone could come close to topping the work that Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo had just completed on the title, but I think King’s run has reached that bar, even if I’m still undecided about whether he surpassed it.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — It really feels to me like the entire comics industry (if not the world) is still shaking off this year’s holiday season...or maybe it’s just me. Whatever the case, the weeks of new releases have been a bit sparse to open this year after the absolute monster that was Wednesday, Dec. 18. As you’ll see below, however, things are starting to pick up a bit again, with an increase in great comics over the year’s first two weeks.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Last year, I swore that I would spend 2019 reading more graphic novels from the publishers like FirstSecond, Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, etc...and you know what? I did. As a result of surprisingly moving to Washington, D.C., in the middle of the year, I also attended Small Press Expo in September, where those aforementioned publishers rule the day.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This first month of the year has felt subdued compared to the packed final month of last year, but that’s been a good thing, giving some truly excellent creator-owned titles a chance to remind us just how nice this current age of comics is. That’s certainly what we get this month, with strong entries from Vault and Image filling out the entirety of our top five with the exception of one spot.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Look, I know I’ve been posting list after list after list of favorite comics things for 2019 since basically Christmas, and thank you all so much for indulging me with all of that. Picking favorite books over the past 12 months and articulating why I found them to be so successful is one of my favorite parts of running a comics blog. Today, however, I am not here to talk comics.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This is the third year that our committee (of one) has done these Best Of rankings, breaking down favorite books into three separate pieces. This is the final piece, and it looks at the Top 5 Best Comics of 2019, while yesterday’s piece looked at #6 - #15 and Wednesday’s at #16 - #25. Today’s, however, is all about our absolute favorite comics from 2019.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This is the third year that our committee (of one) has done these Best Of rankings, breaking down favorite books into three separate pieces. The final piece (coming this Friday!) will look at the Top 5 Best Comics of 2019, while yesterday’s piece looked at #16 - #25. Today’s, however, is all about our Top Comics of 2019, #6 - #15.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This is the third year that our committee (of one) has done these Best Of rankings, breaking down favorite books into three separate pieces. The final piece (coming this Friday!) will look at the Top 5 Best Comics of 2019, while the second to last (coming on Thursday!) looks at #6 - #15. Today’s, however, is all about our Top Comics of 2019, #16 - #25.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — We’re deep in the middle of our Best of 2019 coverage, but we’re taking a quick break today to do one of our usual features, this specifically being the Top Comics to Buy for January 1. It’s a holiday, so there aren’t as many big books as one might expect to find on a typical Wednesday.
Read MoreBy Various — One of the grand appealing things about comics is that it lacks many of the barriers between audience and creator found in other visual mediums like TV and movies. This more direct connection between artist and audience means comics stories are less polished, less labored, and less beholden to corporate interests than their counterparts on screens or prose pages. The result is an agile storytelling medium, where creators are arguably able to disseminate unique visions and perspectives better than if they’d spent years on a novel or on a large-scale production in television or film.
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