Back on my library bullshit

Small town living was all well and good, but one of the very first things I did when I got back to the big smoke was rejoin the library and start loading up on the comic book graphic novels and trade paperbacks that I had missed out on this year.

Obviously this means catching up with old favorites and seeing what Batman, Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four are up to, and they seem fine, which is nice.

But the city library system gets so many comics every year, I've had to pick and choose what to read now, for fear of getting buried in Venom-related comics. So I'll get to the big DC event books of the past couple of years at some point later on, and Daredevil can also wait.

But I had to check out the Immortal Thor, after enjoying Al Ewing's Hulk comics, and the first two books of that were a lot of fun, (although while the magical comic book is clever at all, it's hard to take seriously when it's such an intentionally shit comic, there has to be some kind of baseline quality - or at least a lot less corporate dick sucking - to make a magic comic find an audience and gain power through their adoration).

Other than that, there were the latest three Brubaker/Phillips books, the staggeringly beaufitul Batman/Dylan Dog comic, all the issues of Sight and Sound I can inhale (which are not comics but are equally vital), more Trigan Empire reprints and Mignolaverse books, the last gasps of the X-Men's Krakoa era, and simple pleasures like the recent Silver Surfer Rebirth by Marz and Lim, a gentle reminder of a cosmic time long swept away into the void of Marvel space.

I also can not help myself from trying out the new Ultimate comics. That's never been a healthy or particularly deep adoration, loving the various Ultimate comics so much, but it's adoration all the same.

I've got a thousand other such interests in the wild world of comics, and I'm feeding them every time I get another library book. It's still the fastest and cheapest way to inhale the goods.