31 Days

Writing 31 reviews of 31 comics in 31 days, and starting it on the day I also began a brand new job for the biggest newspaper in the country, seemed very foolish at several points over the past month. But I got there in the end.

Every review I’ve done in the past few weeks has been written on the day it was first posted. I had a pile of comics sitting beside the computer at home, would pick one at random every day and try and say something about it. There were about fifty of them, and I couldn’t find the right way to hook into some of them, including an issue of Not Brand Echh, Daredevil #219, Captain Marvel #34, Piracy #1, Doctor Who: The Forgotten, Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends, Excalibur #14, Sandman: Three Septembers and a January, Sweet Tooth #21 and the Superman Supacomic.

I’m deeply fond of all of these comics, and I will try to say something about all of them at one point. Especially the Supacomic, which might be my favourite comic book of all time. I’m not joking, if my house is burning down, I’m grabbing the Supacomic before I get the photo albums.

But I hope the comics that had something I did manage to talk about showed just how much I fucking love comic books. All kinds.

You’re allowed to love the most mini of mini-comics just as much as some far out superheroics, for vastly different reasons. You can do anything with comics, and it’s so much fun to see people do just that.

I tried to find something nice to say about everything, because there was usually something there. Even in that Green Lantern: Blackest Night book, which was all kinds of terrible, there was still old Dougie Mahnke on pencils, and I came in wanting to like the comic. I really did. I loved the idea. I just hated every storytelling turn it took.

Anyway, here is a handy one-stop list of the 31 Days of Comics.

1. I thought the Megalomaniacal Spider-Man has a lovely ending.

2. Prog 2011 was as good as these year-end progs ever are, but hinted at a foreboding future.

3. I always thought the Eltingville crews ruled.

4. I got all soppy over The Flash #129.

5. Palooka-ville #1 wasn’t what I expected.

6. Miller and O’Neill rocked my free world in Marvel Tales #200.

7. Captain America/Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers #1 was free

8. Green Lantern: Blackest Night was disappointing

9. I still don’t know what to make of Defenders 39

10. Sergio Aragones Destroys DC: In my country, Sergio is a God. And Evanier is his Pope.

11. Two Langridge comics in five days with Zoot Suite

12. There is primordial Hitch in 20-year-old Superman annuals.

13. I always think I’ve got all the good charity comics, and then I find something like Food For Thought.

14 Moore was grump with DC by the time Swamp Thing #60 came around, but he could still produce some truly graceful storytelling by loving the alien

15. At least Rachel got her happy ending in one of those What Ifs?

16. American Splendor: Unsung Hero showed that Harvey Pekar was a fine biographer, and not just when he was writing about his own life.

17. It took a long while for Shoot to show up in Vertigo Resurrected #1, but when it did, it had lost a lot of its power.

18. Deadwood diversion.

19. Star Wars: Boba Fett: Bounty on Bar-Kooda. If you want some good action comics, you can’t go wrong with Wagner and Kennedy.

20. I want to like the Teen Titans much more than I do.

21. I like where The Boys is going.

22. New Gods #2 – in which a 40-year-old comic has more power and energy than anything on modern stands.


23. Son of the Gun might be a relatively simple Jodorowsky comic, but it’s still a Jodorowsky comic.

24. Oh, Mario.

25. The JLI influence was strong in Starman #35

26. Hyper-compressed storytelling in the Judge Dredd Collection

27. Who theorising

28. Absolute power doesn’t have to corrupt absolutely in Batman Incorporated

29. Grendel in transition

30. Indiana Jones is my nostalgia porn

31. Kung Fu isn’t easy to do in comics, but Shaolin Burning does it.

After all that, I’m taking the next week of from blogging, and normal service will resume next Friday with the usual half-arsed post every three or four days. Don’t expect anything about the avalanche of new title announcements out of DC (same old creators = same old shit), but there will certainly be some Venture Bros and Game of Thrones fun.