Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Blog Template Update for May

This is the latest monthly update to the left column of the blog, updating my favorite comics and TV for the previous month. The listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. This is basically also my own records of what I read/liked for the inevitable "End of Year" lists I feel like making.

Given how much I hate much of Marvel's best sellers, I'm continuously shocked by how much of them I read. Six books this month (counting Criminal, which is just barely Marvel), and three of them are even in post-Initiative continuity. DC doesn't fare so well, post-52... none of their books even made it close, and the one book I am reading, The Spirit, isn't in continuity. Of course, there were four Vertigo books in there, just as many as I have Dark Horse and one less than I have of Image. Two indys, one from Archaia and one from Oni.

Graphic novels I read this month but didn't hit my Top 10 include a slew of discounted Marvel hardcovers (Westerns, Horror, Supreme Power 1-2, Best of Wolverine), Transformers: Infiltration and Transformers: Escalation, the latest Walking Dead HC, the Oni story of the first monkey in space, First in Space and Plain Janes, the launch of DC's Minx line. Those last two would easily have made a top 10 in a weaker month, but there were just so many good trades released in May. And that's not even counting the good ones that I haven't read yet, like Mouse Guard or Fell. Single issues that almost made the list included Hack Slash Series #1, GI Joe Storm Shadow #1, Black Coat Or Give Me Death #1, World War Hulk Prologue World Breaker, Marvel Zombies Dead Days, the third issues of Buffy, Star Wars Dark Times and Marvel Zombies Army of Darkness and Captain America #26. So it was a pretty good month for comic books. There wasn't a lot new, but what was new was pretty good, an X-Men First Class Special with great artwork and the hilariously sick and wrong Goon: Satan's Sodomy Baby.

May was a really good month for TV. Sopranos and Veronica Mars both drew to a close, the latter in a decent manner after a disappointing season and a disappointing near-pickup, the former in fine style, although as I write this there's still one more episode to go. A lot of TV ended in May, which means my June line-up is probably going to look pretty different. Most of what was great (The Office, 30 Rock, The Shield) stayed great, and Lost took a huge upturn and ended on a great episode, while Heroes ended a great set of episodes with a really disappointing finale. The upfronts for next season look pretty fucking abysmal in terms of new shows, so this might have been the best season of TV for a while.

Tons of new feeds this month. I added Tom Brevoort's Marvel Blog: Blah Blah Blah to follow the entertaining Editorial Simulation, finally added The Savage Critics to my feed, found Melanie McFarland, Seattle's TV Gal off a link from Alan Sepinwall and added Rolling Stone's Photo, DVD, Music and Movie feeds. I also added a couple new writer feeds from Andy Diggle and Heroes producer Greg Beeman, found artist blogs for several favorites like Frazer Irving, Kyle Baker and Sean Phillips and added three new webcomics: Alien Loves Predator, Smuggling Spirits and Wondermark. Then there were two new local feeds for Austinite Rob Osborne and the Alamo Drafthouse.

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