Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Blog Update for June 2008

This is the latest monthly update to the right 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.

It was another pretty good month for comics reading, at least for me. Breaks down like this: 7 Marvel (two of them MAX), 5 DC (one of them Vertigo, two of them Chuck Dixon and one of them Mark Waid, the latter three are all on their way out), 3 Dark Horse, 2 Boom! (both Games Workshop licensed books), 1 Image (Jay Faerber's Gemini) and 2 indies (RASL and Superior Showcase). Almost making the cut this month we've got a half-dozen Marvel books (Captain America #39, Thunderbolts #121, What If Fantastic Four Tribute To Mike Wieringo, X-Men Legacy #213, Wolverine #66 and X-Factor #32), a lone DC hold-out (Tiny Titans #5), a lone Dark Horse holdout (Buffy The Vampire Slayer #15), two Image (Noble Causes #34 and Pilot Season Genius #1) and three indie (Scream Queen #1 from Boom!, Hack Slash Series #12 from Devil's Due and Jim Butchers Dresden Files #3 from Dabel Brothers). Writers with more than one entry in the list this month were Jeff Parker, Abnett & Lanning and Chuck Dixon. Nobody had more than two, unless you count Abnett separately from Lanning for his contributions to Warhammer Condemned by Fire, which nudges him up to three.

I broke the "10 good graphic novels a month" rule this month, and also read Suburban Glamour, Jack of Fables Vol 3 and the latest Wormwood Gentleman Corpse (Calamari Rising) all of which landed just outside the top 10. Instead of reading a novel this month, I read issues #1-50 of Robin, plus the three miniseries, since I was in a Chuck Dixon Robin mood. Mostly it doesn't hold up all that well, especially given the bad '90s paper quality, coloring and sometimes art/inking.

Not a lot of TV in June... in fact, I barely even turned the Tivo on, save to watch the finales for Battlestar Galactica and Spectacular Spider-Man. Mostly, I've been watching DVDs, finally starting to watch The Wire (I'm four or five episodes into season one and loving it) and catching up on TV series that I got as gifts a long while back, watching seasons one through three of The Office and then starting on Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I also watched the first episodes of Weeds and Diary of a Call Girl from Showtime, and decided I was just interested enough to watch them on DVD when they come out. Thankfully, Burn Notice starts on Thursday... and I hope Always Sunny will return in August or before as well.

I added eight new RSS feeds this month, half of them new political feeds. Those are BAGnewsNotes (great photo/analysis blog), Talking Points Memo
and TPM Election Central (a steady flow of liberal-bent political news) and Crooks and Liars (really good at pointing out the stupidity of politics and politicians). I also added the new (and irregularly updated) webcomic Comic Critics, the pop-culture site IO9 (like Boing-Boing but tons better, more focused on geek silliness and less on how evil DRM is, and has Graeme McMillan writing for them), plus art blogs for Jeremy Haun and Brian Hurtt.

1 comment:

Dereck said...

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia returns Sept 18.