Comics Stuff - Monthly Update for September:
This is the first monthly update to the left column of the blog, listing my Current Favorite Monthly Titles, which is my counterpart to Current Favorite TV series, as well as my five favorite first issues of the month and my ten favorite graphic novel reads of the month.

I was going to try a new feature where I'd do a monthly brief rundown of my thoughts on the top 10 in the Diamond 300, but then I realized that in July, I had actually read only one of the Top 10 books (All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #1, which I found to be exceedingly mediocre) and at best skim-read the rest. So it was actually even more depressing than I thought it would be. Seriously, you had to go at least to 11 before you found a title I liked (Villains United #4) and all the way to #49 to find one I loved (Serenity #1), and #65 to find one on my top 10 monthly titles list (Seven Soldiers: Guardian). I have decided to go ahead and put the ranking of my Top Ten Favorite Monthly Books of the moment as they ranked on the July sales charts. Why would I do something so obviously ego-stomping? Hey, it keeps me humble. Relatively speaking. Also, there is that faint hope that some people will realize that even with the buzz, some of these books are still struggling, and maybe they'll throw some of those fat Infinite Crisis/House of M dollars the way of these smaller books.

A couple things of note in how I organize these things, for those who care. These listings are alphabetical, not by rank of how much I liked them in comparison. I've narrowed it down to five or ten, beyond that is further narrowing of which one I liked best than I want to do on a monthly basis, at least right now. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. And thirdly, I was pretty strict on the monthly series, in that it has to be a series that is solicited and actually printed monthly (for the most part, at least), and it has to be either ongoing or a long ongoing (at least 30 issues, which means Seven Soldiers just barely qualifies) instead of a limited series. This is why, for example, Banana Sundays (limited series), True Story Swear to God (bimonthly) and New Warriors (limited series) didn't make the list. In each case, I've provided a link for the listing, usually to one of my reviews (for further info on my opinion), but in the case of the monthly books and books I haven't reviewed, I've provided links to official publisher or creator sites or the best source of info I could find relatively easily.

Finally, the updates are for the month of August... September just barely started. So all my favorites will be anywhere from a week to a full month old, but these are meant to be sort of "standing" preferences anyway.