Blog Template Update for February
This is the latest monthly update to the left column of the blog, listing my Favorite Comics of the Month, which is my counterpart to Current Favorite TV series, as well as my ten favorite graphic novel reads of the month. With my Fourth Rail commitments more or less gone, this is the closest thing I have anymore to regular "reviews."

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. My criteria for what makes the list is when I read them, not necessarily when they were published. And each month, I'm recommending twenty things that I read in the month instead of 10 ongoing series and 5 first issues. It's less useful as a gauge of my overall tastes, but more useful as a "must-read" for the month. Oh, and graphic novels won't be listed in Favorite Comics... that's strictly for issues.

I'm now including links to the Amazon listings for my top ten trades. I encourage folks to visit their local comic shops if that's an option, but if it's not and you want to click through on the link to buy at Amazon, I think I earn, like, a nickel or something for each purchase made. At any rate, in addition to my top ten, other trades I read and liked this month included Battle Hymn: Farewell to the First Golden Age, Lucifer Vol. 9, Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots!, Noble Causes Vol. 5: Betrayals and Zombie World: Champion of the Worms.

Looking at my favorite comics for February, a majority (12) still come from Marvel and DC... but none of the DC books are actually in the Infinite Crisis-related DC Universe continuity, two are largely due to creators (Matt Wagner & Paul Pope) and two are Vertigo. In the indy category, we've got one each from Speakeasy, Image, Viper, IDW, Oni, Boom and two from Dark Horse. Not a lot of new publishers (or self publishers) striking my fancy this month, although Speakeasy, Viper and Boom! are both relatively new, I suppose.

Based on these selections, it's tough to pull out any real favorite creator ideas, because most creators only make the list once. Brian K. Vaughan is on there twice, for Runaways and Y: The Last Man, and Dan Slott for Thing and She-Hulk, and it's probably fair to categorize those two guys as my favorite monthly writers. Brian Wood's only on there once this month, for Supermarket, but with Local and DMZ, he's probably up there as one of my favorite writers of the moment as well.

Finally, the updates are for the month of February... March 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.