Blog Template Update for July

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.

Wow, was July a great month for comics. Huge, huge weeks every week, almost. I didn't even read everything available in the last week of July, so it's possible some of that stuff might pop up in August. With the announcement of The Spirit ending (yeah, I know it continues beyond #12, but without Darwyn Cooke, I can't imagine anyone making it work), there's not much hope for DC in my Top 20 future. Even amongst those that didn't make the cut, there's only one DC book, by Mark Waid and George Perez. However, five of them are Vertigo (well, one Wildstorm), which means DC the company still owns 25% of my Top 20. So does Marvel, actually, based on all four of the Annihilation books (I love Conquest) and the first issue of The Order. There are also five books on my "just missed it" list from Marvel. I hate to admit it, but Marvel has my attention right now. Then again, Dark Horse has 25% of the list too, with two of their four Star Wars books (and all of them are good), the always-excellent BPRD, the short but sweet Grendel Behold the Devil and a fantastic standalone Buffy the Vampire Slayer issue. The other 25%? Mostly Image, with one Oni book for flavor. Either I'm missing a lot of good indy books (and I don't think I am), or July was a month where not many indys were published. There were three books (Green Arrow Year One #1, Repo #2 and Spirit #8) that would have made the cut in almost any other month, and then there are exceptionally good books like Brave And The Bold #5, Captain America #28, Hack Slash Series #3, Invincible #44, Marvel Adventures Hulk #1, New Warriors #2, Runaways #27 (yep, back on board), X-Men First Class Vol. 2 #2 and Zero Killer #1. Postcards and Silverfish nearly made the graphic novel cut, but I didn't read many more. Must have been the gigantic Harry Potter book I read that took my time.

Or maybe it was TV. I've started to really love Burn Notice, although I'd probably love it more if it were on F/X and truer to its source material instead of all USA'ed up. Still digging John From Cincinnati, but wondering if it's going anywhere. Big Love picked up for me a bit, but still isn't good enough to keep HBO if there wasn't something else I really wanted. Which Entourage isn't either, at this point. They're sliding down to the level of "good enough," which works for regular TV but not pay cable. Fortunately, I've grown addicted to movies on demand and I really liked Bill Maher's latest stand-up special, and I still want to like shows as much as I liked Deadwood, Sopranos, early Entourage, etc. Also still watching The 4400 and Rescue Me, though I probably wouldn't be if they were competing with a wider variety of stuff to watch. And with the addition of a bigger TV to my office, I've added Countdown, Daily Show and Colbert Report back into the background TV rotation. Still catching up on the rest of Freaks and Geeks as well. Also have the first DVD of Sandbaggers and Eureka, but haven't watched either yet.

A few new feeds this month. There's the shiny new Savage Critics site (so good I'm jealous), Ben Templesmith, John Hodgman, The Newshole (Keith Olbermann's site), The Process (Joe Infurnari's webcomic), Transmission-X (a webcomics site that features a lot of really good artists). I also added a new "Top 10" blogs for the ones that I read first, every time there's a new entry in Google Reader.