Every comic you've read in 2015

[Davedevil]

Batgirl #41 - Interested to see where they go with Babs and her dad. Wonder if she'll come clean with her secret identity. Tarr's doing the main art chores this time around and it's pretty good. I dunno if I like it more than when Stewart was doing layouts but it's different.

A-Force #2- Still good fun. Art is continuing to surprise me, considering I wasn't the biggest Jorge Molina fan before.

Wolverine Enemy of the State - Kickass story. (Heh) Would love to see this adapted in some way. Might be the last great thing JRJR's drawn, if slightly wonky at points.

[Professor]

FF Vol. 1 - Been about two weeks since I read this. I remember relatively nothing about it beyond how much I hated it. May have been the worst thing I have read this year.

FF Vol. 2 - Just finished this so I actually remember this one. Better, but still not good. There are just too many characters in this book for it to work. And I don't feel that the story really went anywhere.

Two volumes and I think the best FF story I read was in Amazing Spider-Man.

Comics: 233
Digital First Comics: 59
Graphic Novels: 17

Trades: 95 (515)(4)(144)

[Missy]

Is that the Ant-Man / She-Hulk, or the one before that?

[Professor]

Ant-Man / She Hulk is Vol. 2.

Vol. 1 is Sue, Reed, Ben, and a completely useless and non-existent Spider-Man.

[Professor]

Ms. Marvel (the 3rd trade) - I know I said I doubt I would continue with this. Apparently I requested this from the library ages ago, so I read this. Seemed rather uneventful. This felt like filler between actual storylines.

Teen Titans: Earth One - This was a quicker read than I anticipated. Not bad, but I did not feel like I got an entire story. And for how much these things are, that is not a good thing at all.

B.A.R. Maid - My power went out. This is what was left on my tablet. It was better than sitting in a dark room. High praise.

Comics: 238
Digital First Comics: 59
Graphic Novels: 18

Trades: 96 (520)(4)(144)

[Dread]

Suiciders #5: Shit. This is good. And beautiful. Lee Bermejo, killin' it.

Superman #41: No thanks.

Superman Wonder Woman #18: is it great? Hell no! It's better than either of the new Superman books I've read though. Will I read more? No.

TMNT Casey & April #1: Not as good as Mutanimals, but cute and sweet.

The Fiction #1: I didn't quite catch what was going on here.

The Flash #41: Kind of yawn-worthy.

The Mantle #2: It's good, but it's moving very slowly.

The Shadow #100: I'm done with Dynamite's pulp stuff. Yuck.

The Tithe #3: Fucking great heist story. Sad that it ends next issue.

The Black Hood #5: Solid end to this arc.

Thors #1: Officially, the best series going for Secret Wars. I was totally wowed.

UFOlogy #3: another slow moving series, but it's pretty good.

We Are...Robin #1: Lee Bermejo wrote Suiciders. It's fucking great. He wrote this too. It is not. The art is awful too.

Weirdworld #1: It certainly lives up to its name. A place for the lost characters. I'm stoked to see more. This issue focuses only on Arkon (the mostly fictional movie character Simon Williams played in Avengers West Coast) and that's cvool, but I want more weirdos. Shoutouts to Skull the Slayer and Man-Thing in this one.

Comics: 736

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 73

Omnibus: 4

[Dan]

Captain America (1968 series) #100-109: Awesome stuff here. The stories are pretty interchangeable, and essentially boil down to "which bad guy/pile of bad guys is Cap going to fling himself at this month?" However, the artwork is some of the best Kirby ever came up with; the action is top notch, and the early teamwork with S.H.I.E.L.D. means that he seems to have a new Kirby Device every issue, and those are always huge fun. Stan's not given a lot to do; his writing is perfectly serviceable, but this is purely Jack's show. Most of the issues were inked by Syd Shores, and those are the better ones. Just hugely entertaining.

[Dread]

Syd Shores was a hugely underrated inker for Kirby. Top 5 for sure.

[Dread]

X-O Manowar Valiant 25th Anniversary Special #1: This is an origin for the suit.. Pretty okay. X-O is, and always has been, the most give or take series of Valiant's run for me anyway.

1872 #1: Yup. Pretty fun.

A-Force #2: I'm out. Generic and nothing is happening.

Action Comics #42: You know, I don't dislike the writing or the art. I think they're both fantastic actually. My problem is the direction. I'm out.

Age of Apocalypse #1: Okay. I'll give it one more.

Airboy #2: Maybe the best comic book being published right now. Holy shit this is good. James Robinson's best work of his career by a long shot.

All-Star Section Eight #2: I think I'll follow this out of morbid curiosity. How is there no age requirement put on the cover of this book? It is full of drinking til you puke, sexual innuendo and violence to animals and yet it has Green lantern on the cover. This might get some comic stores in trouble.

Archie #1: Holy shit, this was good. Like, really good. Like The Office for high school kids set in the Archie universe. This is kind of amazing.

Faith no more/Mr Bungle flipbook (or whatever its official name is): It's amazing how long it took, considering how rabid Patton's fanbase is. The FNM side is a pretty by the book comic harkening back to the Rock n Roll Comics of the 80s (which is kind of comforting in a weird way). The Bungle side is actually good comics. Displaying the insanity of Bungle kind of beautifully. It's a weird book though. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Comics fans won't get it if they don't know who the bands are and the fans of the bands are too hardcore to find any of it informative.

Colder The Bad Seed: Holy shit. Nightmare architects these guys are. Shivers.

The Valiant: hands down the best miniseries of the year. THIS is how you do a universe-wide crossover.

Iron Fist The living Weapon vol 1: I wanted to wait til vol 2 comes out but I couldn't. This is one of the best things Marvel's published in 10 years. The story is single-minded but multi-layered and engaging. The art is like the best of Jim Lee, Frank Miller, Horatio Altuna and Milo Manara mixed together and yet is completely new at the same time. Looking forward to Kaare's Image book because Marvel doesn't deserve him.

Cyber Force Rebirth vol 2: A pretty big step down from vol 1.

X vol 5: This might be the best of the entire run so far. A real look at X's powers in this one.

Comics: 745

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 78

Omnibus: 4

[Dan]

Power Man and Iron Fist vol. 1 #76-83: I got this in a cheap lot. This is towards the end of Mary Jo Duffy's run as the writer, and sees the changeover in art from Kerry Gammill to Denys Cowan. Overall, this is a fairly fun book; it's very, very lighthearted and has a great sense of humor, at a time when Marvel was starting to get pretty dark. Luke Cage is a very funny character in this who has absolutely no time at all for any of the bullshit going on around him. The stories can be pretty light and frankly forgettable, however, and Luke is really the only character with any real personality. Also, the Shooter-era "explain who they are and what they can do in every issue" mantra is on full display here, and while "Danny's really good at martial arts" is easy enough to get across, every single issue has Luke mentioning his "steel-hard skin" and his "300 pounds of solid muscle", in those precise words. Every one.

Gammill's artwork is decent, but Cowan hasn't hit his stride yet, and the stuff he turns in here can be pretty ugly. Some of his layouts are nonsensical, and he's not so much about backgrounds. He'll get much better later on, but these issues aren't a good showcase for him.

Also, there's a straight-up homage to Doctor Who in one issue (they meet a time-traveling professor who assists "Luke and the Fist" against the Dredlox, pepperpot-shaped wheeled robots that scream "Incinerate! Incinerate!") which was confirmed in the letter column a few issues later. In 1981, that took serious nerd-cred.

Also, look at this cover and tell me you wouldn't buy it.

[Venneh]

Hawkeye 22: MU leaked this on Monday, and I got to read it a few times before they yanked it again. Fucking. Perfect. Finale. Everything is wrapped in a way that doesn't feel artificial, there are some awesome fights, and Kate and Lucky get to kick ass right alongside Clint, as well as the neighbors.

The only thing I am genuinely sad that will probably not get picked up on is Mr. Bishop hiring the coalition to take out Kate and Clint.

[Davedevil]

Archie #1 - Hmm. I liked it, but I'm not sure if I'll follow this monthly.

Umbrella Academy - Fun book with some interesting characters, in the writing and visually. More of the latter, but Way shows skill in comic writing right away. Art by Gabriel Ba is great, real Mignola vibe thanks to Dave Stewart's colors. (Who it seems is just as responsible for the Hellboy look as Mignola) I could definitely see this becoming a TV show, and I hope it does.

Harley Quinn and Power Girl #1 - Which follows up on my least favorite arc from the Harley series. The sexual jokes got old quick. Art was good though.

Superman #41 - Hm.

Sons of the Devil #2 - Creepy and engaging.

ASM #18.1 - Still solid in writing and art.

Spider-Gwen #5 - This universe's Matt Murdock is a jerk. I hope the gap between issues doesn't mess up the flow of the story because this is going well.

Star Wars #6 - A good fight between Luke and Boba Fett, though the art was muddled at times. The Han and Leia B-plot was intriguing as well. I have a feeling it can't really go too far with it taking place in between movies, but we'll see.

[Professor]

Scarlet Spider - Felt a lot like the Ben Riley era of the Spider books. I think it was the supporting cast that drives that feeling. This is at its best when it wasn't tied down with crossovers (Minimum Carnage was a bore.) Disappointed in the ending, as it was rushed and incomplete.

New Warriors (Vol. 5) - Last page of Scarlet Spider said he'd be in this, so what not give it a shot. Quick and fun. Would have been better served as a planned 12 issue series, rather than an ongoing that ended at 12 issues. And it felt like it was trying to be Superior Foes of Spider-Man at times.

Comics: 272
Digital First Comics: 59
Graphic Novels: 18

Trades: 97 (527)(4)(144)

[Dread]

Baltimore The Cult of the Red King #3: this is really gothic and slow-burny. Great, though.

Barb Wire #1: I'm all for rebooting the Comics Greatest World stuff because I loved it so as a kid, but I'm aware that it hasn't all aged well. Barb Wire is, more than anything, ripe for a reboot. However, getting the original writer back to do it is probably not the best way to go. No thanks.

Batman Beyond #2: I really want to look at this for the Bernard Chang art, but I don't want to read it for the story. I'm out.

Bloodshot Reborn #4: This series makes a shitload more sense having read The Valiant. Good stuff. I still don't dig Bloodsquirt as a story concept, but I'm willing to ride it out.

Bloodstrike #1: Rob Liefeld cycles through all of his character types and builds yet another shitty story around them. But ooh! There's lots of swear words and violence and nudity. But it's kind of like what your repressed Christian friend as a child would come up with. I'm fairly certain that Liefeld has never watched porn because he doesn't have any idea what a big dick looks like. This book is ALMOST worth buying to see. Almost. Holy shit this was bad.

Captain Canuck #1,2: This should have come out ten years ago to be effective in this incarnation. It's just rote at this point.

Civil War #1: The first half of this issue is boredom personified. Once Stark and Rogers meet, however, it becomes electric. I don't quite get how a world that emerges from a single country where the Civil War has only ever raged exists without the prior relationships of the characters, but I think that Hickman and his Marvel editorial team are hoping no one thinks TOO hard about Secret Wars.

Darth Vader #7: Pretty fun.

Evil Dead 2 Beyond Dead By Dawn #1: this is sort of the film from Annie's perspective.

Future Imperfect #2: Fucking outstanding.

Ghost Racers #2: This issue actually has a story, but it still isn't very good.

God Is Dead #37,38: this new direction is insanely beautiful and I love it.

Comics: 759

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 78

Omnibus: 4

[Davedevil]

Gen 13 - The original miniseries. Good lord this was tough to read. J. Scott Campbell wasn't the artist he'd become, looking like the midpoint between Liefeld and Lee. Grunge in particular was hard to look at. They had no idea how to write exposition so there's just boxes and boxes of words that slow everything down. I really should just read the later runs of this book.

Princess Leia 5 - Sad it's only a limited series. Gonna miss my monthly dose of Waid and the Dodsons' Leia. Wonderful finale.

Spider-Woman 6 - Great book. Wonder what's gonna happen post-Secret Wars, but it's great right now.

[Dread]

Green Arrow #42: I like the art a lot. Zircher's great. I just can't dig a modern day GA story where he fights a giant machine piloted by a guy.

Harrow County #3: <shivers>

Imperium #6: There is SO MUCH going on here.

JL Gods and Monsters Batman #1-3: This is great. Kirk Langstrom is a vampire Batman. DeMatteis has an amazing script style here that is sharp and incisive. Dow Smith's art is amazing. I was worried it would be in the Bruce Timm style, but I'm glad it wasn't.

JL Gods and Monsters Superman #1-3: Kal-El landed with migrant workers and he got to see how terrible America can be. Holy shit, this is a Superman you don't want to run across. Same great scripts by DeMatteis. Great art by the artist whose name I can't remember. Looking forward to Wonder Woman.

Justice League of America #2: Hitch's book. This is fun. How is he doing this monthly? I feel like issues one and two were biweekly.

Lando #1: Ehh....I don't think so.

Masks 2 #4: It got interesting.

Master of Kung Fu #3: It kind of lost me, but there's only one more.

Midnighter #2: Not as good as last issue, but fun nonetheless.

Mrs Deadpool and the Howling Commandoes #2: Yeah, I'm out.

Mythic #2: Holy shit. This IS the comic I used to be working on.

Negative Space #1: I'm a little confused, but also a lot impressed.

Comics: 776

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 78

Omnibus: 4

[Rjoyadet]

Godzilla in Hell: My girlfriend said it best when she asked why Godzilla would be in Hell if he is more chaotic neutral than evil. Reads like Gon in the fact that there are no words.

[Venneh]

Black Canary 2: More stuff on the road and training as we get a sense of the band's dynamics and exactly what is coming after the kid. Some real neat fight scenes too. Wu continues to own.

Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps 2: We get more of Battleworld fleshed out, and more of a sense that things, despite Doom, are starting to unravel. Also, we get a Rhodey. Love that each of the girls is getting fleshed out too. One of the neater tie-ins.

Planet Hulk 3: Dinosaurs, more stuff going crazy in Hulk land, and what I swear to god is one of the gayest interpretations of Bucky and Steve, ever. You go, Sam Humphries. You go.

Mercury Heat 1: Gillen does Dredd-esque sci-fi. This thing has apparently been in gestation since about '08? I'm interested.

Siege 1: Oh yeah, Ben is totally the Wall. All my favorite Gillen written ladies, plus amazing dpses by a guest artist each issue? Sign me the fuck up. Not that big of a fan of Andrade on the art here but eh, I can live with it.

Secret Wars Battleworld 3: Buddhist monk Wolverine, Western Deadpool, and a one page Ant Man joke comic. Eh.

Years of Future Past 3: Well that was a right turn out of nowhere. Okay. Let's see how the hell this winds up next issue. (A+ always for having Lockheed battle things.)

Captain Britain and the Mighty Avengers 1: Brief peaceful utopia led by Yinsen and a whole bunch of other characters you kinda forgot existed, and having doubts about Doom being all shattered by Faiza motherfucking Hussain (bless you Ewing for remembering she exists), promptly smashing into a Dredd-esque world with the Punisher as Dredd basically? Yup. Totally here for this.

Island 1: Brandon Graham and Emma Rios tackle the comics magazine. Graham does a continuation of Multiple Warheads (I followed it well enough despite not knowing what the fuck is going on), and provides two additional two-page pieces looking at process. I like. Emma Rios' is the one that has my attention, though. Kelly Sue provides a great one-off essay. There's a cat mummy thing in the back that's not quite my speed, eh. Pick it up and page through it at minimum.

[Dread]

Penthouse Comix #1-33: IN the early nineties, Bob Guccione bounded into the world of comics, and, while the results are somewhat obvious, he sure knew how to rally the talent. Uncensored work from Richard Corben, Moebius, Altuna, Kevin Maguire, Tom Fowler, and Mark Texeira. There are some pretty clear turds here, but many of these are sharply and smartly written satires, sci fi stories, and comedies.

Comics: 809

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 78

Omnibus: 4

[Dread]

Onyx #1: yawn.

Princess Leia #5: It ended alright. Not as good as the rest of the series has been. Sad to see it go as it's the best of the SW comics.

Providence #2: TWO FUCKING ISSUES IN A ROW? Fuck you, Alan Moore. This series should be called "Two White Guys talking for thirty pages." The. Worst.

Rasputin #6: Oh fuck. Rasputin's back. Lovely.

Rebels #4: Another snoozer. I'm out.

Red Skull #1: This was fucking glorious. Josh Williamson is my favorite comic writer right now.

Runaways #2: Nope. Boring. I'm out.

Savior #4: This might be the slowest moving comic series ever...in a world where ALAN FUCKING MOORE'S PROVIDENCE DOESN'T EXIST! I'm out of this one too.

Secret Wars Journal #3: Pretty inconsequential, though I liked the Wolverine Noir story AND Scott Aukerman's Doc Samson story enough. It just didn't wow me.

Secret Wars #4: Okay. Alright. Something's happening. Still very fan-fiction-y. This event has two or three peripheral series that are twice as good as the main series.

Secret Wars 2099 #3: namely this one. Defenders 2099? Yes. Please. More.

Comics: 820

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 78

Omnibus: 4

[Davedevil]

The Best of the Spirit - This was a collection published around the time of the movie's release. Unbelievable how good this is. The stories are all well-selected, giving you a good overview of the kind of stories the Spirit featured. I'm in awe of the art and storytelling. If I never looked it up online and saw that by the end, Eisner was using ghost writers and artists, I would've bought that it was Eisner all the way. Comic strips are hard to collect, considering that there's a lot of them, but I need to read more. (It seems that with collections of strips, they assume that this'll be the only thing you collect)

[Dread]

Justice League Gods and Monsters Wonder Woman #1-3: DeMatteis writing, Rick Leonardi drawing in a semi DCAU-style? Kinda cool. These versions of the characters are all far more relatable than I expected. More than their normal world counterparts, too.

Sensation Comics... #41-43: The end of a great arc and beginning of an awful one.

Squadron Sinister #2: Love this.

Starve #2: interesting. Might not be following monthly anymore. Feels like a "long game" kind of thing.

Strange Fruit #1: Not sure why this is so controversial. It's pretty rote to me. Might have been provocative in the early 90s.

Sundowners #10, 11: Pretty solid. Weird as always.

TMNT #47: ok. Not great.

Comics: 832

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 78

Omnibus: 4

[Dread]

Danger Club vol 2 Rebirth: Ok, volume 1 was amazing. One of my favorite books of last year. Then, I picked up what I thought were the first two issues of this arc and was confused beyond measure. Turns out those were parts 2 and 3. Got the trade. Still fucking excellent. I assume it's over now, but if there's more, I'll be back.

Captain America Streets of Poison Epic Collection: Almost 500 pages of Ron Lim-drawn Captain America. Shit, yeah!

Comics: 832

Graphic Novels: 33

Trade Paperbacks: 79

Omnibus: 5

[Dan]

The Evolutionary War Omnibus: collects a ton of Marvel Annuals from 1988. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: annuals suck. They purport to be a big, exciting pile of bonus awesomeness every summer, and what they actually deliver is fill-in work, old inventory, and tryouts by people you'll never hear of again. In 1988, Marvel tried an experiment where they told one enormous crossover story across eleven Annuals. (It worked well enough that they did it a few more times after this.) This tells the story of the High Evolutionary, a scientist/demigod/genuine British person with the amazing ability to transform cows into nannies. He's working on a giant bomb that will cause humankind to evolve into the next level of whatever they're going to be, and his plan involves cleansing the Earth of non-standard offshoots of humanity like Inhumans, however many subterranean underground mole people Marvel has running around, Savage Land mutates, and so on, so all that's left are baseline humans (along with mutants and mutated humans) so that his experiment in forced evolution will be pure or some shit. Also he has his people blow up a lot of drug shipments, because drugs are bad. I dunno. This wasn't great. I applaud the idea of making annuals actually do something but the HE's plan is actually not really all that fleshed out, and some issues barely address it at all. And while some of the comics are decent (The Punisher annual features pretty good Mark Teixiera art, Spectacular Spider-Man has an interesting clone Gwen story from Gerry Conway and Mark Bagley, Fantastic Four is kinda fun, The Avengers has some nice work from M.D. Bright, and Steve Englehart turns in some interesting scripts across the board), most of them are dull and some are outright garbage. I'm looking at you, Silver Surfer. Also, we get the first appearance of Speedball, and we meet The Slug, which is the result of someone thinking that the Kingpin's all right, I guess, but he really should be fatter.

Wolverine (2013) #1-6: Ever since Hugh Jackman started playing him in the films, Wolverine's been cleaned up quite a bit, and become much more of a "stand aside, citizen, I'll handle this" kind of superhero. The funny thing is, with Logan, this feels earned. He's been striving to better himself for thirty years, and now he's a teacher and an Avenger. Fact is, I like this Wolverine a lot. Paul Cornell is a writer I quite enjoy, and I appreciated his take on the character quite a bit. The first four issues feature Alan Davis on art, and that certainly doesn't hurt. Not the deepest stuff ever created, but certainly fun.

Nightcrawler (2014) #1-6: I expected to not like this very much at all. Kurt Wagner is one of my all time favorite X-Men in the right hands, and I was promised a return to the fun swashbuckler I loved so much as a kid. However, the cover very clearly said Chris Claremont and Todd Nauck, so my expectations were lowered. So imagine my surprise when these flew by. Someone is finally, finally editing Claremont. He's nowhere near the name he used to be, so he can be edited, and while the dialogue is clearly him, there's nowhere near as much of it as there used to be. At no point is no quarter asked and none given, no one is of little faith, no one demands that the X-Men Hear Me, or any one of a million other writing tics he is justly famous for. There's just good story, great character interaction, and Kurt surrounded by Bamfs, which is something every book needs. And Nauck's art is the best I've seen him produce in years. I'm not a fan in the slightest - his faces are hideous and his anatomy is sketchy at best - but here, he's drawn some good stuff; honestly, better than I would have ever thought he could do. I'm really glad I gave this a shot.

[Dread]

Nice. Evolutionary War is one of the omnibi I have that I haven't read yet. I read a couple of the annuals (part of the problem with that shit is that it was near impossible to find every part of those crossovers) but not the whole thing.

Nixon's Pals: Joe Casey and Chris Burnham's OGN about a parole officer for super-villains. Great high-concept idea and delivery that would feel very welcome at HBO. I've never liked Burnham's art more than I do here. You can tell he loves creating this universe. The back matter is great not for the art steps but for the way Casey scripts. He writes out scenes in prose complete with dialogue and let's the artist go for it. Interesting thing I'd like to try sometime.

Comics: 832

Graphic Novels: 34

Trade Paperbacks: 79

Omnibus: 5