30-Day Comic Book Challenge - Week 1
Wolverine: Revenge #2
Uncanny X-Men #4
Exceptional X-Men #2
X-Force #4
X-Factor #3
Wolverine #2
Batman #151
I made through seven days without any real effort. Most of the bookos were read over my morning bowl of cereal, as predicted, but I did read one lying in my adjustable bed after putting the head up, like the privilidged white person I am. I don’t know why exactly, but that made me feel nice and relaxed and I might try it again before the month is over.
Anywho, you’ll notice I read a lot of X-Men titles (Wolverine is an X-Man, remember). For those who don’t know the comics world, there are a ton of X-books, like there are Spider-Man books, Bat-books, etc., and recently, all of the books in the X-Men line were re-launched starting with issue #1. It is a marketing ploy by comics companies to try and entice new readers, and even though I’m not actually a new reader, I fell for it like a sycophant. In fact, the only non-X-Men books I currently read are Captain Marvel (currently on hiatus) Iron Man, and Batman, and anything by Terry Moore, but he hasn’t written anything new in awhile. Also, it should be noted that there are about 50 Batman titles, but I only read straight-up Batman. I’m not that big of a fan.
As rich as the X-Men are as characters, reading one every day for a week did kind of make me think I should vary my tastes a little more. Over the years, I have regularly read Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Daredevil, Avengers, Black Widow, Punisher, a bunch of those Star Wars books that Marvel put out, and even goddam Power Pack, but right now it is mostly X-Men, and I’m not sure if that’s me or the books not being interesting to me. It also has a lot to do with all the convenient comic book stores around me closing, so I no longer walk in and and see something on the shelf and take a fly on it. If you’re interested, I talked about this in a previous post awhile back, when my local comic shop closed:
Comic Book Stores That Settle
I haven’t added this stuff in awhile, but Substackers seem to do it often, so here goes:
Wow. That picture is definitely not recent, as there is a lot more gray in my beard now.
So, the plan for the month will be to expand my horizons a little bit and not just read X-books. In fact, I just ordered the collected hardcover for a book called Somna, which won the 2024 Eisner Award for Best New Series, so look at me go! It’s by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, and if you click on the title link and decide to check it out, I’ll get 27 cents!
So, thanks for joining me on this journey. Hopefully, by next week, we’ll have 7 books and not all of them will have the letter “X” in the title. Also, if you are so inclined, please like and subscribe and check out my podcast, my own comic and my RedBubble store and try to enjoy life a little before Inauguration Day, when there’s a good chance everything will go straight to Hell.
On that note…