30-Day Comic Book Challenge Week 4 & Final Thoughts
Done and done.
Something is Killing the Children #4
X-Men #7
X-Factor #4
Something is Killing the Children #5
Something is Killing the Children #6 + Somna (1st Half)
Somna (2nd half)
Uncanny X-Men #5
Scarlett #2
Scarlett #3
Hello, and welcome back, if you have been here before. If not, welcome! I have successfully completed my (admittedly rather easy) trek of reading a comic every day in November. The month really flew by, but I can’t tell if it was reading comics that made it seem like that, because I was enjoying them so much, or if it was Thanksgiving falling so late, or whatever, but 30 days is 30 days, no matter how you slice it.
But the point was to get through the backlog, and I did that. The point was also to try and reignite my love of the medium, and I think I did that, too. Despite my appreciation of the X-Men, the first few days were a bit of a slog. Before we start a whole thing, I know we are talking about comics, and there are probably some people who read whole novels in a day, but I am not one of those people. Like I said at the beginning, most of my comic comsumption comes over my breakfast cereal. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, and some traveling and some time-off from work, I was able to take in comics in other times and ways; some digitally, some while lying in bed, and even a couple of Somna issues in my local Starbucks. Interestingly enough, Somna has a lot of (very artistic) adult themes, so iw as wondeirng what the two ladies at the table next to me would have thought if they glanced over while I was reading it. Well, I certainly enjoyed it, at least. I’ll probably read it again sometime.
Ahem.
Anyway, I have not been “plugged in” to the comics world since all my stores closed, So Somna was one of the books I had to search a little for. I also was able to finally start reading Something is Killing the Children, after a friend gave me her copies awhile back when she was moving. To me, these kinds of books are what reading comics as a grown-ass adult are all about. And I don’t mean sex or anything. They are a little creepy, a little violent, very thematic, very artistic, and very cool. They are literature, and that is what I have been missing in comics lately. I don’t want to be that guy who poops on “mainstream” comics, because comics as a whole are so out of the mainstream that even Deadpool or Spider-Man can’t be really be considered predominant forms of entertainment. But I get it. When comic book nerds talk about “mainstream comics,” they are talking about Marvel and DC. However, a quick note on comic sales: DC sent out a press release saying that the top selling comic of 2024 was Absolute Batman #1, and it was reported to have sold 400,000 copies across all stores and all printings. However, some are saying that Marvel actually had the top seller with Ultimate Spider-Man #1 back at the beginning of the year with 450,000 copies. However, to put things in perspective, Jim Lee’s relaunch of X-Men back in the 1991 sold 8.2 million copies, and the top selling Manga book of this year, Jujutsu Kaisen, apparently sold 6.27 million copies. This is all just to say that the “mainstream comics” that I am talking about still don’t really amount to a hill of beans, no matter how many successful movies and shows they make about the characters.
This is not to say that mainstream American comics can’t be literature. The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Daredevil: Born Again, Old Man Logan, Captain America: Winter Soldier… if you’re reading this, you have probably read some of them, or at least heard of them, and probably seen the movies. And when I didn’t just read comics but read about them (and podcasted about them, and thought about them…), I would hear about these books and others like them. And it wasn’t just the corporate hype-machine getting behind something because they wanted to make a few bucks. These were damn good reads, and they still are. They are what I would call literature, and I recommend reading them, and of course, clicking on the titles if you plan on purchasing. I’m not just about spreading the word. I gotta make a few bucks, too.
So, that’s the conclusion I came to last month, that this stuff can still be good. Sometimes you have to do some digging for it, and sometimes they are right in front of your face, but they are there. So read comics, ya’ll. And let me know what you think in the comments. And don’t forget to like and subscribe.
Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon with more fairly shallow observations.