By Zack Quaintance — I am always caught by surprise by holidays, which consistently leaving me feeling more worn out than they do rejuvenated for reasons I struggle to understand. Anyway, point is I’m here, a little worse for the Thanksgiving ware. I am, however, totally ready to let you know about the books that our committee (of one) has selected as the Top Comics to Buy for December 4, 2019.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Sorry for the delay this week, but it’s actually kind of fitting because our comic of the week is Batman Creature of the Night #4. So, why does that make it kind of fitting? Well, because two years have elapsed between the release of Batman Creature of the Night #1 and this week’s finale.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — The great new #1 issues just keep coming this month, and — here’s my favorite part — the vast majority of creator-owned. During the first two Wednesdays alone, we got excellent new books such as Undiscovered Country #1, Black Stars Above #1, Family Tree #1, Folklords #1, and Heist or How to Steal a Planet #1. That is..a lot of excellent and original new books.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — The holiday is really setting in now, which means our committee (of one) is extra grateful for weeks like this in which there are less notable books...but the books we are getting through the direct market are largely stellar. This is a week in which a few key things dawned on me. I mean, I’m always talking about how good comics are right now, but maybe that’s always a little bit true when you’re reading a lot and keeping really engaged with the medium (the same can be said of movies, TV, music, etc.).
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This is the most packed week I’ve seen all year, at least as far as my own tastes in creator-owned comics are concerned. Each week, we pick a top 5 list of new comics coming on Wednesday to spotlight. This week’s list of Top Comics to Buy for November 6, 2019 could have easily gone to 6, or 7, or maybe even 10. There were, quite simply, too many great books.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Ah, the always-odd fifth Wednesday, which often feels like a little bonus at the end of whatever month it shows up in. This fifth Wednesday is no different, and out Top Comics to Buy for October 30, 2019 maybe reflect that a bit, featuring as they do four books from one of our favorite rising indie publishers, Vault Comics.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This week really made me take stock of this year, featuring as it does two of the major highlights in comics for 2019: Criminal and Immortal Hulk. It’s really, in many ways, been a very solid year for comics, albeit not an overly flashy one. We’ve gotten some really stellar self-contained superhero stories, thinking here specifically of Immortal Hulk as well as the Superman epic that unfurled at DC and ultimately delivered the return of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This is somewhat of a lighter week for my individual tastes, although if I look to the New #1s and One Shots section of our Top Comics to Buy for October 16, 2019, I do find some capital B Big books dropping. In fact, while this column generally doesn’t put #1s in our Top 5, there were so many strong debuts this week that we had to make some exceptions.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I just got back from my first trip to New York Comic Con, and boy is my everything exhausted. It was a great show, though. I covered it for ComicsBeat, and I found myself running from panels to the press room to panels and back again. Covering these shows is never easy, but it’s nice to have a challenge within the context of what might otherwise be overwhelming. Also, as a professional journalist by trade, I feel like I’m doing at least a little bit of service to the industry.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — It’s New York Comic Con week, and so for folks heading to the show (myself included), the new releases might take a bit of a backseat...which isn’t an indictment of quality. It’s not really a statement either way. Timing is a thing that happens, etc. Anyway, the big headliner for me this week in the Top Comics to Buy for October 2 is House of X #6.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This is one of my favorite weeks, wherein the creator-owned books in our Top Comics to Buy for September 25, 2019 outnumber the superhero choices by a wide margin, in this case four to one. What I also appreciate about the selections this week is the diversity in the creator-owned ideas. We have a couple of horror books from Vault, the latest installment in the Brubaker/Phillips noir epic Criminal, and the genre-shattering Tommy Gun Wizards.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Well, well, well...it finally happened. A comic has dislodged the Jonathan Hickman X-Men run from the top of our PICK OF THE WEEK selections, where those books have dominated since the series began with House of X #1 way back on July 24. That’s a massive run. In our Top Comics to Buy for September 18, however, it has been ended—it just took an entire legion of super-heroes to do it.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This can’t last...that’s what I’ve been thinking since House of X #1 was our Pick of the Week on the Wednesday that Marvel’s X-Men revitalization launched. Yet, here we are — the Top Comics to Buy for September 11, 2019 features another Hickman X-Book right at the top. You know why? Because every time the story loses even a tiny bit of momentum, we get an iconic issue like House of X #4.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — Holy wow, there are so many new #1s and one-shots out this week. I have no idea why, so I’ll just chalk it up to coincidence and move on. First, however, I will note that we don’t typically put new #1 issues in our Top Comics to Buy, unless they’re really really special. The reason being that you almost always need more than that to really get a sense of whether a new book is worthwhile. Plus, you all know what #1 comics you’re probably going to buy, and we do our best to review them anyway.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — All hail the week in which we get six new releases from the best indie comics publisher in the game, Vault. This is seriously an amazing week to be a reader of high-concept fantasy and sci-fi comics. Of those Vault entries, we get continuations of complex stories like Test, The Resonant, She Said Destroy (which was also the name of the screamo band I almost started in high school), and Sera and the Royal Stars.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — This was maybe a lighter week in terms of volume of comics (or maybe not, depending on your preferences), but it’s one of those weeks I love where our Top Comics to Buy for August 21 end up being an exceedingly eclectic bunch. I mean, we have books here about little mechanical fantasy journeymen, an Instagram model with a sinus problem, a lovestruck ancient cosmic god, and the X-Men.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — I’m starting to be predictable, week in and week out putting the new Jonathan Hickman X-Men comic on top as our PICK OF THE WEEK. The thing is, I really feel like we’re witnessing a genuine important moment in comics here—the restoration of a once-vaunted franchise that had fallen into neglect. It’s like watching a community come to its sense and restore a gorgeous art deco theater instead of razing it and building a supermarket on top of it.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — As regular readers must have noticed by now, there have been some big changes to the site this week, namely...the name. We are no longer Batman’s Bookcase, moving instead to the less ironic (and, in my opinion, less funny) but far more original content friendly title of Comics Bookcase. As I wrote on Twitter, the main reason for this is that the site has grown bigger than I ever thought it would, covering an increasingly broad range of comics, and I wanted a new name to reflect that.
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — It’s kind of odd how a single comic can really make a week feel so much better in terms of new comics. For me this week, that comic is Powers of X #1. I absolutely loved House of X #1, a grandiose and confident comic that seemed for the first time in nearly 20 years to announce that the X-Men were starting something that will feel both new and important. As a child of the ‘90s, this feeling is one that I have greatly missed. And I get to have it again this week…
Read MoreBy Zack Quaintance — So, some good news: my backlog of comics for 2019 is down to only 62. This is a minor miracle, considering that at one point immediately after my move (Sacramento -> Washington, D.C.), I found myself with a (figurative) pile in the triple digits. Now, I’m going to enjoy this, but only briefly—going to San Diego Wednesday through Sunday is sure to push it right back up.
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