I’m back, these creators are back and these villains are bad

Dear Super-Villains 
DC Comics 
Creators: Michael Northrop and Gustavo Duarte 
Release date: April 2021 

Hello, Kiddie Cops, and welcome back to the first new blog post in a spell.

I initially stopped posting here for two reasons. First, I’d recently started a new job that was taking up more of my time. Second, my comics buying was dropping to very few titles at the time, and I was getting a little worried that I might be just talking about the same handful of titles over and over again. I didn’t want the blog to suffer because of that.

Jump ahead almost two years, and I’m still not really buying that many new monthly comics. But I am still buying and enjoying a handful of new titles every month. My decreased regular pull list has allowed me to try some new things. And buying fewer new comics each month has allowed me time to read some of the many, many comics, trades and more that I’ve purchased over the years but never had a chance to read before and to finally re-read some favorites I haven’t explored again in several years.

Now, this blog has always been about celebrating comics that I love. You try some new things and not every one of them is going to be to your liking. But I don’t want to dwell on comics I don’t like. If I didn’t like it, why spend more time with it and make myself continue to feel bad about it? I’d much rather give a shout out to creators, characters and projects I enjoyed in an attempt to help others discover the same delight for themselves.

And I’ve found myself doing just that over the last several months again. I just wasn’t doing the celebrating here. I was writing much shorter bits of praise for some recently read comics, then sharing those thoughts on other platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. In the past few months, I’ve shared praise for books like The Marvels Project by Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting; Batman Universe by Brian Michael Bendis and Nick Derington; Point of Impact by Jay Faerber, Koray Kuranel and Charles Pritchett; The Booster Gold hardcovers – The Big Fall and Future Lost – by Dan Jurgens; Pulp by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips; the two Robin Archives from DC Comics; Infinite Frontier Nightwing by Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo and Adriano Lucas; and Somerset Holmes by Bruce Jones, Brent Anderson, April Campbell and Ed King.

There’s nothing really wrong with posting about comics on those platforms. I’m sure I will continue to do so. But my comics-related posts on those platforms were mixed in with other kinds of posts – politics and job and family and real life, those kinds of things – and not likely to be seen by too many people outside my immediate circle of followers and friends.

At one point, this blog had a decent following, and if I start posting regularly again, it may have more of an audience again, giving my attempts to promote good comics a potentially wider audience.

Which brings us to this digest-sized modern original graphic novel, a sequel to the popular book I reviewed in my last post here nearly two years ago. Once again, the book focuses on some inquisitive youngsters who email their questions to super-villains this time instead of the members of the Justice League. As you can likely tell from the image above, the villains featured include Harley Quinn, Lex Luthor, Catwoman, Grodd, Giganta, Sinestro, Black Manta, and for some reason, Katana.

Michael Northrop’s words and Gustavo Duarte’s illustrations make for a whimsical, fun follow-up tale to Dear Justice League that I heartily recommend. To my taste, this volume was a little more loose than the first volume, but what do you expect from a group of villains all vying for the top spot? They’re not going to act the same as the heroes, obviously.

Dear Super-Villains is absolutely another fun read. Check back soon for something else from the realm of comics that I’ve recently read and believe might be worth your time to check out.

Don't give up on me just yet

It's been a crazy couple weeks, so no new post once again this week, but here's a small teaser image for the next post, just to let you know I am thinking of things. Just haven't had a chance to write my thoughts down as yet.

In the meantime, happy collecting!

Sorry About That, Folks

I swear, the title of the previous post was intended to refer ONLY to Kurt Busiek's final issue of his Avengers run, and NOT that I wasn't coming back.

Unfortunately, work — my paying job — has been getting in the way a whole lot of late. I won't bore you with all the details, but the increased demands on my time there do NOT look to be changing any time soon.

It is my hope that I can continue to post here from time to time in the foreseeable future, but I can't promise any kind of regularity right now. Hopefully, that will change before long.

In the meantime, thanks to those of you who have still been stopping by; I hope you continue to do so, enjoying posts from the archives when there is not something new. I really hope to be back as time allows and get back to a regular posting schedule before long.

The Best Of The Bunch

My World And Welcome To It
Baboon Books
Richard John Marcej, writer and artist

This little gem was a free bonus sent along with an order from Baboon Books. The other items I'd ordered weren't bad, I'd even be interested in reading more from some of the creators, but the other books just didn't grab me as much as I'd hoped. This book, however, contains 22 examples of Richard Marcej's daily illustrated blog where he draws a comic about something from that day in his life. Some of the subjects involve his daily routine. Others involve strange things he witnessed or overheard or did. It was a fun read filled with humor and a lot of dedication if Marcej really produces one of these illustrated journal entries each and every day. Kudos to him for that dedication, and more kudos for the fact that the cartoons are very readable and entertaining. I plan to start checking out his blog.

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Short post today, but I also have a brief bit of housekeeping. Today's will be the last Sunday post, at least for a while. My family has undergone some changes in the past few weeks which have made it a bit harder to find time to generate posts three times a week. I'm hoping that will be temporary; but for now, I'm returning to the original Tuesday/Friday schedule for new posts. Not a major change, but wanted to let the faithful know up front.

See ya on Tuesday, Kiddie Cops!

I'm Back!

Hey, Kiddie Cops! I'm back!

Did you miss me?

Probably not. If I had any regular readers before, they've probably long since given up waiting for updates, and since my previous round of posts never generated any comments (at least none about the actual content of the posts), I doubt too many people were reading my musings back then anyway.

Not that I don't welcome readers; far from it. If you've stumbled across this blog, then welcome. Feel free to just browse, or to comment or whatever. Maybe some of my thoughts on the titles I'm reading or have read may spark an interest in someone else, or give them incentive to try something new. That would be fantastic!

But in all honesty, the first round of posts ended up helping me in unintended ways, and I'm back in an effort to recapture a bit of that "magic" I experienced the first time around.

Like most folks out there, I'm not made of money despite my collecting hobby — or maybe because of it. (I'm not made of unlimited time, either, which also proves to often be a hinderance, but that's another post.) Anyway, every so often, I find myself for economic reasons needing to trim the number of comics I buy each month. I know which books I'm still enjoying and which are maybe dropping on the interest-scale, at least in a basic sense. But it can get very easy each month when it comes time to order, to fall back on the habits of previous months without really thinking. Or to give a slacking book "one more month" to get good again for five months without realizing you've been disappointed for that long.

Writing this blog and these little reviews forced me to spend more time thinking about what I liked and why, as well as what I didn't care for anymore and how far some titles had fallen. That, in turn, made it a little easier to make cuts when it came time to order each month. Often I'd remember my reactions better after posting them, but even if my memory was somewhat vague, I could quickly revisit my thoughts in the blog.

Well, I find myself in need of that assistance once again. I'm trying to trim some dead weight from my "pull list." So why not resume putting my thoughts down here? I had no good answer for that question, so here I am, giving the blog another whirl.

Don't think that means this will be all comic-bashing. Far from it. Trying new things means once in a while having to spit something back out. A person can get tired of a steady diet of even something great that has become somewhat stale. But by and large, I love comics as an entertainment medium. I guarantee there'll be loads of good here to counter the bad.

Next time we'll dive right in to some recent reads, but until then, Happy Collecting!!

More Links In The Chain

Just another quick post for today to call attention to the update links to the right. The first one connects to my comics for sale site. The others are comics news sites I frequent. Been meaning to post them for a while now and haven't gotten it done. Now it is. Check 'em out. Happy collecting.

Hello, hello, hello

Wow, I really haven't been here much of late. Been busy, busy, busy. Trying to keep up with projects around the house and some overtime at work -- nice on the checkbook, not so nice on the life. Fighting being sleepy right now. Got woke up early this morning with some family business and wasn't feeling too great yesterday when I went to bed, so I'm a little wiped right now. But I logged in to check e-mail and figured I'd take just a quick minute to check in here and pledge to try and do better in the coming days.

Ciao for now, though.

Checking In

Hey, everybody! I'm baaaaack!

No, I wasn't abducted by aliens for the better part of the month. Been going through some changes at work which have translated into many extra hours. And work has been taking enough extra time of late that I haven't been feeling especially creative, or even motivated, for that matter.

But, now that I'm here, I see it has actually been closer to a month than I thought it had been, so it's about time I checked in, even if just for a brief visit.

I hope to be back in a few days with more. Take care of yourselves.

Staying connected

Nothing much to say today, but it's the last day of my weekend (yes, my weekend from work is now Sunday and Monday), I'm online, and figured I'd drop by, post some quick thoughts before continuing on and logging off.

One thing I'll be doing after leaving here is updating the comic book Web site. If anyone has found their way here and might be looking for some cheap comics to buy, pop on over to my site at http://www.angelfire.com/comics/tsgnightwing It's full of hundreds of comics which are extras for me and which I hope to sell to someone cheaply, but making enough to continue buying new comics for myself. Check it out. You know you want to.

Another place I am thinking about going posting today is classmates.com. My wife recently reunited with an old high school friend that way and the two have gotten reacquainted quite nicely through the site. It got me wondering about some kids I went to school with -- or, I guess they probably aren't kids anymore, but you know what I mean. But anyway, I'm thinking about checking out a trial membership and seeing how many fellow students from Grand Valley Community School I might find there to catch up with.

Until next time, let's all be careful out there.

Checking In

Nothing really much to say today, but wanted to check in before too much time had passed. Just got done updating the comics Web site a few minutes ago. Nothing added this week, but managed to sell a couple comics and removed them. Dunno how much I'll post this week. Thursday is my wife's and my anniversary. Going out of town for a few days. Likely will be Internet free most of the time. So, if I don't talk to you again, have a good weekend.

Hello, one and all (you know who you are). Recently, several other people I know have started blogs and have kept them going quite well, including my lovely wife. Especially her recent posts got me to wondering if my blog even still existed anywhere in the cyber-realm. Well, apparently it does, so I thought I'd drop a quick post today and try to drop by occasionally to post tidbits and drek. I'm sure posts will still be very sporadic, but maybe with a little effort I can achieve a bit more frequency than what I have had in the past. Wish me luck, Kiddie-Cops.