Post-shop Thoughts, November 2010

The beginning of the month means a trip to the comics shop! This month features a bunch of Return of Bruce Wayne-related books, but which ones made the cut? And, with all those Bat-books, what else did I have room to get? Read on to find out the whats and wherefores.

Bruce Wayne — The Road Home

First up, the Bat-books. And the features of this month are the Bruce Wayne — The Road Home books. I picked up half of the eight books: Batman and Robin, Red Robin, Batgirl, and Ra's al Ghul. These were all written by the current Red Robin writer, Fabian Nicieza, with the exception of the Batgirl book, written by that series' writer, Bryan Q. Miller. I had planned on getting these because I've been enjoying Nicieza's run on Red Robin, I've enjoyed the couple of issues of Batgirl I have read, and I'm most interested in those characters. So, I stuck with that plan, despite seeing some poorer reviews for a couple of those books. Character-love wins out, I guess.

Other Bat-related books

Little surprise here: I'm still picking up Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne and Time Masters: Vanishing Point. I'll see them through to the end. Also, I'm still getting Detective Comics, hoping that story can end decently and looking forward to Scott Snyder's run. And I couldn't resist the whimsical art and story in Knight & Squire, so I'll be getting that limited series, too.

What got cut

With ten books from my pull-list and the Bat-books on top of that, there were several good-looking comics I had to pass on, at least for now. Ragman: Suit of Souls looked like a nice overview/history of the character — and it's a character that intrigues me — but I just couldn't justify getting it right now. I also looked at the new Spike series, and it looked like it might be worth it, but there was just too much this month. Likewise with Bill Willingham's The Warriors Three. I'm going to try to fit that one in next month. Also, I looked at Amazing Spider-Man #647, but none of the stories jumped out to me as being amazing, so unless I see rave reviews I'll skip it and take a look at the start of Big Time.

I've mostly decided to drop Secret Avengers. I really wanted to like the book, but it hasn't been what it should've been, and I can find plenty of other comics that are more worthy of my cash. I kinda hate to drop it because I want it to be good, but I don't want to hang on to a subpar book when there are others that're good now. So, I didn't get it, but I'm willing to take another look next month if reviews are good.

There were a bunch of other books I would've gotten if I had unlimited resources, but they weren't going to happen, realistically. And there were a few hardcovers and trades I'll get at some point, but this month was not the time for anything like that. Maybe next month I won't have too much extra from Chaos War, or I'll just get a couple of Christmas presents for myself. We'll see. That's all for this month.