I started reading Sandman for the first time in the new collected editions. Some of the weirdest and most off-putting issues come early on, so if you get past those you'll get invested in Dream's story. Gaiman plays with a bewildering range of tones, genres, and subject matter--from cats to Shakespeare to serial killers--as the story is largely episodic. The art is purposely kind of rough, which isn't my style but you get used to it.

Gaiman's homage to G.K. Chesterton in Sandman.

We Only Find Them When They're Dead is strikingly innovative, combining hard sci-fi with spy fiction. The story moves back and forth through time, always keeping you on your toes. Nobody draws lips like Simone di Meo. Miotti's colors are wild: everything looks like it's glowing.

What if Superman had a sidekick? I love everything Dan Mora draws and will never shut up about it. Mark Waid expertly blends incredibly wholesome versions of the characters with classic harrowing comic book action.

Immortal Hulk was a massive hit, but I didn't love it. You need a high tolerance for body horror, but more than that, I found it convoluted. Hulk's personality verges on evil, which I found strange, though I did appreciate how Ewing brings in big themes of science and religion. A lot of the art is also surprisingly bad.

Star Wars comics has been on an incredibly good run for almost a decade. Aphra is one of the best original characters, and Si Spurrier does a tremendous job taking over for Kieron Gillen. This arc features what has to be the first all-female love triangle in Star Wars comics. Spurrier digs into how Aphra's choices hurt others--and herself--while throwing in some great twists.

We're living in halcyon days for Catwoman stories. Cliff Chiang's Catwoman: Lonely City is an impressive feat of cartooning (Chiang wrote, drew, colored, and lettered it all himself). The story follows an aged Selina reckoning with her past, while Gotham is moving into a future beyond Batman.

Haunting, poignant, melancholy--Ishiguro is the master of understatement. Muted language both conveys and conceals depth of feeling.

Si Spurrier has such a distinctive angle on the X-Men. Parts of this book are super weird, but it culminates in a soaring crescendo. I love that Nightcrawler is at the center of the story, and Legion is a great second lead.

Tom Taylor's mission is to make Nightwing the most beloved character in the DC universe, and Bruno Redundo's goal is to depict Dick Grayson at his most acrobatic. The story is fairly light but has been incredibly popular.

Gary Gulman is hilarious live, and now his book is out! He reads the audiobook himself if you prefer that delivery mechanism.

I've never read Never Let Me Go, but I'm a big fan of Ishiguro's entrancing, elegiac, minimalist prose.

Hickman at his most commercial, but still full of mind-bendy time travel stuff. The artists prior to Nick Dragotta are pretty meh.

Lady Spider's steam punk rogues gallery from 1895.

The inspiration for the hit animated movies but with a very different story. Vampiric, cosmic aristocrats are hunting all the spider-people across the multiverse. Some of the tie-ins are just okay, but the main story is killer.

Zdarsky's story is solid, but Jimenez's art is world-class. Lots of great guest appearances from members of the Bat Family and Justice League.

Die uses the imagery and language of RPGs to explore mental health issues. The story was pretty gripping, but the ultimate payoff was a bit of a letdown.

Really proud of this article about race and theology in Watchmen and its spinoffs. Check it out:
https://academic.oup.com/litthe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/litthe/frad025/72616...

I really like how Gillen weaves real writers' ideas--Tolkien, Charlotte Bronte, H.G. Wells--into the story. The characters make some incredibly foolish decisions during this arc, but issue 15 is truly heart pounding.

UGA's special collections library has a 1st edition of Moby-Dick from 1851.

The only way to escape the world of Die is if the whole team wishes to go home. Just one problem: half of them want to stay in this trauma-inflected fantasy. Gillen's pacing is excellent, as always. Each issue has both substance and suspense.

Die is D&D meets Jumanji, acid wash Narnia, Tolkien on meth. British teens are sucked into an RPG, but they can only go home if they all agree. The art is largely impressionistic; not my cup of tea, but certainly deft at communicating the characters' emotions. Gillen comes up with really inventive character classes and abilities.

This is an odd book with a complicated premise, but Nightcrawler and Legion are great co-leads, and the art fits the psychedelic vibe. This volume has a pretty classic mystery + romance plot.

This book is incredibly trippy, but there is such a touching uncle-nephew moment between Legion and Juggernaut.

Finally a Nightcrawler-centric book!

Every time travel story needs a time loop, and This Is How You Lose the Time War has a clever one. The world, however, remains terribly abstract. Even the co-protagonists, Red and Blue, are more concepts than people. I found this simultaneously fascinating and unsatisfying. It would actually make an excellent comic if the lyrical prose was accompanied by illustrations.

Somebody dropped a copy of Batman: Zero Year in the Little Free Library and, even though I already own it, you bet I snagged it. Such an incredibly fun and inventive story from Scott Snyder's epic New 52 Batman run.

Even by Sapkowski's standards, this book is hella confusing. It has multiple frame narratives, shifts in perspective, and covers a wide range of characters and events. Sapkowski loves to run the plot beyond the most satisfying, cathartic moment. Still, it's impossible not to love Geralt, Ciri, and Yennifer.

This is a really interesting use of the epistolary form, as the novel is mainly comprised of letters between Red and Blue. The language is gorgeous, meditative, agonized, and potent, but it throws me off slightly that Red and Blue, who are agents of diametrically opposed and incompatible possible futures, sound so much alike. Their voices should more fully reflect how vastly different their societies are.

Like a sci-fi version of Killing Eve

If you've played the Dragon Age games or just like fantasy, this is a solid anthology. It include one main story in three parts, as well as two unrelated stories also set in the world of Thedas. The best is the stand-alone story Magekiller by comics veteran Greg Rucka, which is set during the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition. The art in the other stories isn't quite up to par.

While there are some genuinely emotional moments, this final Spider-Gwen arc just doesn't hold together. Latour tries to cram too much into five issues--a single issue is spent on a year Gwen spends in prison for reasons that don't make a ton of sense. Gweb's reconciliation with her father, bandmates, and Venom needed more finesse.

Really excited to teach Piranesi this fall

With Batman presumed dead, GCPD gives commissioner Gordon a high-powered suit so he can take the mantle as Gotham's protector. Coming off of the climactic Joker: Endgame arc, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are at the top of their game. And Danny Miki colors Capullo expertly, sometimes with psychedelic flair, others with brooding mystery. And in the middle is a riveting one-shot that forces Batman to confront gun violence and gentrification.

What a thrill ride!

Marjorie Liu's Han Solo miniseries is so much fan. Liu nails the high octane pacing by putting Han and Chewie into a deadly race as cover for a mission to extract Rebel spies before a mole can assassinate them. The overlapping dangers and mysterious create tons of tension, and Mark Brooks' art is terrific.

This third arc of Black Science, which features a techno-Roman aesthetic, was especially good. The characters, well, some of them, survive but not unscathed. Remender balances suspense and tragedy.

The contrast between Black Science #1-11 and #12 onward shows just how important the colorist is in comics. Moreno Dinisio colors Matteo Scalera's illustrations with so much more crispness and vibrance than Dean White.

Kelly Sue Deconnick uses an intersectional feminist perspective and sci-fi prison setting to satirize patriarchy in our contemporary moment. Combining elements of sports drama and prison drama, Bitch Planet depicts a multiracial team of female inmates, who are the ultimate "non-compliants." Valentine de Landro's art conveys the punk vibes.

I don't totally get why Selina would be pals with the Joker, but it's really cool to see King explore what Bruce and Selina's life would be like as they age and, eventually, die. A lot of this book is about parenting, grief, and how hard it is to change, even for someone you love. And Clay Mann's art is killer.

Tom King loves Christmas.

Clay Mann is out here making even Joker look sexy.

Picking up where his 85-issue Rebirth run on Batman left off, Tom King brings us the story of Bruce and Selina's marriage mainly from Selina's perspective. Told in three overlapping timelines, King depicts how the Joker, the Phantasm, and Selina herself threaten to unravel Gotham's power couple's relationship.

I'm gradually making my way through Spider Gwen. In this particular arc, Gwen is exposed to the Venom symbiote for reasons that don't totally make sense. The final couple of issues set up the confrontation with Matt Murdock that Latour has been building toward. Latour depicts Gwen as kind of erratic, which I find odd.

Originally a web comic, Nimona was collected as a graphic novel--I read it in one sitting. The story is really fun and the characters are so lovable. Stevenson blends the contemporary with the medieval in humorous ways, mixing science and magic in a brisk tale of belonging. The art is simple, but visually propulsive.

Hench is really interesting but ultimately flawed feminist take on superheroes and villains. The opening act revolves around the Millennial desire for a healthy workplace, while the bulk of the story deploys familiar tropes about how heroes and villains have a shared past. I think the novel would've been much better if Quantum Entanglement, the main female superhero, had been a co-protagonist with Anna a.k.a. The Auditor.

I really like Rodriguez's art, but I find Latour's storytelling a but frenetic. Gwen is always lurching from mistake to mistake, crisis to crisis. That's certainly part of the larger Spiderman brand. It's really fun to see alternate versions of Wolverine and Kitty Pride.

Across the Spiderverse was so good I had to go back to the source. 🕷

My guy Dan Mora put Gran from Once & Future in an issue of Detective Comics.

X-Men Red focuses on Storm, Magneto, and the mutants on Mars a.k.a. Arrako. Storm is trying to steer the militant Arakii toward a more peaceful path. Some of the art is a little inconsistent.