A Few Pounds of Vacation Reading

I am happy to report that I will be going on a bit of a vacation this week and I must admit that a big part of this trip will be spent just digging myself out from under the many weeks of books that have caught up, as well, as a few trades that I've been hoarding for precisely such an occasion.

For whatever reason, when it comes to zombies, werewolves and and vampires, I just can't seem to get into the stories on a monthly basis. Witness my six unread copies of iZombie, my three issues of American Vampire, and my insistence on reading The Walking Dead only in hardcovers. I think most of this has to do with the actual stories themselves–these books just seem to lend themselves to four-and five-issue arcs, and I am at the point that I prefer just to wait and read those kinds of stories all in one go, especially when the books tend to forgo the "Story so far…" introduction. By the way, if anyone from the DC publishing department is reading this article, you should really take a look at what Marvel is doing with those introductions–they are extremely useful, especially for your audience, who is both growing older and (seemingly) reading a multitude of books, many of which feature the same characters and (distressingly) similar storylines. Help us help you sell more books, okay? 

While I continue to count myself as a big fan of Spider-Man, I can't help but feel that the stories have been kind of confusing as of late. The chronology between Amazing Spider-Man and FF have been so tightly interwoven that if it's not clear where one book ends and the other begins. Not so much with the main plot points, but I feel like I have read "Spidey's first day with the FF" at least three times. While I enjoyed Spider-Man becoming part of the FF, I hope this kind of overlapping storyline trend is something the editors will use judiciously; I find, for whatever reason, the stories involving the Fantastic Four/FF interesting in theory, but often just kind of tiring. Great concepts, sure–I liked the screaming giant atom–but if you are going to gloss over them so quickly, what's the point?

I was tempted to bring the past 5-6 issues of Action Comics, but I'm just going to let it lie. I was not a big fan of Action Comics #900–I thought the main story was just hyperbolic, over the top nonsense that just made me roll my eyes ever few pages. I ended up skimming over much of it out of frustration and then forced myself to go back and slog through the story. While I enjoyed the backup stories a bit–especially the first one penned by Damon Lindelof–I just feel like maybe I need a break from Superman altogether. I mean, if all I am doing is complaining about the book, clearly the book is not for me and I should just quit while I am so far behind. I will continue to enjoy the character in other books, but I am tired of being disappointed. I admit that I may have become so sensitive to Superman being done "right" that "right" just means "the way I want it" and I could very well be shutting myself off from enjoying different takes on the character and mythos — that this is very much a "it's not you, it's me" kind of situation. I just know that Action Comics #900 should have been the ultimate book to hand to readers of Superman, new and old, to remind people just how necessary and important the character is in our shared story, and what we got was a barely navigable end to a largely consequence-free mishmash of storylines resulting in an incredibly uninspiring and nausea-inducing cliffhanger ("Reign of the Doomsdays"? Really? That's the best you can do?) and clever, if depressingly brief, backup stories, one of which was a storyboard.  What happened there?  Did they run out of time? Did they just figure that everyone was going to buy the issue anyway, so why actually finish it?

Jeez. That's it. I am dropping out of Superman comics for a while.

I'll be bringing the many X-Men and Wolverine books with me, just so I can figure out exactly which storylines I am still into.  Apparently this is the "Year of the X-Men" but it seems to me that every year is the year of X-something, so I just want to get myself covered as I look towards a summer of juggling quite a few events, from Flashpoint to War of the Green Lanterns to Fear Itself to Spider Island  to whatever else it is I am missing. (Oh, that's right, there's the whole Ultimate universe that's getting redone. We've…we did that before, right?)

Finally, since I won't be able to see Thor on opening night, I will be bring Astonishing Thor #1-3 with me to celebrate the occasion. With the exception of Thor: The Mighty Avenger, I haven't been able to enjoy more than a few panels of Thor. I just found myself losing interest, and ended up dropping the regular book but just realized that I was tricked into buying the most recent one when they changed the freakin' name of it to Journey Into Mystery, which I knew I should have passed on, but I was feeling kind of optimistic about Fear Itself at the moment.  Since then, by the way, I reread the first issue of Fear Itself and am convinced that I will not be buying any of the side books at all. Oh, and total aside worthy of its own article: if Fear Itself is truly going to be a case where they replace "rings" with "hammers," I think I will be dropping the vast majority of my Marvel books.  

I find it telling that the books I am most interested in reading (and re-reading) are non superhero books. I am still kind of stunned at how quickly The New York Five ended; I felt that the book was just starting to get going, so I want to reread the series and see how it feels to read all at once. I read the last issue this weekend and it just felt…abrupt, really, which was I was worried about when I realized it was a four issue miniseries. I picked up the trade for The Sixth Gun, which I am really excited about–I flipped through it and the art looked gorgeous, and I am stoked to go into it knowing almost nothing other than everyone I like seems to love the book.

The book I am most looking forward to reading is the Stumptown hardcover by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth, which I ordered a few weeks ago but have been saving for precisely this trip. I had actually begun the series reading it in issue form, but it kept selling out and I fell too far behind. I have a feeling this will read better in trade as well. Lastly, I picked up two trades that will have to remain nameless–they are the subject of an upcoming Booksplode and I don't want to give away the surprise. Suffice to say, it's an old favorite that I found out about in the middle of its run years ago and can't wait to read the whole thing from beginning to end. I really wanted to bring the latest Parker book as well, but I already tried to bring it on another trip and failed so I will just have to do it at home. I'm already carrying way too much with me!

This (tragically short) vacation will both be a time to catch up on stories and characters that I have fallen behind on, but it will also serve as a reconsideration of those same books, if not a reconsideration of just I really want from comics these days. Like we've discussed before, if we are not reading the books when they come out, then why read monthly books at all?  Does it make sense for me to read iZombie in single issue form when I am just saving them up to read as a flimsy trade in the first place? Do I really want to waste any more of your time by ranting about how bad Superman has become? Do I want to explain, yet again, how too many events are making comics no fun? Have I finally reached my breaking point with the whole cyclical nature of superhero comic book writing, where "new" equals "change" but "change" never really sticks? We'll see. 

It's not all bad, though. I am flipping through this 3.5" stack of books and there's much to look forward to: Batman and Robin, Zatanna (sans Chiang??), Venom #2, Xombi (Frazer Irving art is picked up immediately, no matter what), several different Avengers books…lots of fun stuff. It's going to be a good couple of days and I think after going through this massive stack of recent books, I won't feel so overwhelmed.

Oh, and finally, I will make sure to catch up on the final six Smallville episodes before the finale next Friday. A friend of mine who works on the show reports that he cried no less than seven times during the last episode. And yes, I am bringing Infinite Vacation #1-2, just because I'm feeling a bit meta.

So that's how I am going to spend my four night vacation at the beach. What kinds of books do you bring on vacation? Do you find yourself re-reading stuff you've already read or do save up new books? Or do you bring comics at all?

Mike Romo works and acts in LA.  Email or check him out his contributions to the twitterverse.