I’m constantly asked, of the many choices available, how I choose what I’d like to read. Obviously it’s all personal and I look at characters. Even though I’m currently boycotting ‘Stupider’ Spider-man right now, I’m usually all over everything Peter’s a part of, and the rest of the Marvel stable of characters are comfortable to me. DC’s Green Lantern is a fabulous series as well as the Snyder/Capullo collaboration on Batman so far and I’ll occasionally check out what’s going on in the rest of the DCU. I’ve never had any qualms about blabbing my love for everything Valiant. Those are some great characters and the lack of depth of history that the other two companies have make the Valiant characters fresh as well as compelling. After that I look to creators and I tend to follow writers more than artists. I appreciate artists but love character development. Brubaker is someone that consistently impresses me and even though his work for Marvel, DC, and Image is all vaguely similar I’m not tired of it yet. J. Michael Straczynski is on more than off with his efforts. I look at sales and wonder why one thing is so much more popular than any other thing.
I also look at awards; Eisner, Harvey, Inkpot, and more from the US, Joe Shuster Awards among others from Canada, and France’s Angouleme International Comics Festival Prizes. There are many more awards from many more countries giving credit to what are supposedly the best efforts and individuals of any given year. The Harvey Awards were just recently handed out at the Baltimore Comic Con, as they are every year, and Saga won the day with six awards, winning for; Best Color, Best New Series, Best Continuing or Limited Series, Best Writer, Best Artist, and Best Single Issue or Story. Jaime Hernandez won Best Cartoonist for Love and Rockets: New Stories. Todd Klein’s work on Fables won Best Letterer. Dick Tracy won the Best Syndicated Strip. Mike Norton’s Battle Pug won Best Online Comics Work. Blacksad: A Silent Hell won the Best American Edition of Foreign Material. Klaus Janson won Best Inker for his work on Captain America. Most Promising New Talent was taken by Dennis Hopeless for Avengers Arena. Adventure Time by Ryan North won Special Award for Humor in Comics. Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers was won by Adventure Time. Alien: the Illustrated Story published by Titan Books won Best Graphic Album, Previously Published. Dark Horse Presents won Best Anthology again. The Best Domestic Reprint Project is David Mazzucchelli‘s Daredevil: Born Again Artists Edition. The Best Cover Artist was David Aja for his illustrations on Hawkeye. Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation was presented to Robot 6 blog by Comic Book Resources. Building Stories by Chris Ware Took home the statue for Special Awards for Excellence in Presentation. Best Graphic Album, Original went home with Darwyn Cooke for Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score. Paul Levitz won the Dick Giordano Hero Initiative Humanitarian of the Year Award and the Hero Initiative Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Sal Buscema.
Some of these I agree with and some of these I don’t but this is a nice guide to what I might be missing so we’ll now take a look at what we might be missing this week starting with DC Comics’ Fables #133, $2.99 by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham among others. Here you’ll see Rose Red try to pull everyone together while a certain dead man leaves his remains on a coroner’s table. All of that and Award winning lettering…
Daredevil #31, $2.99, from Marvel Comics by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee which has won Best Continuing Series in the past also features a nominated letterer for this year in Joe Caramagna…
Boom Studios’ Adventure Time #20, $3.99, by Ryan North, Zack Smith, and Shelli Paroline was nominated for Best New Series as well as winning in the categories it did…
Ryan Jampole of Archie Comics’ Mega Man #29, $2.99, was nominated for Most Promising New Talent…
And there are plenty more that are not listed. For a more complete list, feel free to visit your local comic store or favorite site. If you’re interested in more of what I think, follow me on Twitter at Mycomicstore001 or like my Facebook page.
Michael R. Murray is a full-time Letter Carrier for the United States Postal Service who doesn’t think it took too long to feel overwhelmed again with the amount of work he’s putting in after being a mailman to pay the bills.