My Weekly Pull - October 5th

The second month of DC's New 52 brought with it some relief to my nearly depleted wallet, but somehow I still managed to spend an exorbitant amount of money.  It's as if I really like comics and continually manage to find new ones to spend all my hard earned cash on.  Kind of a problem, really.

Marvel
MYSTIC #3

DC Comics

ACTION COMICS #2
ALL STAR SUPERMAN TP
ANIMAL MAN #2
BATWING #2
OMAC #2
SWEET TOOTH #26

Everyone Else

HARK A VAGRANT HC
CHEW #21
REED GUNTHER #5
ROGER LANGRIDGE’S THE SHOW MUST GO ON TP

ROGER LANGRIDGE’S SNARKED #1
SEVERED #3

SKULLKICKERS #11

A pretty big drop for Marvel, relatively speaking, but that's okay, because I'm absolutely in love with Mystic. I've been singing the praises of this book to anyone who will listen to me, and while I think you all recognize that it doesn't always take that much for a comic to win me over, Mystic is on a whole other level. As I said over at The Weekly Crisis, I feel like this book is akin to a classic Disney movie: it's a children's story, but it is really smart and can be appreciated just as much by an adult reader. Once the last issue drops, I will definitely be foisting this upon people I know. So watch out for that people I know.

Despite not having to buy all of DC's books for review purpose, I managed to get four of their new series. While I was happy to do so for Animal Man, O.M.A.C., and Batwing, Action Comics was a big let down for the main reason that I paid $3.99 for 22 pages of story. I hate doing that, and the only book where I'm really comfortable doing so is Amazing Spider-Man. It was especially maddening because I didn't realize the back part of the book was filler until I turned the last story page. Argh.

You'll also notice that I picked up the All-Star Superman trade, which was long overdue, as I didn't actually own this fantastic series until this week. I'll have to read through it again in the near future, but for now it can sit on my bookshelf, waiting for me to find the time.

Sweet Tooth kicked off a new story arc that was completely different from the rest of the series up until this point. Jeff Lemire jumped almost a hundred years back in time, changed his writing style, and brought in a guest artist to really insist on how dramatic of a shift it was. It's still too early for me to really say if the move was a success or no, but I appreciate the lengths he went to metatextually to support his story.

Apart from All-Star Superman, it was really the other companies that did me in this time around. I couldn't resist Kate Beaton's Hark a Vagrant (though I didn't actually get my copy until October 5th), and I had ordered Roger Langridge's "The Show Must Go On" months before. The same is actually true of Snarked!, which was a super cute comic by Langridge that was very much in a vein similar to his work on The Muppets, which I also enjoyed.

The rest of those books are mostly old standbys of mine, so it's not too surprising that I couldn't say no to them. Chew was, as always, wonderful. Reed Gunther #5 was a pretty solid conclusion to the opening arc, but it might also be where I get off. Will have to see what the solicitation for Reed Gunther #6 is like, I guess. Severed isn't actually that old of a standby, but I'm too busy buying everything Scott Snyder does (with the exception of Swamp Thing, which didn't really grab me) to not pick it up. And finally, Skullkickers was hilariously great, which is exactly what I was expecting. Awesome.

With that, we're one step closer to catching up to my present-day comic buying habits. They're still in a bit of flux, but I think I'm making strides to reigning it in. At least sometimes.