I’m not a fan of the “Marvel cinematic universe,” but I do appreciate how the films have guided the publisher’s choice of reprint material. Absent a tenuous association with a multi-billion dollar media franchise, it’s hard to imagine a dedicated trade collection of the Avengers’ “Trial of Yellowjacket” arc. Spanning Avengers #212 to #230, the […]

…and I’m back, with a five alarm trigger warning for…well, a lot of stuff further on down the page. For some nostalgic reason, I got into a Bronze Age Avengers kick during my holiday hiatus and set about cobbling together a stack of collections covering the eight-year run between issues #181 and #277. While I […]

I prefer to let my featured selections percolate for a few weeks before discussing them here. It gives my brain time to process the material, jog loose any stray memories, and conduct more than a surface level survey. We’re going to put aside that informal rule for this installment, which discusses a much-anticipated tome which […]

When I first set about acquiring collected editions of “most favored” funnybooks, John Byrne’s year-long stint on West Coast Avengers/Avengers West Coast was near the top of my wantlist. The run was controversial as it unfolded and remains so among segments of fandom who still give a flying fart about thirty year old superhero stories. […]

The set of Xenon collected editions I stumbled across at local comics shop got me to thinking about other translated manga offerings from my teen years, and whether they’d also received the trade paperback treatment. Back in those less enlightened times, “flipped ‘n’ floppy” was the norm for localized releases, with a handful of “prestige” […]

Though my pile of trade paperbacks has ramped up its rate of growth in the past couple of months, my slow drift back into reading comics for — GASP — fun started a couple of summers ago. Maura and I had to have our fingerprints taken as part of the pre-adoption process, and the nearest […]

My grandmother’s passing last year forced me to confront a situation I’d been kicking down the road for two decades. During the years I lived under her roof, I’d treated the attic as a catchbasin for whatever overflow needed to be shifted from my room — boxes upon boxes of paperback potboilers and old textbooks, […]