New Comic Book Day: Reading Habits

So you've heard my opinions of large sprawling topics (note: ranting) but do I put my money where my mouth is, and what do I actually read? I've name dropped the odd book here and there in other articles but I figured for you to really get to understand my reading habits I should just come all out and share my pull list.

I have been house bound for a couple of months now, due to a really large Hernia I got at my day job. I barely left the house since mid December, yesterday I finally went to pick up a months worth of comics and even surprised myself with just how many comics I consume each week. I've got a moderate income and can spend £30-40 a week on books, depending on what's out. It's my main hobby so the amount I'm spending is fine with me.

A months worth of reading to catch up on! 

So here's what I read:

Image books
Ringside
Phonogram
Tokyo Ghost
Black Science
Saga (in trades)
Paper Girls
Wicked and Divine
Kaptara
Pretty Deadly
Sex Criminals
Rocket Girl

Image comics is just knocking it out of the park with everything it's putting out. So many good titles and as I drop more and more DC books I can afford more and more Image books. Every Image book I've read is just solid gold.

A book I never thought we'd have.
Let alone one I'd buy or enjoy!

Vertigo and other Indie booksArt Ops
Archie
Jughead
Back to the Future
FBP (tpb)
James Bond 007
Klaus
Power Rangers

There's a lot of good books out there that aren't "mainstream" too. Loads of good licensed movie properties that I would have loved to have read. I guess the more books DC cancels or ruins for me, the more money I can spend elsewhere.

Much volume

Many comics

A crazy amount of MarvelAll New All Different Avengers
New Avengers
Uncanny Avengers
Ultimates
A-Force
Daredevil
Doctor Strange
All New Inhumans
Uncanny Inhumans
Invincible Ironman
Old Man Logan
Squirrel Girl
Extraordinary X-men
All New X-men
Uncanny X-men
Astonishing Antman

Such variety

Captain Marvel
Ms. Marvel
Hellcat
Silver Surfer
All New Hawkeye
Mighty Thor
Guardians of the Galaxy
Scarlet Witch
Howard the Duck
Vision
Amazing Spider-man
Spider-man
Spidey
Spider Gwen

Wow!

There are a lot of upcoming Marvel books that I am so, so excited for. I don't know why I gravitate more towards Marvel books. I started on the X-men 90's cartoon rather than the Batman animated series so I don't know wether it's just ingrained into me now.

The rolling/ sliding continuity seems to feel better than the hard reboot every so often like DC does. A lot of it still counts rather than scrapping everything or picking and choosing like New52 massacred. I like the diversity of styles and characters, it's just a more vibrant world, more linked to the real world because there's no made up cities. It feels a lot more tied together and fluid than DC too, like different editors know what's going on in each others books and the world moves along together, rather than over at DC when you have things like the cartoon jokey Harley Quinn in her solo book and this scantily clad murderous version in the Suicide Squad team book. Each to their own I suppose. Or the Batman book saying Tim Drake was a Robin then Teen Titans the opposite. It's just dumb.

DC booksBatgirl
Batman
Batman and Robin Eternal
Grayson
Gotham Academy
Justice League of America
Justice League
Dark Knight 3

There are a lot of DC books that I'm pondering on dropping, it seems like a lot of the more obscure titles I read from them will be cancelled anyway, with their upcoming "Rebirth" branding. There's mostly just rumours so far but it seems like they will be going back to self described "meat and potatoes" comics. Back to basics, and not very experimental or breaking their gritty, scratch, dark house style, so it's all uniform again. Which is the opposite of what I like.

A lot of their more brightly coloured, enjoyable books where right down my alley.

I could comfortably just read Batman and Justice League until after this relaunch/ renumbering. I'm only reading JL for the comedy gold in it. It's so over the top. Remember Ultraman snorting Kryptonite. That's hilarious to me. Also the League just doesn't want to fight bad guys, so far they've fought themselves, other leagues, evil versions of themselves, then the villains were the good guys. They keep alluding to all of these great battles between panels/ issues but we never see them. It's only recently that around 50 issues in they've actually about to fight a bad guy. Batman however is incredible, Snyder on Batman has been on my pull list since Black Mirror prior to the New52.

Hey Kids, Comics!

I remember when the New52 started I was reading 26 of the 52 in the first month (there are plenty of articles in the Consider Our Fight Begun archives about the start of the New52, easy to find too thanks to the 4 year gap!). Each time they cancelled books short or changed creative teams mid story I just thought NAH! and stopped reading. There where some great runs like Action, Swamp Thing and Animal Man, wen a team is left to tell a story but they change things up too often.  I cover a lot of this in my How to Save a Comic Series article so I won't go in depth again. This is weird because Marvel also does that but you get these really short volumes rather than having series like Green Arrow that floundered around with several creative teams in as many issues before Lemire got a good long run. I am more forgiving of the shorter series, and renumbering with second volumes after a story arc is finished rather than constantly toying with things. I think there's logic there and not just being a blind Marvel Zombie of a follower.

I have probably missed a few books from my list somewhere. What's everyone else reading? Got any recommendations?