Also, don't bother reading the first 25 issues before High Society. You'll miss a tiny bit of background material, but you'll also miss a large amount of what I remember as inane, dated parody and poor art. When I read it ~15 years ago, I found High Society on its own a superb work of political commentary, but when I…

The other big selling point on Scott Lang versus Hank Pam is Scott's daughter, Cassie, who grows up to be the Young Avenger Stature. I'd be absolutely shocked if there weren't a Young Avengers movie or series in the next ten years (after or during Infinity War, is my guess), and setting up Cassie now just helps prep…

I'm finally giving Morrison's New X-Men a read (yeah, yeah… I've never been an obsessive X-Men fan and the 90 books a month just keep me from reading them most of the time, even if a lot of the stuff I read I do end up liking…).

I have enjoyed other stuff by Soule, but didn't really get into the first few issues of his Swamp Thing. Does it get better? I've been meaning to pick it up, but just haven't gotten around to it…

On the Marvel side of things, part of the problem is that a lot of their good people are overworked. I think She-Hulk wasn't so much a matter of sales as it was a combination of low-ish sales and wanting to use Soule somewhere else (the weekly Wolverines series, etc.). If it had better sales, maybe they would have…

Trades is where it gets even more confusing, though, since there you have things like Amazing Spider-Man by Slott, volume 1. Oh, wait, is that the first Big Time storyline, or the first Black Cat/Electro storyline from ASM v3? And, if the former, what does it come after? It's confusing as hell, especially if you…

Stay on target, stay on target!

The Hobbit: There and Cut Again.

While that's true, it's only been in the past couple of years that I've seen the endless listicles of "the worst plot holes in __", where it's stuff like "in this shot, Joe is holding a cup. They then cut to Sarah. When they cut back to Joe, he isn't holding the cup. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CUP?!?" Sure, it's a…

I don't loathe Tolkien, but I can definitely understand a lot of the complaints about his writing style. It's very dry, strongly influenced by medieval chronicles and epics, where things are stated rather than shown, with a tendency to go off in random tangents that don't really fit the rest of the narrative. The…

I want to say it was a poisoned arrow, but I might be misremembering.

Though the one time that's happened so far—Guardians of the Galaxy 14—they kept the existing numbering. Though, I think that's the right choice there, as most of those earlier issues were with the original Guardians, who were getting their own series again. Likewise, it would be nice to see Amazing Spider-Man 800…

Pretty sure She-Hulk was cancelled mostly because Soule was over-committed. They've also made some hints that it will be coming back, so I wouldn't be shocked to see a She-Hulk volume X+1 written by Soule out sometime next year (e.g., after the weekly Wolverines ends).

I read an interview with either Remender or the editor on Axis, and they talked about this a little—basically, ANCA doesn't happen at the same time as Axis, but they were coy as to whether it was before or after. I'm guessing after, but they don't want to explicitly say so because that would "spoil" the end (that Sam…

It helps that Lim had been drawing most of the characters already over in Silver Surfer, so he was the obvious fill-in choice when Perez dropped off Infinity Gauntlet.

The answer is neither Kirby nor Möbius, but Ron Lim, who succeeded in making the Surfer look silver with the limitations of 80s/90s coloring and paper.

Pretty much then only way a new comic becomes valuable is if it sells poorly on release, but later becomes popular for some other reason, like the character is featured in a movie or something. So, those old Big Hero 6 comics that were dollar bin material until a few months ago are probably now going for hugely…

Oh, thanks—forgot to mention Rogers, who together with Englehart really helped to sell the book. But he dropped off pretty quickly—issue 12 was his last regular issue, and 21 (which he also wrote) his last on the series. His immediate replacement, Joe Staton, was serviceable, but not nearly up to the same level, but…

The big question is whether your want a digital copy also. The smaller trades come with them, the oversized hardcovers so far don't.

Yeah, that's really a weird volume—a grab bag of early appearances before getting his own title.