What are the Batman Day giveaways this year? I'm assuming it's the New 52 Batman #1?

JRjr on All-Star Batman is the best I've seen from him since… his Amazing Spider-Man run with JMS? It's really great and reminds me why he became one of the first artists I followed. It's such a stark difference from what he was delivering on Superman, Kick-Ass, and Avengers.

I really couldn't believe how much I enjoyed Detective based on the few issues I'd read. I'd previously lumped Tynion in with other writers such as Sam Humphries who keep getting work in spite of never delivering quality work. Tynion even looked worse whenever they had him writing back-ups for Snyder in the main…

Renew Your Vows was one of the best Spider-Man stories I've read in a while. I think I'll give the new series by Gerry Conway a shot for at least one or two issues.

I haven't read Detective 940 yet (waiting for trade), but I couldn't help but read spoilers to find out what happened to one of my all-time favorite characters.

I feel the same as you. It's ridiculous but I enjoy all of the books I buy - some to varying levels of course - and I already know there's even more books that I'll enjoy that I'm not buying. It's really hard to draw the line!!!!

Teaching's been going well but my only complaint is not having enough time to hang out on these posts like I could over the summer. My strategy is going to be to save most of my commenting for Fridays, where it's ok to slack a little before the weekend. Unfortunately on the other days I don't have much time to just…

How do you decide to drop an ongoing?

The Last Days of American Crime - Another ugly comic from Rick Remender. This time it's a heist tale that you'd expect to be executed much better by the likes of Brubaker or Azzarello, but since we have Remender that means there's a much bigger uptick in sexism, racism, and general bad behavior. I think I've accepted…

Unfortunately I haven't found her interesting ever since. Her most recent portrayals seem limited to "concerned mother" and "nagging wife." I doubt they're going to fridge her kid or break up her marriage since Bendis would just be undoing his own work. It'll be nice to get the character back to a more usable…

Season 4 just felt too crowded for me, even though I liked each of the characters. It seemed impossible to balance and utilize the cast when it was that big. Season 5 - especially in the episodes without Jess - was a great overcorrection to that problem. Cece got more characterization in that string of episodes that…

The rest of the season is fantastic, and honestly the best the show has ever been since Season 2. If you didn't like Regan, don't worry the show rubber bands back to the status quo after Jess comes back. The buildup to Schmidt and Cece's wedding is fairly well done and it thankfully sounds like the drama between them…

The screenwriter vs. star & director point you raised is pretty interesting. If the screenwriter and director have conflicting views on how a character is meant to be portrayed, doesn't the director ultimately win out because film is a director's medium and he's the one calling the shots and controlling the overall…

The photo caption gave it away for me immediately.

The lack of big-name talent (at the time) on those books was puzzling to me for a prestige hardcover series. They seemed to be targeting the Barnes & Noble audience and skipping the direct market entirely.

I enjoyed DD: Yellow so much that it actually made me go back and try to read the original Silver Age stories they were based on. Oof. It turned out Tim Sale was the only thing that made it work!

I love Man Without Fear, almost for the black ninja outfit alone. It made a pretty bold choice by forgoing any traditional costumes by the very end, which has become more normal these days but back then was a pretty innovative decision.

AHHhhhhhhhhhhhh

It's actually pretty fair to say that #1-13 can be considered "the origin" since that MJ issue is pretty important to how that Spider-Man would be defined. Bendis' reasoning was pretty sound and matched the 21st century. What would a teenager do if he suddenly got powers? Tell his girlfriend!

It really messed up comics by making decompressed storytelling a norm, but the opening arc of Ultimate Spider-Man was wonderful and did everything that Chapter One failed to do by properly updating Spidey's origin. The additional time given to flesh out Uncle Ben made a big difference and it was nice to spend more…