Paul's Picks! - November 16, 2012

Well, it's that time again folks: Wednesday! And you know what Wednesday is?... Well, of course you do, you're reading a blog about comics, so you obviously know it's New Comics Day, a.k.a. Paul's favorite weekly holiday! And now for his much-anticipated pick-of-the-week...

Hello friends, fans, and fellow nerds! Well, maybe you're not all nerds, but I like to think we hold our own little corner of the world in all of our nerd-glory. But regardless of your affiliation, welcome to this week's edition of Paul's Picks, where I, Paul Shirley, relay to you all my favorite book from this week's hefty stack of pulls, along with my review! Are you ready? Then let's get started...

All New X-Men by Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

In a week filled to the brim with quality books, I'll not lie in saying there were more than a couple of choices to go with here. Snyder and Capullo are still blowing it up over there on Batman #14, all of the new Marvel NOW! titles I read were more than solid, and there were even a few sleepers that brought their A-game, such as Batgirl #14 and Detective Comics #14 by the Great new creative team of John Layman and Jay Fabok. And yet, no other book just knocked me on my back quite as hard as Bendis and Immonen's first foray into their new title, All New X-Men.

Paul's Picks - August 8, 2012

Well, it's that time again folks: Wednesday! And you know what Wednesday is?... Well, of course you do, you're reading a blog about comics, so you obviously know it's New Comics Day, a.k.a. Paul's favorite weekly holiday! And now for his much-anticipated pick-of-the-week...

Another week, another huge stack of comics (and files of digital comics) to read. I couldn't wait to get my pulls from the LCS this week, but once I nabbed my stack, I realized that many of my books are in a strange place right now. I wouldn't say we're in a dull moment, I mean AvX is rapidly approaching its climactic end, and many series are in the middle of an arc (some more enthralling than others), but I found myself a bit disinterested in some of the titles I've been reading over the last couple of weeks. A keen example would be New Avengers by BMB. It's a good title, and it has contained some of the best tie-ins from the event so far, but when I flipped over to it on my iPad, I was a bit nonplussed. It wasn't a bad book, I guess it's just that I'm feeling the longevity of this event in the tie-ins more than anything else. The one book that I immediately lifted to the top of the pile was Scott Snyder's Batman #12, but I'm sad to say it just didn't blow me away. I think I was pulled in by all of the Twitter hype singing its praises, so once I had it behind me I was a bit let down (although the guest art by Becky Cloonan was top notch).

But never fear! There were two books that totally rocked my world this week, but as in Highlander (and the Phoenix Five), "there can be only one." And so, without further whining/yapping/introducing, my pick this week goes to...

Tales from the Long Box: Is Marvel Winning the Comic Book Wars?

Every week Seth goes into his back issue bins, picks out a single issue, story arc, or creative run, pours through it and then writes about it. He calls it Tales from the Long Box. Though old and now either retconned out of existence or made irrelevant by the latest event, these books still share something in common... they're bagged, boarded, and a part of comics history.

Is Marvel Winning the Comic Book Wars?

On the most recent episode of our podcast (out now) we were sent an e-mail by faithful listener Michael/@Ctcher asking us if we believed, like him, that Marvel is currently the better company. He mentioned the depth of Marvel's character roster as well as their stable of creative talent. Paul and I got into it a little bit on the show but I felt I had more to say on the subject. So here is me saying more on the subject.

For my part, the importance is always placed on the creators. Sure I love Batman but plenty of bad writers have written awful Batman stories. This was a lesson I learned when I first started reading comics regularly. It all comes down to the creators. When you look at the big guns at Marvel, names like Hickman, Bendis, Fraction, Brubaker, Aaron, Loeb (regardless of how you feel about his work, he's still a big draw for many people), Zeb Wells, Waid... I could go on. At DC you have Johns, Morrison, Lemire, Snyder... I guess you could toss Gail Simone in there but she's only writing one title currently. This isn't to say there aren't more solid writers at either company; there are. But these are the guys who will sell a comic based on name recognition alone.

Buy This! - April 25th, 2012

Here we go again.

With Marvel ramping up AvX this week with the biggest week of tie-ins released thus far, and DC launching a full scale invasion of the bat family with Night of the Owls it’s safe to say that event season is officially underway. Really it has been for at least a month but with DC launching their own volley it really feels like it now.

 Due to this fact, this week’s Buy This is going “All Avengers VS X-Men”.  Partially this is due to the fact that AvX has been really quite enjoyable so far and partially it is because… well AvX has me anxious to see what happens next. Who knows, depending on how some of the first slew of Night of the Owls releases fare maybe I’ll do a special column for the bat titles next week.

Episode 11 - The One with Paul, Allen, and the Spider-Men

Podcast Episode 9 - The Best Issue of 2012!

Hello everyone! Here's episode 9 of our podcast, where we reveal all of our opinions about the world of comics from this week. And just so everyone knows, our Pick of the Week was Avenging Spiderman #5, which we somehow managed to talk about for 10 minutes without ever mentioning the title... Enjoy! Comment! Rate us on iTunes!