2023 Comic Reading Challenge

Having a really good year so far for reading:

At 238 comics I am well ahead of schedule for 2,023 for the year.

Finished my first Kull omnibus and am heading into the second.

Still slowly savoring my Golden Age Wonder Woman omnibus 4. All new material for me. I am hoping volume 5 will come out this year.

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My fortune teller says it will come out on January 1st, 2024.

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This week I read 113 comics. I am at 516 year to date.

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read one more white knight red hood 1 not bad
it brings my count up to 40

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Yall gotta dive into the collections and omnibus’ they have on here now, some GEMS! Neal Adams doin war books and that 3 parter from Action, that I didnt even know existed rocked,wonky science and all.

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And on a sad note…didnt know all GI JOE books were disappearing from COMIXOLOGY, so the great read thru ends with #110. Licensed books, get em while ya can, wait till they come back.

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Each year my total count has dropped since 2020. I’m trying to get passed 895 like I did in 2020. In January I read 68 and I was reading the other app. In February I’ve gone back to DC but I think in March I’ll just read whichever books I’ve been trying to complete.

January 2023
Daredevil (2015) #11-16 6 1/1/2023
Captain America (1968) #118-119 2 1/2/2023
Daredevil (2015) #17-20 4 1/2/2023
Captain America (1968) #120-122 3 1/4/2023
Daredevil (2015) #21-25 5 1/7/2023
Daredevil (2015) #595-600 6 1/8/2023
Captain America (1968) #123-124 2 1/9/2023
Daredevil (2015) #601-602 2 1/9/2023
Daredevil (2015) #603-605 3 1/10/2023
Daredevil (2015) #606-612 7 1/14/2023
Alien (2021) #1-2 2 1/14/2023
Alien (2021) #3-5 3 1/15/2023
Alien (2021) #6-7 2 1/16/2023
Captain America (1968) #125-126 2 1/19/2023
Fantastic Four (2018) #1-6 6 1/21/2023
Fantastic Four (2018) #7-9 3 1/22/2023
Captain America (1968) #127-128 2 1/23/2023
Marvel Team-Up (1972) #1-2 2 1/24/2023
Marvel Team-Up (1972) #3-4 2 1/25/2023
Marvel Team-Up (1972) #5-6 2 1/31/2023
Captain America (1968) #129-130 2 1/31/2023
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How is the Alien series? I’ve been thinking about checking it out.

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Red Tornado: 2 issues from 2010
Writer: Kevin VanHook
(Technically four, but two of them were last year and I don’t think I ever made a note of it.)

The comic… exists, but moreover wow DCUI has managed to make the comic reader interface even more unusable. I suppose I knew it was possible, since Marvel Unlimited exists, but it’s surprising.
2.

And then I suddenly went insane. Long story. I’ve been challenged.

Sporadic early Legion of Superheroes appearances: 7 issues from 1958-1962
Writers: Otto Binder (Superboy story in 2 issues of Adventure Comics, Superman story in 1 issue of Action Comics), Ed Herron (Green Arrow story in 1 issue of Adventure Comics), Jack Miller (Aquaman story in 1 issue of Adventure Comics), Jerry Siegel (2 issues of Superboy, 1 issue of Superman, Superboy story in 2 issues of Adventure Comics, Supergirl story in 4 issues of Action Comics), Robert Bernstein (1 issue of Superboy, Aquaman story in 1 issue of Adventure Comics, Green Arrow story in 1 issue of Adventure Comics, Superboy story in 1 issue of Adventure Comics)
I like that robotic demonstrations of Superboy’s powers are considered an indispensable part of history curriculum in the thirtieth century. Not even Superman; Superboy.

For that matter, I also like that the present of this first Superboy/Legion story is ostensibly taking place in 1958, based on the time travel sequence. Anybody else spot a hole in that logic?

… Also, these three are dicks. I know it’s the Silver Age, but your whole initiation process is just… gaslighting your prospective new member?

In the Green Arrow story with the “bad luck” arrows, it actually mostly makes sense for a Silver Age value of “sense,” but the “13” arrow didn’t… do anything. He uses it to mark some robbers’ license plate and then tell the police to look for it, but, like, he could’ve just told them the number that was already there.

In the second Adventure issue, oh, good. Now the Legion has moved on from gaslighting new members to imprisoning people for crimes they won’t commit for five years.

This incident is followed by a pair of stories where Green Arrow and Aquaman villains you’ve never heard of switch gimmicks, the Aquaman guy committing to becoming a “land pirate” and the Green Arrow guy going underwater. You would think, then, that this means Green Arrow and Aquaman, who are given ample notice of this, would… switch villains. Inexplicably, no, they each chase their own guy.

In the first Supergirl story, man. Supergirl goes to impressive lengths to ensure that she’s not seen helping this school bus make it to its destination in time… to see Superman. Talk about low self-esteem. Anyway, the Legion (or, in this case, their inexplicably identical children later retconned into the same people) shows up and pulls the exact same initial prank on Kara. And then they block her from joining because red kryptonite shenanigans aged her up for like fifteen minutes. These guys are terrible.

Basically, short version, it’s Silver Age Superbooks and everybody solves all their problems and non-problems with needlessly elaborate ruses.

With the Legion of Super-Villains, I have to wonder why only Cosmic King has different powers from his Legionnaire counterpart.

Shoutout to Streaky the Super-Cat’s conveniently labelled, spontaneously-appearing-with-no-explanation, Legion-era descendant…


I’m not even sure how to make a joke of this anymore; it mocks itself too well.
9.

Adventure Comics: 12 issues from 1962-1963
Writers: Jerry Siegel (6 issues), Otto Binder (Superboy story in 1 issue), Edmond Hamilton (3 issues, Legion story in 3 issues), George Kashdan (Superboy story in 1 issue), George Papp (Superboy story in 1 issue)
I like that the Legion’s clubhouse is just… sitting there in the middle of an open field with nothing else nearby.

Anyway, how about that mysterious villain, Urthlo, huh? Very mysterious, but something seems faintly familiar about him. Oh, I bet it’s secretly Bizarro!

These stories have done a handy job of turning the timeline into knots in an impressively short amount of time, particularly as to how the Legion ostensibly only invites one or two members a year (the issue with Brainiac 5 suggested they switched to admitting members in boy/girl pairs sometime before Sun Boy and Bouncing Boy joined, but issues taking place after both of them are on the team show only single members being admitted) and yet no matter how many members they accumulate, the founding trio remains nonspecifically teenaged. In any case, they’ve certainly admitted new members more than six times, meaning that even if they started at age 13, the founders must have exceeded the eighteen-year maximum age limit.

In Superboy news, I like that multiple plot points have hinged critically on the idea that Clark’s glasses are indestructible.

To a point, this is all just standard Silver Age Antics™-centric storytelling, but things change with #304. Siegel just… straight-up killed off a main character and set up a multi-issue arc. A character arc, even, to some extent. In 1963. Which, like, none of this is innovative relative to other media, but I have to admit I’d expect any other comic to be way more simplistic than this until, like, ’68 at the earliest, maybe.

The trouble with the Legion of Substitute Heroes is that most of their powers aren’t even bad, just mildly situational at worst. Like, “makes everything really cold” seems less likely to be a hazard than “makes everything really hot,” but Sun Boy is allowed in. Allowed in: Flubber. Not allowed in: Remember when world hunger was a thing?

They seem to have just stopped referencing Supergirl as a member between issues; weird.

Shortly after getting the idea to kill a major character, this book also very quickly masters the art of the fakeout death, quickly escalating to an issue that kills off (and immediately resurrects) everyone like some kind of G-rated slasher movie. The villain turns out to be Mr. Mxyzptlk’s edgy murderous descendant. I am not kidding; this is a thing. This plot point is somehow not from the 2000s.
21.

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Adventure Comics: 19 issues from 1964-1968
Writers: Edmond Hamilton (3 issues), Jerry Siegel (2 issues), Otto Binder (Tommy Tomorrow reprints in 2 issues, Superboy reprint in 1 issue), Bill Finger (Superboy reprint in 1 issue), Jim Shooter (13 issues), E. Nelson Bridwell (1 issue)
My last post was very late at night, and I wasn’t awake enough to think about this. But the whole Lightning Lad death and resurrection saga is a bit “dig a hole and fill it back in.” Like, the death is okay. Accepting the “can’t fight fate” contrivance, Saturn Girl trying to take the risk off the other Legion in the first place is sensible enough, and Lightning Lad’s surprise intercept also checks out. Especially because those two in particular… might have a thing? Adult-Legion-them had a thing in one issue, anyway. But the Legion immediately decides that resurrecting Lightning Lad is both feasible and advisable. Even in this vaguely utopian-or-at-least-not-actively-bad future, death still has to, like, happen to most people most of the time? So should they be trying to resurrect everyone who dies? Whatever. Silver Age logic.

Anyway, then the lightning rod gimmick. Here’s where it really loses me. Their plan becomes to resurrect Lightning Lad by… killing someone else. If a Legionnaire had taken the hit instead of another surprise intercept by Proty, would they start trying to resurrect that person? Also, why is so much of this book about Saturn Girl wanting to die?

Ultra Boy’s powers are kind of a sudden retcon. Up to #316, there’s no mention of his having powers other than his souped-up x-ray vision.

The plot of #333 depends on two cities’ worth of people just taking it as objective fact that they cannot share an entire planet despite having no other specific problem with each other.

I’m just reading wiki summaries of a significant chunk of this, but there is an extremely high density of plots about new Legion members turning out to be evil infiltrators and new villains turning out to be existing Legion members due to mind control or elaborate hoaxes. Or both. Frequently both.

Also, seemingly dire fates befalling Lightning Lad that the narrative repeatedly bends over backwards to assure you are actually temporary.

Damn, Clark, I think Brainy needs some arctic breath for that burn.

Unrelated sidenote: I like that the Superboy stories (all reprints at this point) are digitized in black and white. It’s very deep and artistic.

Anyway, it’s weird that they insist on putting Invisible Kid in every issue but almost never give him any dialogue.

Shooter’s run… I’m not sure I could put my finger on what he’s doing differently from what I’ve already seen, but I think at least he has a better sense of pacing. The “One of Us is a Traitor” two-parter isn’t anything revolutionary in its main concept (yet another infiltrator recruit, albeit with three real recruits to wrangle some mystery out of it), but the premise of a conflict between the United Planets and a foreign power (uh, the Khunds, not A Foreign Power from all the Golden Age comics) creates more of a sense of a world beyond the Legion themselves and the bare minimum outside elements to justify the antics of the month. This is symbolically followed by the next issue being the first (that I’ve seen; plenty of undigitized material) to show the Clubhouse in a city instead of a flat open field with no other visible landmarks.

The Adult Legion is a very bizarre Shipping Frenzy™ of characters who mostly have barely interacted—if at all—being mashed together in the future (more future) for pages at a time.

The other thing is that of the Legion villains I’ve actually heard of (whether I liked it or not), pretty much all but the Time Trapper debuted in this era, so Shooter seems to have had a better grasp of creating bad guys than the previous writers as well.
40.

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26 for February

Batgirl 60-64

Savage Hawkman 5-9

ASBARTBW- 10 issues

Superman for all Seasons 4 issues

Justice Society of America 1992-4

The Golden Age-1

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Superboy #195 from 1973
Writer: Cary Bates
Meanwhile in “Things less ableist than Batgirl in 2012,” have Superboy in 1973.

Meanwhile, in the future, apparently the United Planets has been replaced by something called the “planetary federation,” so I guess we’re doing Star Trek now.
41.

Superboy Starring the Legion of Superheroes #200 from 1974
Writer: Cary Bates
Ooh, this entire issue is in black and white on DCUI. So artsy.
42.

Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes: 36 issues from 1976-1979
Writers: Cary Bates (main story in 1 issue), Jim Shooter (2 issues, backup in 1 issue), Paul Levitz (12 issues, scripter on 3 issues, main story in 3 issues, co-writer on main story in 1 issue, plotter on main story in 1 issue, backups in 1 issue, plotter on backups in 2 issues), Gerry Conway (11 issues, main story in 1 issue, backup in 1 issue), Paul Kupperberg (co-writer on main story in 1 issue, backup on 1 issue, scripter on backups in 2 issues), Jim Starlin (plotter on 3 issues), Len Wein (main story in 1 issue, scripter on main story in 1 issue, backup in 1 issue)
And suddenly, everyone’s outfit is ridiculous. Actually I think a lot of them have been ridiculous for a while, but: undigitized. I especially like that everyone else has weird swimsuits or whatever and then there’s Brainiac 5 still in a featureless purple jumpsuit. While I’m on character designs, I also like that Superboy—who, for those of you keeping track at home, was noted in #195 to be coming from the ‘50s, maybe sliding-timescaled to the ‘60s by now—has kept up with ‘70s fashion trends and grown big sideburns.

It’s odd how many writers this Pulsar Stargrave plot gets bounced across—Shooter, Levitz, and Conway each do part of it, and the idea that he needs the Legion to help stop Mordru from destroying the universe vanishes somewhere around the latter two.

Shoutout to Australia spontaneously deciding to take over the world for no given reason (other than the Adult Legion back in the ‘60s saying Chemical King died “preventing World War VII” back before he was even properly introduced, so somebody had to threaten to start it).

I… can’t tell if I’m supposed to think Wildfire is a bad leader or not. Nobody seems to like him (and he did get elected on a technicality, since apparently they changed the bylaws to prevent Superboy from being leader and then a majority voted for Clark anyway and it went to the runner-up???), but his ideas always seem to work out, but they’re often very harebrained ideas. Like claiming to be choosing a team for a mission 100% “randomly” (which is screwy in itself), and then very obviously just intentionally picking the most obvious people.

Also… have I just seen the same character several times and kept forgetting his name, or do Science Police officers all seem to have unpronounceable triple-consonants in their names? The one I’ve got in front of me, who does seem to be recurring according to the wiki, is “Dvron,” but I could swear I’ve seen several of these.

So, Arma Getten—yes, seriously—is mad at R.J. Brande because he bankrupted his father’s company… but then his plan turns out to be blowing up the solar system? Um, what?

I really liked the murder mystery in #239. A lot of these long-running Pre-Crisis books have a very noticeable tipping point where they stop being academically interesting and start being fun, and I think this might be it (though that could just be my natural bias towards murder mysteries). Also in that issue, Chameleon Boy isn’t quite the first character to manifest a personality, but he’s probably the first to manifest one that isn’t “being a hothead and/or jerk to drum up conflict,” which we’ve gotten from numerous characters already with varying degrees of consistency. Anyway, Reep was actually cool in this issue.

It got a bit of that “exhausting chain of action scenes” feel that events tend to have towards the end, but on the whole, “Earthwar” was a really good arc. I almost wish the Dark Circle had just directly been the villains, since I feel like they’re more interesting than Mordru, but it wasn’t like Mordru came out of nowhere.

Then… oh god. Okay, that murder mystery I liked is resolved by… blaming Brainiac 5, who has apparently gone evil because… we dunno, he was kinda stressed out or something. Anyway, now he… summons a hate monster to eat the universe, with no real follow-up to the frameup thing. I’m sure this plan would make sense if I had a 12th-level intellect. Anyway, that’s… just a thing now.

I hate Jim Starlin.
78.

And… that takes care of the '70s.

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Legion of Super-Heroes: 57 issues from 1980-1984
Writers: Gerry Conway (15 issues, plotter on 3 issues, main story on 1 issue), J.M. DeMatteis (1 issue, scripter on 1 issue), Paul Kupperberg (backup on 1 issue), Roy Thomas (3 issues, plotter on 2 issues, scripter on 2 issues), Paul Levitz (31 issues, scripter on 2 issues, main story on 1 issue), Keith Giffen (co-plotter on 22 issues, co-plotter on main story in 1 issue), Dan Mishkin & Gary Cohn (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld backup inexplicably present in 1 issue)
I like that the two main forms of entertainment confirmed to continue into the 30th Century are… Broadway and circuses.

Let’s see… a lot of unremarkable villain-of-the-month stories early on, but…


… Oh my god. This is the weirdest deep cut reference and I love it; the loborilla is an alien creature from a Star Rovers story in Mystery in Space. Now, Mystery in Space was very… Silver Age, but the Star Rovers always stood out by being legitimately hilarious, and I am so happy that there’s a third person in the universe who cares about them.

So, the “League of Super-Assassins” (no relation to the League of Non-Super Assassins, as far as I can tell) somehow had time to grow to adulthood in the span since the story about that one planet’s sun going nova? That issue was less than five years old, I’m pretty sure. How old is everybody?

Conway does an admirable job of trying to straighten out the “Brainy goes ‘insane,’ frames Ultra Boy for murder, and then tries to destroy the universe” debacle.

Eventually, Roy Thomas takes over as scripter, with the expected rapid deterioration in, uh, script quality.

How exactly did this Chainsman clown become world-threateningly powerful? His thing is just… being kinda good at making traps. And here he just, like, 1v1s Superboy while not only not knowing it’s Superboy, but having reason to believe Superboy couldn’t possibly show up.

I like how often the Legionnaires will just… make Twentieth-Century pop-culture references with no explanation other than occasionally stopping to blame Superboy. Did he just spend his entire time in the future teaching them songs and idioms and movie quotes?

Anyway, Levitz frees me from the hell that is Roy Thomas’s exposition. I mean exposition. I mean exposition. I mean writing. And suddenly it reads like an actual story; I forgot what that felt like. It’s good again.

Also


Brainy’s got a point; they made combat way too complicated in 741st Edition.

Aww, they got rid of Cosmic Boy’s ridiculous costume.

The new Invisible Kid is okay, but the random insertions of broken French into his dialogue is really painful.

The Great Darkness Saga is good as it goes along, though I imagine that if you’re more familiar with the Legion than the Fourth World, this must be equivalent to how it feels when present-day stories suddenly get raided by a bunch of confusing Legion concepts that you’re expected to care about with no context.

For a big stretch of this under Levitz and Giffen, I don’t have much to say because… it’s just a really solid run? I’m enjoying it.

Gonna break this review off here because I’ve been gabbing for a while, and this is where the book sort of Duo Damsels into two different titles the same way New Teen Titans did around this time.
135.

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Awesome, everyone! I’ve been keeping track of my comics since September of last year. Currently trying to separate the ones I’ve read this year. I’m currently at 88 issues across DC, Marvel, Image, BOOM!, Comixology and some others. I’ll post again when I have it figured out.

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This week I read 84 comics. My total for the year is now 600.

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Legion of Super-Heroes and Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes: 25 issues from 1984-1985
Writers: Paul Levitz (4 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, 12 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, plotter on 3 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, main story in 2 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, co-plotter on main story in 1 issue of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, plotter on backup in 2 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes), Keith Giffen (co-plotter on 2 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, co-plotter on 4 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-plotter on main story in 3 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes), Mindy Newell (3 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, scripter on 4 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, scripter on backup in 2 issues of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes)
(You know, I didn’t even really think about this “writer” field when I started doing it. It seemed like such a simple thing!)

OK, so Validus’s origin was a pretty surprising dangling plot thread, but this was just about the weirdest possible way of addressing that. So, Imra and Garth’s baby is born; that checks out. But apparently they had twins, but Darkseid, in revenge for getting beaten the Great Darkness saga, secretly steals one through the power of off-panel, turns him into Validus, and sends him back in time? Just… what? It makes some tangential degree of sense because Validus does seem to have some psychic and electrical stuff going on, but it’s just… really?

So, White Witch isn’t fully human anymore because… reading books too much gives you antennae growing out of your eyelashes? Checks out.

I like how often plot convenience circumvents Dawnstar’s tracking.

Anyway, not much really happened in this stretch because both titles had overly long arcs of small groups being stuck on random weirdo planets; ultimately didn’t feel necessary for there to be two titles’ worth of issues here.
160.

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just read worlds finest 11 and legends of gotham 1 worlds finest was great and legends of gotham was okay but it seemed like a story that they wrote two or three years ago that they change some dialog on to make it seem like it was made recently that puts me at 42

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It was alright. It does connect to each other. I’m looking forward to the Predator stuff.

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IDW lost the rights and I think they are going to Image which is silly as Image was supposed to be creator owned…

Same for Transformers.

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