Editor’s Note: It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s New Comic Book Day and the return of Amazing Journey!
The Amazing Journey column will touch on a comics-related topic, such as writing the first issue of a series, what it’s like to run a comic book store, working with artists, and how writing comics is different from writing prose. I had intended this to be a weekly column, but my pace fell off as I worked on finishing Guild of Magic and one of the interviews I had planned didn’t line up.
Now that Guild of Magic is done and I have a little bit more time, I have turned back to comic writing and am going to do a full-blown “issue” of Amazing Journey once a month, with weekly Wednesday new issue spotlights in between.
What single issue series and/or graphic novel are you enjoying now?
Leave a comment or reply to this email with your thoughts! And if you do, you’ll be entered to win a copy of David Pepose’s The O.Z. #1 - what if Dorothy Gale’s granddaughter returned to Oz and found it a warzone? (U.S. residents only).
Daredevil #11: I am on a Daredevil kick, having caught up on Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto’s run over the winter holidays and having recently finished reading Charles Soule’s prior run (which ran almost 50 issues). It seems as if this story is headed to its finale this summer and I am very excited to see how it ends. This week’s issue features the above amazing Derrick Chew Elektra variant!
X-Men Red #11: Another issue eleven this week from one of my other current favorite series, which has been on hiatus for several months while we were in the Sins of Sinister alt-timeline. If you haven’t read this series yet, it’s basically Mutants on Mars! with Storm, Sunspot, and others.
The Amazing Spider-Man #25: Since the beginning of Zeb Wells’ run (and the end of the Beyond arc), we have been promised some answers regarding the new mysterious status quo, which saw Peter and MJ living apart and MJ sporting a husband and two kids! Those answers arrive today and Marvel has been teasing a monumental issue #26 coming out on May 31.
Graphic novel pick!
I’m really enjoying Danger and Other Unknown Risks, by Ryan North & Erica Henderson. The premise is what if on Y2K, the world didn’t end because of a huge technology disaster, but because of the return of magic? Danger follows Marguerite de Pruitt and her talking dog Daisy as they journey across a world shattered by magic to find three totems that will fuel the spell to heal the world.
Descender is a sci-fi series about a young robot trying to stay alive in a galaxy that's banned all robots and bounty hunters are searching for the remaining ones: https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/descender
I've read the first volume of Nice House, so good!
I've been reading Gideon Falls. It's an Image comics story by Jeff LeMire first published in 2017 and deals with a man who's had some problems and gets consumed with the legend of the Black Barn. It's been fun so far.
I’ll check it out. I’m always a sucker for LeMire, Tynion and Cates.
There's a follow-on series after that, but its premise I think spoils what happens in Descender, so I won't say more about it.
I enjoyed Cates' recent runs on Hulk and Thor.
What’s the Descender storyline?
Another fun one I’ve been reading lately is Nice House on the Lake by Tynion.
Descender is a sci-fi series about a young robot trying to stay alive in a galaxy that's banned all robots and bounty hunters are searching for the remaining ones: https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/descender
I've read the first volume of Nice House, so good!
I've been reading Gideon Falls. It's an Image comics story by Jeff LeMire first published in 2017 and deals with a man who's had some problems and gets consumed with the legend of the Black Barn. It's been fun so far.
Nice! I have Lemire's Descender first volume hardcover that I've been meaning to get to for a while.