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Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2024

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Beastie Boys, Book Report, books, comic books, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, reviews, Run-DMC, Superman, Year End Books on January 24, 2025 by Paxton

It’s the beginning of the year, which means it’s time for my yearly round up of the books I’ve read. I was surprised how many books I read I’d read last year, 275. Which is a nice total. But this year, I topped that. Which is kind of crazy. But as usual, it’s not all novels, there are a healthy amount of comics in that total as well.

As always, you can find my reading log on Goodreads. My reading goal for 2024 was 250. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 344 books. Again, I smashed all my previous reading totals. I’m waiting for this surge to end. Watch, next year I’ll only read like 100 books. LOL

Let’s take a look at some of the GoodReads stats for 2024.

GoodReads stats 2024

I’m pretty happy with what I was able to read this year. Like last year, I think I’m comic book heavy in my overall totals. I may focus more on novels this year. There was a big stretch last year where I read all two years worth of John Byrne’s Superman comics. So that definitely inflated my totals quite a bit.

Let’s look at the numbers of some of the things I read.

Looking at my list it looks like I read about 61 novels this year. And everything else was comic books. You can see the shortest thing I read all year was a short story. It’s a part of Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, which I’m quite enjoying. I’m looking forward to the upcoming series for that. The longest book I read was the second Gray Man novel, On Target. So far, that Gray Man series is really good. I’m hoping they make more movies with Ryan Gosling based on the books.

These are the “most popular” and “least popular” books I read this year. It looks like Lord of the Flies was the one I read shelved by more people than any other. That’s still a good book, I hadn’t read it since high school. I had read the book FantasticLand right before it, and it reminded me of Lord of the Flies. So I re-read it right after. Still really good and you can see where it’s influenced so many other things. That issue of Tom King’s Wonder Woman looks like no one else had shelved it, which is not surprising, it’s a fairly new issue.

Okay, let’s dig into my list of favorite books I read in 2024. Rules are the same every year. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2024 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I typically had a few. I don’t usually read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order. Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes – Back in 2023 I read Madeline Miller’s books; Circe and Song of Achilles. They made my 2023 favorites list. They made me want to read more modern retellings of mythology. Which, because of Madeline Miller, there are a lot of now. So from there I read a book this year called God of Fire. And I *did not* like it. Most of it was okay, but the way it handled the protagonist, Hephaestus, really grated on my nerves. Then Michael May recommended to me Stone Blind. And *this* one was exactly what I wanted. Modern retellings of mythology that are fun and interesting. This revolves mostly around the Medusa/Perseus myths, but you get a good grab bag of a lot of the stories. And they are written well. I really enjoyed what it was doing and how it got there.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells – I read the first book in this series back in April 2023. It did not make my favorites list. I liked it, I thought it was good, but not great. Consequently, I didn’t read the second book in the series until last year. Early last year. And I loved it. I think I just liked the overall story in this one better. Plus, the book introduced a ship run by an AI called ART. And ART was awesome and I loved his relationship with the main character. I wanted every book after this to be ART and Murderbot’s adventures into space. It’s kind of hard to describe this series, but Murderbot is a security robot that hacked its governor module and gave himself free will. Now all he wants to do is watch his downloaded media and be left alone. But instead he’s constantly pulled into drama with humans and having to save them when they inevitably put themselves into situations that will cause their immediate grisly deaths. I’ve read up through book 4 and hope to read book 5 very soon. For those that didn’t know, this book series is going to be an AppleTV+ series some time this year.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi – I’ve been interested in Scalzi for years. I had eyeballed his Redshirts for years to read. And I want to read his Old Man’s War this year, too. The only thing I’ve read by him (besides this book) is Kaiju Preservation Society, which I enjoyed quite a bit. This one I liked even better than KPS. A guy from a wealthy family is sort of the black sheep. He’s a step sibling, as his mother was different, and none of his siblings like him. One day a mysterious uncle on his mother’s side dies and leaves him his business. And the novel is spent learning about what this uncle did. And what the uncle did is kind of weird and hard to explain, but he’s somewhat like a Bond villain. And the guy has inherited this entire empire. It’s a really great world. Lots of great characters. It really has fun with the concept. I don’t want to get too much into it because the discovery of the world is the best part.

FantasticLand by Mike Bockoven – I think I read a review of this somewhere, and it got me interested. It’s about a hurricane that floods the surrounding area of an amusement park similar to Disney World, trapping hundreds of park goers and staff inside the park for a month. That’s interesting enough, but what this book does isn’t show you the events happening in real time. The story in the book takes place years after the event. It’s interviewing different people that were involved in the events and slowly reveals all the craziness that happened in the park. It’s a fascinating “oral history” of these events. I really really dug this book. It reminded me a lot of Lord of the Flies, and I went on a strange Lord of the Flies kick after reading this. I re-read the book and even watched the 1990 movie with Balthazar Getty and James Badge Dale.

James by Percival Everett – I’m a fan of Mark Twain. And I’m a fan of Tom and Huck Finn. I read both of those books in high school, and just a few years ago, I re-read both books and they hold up as good reads, especially Huck Finn. I even read the two novellas that Twain wrote as follow-ups; Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Tom Sawyer Detective. So when I saw someone had written a book that was essentially “The Adventures of Huck Finn but from Jim’s point of view”, I knew I had to read it. And it was exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s a lot funnier than I was expecting. Also, yes, there’s a lot of heavy themes most of them pertaining to slavery and how whites treated blacks. But also, Jim is really awesome as a character. And you see the events of Huck Finn just from a different angle. I love that. The end of this book though, kind of goes its own way, but in a good way, I think. It’s really good. I highly recommend it.

Together Forever: Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys
Together Forever: The Run-DMC and Beastie Boys Photographs – Yes! I’m sticking in a sixth book! This isn’t a novel, it’s a coffee table book. And it’s a collection of photographs of the rap groups Run-DMC and Beastie Boys; two of my favorite groups of all time. They used to tour together and hang out and did promotional stuff all the time. These are all the photos they did together. It’s a gorgeous edition. Lots of really awesome photos, the majority of which were in the 80s. I really really love this book.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

Strange/Doctor Strange by Jed Mackay and Pascal Ferry, and various – I guess, if I HAD to pick a favorite comic of the year, it would be the epic run Jed Mackay had across the Doctor Strange titles. First with Strange, where Clea takes over as sorcerer supreme after Strange’s death, and then in Doctor Strange which has Strange return from the dead to join Clea. Mackay writes Clea as awesome and badass and funny. And I love her and Stephen’s relationship. They fully support each other and they have fun banter like Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man movies. I also read MacKay’s lead up event to this; The Death of Dr Strange. The main issues of that are really good as well, but these two titles are…*chef’s kiss*

Black Cat by Jed MacKay and various artists – Yep, I’m doubling down on Mr MacKay. MacKay’s run is made up of two different series, but they all kind of go together. I read the first series back in 2022. I finished out the series in 2024. I also read several one shots and minis that MacKay wrote for Black Cat after the series ended. They are all really funny. Particularly the run I read this past year where Black Cat and the Silver Fox face the God of Death and bargain with him. So much adventure, fun, and snappy banter. This is a great series. Felicia even manages to steal her own version of Iron Man’s armor from Tony Stark. GREAT!

Birds of Prey by Kelly Thompson and Leonardo Romero – Let’s switch over to DC Comics. Kelly Thompson has been a favorite of mine since she did Black Widow, Kate Bishop: Hawkeye, and West Coast Avengers several years ago. So when I heard she was going to take over the super girl group, Birds of Prey, I was pretty excited. And come to find out, I was correct. This title is AWESOME. It has a great set of characters, they have great and fun interactions, and the story plots are wild, adventurous, and really have fun with the concept. That’s all I want out of things. Just write like you enjoy the characters. Kelly Thompson does that and this title exemplifies that.

Wonder Woman by Tom King and Daniel Sampere – So I read several events by both Marvel and DC this past year. One of them was DC’s Absolute Power by Mark Waid, which was really good. But the best thing that this event did for me was introduce me to Tom King’s Wonder Woman. I read a bunch of the Absolute Power tie-ins. I’ll be honest, most of the one-off titles were garbage. But several of the in-title crossovers were good with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Particularly Wonder Woman, which was written by Tom King. Who for the most part I like, but sometimes he can’t get out of his own way. I love King’s Vision series and the beginning of his Batman run. But his Miracle Man title was WAY too convoluted. So I gave his Wonder Woman a try based on the Absolute Power crossover issues. And I loved it. This is such a great title. King does a great job respecting the character. He ties in Trinity and the other Amazons. The story structure is a little weird. We are introduced to a new villain called The Sovereign. The whole story is told by him in flashback AFTER the events have happened. So while I’m side-eyeing King’s decision to have Wonder Woman’s story told to us in flashback by a guy, a guy villain nonetheless, I will say, that construct does manage to get out of the way of the story and be as non-intrusive as possible. And the actual story that is being told is EXCELLENT. You really see how awesome and bad ass Wonder Woman is. I also want to point out that King also writes a backup story in each issue that takes place in the future involving the antics of Trinity, Damien Wayne, and Jon Kent. It’s funny and lighthearted. It’s supposed to be less serious. And it’s a wonderful companion to the main story. I love this title so much.

John Byrne’s 2 year run on Superman/Action Comics – I’ve talked about on this very blog how much I love Byrne’s run on Superman back in the late 80s. For two years he wrote and drew Superman and Action Comics. And towards the end, he was also writing Adventures of Superman. I was buying his run piece-meal from the racks in the 80s and loved it. So I decided in 2024 to read the complete 2 year run of Byrne’s Superman which includes the main Superman title, Action Comics, the mini-event Legends, the graphic novel The Earth Stealers, several issues of Adventures of Superman, and several issues of Legion of Superheroes that tied into his run. It was one long glorious ride. Not everything was my favorite, I’ll say that. But over the two years, particularly in the first year or so, there was some dynamite storytelling. And Byrne’s art. I love Byrne’s art. It’s just so well composed and lends itself to the action-y stories.

And there you go, some of my favorite things I read in 2024. I read some really fun stuff last year. It was difficult to narrow it down, but only for 1 or 2 things. Most of this stuff jumped out immediately as “this belongs on the list”.

Hope you guys found something new to read that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

So that covers the year end articles for IRM, and now the things I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES!! I need to rewatch a few things, so movies may be another week or two down the line. But I’ll get them out, I promise you!!

Thanks for reading.

Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2023

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Book Report, books, comic books, DC Comics, Magic Johnson, Marvel Comics, NBA, reviews, time travel, Year End Books on February 2, 2024 by Paxton

Well, I was shocked in 2022 that I had read the most books I’d ever logged…EVER. And then, in 2023, I managed to top that. Which is crazy to me because in November and December I kind of stopped reading for a while due to work. Let’s dig into one of my most weirdly productive years ever.

As always, you can find my reading log on Goodreads. My reading goal for 2023 was 200. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 275 books. Again, I smashed all my previous reading totals. It’s even more remarkable to me because around November, I had a streak of books/comics that I didn’t like and it killed my momentum for a month. So this total could have been higher.

Let’s take a look at some of the GoodReads stats for 2023.

I’m pretty happy with what I was able to read this year. Looking at it, I think I’m comic book heavy in my overall totals. Most of that was because, like I said, in Oct-Nov, I hit a snag where I just couldn’t read any books. It just wasn’t happening. That’s why I’m surprised I got as much read as I did.

Let’s look at the numbers of some of the things I read.

Going over my spreadsheet, it looks like I read roughly 64 novels. The rest were comics issues and trade paperbacks. In the image above you can see my shortest and longest book I read. Over Halloween I read several Poe stories. Cask was one of them. I also read Murders in the Rue Morgue and Masque of the Red Death. I enjoyed them. Longest book I read is that Return of the Living Dead Complete History. I love that movie. And that book was excellent. However, full disclosure, I wound up only reading the chapters for the first three movies. I did not care about parts 4 and 5. That came out to about 2/3 of the whole book, not the full 751 pgs.

Here are my “most popular” and “least popular” shelved books. Most popular was The Song of Achilles, which is EXCELLENT, btw. Wow over 3 million other people read that last year. And exactly 0 people read Tim Holt Western Magazine #11. That doesn’t surprise me, but if you were wondering why I read it, it’s because that is the first appearance of the original Ghost Rider, when he was a heroic but mysterious gunslinger.

Let’s move on with my recap of my favorite books I read this year.

Rules are the same as every year. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2023 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I typically had a few. I don’t usually read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order. Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller – This was recommended to me by a family member. I’m a big fan of the Trojan War and the 2004 movie Troy, so I thought this might be an interesting read. It is FANTASTIC. It’s a retelling of The Iliad, but from the point of view of Achilles’ partner. In the movie Troy, that character is his cousin, but in The Iliad and this book, he’s more of a companion and lover. I loved this book. It’s a fantastic retelling. The characters are great. I loved it. So much so I also read Miller’s follow up, Circe. That is a retelling of The Odyssey and also fantastic. And then I read two of her short stories, Galatea, and Heracles’ Bow. I’m anxiously awaiting her next book.

Zorro #1
The Curse of Capistrano (aka The Mark of Zorro) by Johnston McCulley – I kind of got into a Zorro kick in 2023. I’ve wanted to read the original Zorro story for many years, and in 2023 I finally did it. And it is so much fun. Lots of action. Great characters. Fun dialogue. I was thrilled. It’s everything I wanted a Zorro story to be. So I read the next two McCulley Zorro stories as well; The Further Adventures of Zorro, and Zorro Rides Again. I loved all of them. They are really fun stories. I hope to keep going through McCulley’s Zorro series, but I don’t know how many full stories are left. I think a lot of them are short stories.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High – Cameron Crowe – I’m a huge fan of the 1982 movie. Have been for years. Finally was able to read a copy of the really hard to find book that was the basis for the movie. And it didn’t disappoint. The basic structure of the movie is there, but there’s a lot of extra content and even a few extra characters. Cameron Crowe wrote a fun book and managed to capture what it was like to be a teen in high school in the late 70s-early 80s.

On Target (The Gray Man #2) – Mark Greaney – I really enjoyed the first Gray Man novel (as well as the movie), so I thought I’d try the second book. And it delivers. Lots of action packed adventure. Court finds himself as a double agent sent on a mission for a Russian gangster. He’s supposed to assassinate an African dictator, but he works a deal with his old office, the CIA, to kidnap him instead and deliver him to them. In return Court will get back in their good graces and can stop running from agents sent to kill him. This was very twisty-turny. I love Court as a character. His mission goes sideways, of course. Lots of fun. Can’t wait to read more. And hopefully they can pump out a few more Gray Man movies with Ryan Gosling.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

I Hate Fairyland (2022) – I was a HUGE fan of the original run of this comic by Skottie Young. And at the end of 2022 Young decided to return to this world. Gert, the protagonist/antagonist from the previous run, returned to Earth, but realized that since she spent so long in Fairyland, she had no life skills. So she has trouble keeping a job. Then a tech guru wants Gert to go back to Fairyland to find his son who disappeared there. I’ve read the 10 issues or so that they’ve released so far. It’s really good, a lot of fun, and I love the art. The first 5-6 issues felt like they were building up to something really big, and the last 4 issues felt like they were told to “wrap it up” by the publisher and it felt a bit rushed. The story I mean. There are a ton of action montages that briskly go over a lot of action. That’s a small nitpick though because the issues in question are still really good. And the art is always cartoonishly fantastic.

Batman White Knight
Batman: White Knight by Sean Murphy – I finally dug into the Murphyverse in 2023. And I loved it. I read all three White Knight series; White Knight, Curse of the White Knight, and Beyond the White Knight. As well as all the mini-series in between. Murphy has built up this excellent Batman universe with compelling iterations of your favorite characters. Particularly Jack Napier/Joker. I thought I was over any more Joker adaptations, but Murphy nailed his version. It’s so good. As is his Harley Quinn. For the first two books, I almost didn’t really even like Batman, he’s kind of a jerk, but that’s part of what Murphy is trying to do. And it worked for me. This is a great series of stories. I look forward to more.

World's Finest
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest by Mark Waid (writer) and Dan Mora (art) – I love Mark Waid as a writer. His Kingdom Come is for me, pound for pound, the best look at mythology and super heroes bar none. And yes, I’m including Watchmen and Dark Knight. So it was such a fun surprise to see Waid take on this title and have so much fun with it. He really plays around with the history of these characters and how their friendship works. And he brings in the Bat family, the Supes family, and tons of other heroes. This ongoing book is a joyful celebration of DC, its characters, and its history. You won’t believe the places this title goes in later issues. Oh, and Dan Mora’s art is THE BEST. It’s so clean and iconic. I really love it.

Superior Spider-man by Christos Gage – Superior Spider-man has become one of my favorite characters. Originally written by Dan Slott, Christos Gage takes over in this series. I love the concept that, on his death bed, Otto Octavius switches minds and bodies with Peter Parker, leaving Parker to die in his place and him to take over being Spider-man. And no one realizes it! Otto continues to try to be a better Spider-man than Parker ever was, but he has trouble working with other people. He certainly beefs up Peter’s operation and does seem to make it more efficient. This is a really great series. They are bringing Superior Spider-man back this year, and it’s written by Dan Slott, so count me excited!

Jughead
Jughead by Chip Zdarsky – I think I’ve mentioned I was a big fan of Mark Waid (again!) and Veronica Fish’s reinvention of Archie. This was a follow up series to that, written by the great Chip Zdarsky and Ryan North who took over in later issues. I really loved their version of Jughead. They also bring in Sabrina who I also love their version of her.

And there you go, some of my favorite things I read in 2023. This was a kind of tough choice, I did have a few really good things that didn’t make the list. I always threaten it, but maybe I’ll do an “honrable mention” article to talk about a few of the other books/comics that didn’t make the list.

Hope you enjoyed this article and found something new that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

So that covers the year end articles for IRM, and now the things I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES!! This year, I’ve actually been taking my time with movies. I’m rewatching several I felt needed rewatches and I’m even for the first time watching a few movies I missed in 2023 to see if they’d make it into my favs list. Normally I don’t allow that. Let’s see if it changes anything!

Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2022

2022 was, for some weird reason, a very productive reading year for me. I reached the highest amount of books/comics read, EVER. So let’s dig into that.

You can find my reading log on Goodreads. I log everything I read there. My reading goal for 2022 was 150. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 241 books. I smashed all my previous reading totals. I was even in a position in December where I was within readch of 250, but work was really busy at that time and I didn’t really try to read a few quick things to up the number. Gotta leave some goals for next year, right?

Let’s take a look at some of the GoodReads stats for 2022.

Year in Books 1

It’s not all novels, obviously, I read a lot of comics as well. And depending on how GoodReads has you log them, it can inflate your totals. But I’m pretty happy with how much I got read this past year.

Let’s look at the numbers of some of the things I read.

Year in Books 2

Here’s my shortest and longest book I read. Shortest is an issue of a comic. Not surprising. I started that Tom Taylor Nightwing series last year and I’m loving it. It’s so good. The longest is, surprisingly, another comic. I reread the X-men: Inferno story arc. I hadn’t read that since it came out in 1989. And I only read the collection of the main mutant titles; X-Men, X-Factor, New Mutants, and X-Terminators. Even just that was a lot, but there’s a whole separate collection of all the tie-in books. At least 20 more issues of tangentially related books. I had to draw the line there. Inferno is great, but…no.

Year in Books 3

Here are my “most popular” and “least popular” shelved books. Most popular was Jurassic Park. I re-read that last year for the first time since the summer the movie came out. It’s still a pretty great book. I’m hoping to re-read the sequel, The Lost World, this year. Look at that, over a million other people shelved Jurassic Park last year. That’s crazy. Wow.

And the least popular book I shelved was The Story of Breakin’. Which is supposed to be an oral history of the making of the movie. Don’t get me started on that. It’s enthusiastic, but it’s not great.

Let’s move on with my recap of my favorite books I read this year.

Rules are the same as every year. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2022 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I typically had a few. I don’t usually read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens. This year I read 5 novels that were released in 2022. One of those 5 was a “did not finish”. Let’s see if any of them made the list.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order.

Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo – The currently final book in the Shadow and Bone series. All of this series has made it onto my year end lists in some form or another. The final two books are a duology focusing on Nicolai, who is my favorite character. The book before this, King of Scars, was a very slow starter, so I was concerned going into this. However, this book was a fantastic ending (?) to the saga. The story was good, characters arcs wrapped up nicely, it was so much fun. This whole series is good, but my favorites are the middle two books, Six of Crows, and Crooked Kingdom. Leigh Bardugo is currently one of my favorite writers. All of her books are really fun and have really good dialogue and characters.

Showtime!: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman – I’m a huge fan of pre-2000s NBA documentaries and biographies. I’ve read a couple huge oral histories of the NBA and the ABA, and tons of books about players and teams including Larry Bird, Pete Maravich, Wilt Chamberlain, and the Celtics. This was one I never read. It’s what the HBO series Winning Time! is loosely based on. So after really enjoying season 1 of Winning Time! I decided to give this a shot. And it’s everything I wanted it to be. Pretty much an oral history of the Los Angeles Lakers starting around the year before Magic was drafted in 1979 and ends right around his (first) retirement in 1991. It’s a lot of information but it’s a lot of fun to see all the locker room shenanigans the team got into. And not just the players, Jerry Buss was kind of a wild man as well. This was a really fun read.

Just One Damned Thing After Another (Chronicles of St Marys Book 1) by Jodi Taylor – Being a huge devotee of time travel books, I’ve been lurking on these St Mary’s books for a while. Currently I’ve read a short prequel to the series, this first book, and the second book. I think there are currently 14 books in the series. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to finish the full series, but the first two books are really really good. There’s a St Mary’s Institute for Historical Research at the University of Thirsk in London. It studies historical events in “contemporary time”. Which is a fancy way of saying, they travel back in time and study historical events. In this book time travel exists and this research institute uses it to bolster the human record of the past. However, the quirky staff at the Institute are disaster magnets and anything that can go wrong will. It’s the characters that are the highlight here but there is some good time jumping action.

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi – I’ve always wanted to read John Scalzi but I never pulled the trigger. I read a sample of his book Redshirts, but never actually finished it. However this came out in February 2022, and my library had a copy online, so I quickly checked it out. And this is a lot of fun. At first glance you think, “It’s essentially Jurassic Park”. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I read another book in that pastiche that I liked a few years ago called The Great Zoo of China. They can be a lot of fun. This story obviously isn’t Earthbound. The goverment discovers a portal to another dimension and a land filled with kaiju. They set up a research station in that dimension to learn more about the creatures. It doesn’t really go the way you expect, ie the kaiju run rampant killing people. It’s actually more of a people villain that causes a bunch of havok, but it’s certainly a lot of fun. And the way the research station works and the variety of kaiju are definitely interesting.

Jack West Jr #7
One Impossible Labyrinth (Jack West Jr Book 7) by Matthew Reilly – I started this series way back in 2010. It’s showed up on my year end list several times, as has the author, Matthew Reilly. This is the final book in Reilly’s Jack West Jr series which is a big, epic, adventure series akin to Indiana Jones, but even bigger. There’s a lot to digest here, it’s not just a one off book, you’re gonna need to read the series from the beginning or you’re gonna be lost. And as a finale, this book nailed it. I love this series, but the last three or four books have just been exquisite. Reilly really knows how to write action and keep the plot moving. So fun.

As usual, I also read a bunch of movie novelizations this year for I Read Movies. However, I don’t include those in this list. I do a separate write up for I Read Movies year end. Check it out here.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

All-New Wolverine by Tom Taylor and David Lopez – I love Laura Kinney (X-23), so I was very curious about this title where she takes over the mantle of the dead (at the time) Wolverine. I think this was also the title that introduced me to writer Tom Taylor. This is such a great series. I read the first three volumes in the title and I love every minute of it. Laura gets a quirky group of characters around her and they have these awesome adventures. I really enjoyed it.

Nightwing by Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, and Neil Edwards – So I loved Tom Taylor from All-New Wolverine, and I kind of do like Nightwing. Actually, it wasn’t really Nightwing that drew me to this, it was Taylor and all the buzz he was getting about how good this title is. So I gave it a shot. Taylor takes over in issue #78 and I’ve read through about issue #94. The title is GREAT. I love Dick as Nightwing in this. I love Barbara Gordon. I love that the Titans show up every once in a while. Blockbuster is the main villain, but he’s more a terrifying mob boss than he is the smash first monster that I’m used to. This is a really good title that I’m continuing to read because I enjoy all the characters.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson – I’ll admit, the buzz for this one actually kept me away. The art is weird, I didn’t get the character, and it just seemed like this whole Squirrel Girl “thing” was just not for me. But I kept hearing from people it’s really good, so towards the end of last year, I decided to just give it a shot. And you know what? I really liked it. Ryan’s humor is a lot of fun. He writes extra comments in the margins of the comic that are pretty weird and funny. The first page of each comic is a Twitter-like conversation between Squirrel Girl and other heroes which is hilarious. I just really enjoyed Squirrel Girl’s positivity and outlook. I’ll be honest, Erica Henderson’s art takes some getting used to. Everyone looks weird. But over time it just works. You get used to it. North’s Squirrel Girl adventures remind me a lot of Christopher Hastings Gwenpool series from a few years ago. Very much enjoyed this.

Batman 3 Jokers
Batman: Three Jokers by Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok – I was reluctant to get into this one because I don’t really want an investigation into the nature of The Joker. The Joker, to me, is a force of nature, an agent of chaos. I don’t need him defined. This does that, to a point, but it’s a really good look at how the Joker has affected the lives of Jason Todd, Barbara Gordon, and to an extent, Batman. In the book we learn there are three Jokers; The Clown, The Criminal, and The Comedian. And we learn how each one works. It’s really well done and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Jason Fabok’s art is fantatic as well.

Maniac of NY 2
Maniac of NY vol 2 – The Bronx is Burning by Elliot Kalan and Andrea Mutti – The followup to the original Maniac of NY. I really like this book. This continues the story of how New York City would deal with having a mysterious, unkillable movie slasher that can disappear and reappear at will. You have the burned out detective on the slasher swat squad, you have the disaffected mayor, you have the cynical police force. It’s really good. However, there are some frustrations, but I think the comic knows they are frustrations. The book lays out a few “hints” to the back story and nature of the killer, Harry. Total plot threads like certain spots of the city that he seems to avoid. And a few other things that point to a possible weakness. However, nothing is ever picked up on. They are completely left dangling. It’s possible these threads will be picked up again for the possible upcoming part 3, but as a reader, that’s fascinating and frustrating in equal measures because I really enjoy this book.

And those were my favorite books and comics I read in 2022. I’ll maybe have a followup article to this talking about some Honorable Mentions. You know, things that maybe I liked that almost made the list, but also things I didn’t like and really want to talk about.

Hope you enjoyed this article and found something new that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

Okay, that covers EVERYTHING I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES! Stay tuned.

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Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2021

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Book Report, books, comic books, Marvel Comics, reviews, Year End Books on January 12, 2022 by Paxton

2021. What can I say. I’m still working from home. Things got a little better in some respects, a little worse in others. But through it all I was able to keep reading. And logging my reading.

So, as usual, you can find my reading logs on Goodreads. I log everything I read there. My reading goal for 2021 was originally 115 books. However, I reached that goal in like October. So, I went in and readjusted my reading goal to 140. And according to Goodreads, I finished out the year with 170 books. I tied my total from last year. Let’s take a look at some of GoodReads’ stats for my reading last year.

Reading 170 books certainly sounds impressive. And I did it twice. It’s not all novels, obviously. There are a generous amount of comics in there. And several smaller kids books. I actually didn’t even log *all* the books I read to my kids. Only some of them. The newer ones.

Let’s look at some of my other Reading totals.

Here’s my shortest and longest book I read. The shortest was one issue of The Flash (1987-). Starting in 2020, I did a read through of the first 62 issues of that Flash series. An issue at a time. In 2021 I read #36 through #61. That was a fun re-read. The longest book as you can see is Stephen King’s The Institute. That was a pretty good book too. It felt like there should have been a small connection to Firestarter in that book. But it never materialized.

Here are my “most popular” and “least popular” shelved books. Most popular was Huck Finn. I had started a re-read of the three Mark Twain books I’d read back in high school; A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and The Adventures of Huck Finn. I read all three last year. I hope to read the two other Tom Sawyer books he wrote that I’d never read; Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective. Again, one of the least popular things I read was an issue of my The Flash (1987-) re-read.

I’ve already set my GoodReads reading goal for this year. I set it to 150. I’m not trying to stress myself out with this goal. But I am trying to up it a little every year.

Let’s move on with my recap of my favorite books I read this year.

Rules are the same. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2021 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I had a few (I think I mentioned most of them earlier). I don’t typically read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens. This year I read 5 novels that were released in 2021. I wonder if any of them made the list. Let’s find out.

Here are the top 5 books I read last year in no particular order.

Images and links are from GoodReads pages.

Books

Project Hail Mary (2021) by Andy Weir – I had wanted to read The Martian for years, and then the Matt Damon movie came out. I loved it, and kind of thought, “Well, now I don’t need to read that book.” Which is not true, I really should. However, when Weir put out his next book, Artemis (2017), I checked it out and read it. And promptly hated it. So, when Project Hail Mary came out this year, I was a bit cautious. This looked a lot more like The Martian than his previous book, so I gave it a shot. And I really really liked it. A guy wakes up on a spaceship. He’s clearly not in our solar system. He seems to have previously been in a coma. His crew mates are dead. And he can’t remember anything. This is where you start in the book and we have to learn everything along with the main character. The story goes into some surprising places. I really enjoyed it. The strength of this is making me want to read The Martian again.

The Tournament (2014) by Matthew Reilly – I love Matthew Reilly. His Jack West Jr books have made it onto my “best of” list. I think his Scarecrow series has also made it onto my lists. He’s a really fun action author and I really enjoy reading his books. I think at this point, I’ve only not read maybe 2-3 of his books. This had been on my “to read” list for a while, but for some reason Reilly’s Kindle books very rarely go on sale. I typcially like to pick up Kindle books when they are $2.99 or less. His rarely go there. So it wasn’t until this year that I finally used a gift card to buy this book. And I’m glad I did. This book is GREAT. It takes place in the 1500s. Queen Elizabeth II is just a teenager. Her teacher is Roger Ascham. They travel to Constantinople to witness a grand chess tournament to determine the greatest chess master in the world. But a murder during the tournament sends Roger Ascham, a smart, amateur detective, into the depths of the sultan’s palace to discover a murderer. Lots of mystery and suspense in this one.

BTTF Ultimate Visual History
Back to the Future Ultimate Visual History (2015) by Michael Klastorin with Randal Atamaniuk – I’ve mentioned before I love oral histories. I previous read all three of JW Rinzler’s “Making of” Star Wars books. I want to read Rinzler’s Indiana Jones “Making of” book. Last year I read one on Jaws and one on one of my favorite video games, NBA Jam. I’d also many years ago read one on Saturday Night Live. I’ve even read a Back to the Future “Making of” book before. And I didn’t love it because, honestly, I already knew all the stuff in that book. So, while I bought this newer Back to the Future Ultimate Visual History, I was worried I wasn’t going to like it because I thought I would already know everything it had to tell me. But I was wrong. This book is so well laid out. Lots of great info. There was even a bunch of stuff I didn’t know. They dig into many aspects of the production of the movie. Even the whole Eric Stoltz debacle. And it tackles both sequels, as well as Back to the Future The Ride, and Back to the Future The Animated Series. So it’s comprehensive. And very readable. Thoroughly enjoyed this.

The Director Should Have Shot You: Memoirs of the Film Trade by Alan Dean Foster – By Subterranean Press. Being a movie novelization junkie, and host of a movie novelization podcast, I was super excited to discover Alan Dean Foster, the godfather of movie novelizations, wrote a memoir. And it’s not just a memoir. It’s a deep dive into all of the movie novelizations that he’s written, including one that was never published. He goes through each book one by one in chronological order and gives anecdotes about the writing of the book. It’s a lot of fun, super informative, with lots of good pictures. Highly recommend this, especially to novelization fans. Unsigned copies of this book are still available. Click the image of the book above to go get one.

Six of Crows Duology (2015/2016) by Leigh Bardugo – This is by the same author that started the Shadow and Bone series that is now a series on Netflix. Technically, these two books are a part of that Shadow and Bone series. In fact, the Netflix series adapts part of Six of Crows in its first season. Anyway, I was aware of the Shadow and Bone series and wanted to read it. But then I was searching “heist” books and Six of Crows kept coming up on people’s lists. So I went ahead and read it. And loved it. THEN, I figured out that Six of Crows takes place a few years after the three Shadow and Bone books. The timeline here is complicated, but in the books, Shadow and Bone is the first trilogy. Then chronologically comes Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom. Then taking place a few years after these books is another trilogy. But I enjoyed Six of Crows so much I just read these two books first anyway. And they are amazing. Great characters. Lots of fun intricate plans. Good dialogue. Really enjoyed this. I also read the first two Shadow and Bone books after these, and I can see where I may have spoiled myself on a few things by doing it this way, but I don’t care. Reading these two first were worth it.

I’m going to throw in one extra. Call it a “Baker’s Five” of books.

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton – This book was on this list until literally the last 5 days of 2021. I read Turton’s first book in 2019. It was mostly good, but sort of went off the rails towards the end. However it was written engagingly enough that I was interested in his next book. And this was it. It is sort of a Sherlockian setup. Takes place in the 16th century on a sailing ship. Murders start happening. The “Sherlock” character is locked up in the brig as a suspect. And the “Watson” character has to solve the mystery on his own. That’s a very basic setup. There’s a lot going on in this book. But it has a great atmosphere, I loved the mystery, and I really enjoyed the characters. There are a couple of Macguffins in the story. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Let’s switch over to comics! Here are the top 5 comics I read last year in no particular order.

Comics

Red Hood 1
Red Hood and the Outlaws (Rebirth) by Scott Lobdell and Dexter Soy – So, as I do, I sort of got on a Jason Todd kick this year. I was always curious about the Red Hood, so I decided to check out Lobdell’s Rebirth series. And loved it. I read through the whole thing. Jason Todd as Red Hood, Artemis, and Bizarro make a great team. And they were like a family. It was such a good dynamic. And Lobdell brought the humor. Jason Todd’s relationship with Batman and the rest of the family is so sardonic. But it’s clear that he appreciates them. His whole sardonic attitude is great and it belies the fact that he’s great at what he does. He’s usually as prepared as Batman is. This is a great series and I wanted to delve more into Jason Todd’s adventures, so next I read…

Batman: Under the Red Hood/Lost Days by Judd Winick, Doug Mahnke, and Jeremy Haun – These books are two different runs separated by 5-6 years, but I’m putting them together because they are by the same author and they are mirrors of each other. Under the Red Hood was the original run where Winick had Jason Todd return as the titular character. It’s a great story, told from Batman’s POV that involves the Joker, Talia al Ghul, and Nightwing. I loved it. Red Hood: Lost Days is a follow up to the original run, also written by Winick, but many years later. Essentially, it’s Under the Red Hood, but this time it’s from Red Hood’s POV. So we get a lot of what you didn’t see in the first book. This one is also excellent and I highly recommend it.

Fire Power by Robert Kirkman and Chris Samnee – I’m a fan of Robert Kirkman. Unlike others, I don’t worship at the altar of Walking Dead, but I love Kirkman’s work on Astounding Wolf-Man, Invincible, and Marvel Zombies. I’m also a big fan of Samnee’s art. One of my all time favorite things is his Black Widow run with Mark Waid. So combine these two on a kung fu tale and YES PLEASE. I read the first three volumes of this which goes up to about issue 12. It’s about an ancient shaolin temple that seeks to rediscover the art of throwing fire. And one man comes to the temple to learn. Then, the story shifts like 15 years, and we see the man with his wife and kids, and his days at the shaolin temple come back to haunt him when a rival temple comes to attack his family. It’s really good, I really enjoyed this title. Great art, of course. And the story really picks up during the “15 years later” part.

Marvel Masterworks (Thor, Hulk, X-Men) – Continuing my journey reading through some of these old Marvel issues. I had set a goal for myself earlier this year to read all the Marvel Masterworks volume 1s featuring the original line up of the Avengers; Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, Wasp, and Captain America. Yes, Captain America wasn’t in Avengers #1, but he showed up in #4, and he’s so linked to the group at this point I’m including him. I’ve done all of those now except Captain America, Ant-Man and Wasp. Captain America has two, the Golden Age archive, and the Modern Age archive (essentially before and after “frozen in ice”). I’ll probably just do both. Anyway, this year I tackled The Mighty Thor (Journey into Mystery), The Incredible Hulk, and in a break from my Avengers challenge, the original X-Men. I loved all of these. In X-Men you see a ton of firsts including Cerebro, Magneto, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver. And everyone is in love with Jean Grey. Hulk’s is super weird. Originally he only changes at night. Then, he has an accident where in order to change into the Hulk, Banner has to bathe himself in Gamma Rays with a radiation gun. EVERY TIME. And Thor’s is a lot of fun too with appearances by Loki and Odin. And Thor has his Doctor Blake secret identity. And his nurse Jane Foster. OMG. So much drama. I really recommend reading these early adventures of your favorite heroes. They are so much fun. Like I said, this year I hope to do Captain America, Ant-Man/Wasp (Tales to Astonish), and maybe Uncanny X-Men.

Black Widow by Kelly Thompson – Kelly Thompson is the best. I originally discovered her on Kate Bishop: Hawkeye. Then I followed her to West Coast Avengers. Which I loved and was sad it didn’t continue after issue #10. Now I’m reading her Deadpool series and this, her Black Widow series. This is so good. The first collection has Bucky and Hawkeye, the second collection has Yelena and Spider-Girl. I love Thompson’s voice. Her dialogue is so great. The art is by Elena Casagrande and Rafael de Latorre. And it’s *also* fantastic. This is a great series. Love it.

And those were my favorite books and comics I read in 2021. I’ll maybe have a followup article to this talking about some Honorable Mentions. You know, things that maybe I liked that almost made the list, but also things I didn’t like and really want to talk about.

Hope you enjoyed this article and found something new that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

Okay, that covers EVERYTHING I’ve read. Next up…MOVIES! Stay tuned.

Year End Book Report: My Favorite Books/Comics I Read in 2020

Posted in Blog Series, Book Report, books, comic books with tags Book Report, books, comic books, Marvel Comics, reviews, Year End Books on January 11, 2021 by Paxton

2020. Oh my god, guys, what a ride. I’m surprised, but I was able to get some reading done in 2020. It helped, sort of, that I was home most of the time. And, we read a lot more books as a family to each other. So that’s why you’ll see Diary of a Wimpy Kid on my list, and Little House on the Prairie, and Junie B Jones. These are book we read as a family or I read to my kids at bedtime. So it did seem we were all reading more together. I really liked that.

So, you can find my reading logs on Goodreads. I log everything I read there. My reading goal for 2020 was 105 books. And according to Goodreads, I read 170 books.

Reading 170 books certainly sounds impressive, but it’s deceiving as well. I had three books I did not finish, but Goodreads counts them in my “books read” and “pages read” totals. There were also a couple large story collections that I only read one story out of, but Goodreads counts that whole book towards my totals. Also, I read several comics series that weren’t collected into paperbacks so I had to list them as single issues. That quickly inflates my totals. Plus, comics are super easy and quick to read. And I read a bunch of them this year.

Let’s look at some of my other Reading totals.

Here’s my shortest and longest book I read. Both were read for AWESOME-tober-fest this year. The short one is obviously a short story. The longest one is a collection of the works of Stephen Vincent Benet. He wrote The Devil and Daniel Webster. I only read The Devil and Daniel Webster. None of the other stories. But that book is counted amongst my totals.

Here are my “most popular” and “least popular” shelved books. I had read the first Harry Potter to my kids this year which started off a whole Potter obsession in this house that continues to this day. We’ve watched all the movies, I’ve read the first three books to them, and they each have their own wands. The least popular book I read is a comic from the Ultraverse: Prime comic series by Malibu. I read a bunch of these Ultraverse titles for my apppearance on the podcast Wizards: The Podcast Guide to Comics. These didn’t even exist on Goodreads. I had to add them.

If you look at my Google Spreadsheet reading log, which I keep in parallel with Goodreads, you’ll see it listing 113 reads this year. Minus the three aforementioned DNF books, which makes it 110 reads. That number rolls up the single issue comics into their collected titles. Still over my goal number of 105, so I’m happy with that. Next year (or this year, I guess, 2021) I set my reading goal to 115.

Let’s move on with my recap of my favorite books I read this year.

Rules are the same. Only books/comics I read for the first time in 2020 are eligible for this list. No re-reads, of which I had a few. You won’t find a lot of “2020” reads in here. I don’t typically read brand new stuff the year it comes out, but it happens. There was one big 2020 release that I did read. Will it make the list? Let’s find out.

Books

Immortality Inc
Immortality, Inc by Robert Sheckley – I’ve been wanting to read this for YEARS. This is the book that the movie Freejack was based on, and I am a fan of that movie. We even covered Freejack on Cult Film Club in 2020. Robert Sheckley is a prolific sci-fi author from the 50s. And yes, Immortality Inc was written in the late 50s. The novel is very different from the movie. The movie took a few aspects of the story and that’s about it. I’m considering doing an appendix episode of this novel on I Read Movies, so possibly stay tuned for that. But the book is good, it’s packed with interesting ideas, and I had some fun with it. I’m now curious to check out more of Sheckley’s work. He’s written a *ton* of stuff including several short story collections, and a novel, Dimension of Miracles, that was a precursor (and possible influencer) to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide.

Brilliance Trilogy 1 Brilliance Trilogy 2 Brilliance Trilogy 3
Brilliance Trilogy by Marcus Sakey – I forget how I found out about this series. The basic premise is that at some point in the 80s it was discovered that 1% of the population is born “brilliant”. Meaning that they have special abilities. But we aren’t talking throwing fireballs, super speed, or flying. It’s more grounded than that. One man can read your intentions through your posture or your muscles tensing. Another man can read the subtleties of the ever changing stock market to such a degree that he racked up billions and shut the entire NYSE down. One woman can turn invisible, not physically invisible, but she inherently knows where people aren’t currently looking and can occupy those spots at the exact time to make herself functionally invisible. And there are many other degredations besides that. Sakey creates a pretty interesting world. It’s definitely an X-Men pastiche type story. Which itself is a thin alegory for racism. This book investigates all of that. The government that’s scared that Brilliants will take over world. What they do about it. And all the political intrigue and drama behind the scenes. It’s really good and I highly recommend it.

Making of ROTJ
The Making of Return of the Jedi by JW Rinzler – So, I finally finished this series. It took me three years, but I finally did it. I read the original Making of Star Wars in 2018. Then I read the Making of Empire Strikes Back in 2019. And this year, I was able to finish the trilogy with Making of Return of the Jedi. These books are exhaustive. Thousands of pictures. Script fragments. Behind the scenes stuff. I had the Kindle versions and they also came with snippets of audio and video clips. There is so much to consume with this series. It’s an undertaking. But it’s highly satisfying and worth it for a die hard Star Wars fan. And to be honest, lately, I’ve been sort of “taking a break” on Star Wars. These books sort of put me back into the mindset of, “Yeah, there’s a lot to like about Star Wars.” Then add in watching season 2 of The Mandalorian with my son, and I may be somewhat ready to dive back into….well, if not all, then certain…Star Wars things.

NBA Jam
NBA Jam (Boss Fight Books) by Reyan Ali – NBA Jam is one of my favorite arcade games of all time. This book is an oral history of how the game was made, how it became a global phenomenon, and all the drama that went on behind the scenes. It’s a lot of fun and I love oral histories like this. I read another pretty great oral history this year about Jaws called The Jaws Log. It was written by one of the screenwriters, Carl Gottlieb, who was there almost every day of shooting. Check it out!

This last spot was pretty hard. Several things could go here. I didn’t have any one, clear winner. So how about a two-fer?
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – This book is a part of the plethora of “Magical Schools” books that have flooded the market since Harry Potter. See Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. This one, though, doesn’t use a hidden magical school amongst our world, it takes place on an existing college campus, Yale, that has a whole hidden magical community inside the normal campus life. I won’t lie, the book is a slow starter. You are sort of dropped into this world with very few context clues to what’s going on. But as I read and picked up more details about the magic in this world, I really liked it. Life in this book is pretty much the same as our own, except magic exists. The problem is, magic is dirty. It’s gross. And it’s not easy to do. There’s a lot of ceremony and ritual that’s required, and not just anybody can do it. And, it’s super dangerous. I liked this approach to magic. And the main protagonist, Alex Stern, is an interesting and complicated character. I would definitely read any sequel Bardugo wants to write in this world.

Time and Again by Jack Finney – I love time travel books. Especially ones that sort of try to take the material in different directions. This is one of those “secret government experiment to make time travel a reality” type stories. And it’s pretty good. A shadowy government agency recruits Si Morley to their ranks. They are attempting time travel. But time travel doesn’t work with a device or a “machine”. In this world, you have to almost will yourself into the past. It reminded me a lot of the movie Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve. And very few people have ever done it. The way they handle time travel here is pretty great. Si ultimately figures it out and travels back to the late 1800s New York. Something goes awry. He gets in trouble with a bad dude in 1880, but everytime he goes back to the future he notices small things are changing. So he has to make a decision about what needs to happen and where is he going to wind up staying, in the future, or in the past? This book was written in 1970. There’s a sequel, but it wasn’t written until 1995! 25 years later! I’m curious to read the sequel now considering some of the things that happen at the end of the first one.

I also read a bunch of movie novelizations this year for I Read Movies. I wanted to place a few on this list, however, I think I may break them out and do an I Read Movies 2020 Year End round up. And talk about the movie novelizations I read for the podcast there. Stay tuned for that!

Let’s switch over to comics!

Comics

Flash 4 Flash YO
The Flash by Josuha Williamson – This summer I went on a BIG The Flash read/re-read. First, I had gotten way behind on my current Flash reading. I had read the first couple volumes of Joshua Williamson’s Flash but stopped there. I wanted to catch up. So, I started where I left off, Volume 4, and read nearly straight through to Volume 12. And this includes Williamson’s take on Flash: Year One. There’s a lot of characters, and a lot of characters with super speed, which normally would bother me, but Williamson is able to handle that load. I enjoyed reading this run so much I actually went and read The Flash: Savage Velocity which is a collection of the first 18 issues of the 1987 Flash title. That was the title I read back in the day as they were being released. The first few issues are by Mike Baron and then William Messner-Loebs takes over. Everyone always talks about Mark Waid’s Flash run, but he didn’t get on that title until issue 62, so there are 61 issues BEFORE him that are actually really good. So I read the first 18 issues in Savage Velocity, and I happen to have a ton of these issues from when I bought them as they were coming out, so I pulled them out and read all the way up to issue #35. Loved this full read.

Dr Strange MM
Marvel Masterworks – I actually read several of these collected Marvel Masterworks books. I read the first two Avengers volumes, as well as the first volume for Dr Strange, Iron Man, and Silver Surfer. I really dig these high quality collections. They are nice to read. I’m going to call out the Avengers (issues #1-10) and Dr Strange (Strange Tales #110-111, 114-141) as my favorites. I can’t express how much fun the Avengers books are. They are mostly by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Don Heck. These 60s stories are amazing and so different than what you expect out of these characters. Iron Man has roller skates BUILT INTO HIS BOOTS! And Dr Strange is exactly what you want it to be, these weirdly strange magical stories with TERRIFIC art by Steve Ditko. I highly recommend reading some if you have the chance. This year I’m hoping to bust into X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, and maybe even another volume of Avengers or Iron Man. Or even Dr Strange. Maybe all of them!

Paper Girls 1 Paper Girls 2 Paper Girls 3
Paper Girls (v1-v3) – So I burned through the first three trades of Paper Girls this year based on people just *loving* this series. I was curious, plus Brian K Vaughn is an awesome writer. And there was talk about the 80s. I thought maybe I’d get some sort of Stranger Things vibe out of this. And that’s not wrong, but it doesn’t really do justice to what you get in this story. There’s SO MUCH going on here, and at any moment, you probably are only aware of 50% of it. There are constant revelations about things that already happened in the story that shed new light or change your perspective on the ongoing story. It’s amazing how well this is written considering how bananas the story gets. I mean BANANAS. The art is great, the titular “paper girls” are awesome, and it takes place in the 80s. I’m not going to spoil anything, just read it.

Calamity Jane: The Calamitous Life of Martha Jane Cannary by Christian Perrissin/Matthieu Blanchin – I found this on a lark for sale and grabbed it to read for my western podcast, Hellbent for Letterbox. And wow, it was super charming. The art is terrific. It’s black and white with some gray lowlights. It reminds me of those Japanese paintings with ink and brush. But the book tries to tell as accurate a story as it can from all the known facts about Mary Jane Cannary, aka Calamity Jane. It takes from several books, and some letters Jane wrote to her daughter. I loved this book and thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Infinite Kung Fu
Infinite Kung-Fu by Kagan McLeod – This book reminds me a lot of the above Calamity Jane book. The art is similarly fantastic. Black and white with lots of brush strokes. It felt like Kagan McLeod had found a lost 70s Kung Fu movie and illustrated it into graphic novel form. An evil emporer, his evil kung fu master generals, kung fu gods, and lots of limb tearing action. I really enjoyed this.

And those were my favorite books and comics I read in 2020. Hope you enjoyed this article and found something new that you may eventually love. Let me know if you do!

Lots more coming up, guys. Expect to see an I Read Movies novelization round up, as well as my favorite movies of 2020 list.

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