I broke 100 reads in January, which was a big goal of mine. Wanted to start off the year strong and build some momentum.

The past few years, I've really struggled with being motivated to read, so while I have literally thousands of issues sitting around me at all times, I just haven't wanted to pick any of them up. The big thing for me in January was that there we no repeat reads; it was 105 brand-new, never looked at before books.

Plan for February is to wrap up the "mod" Wonder Woman era, then move on to either Jonah Hex or Scalphunter, as I'm trying to balance superhero books with other genres so that it doesn't feel too "samey". Also avoiding doing any "epic run" reads, like when I read Thor or Iron Man from start to finish with no breaks for anything else other than the weekly comics; I always felt burned out at the end of one of those and don't want to look at another comic book for a while after that.

February and it's extra day are done, so time to wrap up the month. A little over 100 comics this month, bringing the yearly tally to 233.

Lots of highlights, The Hunters OGN from Jimmy Palmiotti's Paper Films via KS was an excellent western, my 2 ride of die books right now Conan and Usagi, the second half of the Adventures in the DC Universe series, and a handful of vintage Savage Sword of Conan issues, top the list. The 1950s Ghost Rider westerns from Magazine Enterprises were more interesting that good. 8 pagers can be tricky, it's possible to tell a lot of good stories in the 8 page format, but these struggled with the page count, they felt rushed, cramped and like they left out important chunks of the story to fit in the 8 pages, which seemed pointless since the entire issue was filled with 8 page Ghost Rider stories by the same artist (Dick Ayers). Seemed like they could have cut one of the stories sand divvied up the pages between the other 3 to give them more room to be told, but who knows what the behind the curtain reasons were-I think GR stories were also appearing in other mags so they could have been farming out the stories to a content studio and required 8 pagers to put in whatever book they needed, readers may have felt that more stories, not longer stories were the better bang for your dime, or something else entirely, so who knows. But the Frazetta covers were definitely the highlights of that series so far (I have a couple more issues in the trade collection to get to, so maybe it will get batter-the stories aren't bad per se, the plots are fine, the art is decent, the pacing and execution of the stories though could be better. And Silver Age Daredevil (issues 50-55) is just an exercise in mediocrity saved only by Gene Colan's wonderful art and storytelling, he just needed better stories to tell.

-M

I read 38 comics in February, which isn't many compared to you guys above, but it was still 15 more than I read in January, so...

I was mostly re-reading my way through J. Michael Straczynski's run on Amazing Spider-Man, but I did slot in 3 vintage early '60s issues of Daredevil and a bunch of late '50s/early '60s Marvel monster stories from the Monster Masterworks TPB.

I love those early Hellboy shorts you're on and the early BPRD books were interesting explorations on tone too. Makes me want to get back to my long dormant Hellboy review thread.

As for my month, I finished my read through of the Deadboy Detectives and while I still love the overall concept I have to say the recent stuff wasn't my cup of tea. I also picked up a couple collections of Solomon Kane and have started working my way through those. I really enjoyed the features by Roy Thomas and Doug Moench I've read(I had picked up a few of these previously) but I'm finding some of the features by Don Glut to be a little dry. 

Slower month for me. I went down a Kirby rabbit hole due to the discussions here. Sampled some Blueberry for the first time. Enjoyed reading the Daredevil issues that came after I stopped collecting the title when JRJR left. Finished BKV's Runaways, which I honestly liked more than Paper Girls and was one of the best Marvel books I've read from the modern era. Volume 1 is stronger than Volume 2, but I enjoyed both. 

I'm inching closer to being up to date with Kingdom. Couldn't manage it in February but hopefully soon. I was in the bookstore the other day and saw that they've just released Vol 71. 71 volumes is impressive. 

I didn't really enjoy Strangers in Paradise XXV or Five Years. I don't mind Moore's characters existing in a shared universe, and I thought it was interesting how they were connected to one another, but having them all come together for a crossover event felt unnecessary to me. I would have preferred a new series instead.

Moench and Gulacy's Hugo Strange sequel was a huge disappointment. Had to read an old Gulacy Batman story to wash the taste out of my mouth. 

I finished the Nexus newspaper strips. Not my preferred way of reading a Nexus story but a decent experiment. I've reached the end of the line with Nexus, so I may need to start a new large-scale re-read. I'm thinking either Grendel or Madman. 

I just use 20 pages as my token divider for OGN and strip collections-20 pages of an OGN or 20 pages of strips equal 1 comics. I don't however use a divider for individual issues (or collected editions that have full issues in them), no matter how many pages. A Bronze Age Marvel with 17 pages is 1 issues. A Golden Age book with 64 pages is 1 issue an issue of Savage Sword with 64 pages, 1 issue. I only use a token divider if it's in a format other than individual issues, otherwise 1 comic=1 comic no matter how many pages. But everyone has their own method so use one that works for you.

-M