The weekend has arrived, and that means the elite members of The Beat staff are once again sharing their reading plans for Weekend Reading 105!
Here at Stately Beat Manor, we’re once again spending our weekend working our way through a stack of reading material! What will you be perusing this weekend? Let The Beat know what you’re thinking, here in the comment section or over on social media @comicsbeat!
AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, in my excitement about Elliot Page‘s Viktor Hargreeves reveal, I’ll be revisiting The Umbrella Academy: Hotel Oblivion by Gerard Way, Gabriel Bá, Nick Filardi, and Nate Piekos. Then, because I pulled it from my shelf as prep for The Beat’s Trans Day of Visibility post and I can’t pass an excuse to revisit, I’ll be rereading Fanlee and Spätzle Make Something Perfect by Pseudonym Jones.
TAIMUR DAR: I’m currently with the rest of Team Beat covering WonderCon for the first time in over three years. Nevertheless, I’ll still be partaking in some reading. The premiere of the new Moon Knight Disney+ original has me interested in checking out some of the original comics. I got back into comics around 2006, roughly the same time Marvel launched the fifth volume of Moon Knight from writer Charlie Huston and artist David Finch. Don’t know how it compares to other Moon Knight runs but I remember people talking about it. Since the first few issues are collected for free on comiXology Unlimited, I’m going to read Moon Knight Vol 1: The Bottom.
DEAN SIMONS: Once again I play my regular roulette of “Will Comixology work?” – If it works, I will be checking out more of Tezuka’s Black Jack plus some classic Franco-Belgian comics via Edgar P. Jacob’s Blake & Mortimer: The Secret of the Swordfish (Part 3) – which is full of stuff that hilariously/awkwardly hasn’t aged well alongside a solid adventure romp reminiscent of the flicks of yesteryear (which were probably contemporary to its first serialisation in Hergé’s Tintin Magazine between 1946 and 1949). That said, the new and unimproved Comixology is nothing if not unreliable so…I will probably be reading Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Gene Wolfe’s Claw of the Conciliator to spare my blood pressure.
REBECCA OLIVER KAPLAN: I have decided to venture over to the dark side and read some X-Men comics this weekend, if I am allowed to as a Scarlet Witch fan now that she sacrificed herself for the greater good. The greater good, folks! Anyway, being gay AF and looking for some good Emma Frost content, it was suggested I start with Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Unfortunately, volume two was the only one that was reasonably priced used so that’s where I am starting, starting with New X-Men #127, it’s penned by Morrison, with contributions by creators who include John Paul Leon, Igor Kordey, Phil Jimenez, Keron Grant, Frank Quitely, Bill Sienkiewicz, Andy Lanning, Norm Rapmund, Tim Townsend, Avalon Studios, Hi-Fi Designs, Dave McCaig, Chris Chuckry, and Chris Eliopoulous. I am also reading my autographed copy of Memories of Survival by Esther Nisenthal Krinitz and Bernice Steinhardt about one woman’s collection of embroidered panels about surviving the Holocaust in Poland.
CY BELTRAN: With my Spring Break this week, I’ve finally been able to set aside some reading time for myself, so I’m going to attempt a read through of the character-redefining Loki stories from the past decade, starting with Kieron Gillen’s short run on Thor from late 2009/early 2010. Then, I’m gonna take a deep dive into Siege by Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel, Mark Morales, Laura Martin, and Chris Eliopoulos. I don’t think I’ve read Siege and its assorted tie-ins in a very long time, but I think I remember enjoying it? Whatever the case, I’m interested to see how I feel about the event now and how the seeds of the current Loki were planted at the end of that event.
JOHANNA DRAPER CARLSON: This week brings the second volume of I Am a Cat Barista by Hiro Maijiam, now with added dog baker! This series is so heart-warming and comfortable, like a welcome cup of hot chocolate. It’s a lovely fantasy, that someone’s there to serve us just what we need when we’re upset. I’m also reading The History of Science Fiction by Xavier Dollo and Djibril Morissette-Phan. Translated from the French, this fanciful trip through the genre has plenty of cameos from both famous creators and characters. Chapters are organized by time period and geography. It’s fascinating getting a more European perspective!
