Saturday means one thing here at Stately Beat Manor: Weekend Reading 130!
What will you be paging through this weekend? Give us a shout-out on social media @comicsbeat or here in the comment section and let us know what’s on your personal reading list.
AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’m fulfilling my part of the bargain as a Constant Reader and digging into Stephen King’s latest, Fairy Tale. Upon glancing at the copyright page, I was delighted to learn that the novel’s even-numbered chapters feature header illustrations by Nicolas Delort, with alternating odd-numbered chapter illustrations by Gabriel Rodríguez. While I’m not as familiar with Delort’s work, I’m very familiar with Rodríguez’s art thanks to his collaborations with Joe Hill. To have his art unexpectedly appear in this already-anticipated prose novel is some good gravy.
TAIMUR DAR: Been absorbed by the new Netflix Dahmer miniseries so I’m going to be reading the My Friend Dahmer graphic novel by Derf Backderf. I watched the film adaptation that came out a few years ago, so I’m really interested to see how the original comic compares to the film as well as to the miniseries. Plus I’ll be going into my new comics read pile this week for the that I haven’t gotten to yet, specifically the Harley Quinn 30th Anniversary issue.
ZACK QUAINTANCE: This weekend I am finishing the novel Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, who also wrote Station Eleven. As far as comics, I’m deep in the middle of a pre-spooky season re-read of the very great Nailbiter comic by Joshua Williamson, Mike Henderson, and team.
REBECCA OLIVER KAPLAN: I was trying to buy myself something new to read while Avery Kaplan reads King’s Fairy Tale, and because I feel like I don’t know enough about manga, I decided to pick up a couple of first volumes among the slim pickings at the store. I am excited to check out Toilet-bound Hanako-Kun by Aidairo, with an English translation by Alethea Nibley and Athena Nibley, with lettering Jesse Moriarty and Tania Biswas. I also am checking out Komi Can’t Communicate by Tomohito Oda, with an English adaptation and translation by John Werryand touch-up art and lettering by Eve Grandt.
DEAN SIMONS: Kenjiro Hata’s Hayate the Combat Butler (Hayate no Gotoku!) is a recent pick up that is giving me many a chuckle. A sitcom shonen manga about an extremely down on his luck kid becoming a butler in a series of ridiculous comedic errors. And that is just the opening premise. I am most of the way through volume 1 so I will more than likely grab subsequent volumes. Another thing I picked up this week is some volumes of the 1970s Belgian BD classic series Yoko Tsuno. For some reason Roger Leloup’s charming scifi series hasn’t been made available in digital format so I tracked down the print translations from Cinebook. I am starting with Cinebook’s seventh volume, which actually reprints the first story: 1972’s The Curious Trio (Le Trio de l’étrange)