With the arrival of the weekend comes not just Guy Fawkes Day, but also Weekend Reading 135!
What will you be paging through this weekend? The Beat is waiting to hear from you! Give us a shout-out, here in the comments or over on social media @comicsbeat, and let us know what you’re thinking!
AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend I’m reading Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. As a huge fan of the first two books in the Locked Tomb trilogy, I’m dying to read the final entry. Fortunately, although the title has already been out for a few weeks, I’ve managed to avoid reading any spoilers about it, so I’m looking forward to finally digging into it this weekend. As far as comics go, I’ll be reading Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned by Judd Winick.
DEAN SIMONS: Shonen manga binge! The other week it was Tite Kubo’s Bleach, this week it is Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece. I restarted both series during the pandemic and am almost at the time jump that follows a major turning point. Currently at volume 55. One Piece and Bleach are manga where you go in for a chapter and then a few hours later you are already starting the next volume. I have plenty of volumes to catch up on though – since One Piece passed its hundredth volume earlier this year.
RICARDO SERRANO: This last NYCC I got my hands on all the trades of a series I’m shamefully behind on: Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s Monstress. I’d already read vol. 1 and had meant to dive in after, but I kept putting it further down on my to-read pile. Mea culpa. Reading the amazing She Eats the Night by the same team reminded me right my wrongs here, an easy thing to accomplish now given how incredible it is. Its blend of horror, magic, dark fantasy, and folklore supported by a strong cast of multilayered characters in a world full of monsters is nothing short of impressive. Just holding the book in my hands feels like I’m in for something supremely special. Takeda’s creature designs are frightening but never without personality, and Liu’s dialogue and narration gives everything an epic and mythical quality few books can achieve as convincingly as this one. I have a lot to enjoy this weekend with Monstress.
REBECCA OLIVER KAPLAN: Can I add everyone else’s weekend reading to my list? But for this weekend, I will enjoy reading classic Marvel Comics in celebration of the upcoming film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which I am seeing on Monday, November 7. In preparation, I am reading the Black Panther — Penguin Classics Marvel Collection Edition, a beautifully black-and-gold bound collection that includes the Black Panther’s 1966 origin tale and the entirety of the critically acclaimed “Panther’s Rage” storyline, a foreword by Nnedi Okorafor, a scholarly introduction and apparatus by Qiana J. Whitted, and a general series introduction by Ben Saunders, who offers insight into the enduring significance of Black Panther.
TAIMUR DAR: I’ve heard nothing but great things for the acclaimed comic series Bitter Root from Chuck Brown, David F. Walker, and Sanford Green and it’s been on my list to read for the longest time. So I’m taking time this weekend to read the first TPB collection. Likewise I’ll also be reading the graphic novel Torso by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko. Bendis’ work at Marvel had a huge impact on me when I got back into comics in the mid aughts. But now that he’s putting his focus on creator-owned work, it seems fitting to fill in the gaps of his pre-Marvel comics, especially after reading the first issue of his new series The Ones which just came out this week.
MARION PEÑA: I picked back up Your Throne, by SAM. It’s a medieval political thriller disguised as a romance fantasy webcomic on Naver’s WEBTOON service that someone recommended to me two years ago. I read about 24 episodes in one sitting back during the pandemic and got caught up immediately, but then I decided to wait and let more episodes build up. This week I checked back in and saw that the main story has been completed, and already binged up to episode 102. My goal is to finish it and get some thoughts out, because I really love this story. The art is spectacular, and I’m shocked that the author does both the story and art, because it feels like an adaptation of a novel from how tightly plotted and paneled it is.
