Saturday has arrived, and it’s brought Weekend Reading 140! Surprise surprise, The Beat elite are spending our weekend just the way you’d expect: lost in a good book inside Stately Beat Manor.
What will you be reading while you avoid Monday morning? The Beat is waiting to hear from you! Give us a shout-out, right here in the comment section or over on social media @comicsbeat!
AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’m going to be checking out Čapek: Four Plays by Karel Čapek, featuring R.U.R., The Insect Play, The Makropulos Case, and The White Plague, translated and with an introduction by Peter Majer and Cathy Porter. The first of these four works is responsible for introducing both the concept of and word for “robot,” so to say it’s had an influence on some of my favorite comics and stories ever is something of an understatement. As far as comics go, I’ll be reviewing some possible candidates for The Beat’s impending “Best Comics of 2022” list. It was a great year for sequential graphic narrative, so I have no shortage of contenders to revisit. Happy holidays to me!
DEAN SIMONS: In my stack of things to finish before the year is out is a handful of issues of Forever Magazine. This weekend shall be the September issue which features Gregory Norman Bossert’s novella Hānai set on an independent Hawaiʻi and involving interstellar cultural exchange. As for comics – I am perusing a curiosity reprint. Scotland’s DC Thomson is a media company with a vast portfolio of British comics under their purview. There is a treasure trove in their archives which is seldom glimpsed (but vigorously protected by their legal team). A recent reprint in their Heritage Comics line is Codename: Warlord, a WW2 set espionage strip published in weekly anthology war comic Warlord. Warlord ran for 627 issues between 1974 and 1986. Codename: Warlord can be a tad ropey in terms of plot but it is entertaining – gorgeously drawn – vintage work. Unfortunately – as was common for the period – the reprints do not have creator credits and the people that produced the strips may have been lost to the sands of time.
TAIMUR DAR: About a year ago after the The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series debuted, a lot of people were interested in reading up on the origin of Isiah Bradley in the Captain America: Truth miniseries from writer Robert Morales and artist Kyle Baker. It dawned on me back then despite being familiar with the character I had never taken the time to actual read the original comic and had put it on my list to read. While randomly searching through various comic titles available on the libby app I spotted it so I’m finally crossing that off my list this weekend.
REBECCA OLIVER KAPLAN: Like every other comics journo—yes, we DO exist!—I am rushing to finish a stack of comics and books before the end of the year. I am beginning with a Dark Horse horror anthology, which still smells shockingly sweet after being shelved between shelves for at least a year. The Dark Horse Book of Horror has contributions from Jill Thompson, P. Craig Russell, Mike Mignola, and more. Also on the to-read list for the weekend is Bandita, written by one of my all-time favorite creators, Kayden Phoenix, with art by Fanny Arteaga, Ari Navarette, and Daniell Black, and lettering and design by Sandra Romero, and 1943’s Cartoon Cavalcade, edited by Thomas Craven. I found a 1944 wartime edition at the local second-hand store, and I can’t wait to read it.
