The weekend is here, and it’s brought Weekend Reading 155! As usual, we’ll be holing up in Stately Beat Manor and getting lost in a good book.

Why not share your reading plans with us? Give us a shout-out, here in the comment section or over on social media @comicsbeat, and let us know what you’ll be paging through!


AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’m checking out Fungirl by Elizabeth Pich. Then, as far as prose goes, I’m revisiting Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich. I previously included this book in my entry for Weekend Reading 56, but with a regular raven visitor outside my window these days, I’m curious to revisit the book to refresh myself on these interesting avians.

DEAN SIMONS: The one-hour commute I have for Star Wars Celebration Europe is a handy time to get some reading done and I am really close to finishing Elizabeth Moon’s Moving Target so that will be my reading this weekend. And if I finish that I might hop immediately on the follow-up, Engaging the Enemy. In terms of comics, I am currently delving into a curious bande dessinée classic – Louis Salvérius and Raoul Cauvin’s Bluecoats (Les Tuniques Bleues), a comedy series about the misadventures of two unionist soldiers during the American Civil War. It has been running since 1970 (over sixty volumes have been released in French) but oddly the Cinebook translations (as the publisher frequently tends to do) skipped the early volumes and started at book six. Anywho, I finished Robertsonville Prison a few days ago and will check out volume seven Navy Blues

 

TAIMUR DAR: I wouldn’t describe myself as a major anime fan, but I instantly fell in love with the Spy x Family anime a few months back. After the recent report that the Spy x Family Volume 9 was the best-selling book last week, it dawned on me that as I wait for the second season it’s probably a good idea for me to read the original manga by Tatsuya Endo. So this weekend I’m going to start at the beginning with the first volume of the Spy x Family manga.

CY BELTRAN: In the midst of an unexpected wait for a physical copy of Stephen King’s The Stand, I’ve decided to make this weekend another catch-up weekend for my stack of floppies that’s been accumulating for a little too long. First I’m wrapping up Knights of X from Toni Howard, Bob Quinn, Erick Arciniega, and Ariana Maher, in preparation to jump right into Betsy Braddock, Captain Britain #1-2. Then, on the recommendation of esteemed Beat editor Avery Kaplan, I’ll be checking out The Darkhold crossover (with a million amazing creators) from the end of last year, which I somehow missed in my quest to read everything Marvel.

REBECCA OLIVER KAPLAN: Cy Beltran‘s Darkhold crossover is such a great choice that I might have to re-read it this weekend! I’m very critical of most of the people who write Wanda Maximoff, but Steve Orlando understands that the character can defend herself without the help of a man. In my opinion, the crossover is also a key text for understanding Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The whole premise of the event is they become physically corrupted from reading the Darkhold, which is exactly what happens to the Scarlet Witch at the end of WandaVision and throughout Multiverse of Madness; i.e., as Wanda becomes more corrupted, her costume develops a “multiversal mold.”

I’m also excited about my other weekend reading, even if it is for work purposes. For the final PanelxPanel, I will be responding to Lillian Hochwender‘s essay from PanelxPanel #60, “The Color of Pain,” with my own essay about how pain is represented in comics, particularly in comics about Frida Kahlo‘s life. I will be re-reading Frida: The Story of Her Life by Vanna Vinci, Frida Kahlo: Her Life, Her Work, Her Home by Francisco de la Mora, with translations by Lawrence Schimel, and the prose book The Culture of Pain by David B. Morris.


You can peruse the 154 previous entries in The Beat’s Weekend Reading archive by clicking here.