As the arrival of Midsummer Night approaches, so too does Weekend Reading 165! No matter the season, you can bet The Beat Elite will be spending our weekends inside, getting lost in a good book.
What will you be reading this weekend? The Beat wants to hear from you! Give us a shout-out, either right here in the comment section or over on social media @comicsbeat, and let us know what you’re thinking.
AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’ll be enjoying The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1916 – 1918. I’ve never actually read any of this seminal Krazy Kat comic strip, in spite of the fact that it is cited by many of my very favorite cartoonists as a foundational inspiration. This weekend, that gets remedied!
DEAN SIMONS: Due to bad hay fever and a heatwave in the UK, sleeping has been a bit of an issue – fortunately I was able to get some reading done while I tossed and turned. A few days ago I finished Elizabeth Moon’s Engaging the Enemy (Vatta’s War Book 3). With that out of the way – and before moving to the fourth book – I am spending some time catching up with my short story anthology subscriptions. Forever Magazine being the main one. Currently reading the January issue which has reprinted the Ian Creasey novella Super Sprouts, and the short stories The Shadow of His Wings, by Ray Nayler and The Liberator by Nick Wolven. As for comics – I am still slowly catching up on my 2000 AD subscription backlog. I have reached Prog 2294 which has the penultimate installment of the most recent series of Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard’s Brink: Mercury Retrograde. One interesting thing about 2000 AD last year was that, as part of its 45th anniversary celebrations, it ran summaries of significant things that were published in each year of the anthology’s existence – written by Scott Montgomery. Prog 2294’s summary (no. 30 of Brimful of Thrills on the 45!) covers 2006 which was the year I became a reader of the longstanding British weekly.
TAIMUR DAR: For fairly obvious reasons, I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic for the original Disney The Little Mermaid animated movie and have been doing a deep dive (pun intended) into its production history. Part of that also includes reading Ariel voice actress Jodi Benson’s memoir Part of My World: What I’ve Learned from The Little Mermaid about Love, Faith, and Finding My Voice. While the portions about her Christian faith don’t strike a chord with me, it’s definitely fascinating learning about her early Broadway career before landing the role of Ariel.
REBECCA OLIVER KAPLAN: I had a really exciting weekend planned. Instead, I will be spending a few days in bed recovering from another surgery (it’s surgery season apparently). I am behind on some of my weekend readings from the past few weeks, so I hope to catch up on those this weekend. I am also going to finish Out of Body by Peter Milligan, Inaki Miranda, Eva de la Cruz, and Sal Cipriano. Hell, it’s Milligan, so maybe I will even take my medical Ketamine and check it out. Then, I am going to read more Trekkie content, Star Trek: Khan – Ruling in Hell by Scott & David Tipton, Fabio Mantovani, Chiara Cinabro, and Neil Uyetake.
You can peruse the 164 previous entries in The Beat’s Weekend Reading archive by clicking here. Weekend Reading is edited by Avery Kaplan.
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