According to the calendar, it’s another weekend, and according to what we can see outside the windows of Stately Beat Manor – what appears to be a plague mixed with a frozen tundra – we’re going to spending yet another weekend inside, safely reading!
Sure, we may not have envisioned a 2021 that saw so many of our close personal friends foregoing showers for days at a time due to weather-related power outages and water shortages, but on the other hand, we also didn’t expect there to so many comics. I guess you win some, you lose some?
As usual, we hope to hear about what you’re reading this weekend, too! Let us know in the comment section or on social media @comicsbeat!
AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’ll be checking out the 1974 Captain America and The Falcon “Secret Empire” storyline by (deep breath) Steve Englehart, Mike Friedrich, Sal Buscema, Vincent Colletta, Frank McLaughlin, Petra Goldberg, Linda Lessmann, Michelle Brand, George Roussos, Charlotte Jeter, and Art Simek.
TAIMUR DAR: When I got back into comics, I really dug Brian K. Vaughan’s work at the time like The Escapists from Dark Horse and Pride of Baghdad. I have not had the time to keep up with the comics he’s done in the last few years but found them available on the libby app on my iPad for diving into Paper Girls that he wrote and Cliff Chiang drew.
BILLY HENEHAN: A couple of weeks ago in this very space, Taimur Dar talked about how he was reading Tom Scioli’s Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics on the Libby app. This was all it took for me to immediately download Libby and give it a try. Kirby wasn’t available for me, though I did put a hold on it. Another Tom Scioli book was available for borrowing: Fantastic Four: Grand Design. I’m digging it so far! Scioli packs a lot into every page, including panels that are tiny cover recreations of Jack Kirby’s FF covers. It’s a worthy successor to Ed Piskor’s X-Men: Grand Design. Thanks for the Libby rec, Taimur! I’m loving it.
ADAM KARENINA SHERIF: Looking for vaguely useful quotations for my own writing, I’m leafing through the Steranko History of Comics 2. It’s an odd format, early attempt at comics history by none other than Jim Steranko. It’s basically Steranko tripping through his favorite Golden Age books, recounting their plots and the various creator beefs of the time. And while it’s disappointing(ly predictable) that he seems to overlook all the racism and misogyny, this book’s a fascinating, niche work of micro-history addressing a pivotal time in comics publishing.
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