Weekend Reading 99 is here, and that means The Beat team is heading into Stately Beat Manor and getting lost in a good book! What are you planning on paging through this weekend? The Beat wants to hear from you! Give us a shout-out, either here in the comment section or over on social media @comicsbeat.
AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’m going to be checking out Sensor by Junji Ito. Then, since I obviously won’t be getting any sleep after reading that, I’m returning to Maps & Legends by Michael Chabon, with an eye towards the title essay (which explores the philosophy the author applies while working in genre storytelling).
George Carmona 3rd: As Valentine’s Day was this past Monday and I have an amazing Wife, I’ll be taking a trip down memory lane with the epic Milestone Compendium One. It collects the first 10-12 issues of the core Milestone books Blood Syndicate, Hardware, Icon, and Static, along with fan favorites Xombi and Shadow Cabinet. As this is such a massive collection, coming in around 1,300 pages, the plan is to tackle it in spurts.
TAIMUR DAR: I’ve been making it no secret that ever since doing press coverage for the new Nickelodeon Big Nate cartoon, I’ve now become a fan of the original Lincoln Peirce comics. I’m still continuing my reading of the Complete Big Nate, but Nickelodeon was also kind enough to send me the illustrated novels Big Nate: In a Class By Himself and Big Nate Strike Again as part of a press kit. And since I’ve never been bound by age recommendations, I’m going to check them out this weekend. For more “big boy” reading, I’m still reading Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha manga epic and Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma ½.
CY BELTRAN: If I can sneak in some free time during a busy weekend, I’d love to hop onto Marvel Unlimited and check out the original run of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur by Amy Reeder, Brandon Montclare, Natacha Bustos, Tamra Bonvillain, and Travis Lanham. I had such a good time reading the short about her in Marvel’s Voices: Legacy #1 and The Beat’s own Avery Kaplan recommended starting right from the beginning with Lunella Lafayette’s solo series!
JOHANNA DRAPER CARLSON: While doing some cleanup this past week, I found my copy of Batman & Dracula: Red Rain. Way back in the day, this was my first exposure to the collector’s market, as I wanted to read it, but at the time, the hardcovers were going for inflated prices. Started me thinking about how much easier it is these days to simply read a story you’re interested in, what with large library collections of comics and digital copies (in spite of the recent ComiXology meltdown), as only two of the many options. Anyway, time to see if the story by Doug Moench, Kelley Jones, and Malcolm Jones III is still of interest.
