We finished off the first major Moon Knight arc the last time with #18. The next Moon Knight arc lasts all the way to #30. That would bring us to the 50th comic out of 91 in the Moon Knight reading list. I reached that point over a week ago and haven’t continued reading since. There are several reasons for that which we will sort of get into here. But this went quite (very) long so I’ve saved the second half for next time.
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Mick vs The Marvel Universe – 11 – Under blue moon, I read you
Well I have, to my own surprise, kept reading American comics. Though at a fairly sedate pace. Even more surprising I actually kept writing about it as well. I haven’t strayed from Moon Knight yet. Though when I catch up with the current run I am definitely going back to find out why there are so many fucking vampires everywhere.
Read MoreMick vs The Marvel Universe – 10 – Have you ever danced with the devil and the pale Moon Knight?
Well it’s that time again. Some external thing I am interested in, in this case Magic The Gathering, has a tie in or crossover with Marvel and I get interested in reading some American comics again. Usually at that point I self sabotage by trying to catch up on twenty five years on continuity. But not this time! This time I took a single recommendation – the current extended run of Moon Knight – and went with it. I got the comics. I transferred them to my iPAD. I got distracted for two days sorting out my neglected comics drive. Then I read the comics. My thoughts on them follow below.
Read MoreMick vs The Marvel Universe – 9.5– Reading didn’t continue and morale didn’t improve
My attempts to get back into American comics has traditionally not gone well for nearly two decades at this point. That might not seem odd with no context but with the context that over the course of a year I read what even I consider a staggering amount of Chinese, Korean and Japanese comics (to the point where one could probably argue its an addiction or certainly an ersatz opioid) I do find it odd that I never got back into reading, not just American comics but more or less any English language comics. This specific attempt to get back into Marvel, as mentioned here, started in this form in 2014, then 2016, then again in early 2022. Where it stuttered along for three months or so, then jumped to February 2023 and now here we are again at the tail end of 2024.
I’ll be honest. I’m not even sure if I legitimately want to read American comics. I’ve gotten interested again. Which is why I’m writing this. But there are a growing category of things that I used to like, and feel I should like, but just can’t seem to get into. Whether that’s genres, activities, authors, etc. I sometimes feel that I “should” like them when the reality is I feel no real excitement or have no lasting interest in them. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. People’s tastes change. But I sometimes wonder if the number of things that interest or excite me is constantly shrinking that, as the common element, it may be something to do with me. Crippling depression perhaps? But just like my doctor did when I mentioned that I’m going to ignore it.
Tangent aside and back to Marvel comics. One brother has been singing the praises for the Krakoa era X-Men stuff and another showed me the Venom 3 trailer which was surprisingly decent and made me interested in Knull. A character I know primarily through Marvel SNAP (which I am to my own surprise still playing). There doesnt seem to be any nicely siloed off story arc to read to get info on Knull (or at least none a casual googling threw up). So I will perhaps return to my arguably self defeating attempts to catch up on the entire Marvel continuity.
Up next we have Grant Morrison’s X-Men run. Which I have many thoughts on.
Mick vs The Marvel Universe – 09 – Extreme Iron Men and unentertaining war crimes
The Invincible Iron Man – Extremis
Warren Ellis is one of those writers where even if you find what you read uninteresting you generally have to admit it’s well written. Personally I find his work very hit or miss. Which is unusual in its own way because I also find his work fairly samey. The same concepts and patterns tend to pop up in a lot of them, just with different set dressing, usually the characters. For the record I remember greatly disliking Extremis the first time I read it so I wan’t exactly champing at the bit.
Read MoreMick vs The Marvel Universe – 08 – Resuming Hostilities
Well it’s been six months since my last attempt at this. I think part’s six and seven made my distaste for what I was reading fairly clear and honestly in the normal course of things that would have been the end of it. But then Marvel SNAP launched globally and I got very into that (I’m cooling on it after a few months but that’s due to structural issues rather than the core gameplay). As did most of my brothers.
So we were talking about it and some of the, to us anyway, obscure characters featured in it. Then a month or two later Marvel’s Midnight Sun’s came out which I played for quite a while and enjoyed. The one of my brothers got a Marvel Unlimited subscription and was getting back into Marvel comics and telling me about them. So basically over the last three or four months there has been a constant influx of Marvel stuff daily which has broken down my wall of disdain for Avengers Disassembled and I am going to heroically stride once more into the breach of twenty year old comics.
Read MoreMick vs The Marvel Universe – 07 – Reading will continue until morale improves
I was actually keeping a relatively respectable pace and then boom, silence for a month. Well there was no great mystery there. I found the comics that I’d read lacklustre and the eponymous event to be particularly disappointing (nice art not withstanding). Then at the beginning of June I got into reading the translated works of a Chinese author who wrote a few very long book series. My “reading stuff time” (totally separate from my online reading stuff time of course) went to shotgunning two and a half of that authors series. However the electricity was off last Friday and again yesterday and having nothing else to do I heroically read some more.
Read MoreMick vs The Marvel Universe – 06 – Vengeance from the grave
I think the last one of these got a bit too “blow by blow” so I’ll be pulling back for a wide shot here. I’d read these a few days ago but held off because I wanted to polish off the last few issues in the event. But then I ended up spending my spare time reading Chinese cultivation novels and the Age of Sigmar:Soulbound RPG. Hopefully get them done this week and be done with Disassembled. I have the feel the speed will pick up a lot when I get to a single title.
Read MoreMick vs The Marvel Universe – 05 – The widening gyre
This time I finally get to the actual meat of the Avengers Disassembled event. However I made the mistake of writing this up while I was reading them so its rather wordy and as editing is a dirty word I make no apologies for what comes next (I did at least correct mis-spellings, I’m not an animal). I also realised I’d been setting up my image galleries incorrectly. So if you were wondering “Hey why are these images so small and nothing happens when I click on them” wonder no more and click to your hearts content.
Read MoreMick vs The Marvel Universe – 04 – Vewy vewy quiet on the western front
I’d planned to have at least one of these out a week, every Wednesday in fact. Obviously this didn’t go as planned this week. For once I wasn’t distracted by organising my digital collection, that’s mostly done for Marvel. I was distracted because I got really into a rather long series of books and couldn’t pull myself away. I’d hoped to get Avengers Disassembled finished this week and push (backwards chronologically) onto Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run or onto the comics that take place between Avengers Disassembled and Civil War. That didn’t happen. I was going to post this Thursday but held of thinking I’d read more. That also didn’t happen. But here’s what I thought of what I did get read.
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