Comics of April 3, 2019 + blog update

I’ve been giving my comic reading a lot of thought lately. At one point, I was generally reading between 5 and 10 comics every week, usually averaging at 8. But in the last few years, the number of comics I’ve been picking up has dropped significantly. Quite often I’ll lose track of one series, and half the time, I won’t even bother to try and catch up.

This is kind of normal for me though. I have a wide range of interests, and I tend to go back and forth between which one I’m paying the most attention to. Lately, I’ve been writing more movie posts than comic posts, and I’m having a lot of fun doing these retroactive movie reviews and learning about their development cycle. It’s something that I’m considering expanding once I move into my new place and get settled. Maybe I’ll even experiment with a few YouTube reviews to see if that works for me. There might also be a couple video game posts every now and then, since I’ll hopefully find more time for playing games after the move.

On that front, I’ve written my Thor: Ragnorok post, and I’ll likely upload it sometime tomorrow or Friday.

I am still enjoying comics, don’t get me wrong, but it’s at the point where if I don’t really like a series, I’m probably going to ignore it. As such, I’m probably going to be writing less full comic reviews, at least with comics that are just coming out. I’ll still be writing my first impressions post, but like with movies, I might instead do occasional retroactive comic reviews. I’d like to re-read the original Infinity Gauntlet event, and perhaps compare it to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame sometime later this year. I’d like to revisit some of the comic events I reviewed in the early days of this blog and see if I still feel the same way about them. But as for new releases, I think I’ll just stick with these first impression posts for a while. And because there isn’t a comic store in the town I’m moving to, they might sometimes not be posted until a couple of days later. It seems unwise to drive 45 minutes or so to a comic store one day, when I’m going back into town the next day for Kung-Fu anyway.

Anyway, this week I picked up War of the Realms 1, Captain America 9 and Red Sonja 3. Here are my first impressions.

War of the Realms 1 is good. In a lot of ways this feels like an extra-long issue from Jason Aaron’s Thor run, just guest starring a bunch of Avengers characters. Considering this event stems from the Thor run he began way back in 2011, that’s probably a good thing. There are some big moments in this issue, like when armies from multiple realms hostile to Asgard invade Earth all at once, Thor being led into a trap, and a couple of twists. The art is consistently brilliant, the action is the right level of intense, and the enemies are given a basic introduction for those who haven’t been reading Aaron’s Thor run. There’s nothing particularly special about this issue, but it’s an entertaining start to an event that’s been teased for years. That’s a good sign. If you’ve been reading Aaron’s Thor run up to this point, you might as well read this event. Apart from that, most people know whether they’re picking this event up or not.

Captain America 9 is great. It continues the story of Captain America in prison, framed for the death of General Ross. There’s a good prison brawl scene, Steve meets the prison warden in a fairly intense moment, and plans to break Steve out from the outside begins forming. Not much else to say about this one without spoiling the fun, but this series is definitely worth checking out for Captain America fans.

Red Sonja 3 is fun. After a brief flashback, it continues the story of Hyrkania being invaded by a warlord. After Sonja declines the help of some mercenaries who claim to be their cousins, the enemy king hires them instead. The result is a fairly entertaining fight where Sonja’s forces use intelligence over the mercenaries’ attempted show of strength. So far this series is turning out quite entertaining, and it’s worth checking out for Red Sonja fans.