After my local comic shop's 50%-off sale for Halloween, I resolved to slow down my print purchases for a while until I read through my ridiculous backlog of reading material.
Then the store acquired a huge collection and put up another big sale over this past weekend!
I am weak. I came away with 12 books. The prices were a steal.
After the usual horror and fantasy grabs, I made myself try some superhero titles. I don't read much Marvel, and I've been on the lookout for a Hulk storyline that interests me. Of course, that was the one thing the collection didn't have much of.
I did wind up with this one - Fantastic Four: The Life Fantastic. I am not a huge FF fan but I thought with the Hulk it might be interesting. Turns out that it contains four short stories - it's not just the Hulk story.
Also, to be different, I read it this weekend instead of putting it in the "to be read" bookcase.
I enjoyed the Hulk FF tale a lot. It helps that the writer was J. Michael Straczynski. The other stories featured other writers. The second tale was a 40th anniversary special. Not much going on but it was fun and even had 'cameos' by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. The third story features a battle of wits and wills between Reed and Doctor Doom, and I found that again, I was pleasantly surprised and I liked it. The final tale was one of time travel and causality. It took a while to get going, but once it did I thought it was well done. Bonus for a Lovecraftian moment. (literally - the word "Lovecraftian" was used!)
I don't know if I would have bought the book new but in a 3 for $10 pile, it was worth it.
I need to read some Marvel collections, if for no other reason than to have some context for the movies that will be coming out over the next few years. I've never really read much Marvel. I was first exposed to DC through Superman and Batman and the Super Friends cartoon on Saturday mornings, which highly influenced my preferences. When I was buying comics every week, there wasn't enough cash for all the DC titles I read and Marvel titles.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with more knowledge/exposure of DC too but as I got older I've leaned Marvel. And taking advantage of 3 for 10 deals = of course!
ReplyDeleteThe FF4 was my favorite comic as a kid, even though I didn't read or own a lot of them. But I always wanted to be Johnny Torch
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