State of the Longbox Address

I've been feeling for a little while that the crop of books I'm buying is getting a little stale.  Here is my pull list:

Captain America

Captain America & Bucky

Thor

Journey Into Mystery

Secret Avengers

Alpha Flight

Avengers: Children's Crusade

Avengers Solo (slot "any solo Hawkeye books" here)

I've found that some books just haven't been getting me very excited lately, and it was time for a change.

I think Ed Brubaker does a spectacular job with Captain America, but I'm getting kind of bored with all the WWII/Cold War stuff in the title.  Going to the well here and there is great, but it gets a little old after awhile, and Brubaker has been on the book for quite awhile now (a great accomplishment in this day and age).  That theme doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, since he will be launching a Winter Soldier ongoing (provided Marvel doesn't cut the feet out from under it before it launches) in 2012.

I was tempted to get the Winter Soldier seres, to have a complete collection of Brubaker's work in the Captain America universe, plus he will be re-teaming with Butch Guice, but as I said, I'm burnt out on the old war story stuff.  Therefore, I made the decision to axe Captain America & Bucky from my list, and will not be getting the Winter Soldier series.

Thor has been a disappointment for me ever since Matt Fraction took over the title.  I feel he has ignored recent continuity, as established by J. Michael Stracynski and Kieron Gillen, and that really makes it hard to enjoy the book as an ongoing series.  I feel that the dialogue is terrible, as Fraction cannot decide if Thor is eloquent or a brute, and the rest of the characters aren't much better.  Fraction is good at starting things at a slow boil, but his conclusions leave a lot to be desired.  With the price of comics today it is really hard to justify buying the book, even though I have a complete run going back to Volume 2 (and we're on the equivalent of Volume 4 right now). 

Secret Avengers was a book I was really excited for.  I don't care for Bendis' Avengers, and Brubaker picked a really great line-up for the book; Steve Rogers, Sharon Carter, Ant-Man (Eric O'Grady), War Machine, Valkyrie, Beast, Moon Knight, and Nova.  This was a great blend of characters I thought would play well off of each other, but unfortunately the book under Brubaker always felts like "Steve Rogers and friends", not a true team book.  I gave the Warren Ellis issues a try but they haven't really seemed to be going anywhere, and I have no great emotional attachment to the series (as I do Thor) since it never quite achieved its potential to my mind, so cutting it off is just the way to go.

So now we are at:

Captain America

Captain America & Bucky

Thor

Journey Into Mystery

Secret Avengers

Alpha Flight

Avengers: Children's Crusade

Avengers Solo (slot "any solo Hawkeye books" here)

Of the remaining books, Journey Into Mystery is a real treat.  I feel that Kieron Gillen has a grasp of Thor and the world of Asgard second only to the great Walt Simonson himself.  Gillen's fill-in work on the Thor title, before Fraction took over, was spectacular.  I firmly believe that he should be the writer of the main Thor book; I would be back in a flash if that were to happen.

Even though I am tired of the World War II inspired stories in Captain America, Alan Davis is coming on board as the artist starting with #6, and anyone who follows this blog know how much I love Alan Davis.  Therefore Captain America's main book will be spared the chopping block.

I absolutely love Alpha Flight, and I have every issue of their various on-goings and mini-series ever produced, and am working on getting their notable appearances in other titles (I am a proud owner of their first full appearance thanks to a trade with Tom Breevort, in Uncanny X-Men #121).  I was very sad that Marvel toyed with my emotions by announcing the mini-series by Pak and Eaglesham would be made into an ongoing (yay!), then they later announced it was reduced back to a mini (boo!).  While I haven't completely fallen in love with the current story, I think it was going to establish a good base to go forward with.

Avengers: Children's Crusade has been alright, though I'm starting to find Young Avengers books to be a little formulaic; kids confront a problem, Avengers tell them to stay out of it, kids defy Avengers.  And if there is an in-story reason why these kids aren't a apart of Avengers Academy I'd love to hear it; I assume the in-story is that the Children's Crusade book couldn't even keep to a bi-monthly schedule, makes it hard to include them in other books. 

Avengers Solo #1 was okay, though I wasn't blown away.  I think I need to re-read it, as part of the problem may be that it was a fairly dense read, and I'm not as used to that as I used to be, with the way comics are currently written.  I will still collect the whole mini-series though.

So with all that being said, I felt it was time for a bit of a change.  What books have I added to the mix and why?  Stay tuned for "Time For a Change", same Blog Time, same Blog Channel!