Weekly Comic Wrap-up May 5, 2014

Not a ton of news worthy moments this week in comics, but some of the stuff that did happen is pretty cool. It was honestly just a great nerd weekend, Amazing Spider-Man 2 released on Friday (or Thursday), Saturday was Free Comic Book Day, and Sunday was Star Wars Day (May the fourth be with you!). As ususal I want to take a moment to plug our Podcast Kickstarter, we’ve only got a couple weeks left and still a pretty long way to go. A dollar or a share would certainly help a lot. And speaking of Podcasts, don’t forget to check ours out, episode 3 of PodQuest should actually be up by the time you’re reading this.

Enough of that, let’s get to the news!

Comic News

• FREE COMIC BOOK DAY 2014! – Anyone who’s reading this, probably took part in Saturday’s Free Comic Book Day. Comic shops all over had tables full of special free books for you to choose from. Depending on where you live, some stores may have had comic creators there to sign books, or other fun events going on. It’s really an awesome day to stop into a comic shop, even if you’re not interested in the free books. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t get to the store till about 9:30pm and most of the books were gone by then.
• Free Image Comics on Comixology – Not sure how long this is going to last, but all weekend, Image has been offering 196 free comics on the digital platform. They’re mostly first issues, but some of them are from amazing series, like Saga, Sex Criminals, Morning Glories, and so many more. If even you’ve never heard of a title, it’s free, give it a shot! You can find all of the free books right here on Comixology, but act quick before they end the promotion.
• Nine More DC Movies – So while not 100% comic news, it still fits in the realm. Basically DC and WB announced they’re making a run to take on Marvel, while it may not be in such an elaborate shared universe as the MCU, DC has plenty of characters to pull from and make compelling cinema. So far of the nine movies, it’s pretty clear that the upcoming Man of Steel sequel and the recently announced Justice League don’t count. So that actually means we’ve got 11 future DC movies already in the works. Of those original nine I mentioned, it’s anyone’s guess. The Wall Street Journal article that revealed the plans, talks about Shazam, 100 Bullets, The Metal Men, and Fables as being four of the possible films. There is also the Joseph Gordon-Levitt produced Sandman in the works, so that’s cool. I’m sure we can count on a new Batman movie in the mix at some point, and depending on how well the Justice League performs multiple sequels to that.
• The Amazing Spider-Man Returns. . . Twice! – This week featured the return of two Amazing Spider-Men, the first was in Wednesday Amazing Spider-Man #1 (volume 3), where Peter Parker returned to spinning webs and cracking wise after a 31 issue absence in Superior Spider-Man. The book was a great reintroduction to Peter’s life, but the price tag was a little hefty, there was plenty of book, but not all of it really seemed to matter that much to be included. Now on the other site of entertainment, over in Hollywood land, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 released in the US, after an early international release. I managed to see it Friday night and it was, in my opinion, the best Spidey film yet. It definitely had it’s problems, and we discuss them a lot in this weeks PodQuest (another shameless plug), but it got so much else right that I’m willing to overlook the negative. Seriously if you haven’t gone out to see it yet, make the trip you won’t be disappointed.

Comics To Watch May 7, 2014

• Swamp Thing #31 – Swamp Thing and Animal Man were probably the two most unlikely awesome books that launched with the New 52. Unfortunately Animal Man ended, but Swamp Thing is still going strong. The amazing stories Scott Snyder started, were expertly continued by Charles Soule, and easily make this one of DC’s best books every month.
• Aphrodite IX #10 – There’s a lot of dystopian future stuff going on out there right now. Particularly in the way of movies based on young adult books. Luckily for comic fans, we’ve got Aphrodite IX where a dystopian future is way more interesting than most movies ever make them out to be. Not saying I’d want to live there, but Matt Hawkins is really crafting an awesome universe that will soon be colliding with the current iteration of Cyber Force before starting up a whole new book again this summer.
• Miles Morales The Ultimate Spider-Man #1 – It took me 21 issues to like Miles as Spider-Man, and now I honestly miss the kid. It’s been to long since an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man came out that wasn’t tied into something else. Not only that, but this is probably going to be the only Ultimate book with a solid team working on it. I’ve said before, the other two books have interesting ideas, and the writing is good, but the art is disgusting. Miles Morales Ultimate Spider-Man has two great creators on it, so no worries there.
• Original Sin #1 – I’m going to kick myself for this one later, I just know it, but Original Sin just sounds interesting, and I’m hoping with Jason Aaron ending a lot of his other books, this one won’t suffer from him being overworked.

Chris talks a bunch on PodQuest each week. He's also been known to write about stuff from time to time. You can Email Chris or follow Chris on Twitter @Just_Cobb or Facebook

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