The last MKE Comicbook of 2015 was a swell one – not as well attended as some evenings, but still made for some good comicbook chat! Our topic of the night was “Best of and Worst of 2015”. Not surprising, a lot of the books mentioned have been in our conversations previously!
We started our talk off with a comment Kate made about comicbook stores: “I can find them intimidating…which I haven’t felt when going to a bookstore.” This really spoke to an issue in the industry right now – women are the fastest growing readership in comics, yet because it was traditionally a guys’ thing, many comicbook stores are struggling to make the in-store browsing/shopping experience a good one for women and especially, new-to-comics-reading women. So let that be a heads-up to our MKE stores — start some women-centric outreach! Comicbooks aren’t just a guys’ thing!
I mentioned some “Best of” books as being “The Unbeatable Squirrel-Girl”, “Astonishing Ant-Man”, and “Spider-Woman”. I also mentioned the “Battleworld” limited-series of “Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders” and “Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-fu”.
Molly mentioned the popular-and-only-getting-more-popular Ms. Marvel – one of Marvel’s breaking-through-to-the-mainstream-media books. It’s definitely worth checking – interesting characters, great art; it’s really a fun superhero book! Molly also mentioned Velvet – a good espionage book, made by the creative team that famously killed Captain America in 2007.
Kate –Drowned City by Don Brown, about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. She mentioned that it is written to younger readers, but has some most awesome art! She also shared Cold Mountain – a graphic novel based on the works of two well-known Chinese poets.
Shawn’s “Best of” suggestions included Nimona, originally an online comic, that proved popular enough to make its way to print. The writer, Noelle Stevenson, is also highly regarded for her work on Lumberjanes. “Lil Avengers vs X-men” and “F*ck Fairyland” were both big favorites of Shawn’s, as they were both done by his favorite creator, Skottie Young!
“Hank Johnson, Agent of Hydra” was a fun one-shot, and all of us who flipped through it, quickly wished it was more than one issue! It tells a “day in the life” for an agent of Hydra”.
Because Shawn is a history teacher, he also mentioned “Nanjing: The Burning City”, a graphic novel about an important, but often overlooked, battle between China and Japan during World War II.
Shawn did bring one “worst of” book – “X-Men ’92”. He put it simply by saying, “it’s a throwback and I just didn’t like it.”
Though it’s not from from 2015, John recently read Rasl by Jeff Smith. He said “It’s very different from Bone, but really good story.” He also mentiioned “Creep” – a strange, P.I. story.
Emilio brought one funny flashback-to-the-80s comicbook – a “Count Duckula” issue that featured a special guest-appearance from Geraldo Rivera!
He had two “worst of” books to mention: “Uncanny Avengers #1” did nothing for him, and Marvel’s “Secret Wars” – “started off confused, only got worse…just tooooooo much”.
As Don couldn’t join us this evening, we didn’t have a trivia contest, but sure are looking forward to his next contest in January 2016!
