I have three small kids ranging from 2-8 years old. They love reading comics and books alike, and as a result I pick up all sorts of free and cheap comics to place in my spinner rack at home for their reading leisure. As you can image its full of Free Comic Book Day titles and any free promo comic I pick up from my local shop, Comics 2 Games. I just happen to be cleaning up our reading room (putting books away my kids didn’t put back on their own) and I noticed on my spinner rack the Detective Comics #27 freebie that DC put out back in July. I can remember grabbing and thinking how cheap it was that they re-used the Greg Capullo Batman Zero cover for it. It’s a free comic, so I gave it to the kids. Upon glancing at the cover this time around, I noticed something I hadn’t before. One name caught my attention. Sean Murphy. Why hadn’t I noticed his name before? Interest peaked, I sat down and gave it a read and holy hell was I pleasantly surprised, and oh by the way… it has a very interesting impact on the current Batman story arc.

It’s a new year full of promise and Image has even more to offer me as far as great reads go. Already Image holds the #1 & #2 spots in my top 5 titles to read monthly and now Image & Rick Remender have added a third. That’s right, Image Comics holds the top 3 spots in my favorite monthly titles to read. Today we are going to discuss the latest edition to that top 5: Rick Remender’s Black Science.

In an attempt to consume more of Scott Snyder‘s work, I reached out to my local library and picked up the first two trade of Snyder’s Vertigo title American Vampire. Holy crap is this book awesome. Vertigo. CHECK. Vampires. CHECK. Historical fiction. CHECK. (triple homerun) Our main character, the first American Vampire, is Skinner Sweet and prior to becoming a part of the undead, Skinner Sweet was a sadistic asshole and a murderous thief. He was last person you would have wanted to run into in 1880. Skinner, murdering bank robber, is wanted by a group of old country European vampires, whom he robbed several tens of thousands of dollars from. Seeking their revenge, they hire a detective from the Pinkerton Group to help capture him. While attempting escape from capture, Skinner Sweet is accidentally transformed into the first American Vampire.

Following up what I call one of the best three runs on Fantastic Four ever (Kirby/Lee, Byrne and Hickman for those keeping score at home), we have Matt Fraction penning both Fantastic Four and the FF titles. I have to admit I was expecting to be let down. It’s near impossible to follow up excellence with excellence. (Those types of things are left to the Niners and the Packers) But none the less, plenty of my fellow collectors stated I would not be let down and that I have to patient and let Fraction do his thing. So I did. Six issues and an Age Of Ultron later, we finally have some goodness to talk about.

I have to admit that I haven’t given Brian Michael Bendis enough credit. Until the last year, my exposure to Bendis has been through his early Image work (Goldfish, Powers) and his DareDevil run. None of that is bad, in fact I love his early Image stuff and his DD was the last time I really cared about DD. So why have I not given him the love? Marvel. It’s his association with Marvel. That isn’t fair to him and I am here to say “I am fucking sorry”. In fact he is the only reason I’m even slightly interested in what is going on at Marvel. His handling of the X-Men right now is unprecedented. (phenomenal) I’ve never seen X-Men continuity handled so well. It’s been over 15 years since I cared about reading an X-Men title. Bendis is one of the best in the business and is by far the best at Marvel. Thank you Brian Michael Bendis for making me care about Marvel again. Placing my faith Bendis, I’m trying out Guardians of the Galaxy.

Wow. June has arrived and so have about half a dozen new titles that have me totally clamoring for the newsstands. (HAH… newsstands) But seriously, in the last thirty days I’ve added five new titles to the pull-list and three just came out in the last 2 weeks. Normally I grab off the shelf for at least three months before I even begin to think about committing a title to the pull-list and in reality it’s usually more like six months. (I still haven’t committed to the Fantastic Four Titles) But at least five number 1’s in the last thirty days have earned that title a spot on the pull-list with just a single issue. Let’s talk June’s pull-list additions.

Originally my intent with this journey through the bowels of Marvel’s Ultimate universe was to read a few of the trades at a time, and then write an article about them. Well it turns out that I’ve been enjoying (well, ‘consuming’ is probably more accurate in most cases) the books so much that I simply never stopped to write. I’ve read roughly 60 of the trades at this point, which finds me within striking distance of the end of my journey through the pre-Ultimatum Ultimate universe.  That said, I’ve got a lot of thoughts to cover in the next few articles.

I’ll be honest, even though I was in my comic book sabbatical phase when Marvel fired up it’s Ultimate line of books, I was still aware of their existence and not terribly fond of the idea.  The idea to reboot your setting by creating a new line of titles that exist in their own continuity, while at the same time maintaining the books in your existing continuity, just seemed like one of those bad ideas that are unique to the comic book medium.  Then again, having a dozen flavors of Batman and X-Men each month also strikes me as a bad thing, so it’s obvious I don’t think like a publisher.

A few weeks back, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, I made the spontaneous decision to start reading the Ultimate line of comics.  In it’s entirety.  

I am a long time reader of Veritgo comics. I’m a fan of the characters, I’m a fan of the line and I’m a fan of what the line meant for creators. When I heard about the concept for Justice League Dark I was torn a little bit. On one hand I was excited about these characters being brought into the New 52 and on the other hand, I had an issue with these characters being on a team of any kind let alone a team with the word ‘Justice’ in the title. Every one of them is a solo character that has plenty of history of not getting along with others or even getting others killed.  In the end, I was more than pleasantly satisfied with the outcome.

In the beginning of Image Comics during the early nineties, I read it all. I couldn’t get my hands on enough of them. Image was known for it’s awesome art, foil covers, Image 0 coupons and gobs of books with the word blood, strike or force in the title. Some of it was great, some of it was terrible, but I think the ultimate goal for the greater good was reached. Creator-owned comics not only hit it big, they thrived.  The big pubs couldn’t push creators around anymore and not only did that benefit the creators, but us readers won big as well. Today Image has matured into a comic book story power house. Uniquely original content that includes tales of surviving a zombie apocalypse, a story of an FDA Agent who solves crimes by getting psychic impressions from the things he eats (including humans), an underground company that erases tragedy for a nominal fee, by time traveling and  a story about an oil tycoon heir who decides to settle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and declare it his own sovereign nation… just to name a few. Today Image is ripe with great stories just waiting to be read. Here are my 5 Reasons You Should be Reading More Image Comics.