That's what I got from the Great Diamond Pricing Glitch of 2010.
First impressions? Iron Man wavers up and down in quality of writing based on Fraction trying to be realistic but not understanding how certain fundamental things like the criminal justice system work. I call it the uncanny valley of superheroes - the more "realistic" you try to make them the more glaring the problems with how unrealistic the story is. As a helpful guideline to other writers: law enforcement officers illegally kicking in the door to a CEO's office and hauling them off to indefinite detention without trial would be on the national news and get them and their bosses fired then arrested; that's assuming it already hasn't happened since they publicly shot up a well-off Washington condo with no legal basis a few hours before that. Also doctoring images to cover up a crime only works if you didn't commit the crime on world wide television in the first place.
The flip side of that is the Captain America which features a robot Nazi, a Russian oligarch sharing his brain space with a super villain, and a guy with a robot arm and indestructible shield who goes around fighting terrorists and it manages to be a rip roaring good time. I think it's because it never got bogged down in minutiae that made me think about how flawed the story was.
I don't have as many golden age reprints in my collection as I'd like so I'm enjoying the Golden Age Marvel Comics omnibus. Still that's the kind of thing only for extreme comic book nerds and fans of pulp.
Daredevil has me interested but I'm waiting to fill in some gaps before I continue. There's about five smaller books I need to get before I can go past that first volume on the top of the stack.
I've read those issues of Walking Dead but it's nice to have my own copy. I don't know if I can take forty-eight consecutive issues of it given how depressing it is.
Along those lines I already own most of the issues in those Nexus Archives but I couldn't resist having the Steve Rude art in a nicer format. I'm probably going to bump that one up the priority list for reviews since I love his art so much.
The Creepy Archives are awesome. The stories may be hokey but listen to this list of staff artists from #16: Neal Adams, Dan Adkins, Eugene Colan, Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Frank Frazetta, Jerry Grandenetti, Rocco Mastroserio, Gray Morrow, Joe Orlando, John Severin, Angelo Torres, Alex Toth, Al Williamson, Wallace Wood. No matter how silly the monster stories are every issue looks great.
The Mister X Archives I bought on a lark since I recalled hearing about the series a long time ago and never gave it a shot. What better time to try it than when I can get the whole thing in a nice hard bound edition for twelve dollars.
Then there's Comic Book Tattoo. The one item on the list that I explicitly added to my cart because of my hobby. I am not looking forward to that one.
So I better get to this. That yard of books aren't going to read themselves.
