Atomic Robo Omnibus

I've recently finished the second Atomic Robo softcover Omnibus.

Very enjoyable comics. 

Spider-man Homecoming

Luke and I saw this yesterday and it was great.

As Spidey is my favourite hero I'm always very critical of any portrayal if it doesn't fit into what I consider to be my "Spidey" which, by extension, is the definitive Spider-man.

This does a great job although it was very different to the Conway/Andru series of the 1970s or the Stern/ Romita Jr & DeFalco/Frenz runs later on.

It was a good plot, lots of comedy and action (very important in Spider-man stories) and I really liked how it tied into early MCU movies.

Legion of Super-heroes collections

As I've said previously, I'm in a phase of being very curious and interested in silver and bronze age DC comics. I never bought any of these when I was growing up and my first "real" exposure to DC was when John Byrne left Marvel to join DC and reboot Superman.

So all this stuff is new to me.

One series that keeps coming up on the DC archives message boards is LOSH and there is a Silver Age Omnibus of their early adventures due to be released in August which is on my wishlist. In the discussions these two collections were recommended as the best stories and as it will take years for the omnibus series to reach these issues I decided to pick up the trades whilst they were still available and not out-of-print. 

"The Darkness Saga" Collects Legion of Super-Heroes #284-296 and Annual #1 and "The Curse" collects Collects Legion of Super-Heroes #297-313 and Annual #2 so these collect a considerable number of issues. 

My plan is to get the omnibus edition and the brand new collection (SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES VOL. Collects issues #234-245.) which will give me plenty to read and hopefully an understanding of what made the Legion so popular with DC fans.

Summary of the Year - so far

Last year I just about completed my Marvel collection, with only a very few individual comics and a few trades, epics, masterworks and omnibuses to obtain.

So naturally I found myself drawn to something new as I like collecting. That something has proven to be pre-Crisis DC. This is as a result of a revamped DC programme to publish archives of their old material collected in Gold, Silver and Bronze Ages. Now I'm still not interested in Golden Age reprints but I definitely like the SA and BA editions and I've bought quite a few with more on pre-order. I've also picked-up other collections where I can and now consider myself to have made a reasonable start.

The other new thing for 2017 is digital comics. There have been some insane deals on the kindle store and I've bought lots and lots. Including quite a bit I already had in print but there is lots of masterworks and other collections I've taken a chance on because it was only £1.89 for the masterworks volume. Well, it would have been rude to pass-up such an opportunity!

I think this is the only edition I've completed  but I reckon I'll be reading quite a bit over the summer holidays.

I have also completed my Marvel Two-in-One collection with the purchase of #13 and I think that just leaves Thor #262 and Giant-size Spider-man #6 to get in this format.

Finally, the scores on the doors are

Comics/Back-issues: Bought 13 :read 0
Trade collections    : Bought 9 : read  11
Epic Collections, Masterworks  & Omnibus editions  : Bought 9 read 4 
Movies 1 (Guardians of the Galaxy 2)
Books 0

The above doesn't take into account the X-Static omnibus which was massive!

Complete Two-In-One (plus another Thor! and Nemo!)

I've now completed by collection of Marvel Two-In-One with this purchase of issue 13. As you can see from the cover scan it's not the VFN as advertised but, to be fair, the seller agreed and fully refunded me when I pointed this out. It'll do but I'd have rather have had that VFN copy.

So, just as promised back in Jan, I've now completed 1-75 of 2-in-1 which was my aim.

I also picked-up Thor #256 from a different seller as it was one of the issues missing from the lot I purchased recently. A nice copy at 99p.

And finally I decided to purchase "River of Ghosts" which is the last part of the Nemo trilogy. I didn't like only having 2/3 of the story on the shelf and this was going cheap. Oh, the completist in me can cause me trouble! 

Three new DC Silver and Bronze Age Omnibus

These are all great books. Extremely interesting to me as I've no experience with any of this stuff.

My only criticism is that the JLA vol 1 doesn't match the new trade dress of more recent volumes. Still I got it for just over £50 which is quite a bit less than Amazon's or shop prices.

Vision Vol 2 - Little Better Than A Beast

 I didn't want to wait too long between reading Vol 1 and Vol 2 of the Vision limited series and I kept that promise to myself.

Although quite sombre in tone this was a well told story in terms of both story and art and I'm very pleased to have read it. It was quite different to the vast majority of other superhero comics and an interesting take on the dynamic.