July is Too Hot to Shake Things Up

July's solicits suggest not a quiet month, exactly, but there's not much in the way of new stuff. Mostly just things I was already buying and will continue to buy.

Marvel, for example, has one new thing I might get, hidden beneath the pile of the X-book stuff, the "Final Annihilation" stuff, and the "Sinister War" one-month Spider-Man event thing. Jed MacKay and Alessandro Cappuccio are doing a Moon Knight series. Taskmaster was a dud, but Black Cat earns MacKay another shot. Beyond that, the aforementioned Black Cat, Black Knight's final issue, Runaways was on a skip month in June, and Way of X (if I'm still buying it.)

DC actually has two things I'm considering. One is the fifth issue of Batman: Urban Legends, because there's a Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain story in there. Not worth $8, but if I can find a beat up copy eventually, I might get it. The other is Blue & Gold, a Dan Jurgens/Ryan Sook Booster Gold and Blue Beetle mini-series. There's some question of whether Sook can stick to a monthly schedule for 8 issues, but Jurgens as writer concerns me more. His work seems technically fine, but I have never gotten excited reading his writing. It's like Cullen Bunn in that there's just something that doesn't connect.

Outside that, the last issue of Jenny Zero from Dark Horse (maybe by next week I'll have the first issue to see if that's going to be relevant.) Freak Snow and You Promised Me Darkness, the latter of which will be in the first half of the conclusion to the first arc. The third issue of Yuki vs. Panda from Source Point. Midnight Western Theatre is going to ship two months in a row, and the second issue of Locust will be out, too. There's also a one-shot connected to that Phantom Starkiller book called Count Draco Knuckleduster, but Joseph Schmalke and Peter Goral. So that's maybe something new.

On the manga front, Square Enix has the fourth volume of Soul Eater Perfect Edition out. I'm a couple of volumes behind yet, but something to keep an eye on. And Vertical has the fifth volume of a series by Aki Irie called Go With Clouds North by Northwest, about a detective in Iceland that can talk to cars. I'd have to go back to find the earlier volumes first, but it's a form of back issue hunting. That's still fun for me, sometimes.