Round And Round We Go

With this post, we mark the end of Year 18 at Reporting on Marvels and Legends. It was a quiet year, largely devoid of weather, automotive or health mishaps. Not even any real travel disasters to speak of, although I also didn't fly anywhere this year, which no doubt helped.

The blog chugged along as it has for the last couple years. Tuesday became movie review day, while Thursday was for books (and I read a few more of those than I have recently, but we'll get to that at New Year's.) I also, thanks to Alex's largesse, have a Playstation 4 now, so I've been able to resume playing new video games (new to me, anyway) and reviewing those.

Saturday Splash Page made it from pre-issue 200 Uncanny X-Men to Tales of Suspense. Only two letters completed, a big step down from 5 the year before. I won't get to Supergirl until early January, so I was a little off on my prediction there. Sunday Splash Page made it from The Hood to Lead City. We're also a couple of weeks away from Legion of Super-Heroes, so didn't quite make it that far either. Still, I finished 6 letters in total over the last year. 18 down, 8 to go.

Unfortunately, we won't be making as much progress next year, as we're about to hit 2 of the 4 busiest letters. Right now, Saturday Splash Page will make it to Spectacular Spider-Man, maybe to Smooth Criminals if I spend fewer weeks on one book than I'm currently thinking. Sunday Splash Page, well, we should at least get past books that start with "Marvel", if only just.

The number of new comics I've bought has dialed back from last year, especially since late summer. Which has meant a few more Random Back Issues (23 over the last year, versus 21 the previous year), and lately, it's also meant more reviews of tpbs, graphic novels and manga. Why, I'm almost through all the ones I bought in 2022, just in time for 2023 to end!

I'm actually thinking about going ahead and shifting tpb review day to Wednesday from Monday. I've already done it a couple of times in the last month, and I'm more likely to have new comics to review on the latter than the former. Make Monday the day for assorted odd thought posts and solicitation rundowns.

As to the oddball posts, in February I tried to figure out what Benjamin Percy's driving at with his extremely evil, extremely incompetent Hank McCoy. In March, I theorized that when fighting much stronger opponents, Spider-Man wins just by getting them to engage. Late March also brought an early, mostly successful, pranking of Pollock. In May I posed the question, who has worse taste in guys, Hellcat or Tigra, and also wondered about why Peter David retconned John Byrne's retcon to Lockjaw. In June, I wrote about the incredible uselessness of Vegeta, which was really satisfying. He's the $-1 from Gravity Falls as a person. In July, I analyzed the dream worlds of the different guys in Moon Knight's system. With August, I talked a little about why I don't like tanking in sports. November brought Blogsgiving, where too much sugar caused me to nearly destroy the (fictional) universe.

Currently, there's no plans for any new features. I've got a pretty good groove going, and I'm just planning to try and maintain it. We'll see how it goes. Thanks to everyone who still drops by, even if you're a soulless algorithm!