I bought 139 new comics in 2022, which is way up from 107 in 2021. In fact, it's the most new comics I've bought in a year since 2009, when I bought 144. That year Marvel was at 104 books (~72%), DC at 26 (~18%), and all other publishers totaled 14 comics (9.72%), which was a new high up til then. This go-round, Marvel's at 54 comics, which is exactly what it managed in 2021 (it's also pretty close to its totals in 2018 & 2019). In 2022, that's only 38.85%, versus the 50.47% it was in 2021.
DC picked up a bit of ground, going from 3 comics (2.8%) to 9 (6.47%), but most of it went to the other publishers. From 51 (46.73%) comics to 76 (54.68%), which blows the previous high - 2019's 61 comics - out of the water, although in terms of percentage it's not up to 2020. But that was such a weird year, hard to compare.
Distorted #1-3: Salvatore Vivenzio and Gabriele Falzone's story was different parties seeking out people who were developing powers. There were several interesting characters, but the story seemed focused on this telekinetic teenager who was mostly moping around trying to decide what to do, which was incredibly boring, so I dropped the book. Plus, there were a couple of times where they seemed to reprint pages from the previous issue, and I couldn't tell if that was a foul-up or a deliberate choice, but it was distracting.
Fantastic Four #1, 2: So far, Ryan North and Iban Coello's run on the FF has seen the team split up into smaller units, each dealing with some odd doing. I was fond of Ben and Alicia dealing with the mystery of the town from the 1950s stuck in a time loop, more than Reed and Sue finding a town of Doombots. The former allowed for a bit more humor, but they were both enjoyable.
High Point: As much as I loved the surreal imagery and how Mahfood seemed to change the color scheme or presentation with every scene switch, I think he's smart to ground the story through Dio's search for her boyfriend's ashes. It provides a nice throughline amid all the stuff about butterflies and evil teeth. Dio continues to press forward and always for the same reason, no matter what she runs across.
Also, I loved the "Macho Tailfin" back-up stories, especially the over-the-top '90s pastiche in issue 5. Macho screaming "FREAK THIS, FUCK-FACE!!" while ripping "Baron Razor Shrapnel Strike" in half, then pulling out a huge gun and a smoke machine to attack the henchmen cracked me up for some reason. Look, I never said my sense of humor wasn't twisted.
Low Point: Mostly I worry how long we'll have to wait to get another mini-series. I really want to see Dio meet Daphne, Gwen and Rita. Also, I wonder how different Mahfood's art will look by then.
Ice Canyon Monster #1: I gave this a whirl in February because a shaman raising some ancient monster to defend his home from environmental degradation sounded worth a read. Unfortunately, none of the other 6 issues ever came out. They were even resolicited for October, and still nothing. I'll always have that panel of the monster that reminded of Earthworm Jim's Bob, the Killer Goldfish.
Impossible Jones #3, 4: The second half of Karl Kesel and David Hahn's introductory mini-series about a thief caught in a super-science experiment who gains weird powers. Jones is still focused on trying to figure out who locked her in that experiment, but she doesn't really get an answer here, and her boyfriend goes missing with an unusual piece they stole. I like how Kesel hints at backstory and history for these new characters without getting bogged down by it, and I like a lot of Hahn's designs for the characters.
Impossible Jones - Naughty or Nice: I mean, I just reviewed this last week. Impossible Jones misses out on the chance to steal some original puppets from a beloved Christmas movie to deal with a bomb threat, then gets stuck with Even Steven while he has an existential crisis over how to fairly repay an anonymous gift.
High Point: The parts that are Felicia and Tamara interacting. Both the knock down, drag out fights, and the parts where they're arguing about what plan they can use to outmaneuver Sunset Bain, while running for their lives from dozens of Iron Man armors. It was fun to see how easily they slid back into old habits, even when Tamara was still furious with Felicia.
Low Point: The Iron Man parts. I haven't been reading his book, so I didn't really care about the 49th iteration of someone hijacking Stark's legacy of building weapons of mass destruction to destroy his legacy of. . .I'm sure he built some non-lethal technologies that didn't develop sentience or otherwise try to kill all humans.
Pere Perez' version of the Iron Cat armors didn't look quite as impressive as C.F. Villa's did, either. Less sleek, less dangerous. I think making the cat ears smaller and cuter didn't help, and the claws went from some pink plasma thing to actual claws, which is just not as cool.
Iron Fist #1-3: Six months after Larry Hama's extremely disappointing mini-series which took the Iron Fist from Danny Rand for the, what, 17th time? Alyssa Wong handed the chi of Shou-Lao the Undying over to a character called Swordmaster, for some reason. At the time I dropped the book, it had still not been explained why, if the mystical shards of his sword that were embedded in his hands were not only painful, but interfering with his ability to use the Iron Fist, he didn't just remove them. Especially since he was supposed to be trying to put the sword back together. If he needs the connection to find the remaining pieces, leave one in, but why a dozen?
High Point: A fight against a chain restaurant mascot come to life is always worth the price of admission, so let's hear it for issue #2! The color work during Jenny's flashback in issue 3 to what caused her to quit originally was excellent. And I don't know whether King continued to evolve as an artist between the first mini-series and this one, or if the shift to a smoother, less ragged line was a deliberate choice, but it made for an interesting shift in how the book looked.
Low Point: After they went to the trouble of establishing the (evil) Director had a set of triplets who could manipulate a person's memories and emotions, I was sure that was going to come into play. Especially as Jenny seemed to avoid public relations snafus and fell into bed with that annoying Alpha guy. But it never really went anywhere, and the Alpha guy easily defeated the triplets by simply killing one of them. Kind of a letdown.
High Point: I enjoy how Patrick gets into the logistics of these kinds of things, but without it being boring exposition. Although the fact they're stealing heavily guarded gold from inside a monster's stomach helps. And he's very good at playing with expectations. Setting things up so you figure something is sure to happen, but it may not happen the way the audience thinks.
Also, the three-panel sequence in issue 4 where Michelle is pistol whipping a guy to death, pauses to catch her breath, then resumes pistol whipping him was an enjoyable bit. I strongly identify with having enough anger it takes a while to really get it all out.
Low Point: The end was bittersweet, but appropriate for the characters. Michelle figured out she was changing, but the others were going where she was, so that was that. Part on good terms, hope it stays that way.
High Point: Eric Borden and Kyle Brummond gave enough of the characters distinct approaches to fighting to make for some interesting match-ups. The Jiao Long Ru Ken fight against Major Walker was probably the best of them, with the classic speed vs. power contrast.
Low Point: With only four issues, and the first of those spent getting the Cooper family to the town, there's not really much time to flesh any of the other fighters out beyond the bare bones. A couple of them get a little more than that, but it makes it difficult to really care. Could be the point I suppose, we don't know any of them, so the option is to pull for Cooper. All of them are unknowns from his perspective, and dangerous. So maybe it works from that approach, but violence without some sort of context for it is weightless.
Two days, and half the comics down. Tomorrow we'll get into the back half of the alphabet (eventually). There's one big ongoing series, then a lot of one-shots and books I only bought a couple issues from.
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