What are reading in November/ 2015 ?

Thanksgiving is so great, if you are not a turkey!

Started Understanding Comics last night. It's art theory applied to comics. There's more to it; but I'm currently in the art theory weeds.

I just finished the very good graphic memoir Honor Girl, about a teen in summer camp trying to deal with her same-sex inclinations.

Found Templar by Jordan Mechner and Leuyen Pham at the local library. I was impressed by how the illustration depicted churches, castles and chapels of the times of the knights of the Templar order around 1300. Warning: it is a long graphic novel by the Author of Prince of Persia.

I've finished The Invincible Iron Man: Stark Disassembled. Inverting the formula of the previous arc (Iron Man: World's Most Wanted), Fraction delivers a short, fast story with 2 layers: real world and psychological plan, which finishes as a winner.
Fraction can squeeze original stories from ole Tony Stark and empowers the support characters.
Salvador Larroca's line art is amazingly clean and awesome and sometimes remindes me of Tony Harris in Ex Machina

Just picked up Descender Vol. 1: Tin Stars.

Just started Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales: Underground Abductor. Disturbing and good so far.

Ooh, just got done with Lumberjanes, Vol. 2, still awesome, and some questions I had from the first volume were even answered. Awesome!!

^I loved both Lumberjanes, too!

I've finished Multiversity. In a nutshell, Grant Morrison does an honest to God homage to Crisis on Infinite Earths the way it should be made (and not like Infinite Crisis). But, it is Morrison at the gears, so it is a rollercoaster through diferent earths and titles resulting in an amazing patchwork. Morrison evolved from the other times he has done this same project (in Zenith and Final Crisis) and delivers a palatable and fun experience, but with some doses of weirdness and references-for-iniatiateds.

For me the weaker titles were The Mastermen and Ultra Comics, while Society of Super-Heroes and Thunderworld are so good that it is unfair that they aren't ongoing series.

There are a variety of Super Artists but the books that open and ends the saga have art by Ivan Reis at his peak.

Highly recommended.

>10 apokoliptian:

I have that one looking at me from the shelf but plan to read the whole New 52 read in order... so it is waiting for that... How connected is it to the sequences before it?

>11 AnnieMod:
It is not connected to the New 52 and be read independently. Morrison even uses versions that are from Silver Age, before Crisis, like the hippie super-heroes that showed first in Animal Man and later in Final Crisis. That is why this story is so good: It is timeless.

The Deluxe Edition have some cool out-takes.

>12 apokoliptian:

Ah. So it can go on top of the reading list :) And it is the Deluxe Edition that is at home.

Thanks!

>13 AnnieMod:
Morrison even attempts to write Watchmen in a one-shot with Frank Quitely drawing it, and I tell you, it is amazing!

>14 apokoliptian:

Morrison has the capability to create great stories - he misfires now and then but when it works, it works. So I am not surprised that it works -- I just never realized it is outside of the New 52 enough to be read while catching up on the rest :) Almost sounds like a newer version of "Seven Soldiers" - which I loved back on the days - at least in feeling and scope.

>15 AnnieMod:
It is exactly the same formula of Seven Soldiers of Victory, but in a pop vein. Morrison has a thing of honing a formula, turning it better.

The crazy thing about Seven Soldiers is that Morrison's first proposal was to make a new JLA in the same mold when Stan Lee dismissed the famous Avengers (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man) and put a lot of ex-villains (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye) and it worked!! But DC did not agree with the concept at the time. Later, DC released Justive League Dark. That's life.

>16 apokoliptian:
Yes, he does. And he can pull it off.

Yep, I know the story :) Sometimes the big 2 get scared of change - DC kept its darker heroes under Vertigo for years... Which probably had a lot to do with them not jumping onto the JLA with them.

I've finished The Invincible Iron Man: Stark Resilient. In this book Tony Stark is bankrupt due to previous events and decides to steer his new enterprise to a positive way, creating no fossil fuel powered car. We have a new player to fill the void of military weapon deliverer in the form of Hammer industries and obviously it ends in battles, explosions and the best car chase in comics! It is impossible to not remember Wildcats vol.4, which may been an influency here.
Matt Fraction again pushes the boundaries making one the best books of his run. Fraction does make a credible character of an industrislist/ tech engineer for Tony Stark at the feet of Howard Hughes, making him as tridimensional as Brian Michael Bendis's Matt Murdock.

A book about comics making and wine growing The Initiates: A Comic Artist and a Wine Artisan Exchange Jobs and at the end the best of both worlds. Further reading suggestions...and a wine list.

Sandman Overture is bizarre and excellent.

Cairo by G. Willow Wilson was pretty good. Nice to read one by a Muslim author.

>21 jnwelch: I assume that you've read all her Ms. Marvel and I think that she had an issue in the first (or maybe second) volume of Storm too? I really love her writing, and Cairo is definitely on my list to read (a list that's way too long, maybe the days off for the holidays I can put to some good use :))

>22 DanieXJ: I've read the Ms. Marvels (and enjoyed them), but not the Storm volume. I'll have to look for that. Her Air Vol. 1 is the first one of hers I read. I haven't read the ones after that yet.

I just added a couple of new titles to my pull list which are: The Ultimates and All New All Different Avengers. I also started reading Amazing Spider Man again starting with issue 1 on all three of these titles. I have really enjoyed all of these titles and am looking forward to the next issues.

>23 jnwelch: Ugh... see, this is what I get for talking back to apokoliptian in another thread :). It wasn't a Storm issue that she wrote (though in my defense Storm is one of the X-Men), it was an X-Men story. It's in X-Men, Vol. 5, and it's issues #23-#26, the Burning World Storyline. And it was good. I really liked it.

(The two Storm volumes aren't bad either, but not as good as The Burning World Storyline)

>25 DanieXJ: Good tip, thanks. I appreciate the follow-up - X-Men it is.

Finished up Batwoman: This Blood is Thick, which I enjoyed but it ended in quite the cliffhanger. Also read Arkham Manor, which was entertaining enough but I felt like it tried to tackled too much and therefore didn't really follow any one storyline too well.

I'm reading the graphic memoir The Story of My Tits, which involves breast cancer, and it's very well done. Also, another memoir, French Milk, about the author's time in Paris.