By mid-2022, my formerly gigantic stack of Marvel Previews books was dwindling, and I was approaching, if not the present, the not-too-distant past. For years, whatever page I would select would reliably turn up a series that had ended, because these days, comic book series reliably end. But now I was getting a hold of series that were still ongoing, which led to some oddly truncated reading experiences — I tried to evaluate them for what they were and what they could give at the time.

Meanwhile, my project reading had hit a very difficult mogul: reading 400 pages reproducing William Blake’s original plates. Songs of Innocence and Experience aside, this stuff is challenging reading in any form, so it took months, even when I devoted lots of time to it. Of course, some of that time was sitting around hospital waiting rooms before and after my dad’s brain surgery, where a stroke paralyzed him and left him bedridden for the rest of his life. I was particularly grateful for the fun reading. That includes Alan Moore’s Miracleman series, which I decided I needed as background.

There are spoilers ahoy — not that I seek them out, but neither do I avoid them.

Hawkeye: Kate Bishop (2021) #1-3

Marieke Nijkamp and Enid Balam
8.7/10 · May 12, 2022

Now this is more like it. Reminiscent of (but not really equal to) the Hawkeye book, with fun mysteries, wonderful character development, clever storytelling devices, and snappy dialogue. Also trick arrows, yeah. Unlike the Star Wars and Hulk series, this totally left me wanting more. Well, except for the art, which was pretty hideous.

Black Panther (2021) #1-3

John Ridley and Juann Cabal
8.7/10 · May 14, 2022

Once again, I’ve tapped into a title that has only just started on MU, thanks to my Previews issues finally catching up with present day. This seems like an interesting enough restart for Black Panther — I’m sure it’s quite a challenge to follow Ta-Nehisi Coates’ run on the book. The plotline plausibly grows from what’s come before, and I’d be happy to keep reading… if there were more to read.

Ka-Zar: Lord of the Savage Land (2021) #1-5

Zac Thompson and Germán García
8.9/10 · May 14, 2022

So the #1 job of this series was to resurrect Ka-Zar after he was killed in the Empyre event. This was done by having the spirit of the Savage Land bring him back as its protector, just as had previously happened with Shanna. A lovely side effect of this was to separate him from his colonialist origins by making him truly one with the land. Now he can transform into aspects of the Savage Land by experiencing deep empathy with them — the very “going native” that colonialists dreaded. Ka-Zar was never my favorite character, but this was a good move forward for him and a well-crafted story overall.

Tech-On Avengers #1-6

Jim Zub and Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz
5.9/10 · May 20, 2022

So, this is apparently a mash-up of superhero comics and some manga/anime subgenre called sentai, in which various people use cool tech to get superpowers, a la Power Rangers. So in this book the Red Skull uses some cosmic macguffin to depower every superhero, and then Tony Stark builds them all super suits to be all mech-y. It is clearly aimed at a) young readers, and b) fans of sentai. I am neither, and didn’t find a whole lot for me in this book, so for me it was a miss. Not an aggravating experience like a Cates book, but a miss nevertheless.

Legends: Black Panther (2021) #1-3

Tochi Onyebuchi et al
8.0/10 · May 20, 2022

The purpose here is to retell BP’s origin in a long enough format that it can make a slim trade. Fair enough — it’s written well, with some nice African awareness. The art is more variable, some being a bit rushed and sketchy for my taste. Kind of an average enjoyable read — nothing special but pleasant enough.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man #24-34

Saladin Ahmed et al
8.8/10 · May 21, 2022

I’ve now reached the point with this project where the Previews I’m looking at are posting issues that aren’t on MU yet. Wow! In this case, the issue at hand is MM:SM #36, whereas MU is only up to #34. My decision in this case is to read the relevant run up to that point, but complicating matters is the fact that I’ve actually already read this run up to #25 in my 100 issues of MM read. So in this case I started at the beginning of the relevant arc, then read up to MU current. This is still a quality run, and and this read happened to encompass a fun 10th anniversary issue which included fun stories from Lord & Miller + Cody Ziglar. Good times!

The Death of Doctor Strange

Jed MacKay, Lee Garbett, and Antonio Fabela
9.2/10 · May 21, 2022

This is one of those “vintage character in modern continuity” riffs, like the time-traveling young X-Men. But where that storyline contrasted modern mutant darkness with its more lighthearted beginnings, this time it’s Strange who has lightened up over time. His severe Ditko 60s “Master of Black Magic” self gets projected into the future to hang out with a kind-hearted ghost dog, workaday Avengers, and estranged Clea. It’s done in a fun way, with a murder mystery motif and a status change to make Clea Sorcerer Supreme. (As it happens, my random method dialed up Strange #2, a series which hasn’t started yet on MU, so I dialed back to this one, which MacKay used to set up the current series.) Enjoyable!

Miracleman Book 1: A Dream of Flying

Alan Moore, Garry Leach, and Alan Davis
9.7/10 · May 22, 2022

I’m taking another run at reading Miracleman — all of it this time — so I reread this first book. This time I couldn’t help but have an eye towards the “The Tyger”, since I’m at a Blake point in my Watchmen project. As it happens, there’s a prominent and repeated tiger metaphor — in Kid Miracleman’s predatory eyes. Something to be done with that, perhaps…

Miracleman Book 2: The Red King’s Gambit

Alan Moore, Alan Davis, Chuck Austen, et al.
9.7/10 · May 22, 2022

Moore continues his relentless and rather grim redemption of the ludicrous here, working out the implications of juxtaposing Shazam tropes with a contemporary 80s milieu in a pretty merciless way. Where the first volume centered on Kid Miracleman, this one centers on Miracleman’s Kid, or rather how it emerges as the lodestone for the plan that created MM in the first place. I loved the dream-fighting scenes, predictably, and the climactic scene of a superhero lifting his human enemy into space and dropping him is… something you wouldn’t see in a Silver Age book, that’s for sure. Moore invented this entire register, and it holds up damn well. There’s also some very fun supplemental material — I particularly enjoyed the framing sequence with cat yronwode breaking the 4th wall and admitting upfront the disastrous reason why the book was suddenly breaking into reprints.

Miracleman Book 3: Olympus

Alan Moore and John Totleben
9.7/10 · May 28, 2022

A foreshadowing of “Super-powers and the Superpowers” — this feels to me like a parable of international relations. On the one side there is the absolute horror of Kid Miracleman — essentially a Holocaust — and on the other side there are the Allies, led by Miracleman. Each one is trying to shape the world in its own image, and the Allies succeed, but at the cost of suppressing dissent, increasing distance from humanity, and endless grief over the bloodshed that they didn’t prevent. A beautiful ending to this excellent series.

Star Wars: Halcyon Legacy #1

Ethan Sacks and Will Sliney
8.1/10 · May 28, 2022

A fun swashbuckling debut issue that hews to the strengths of Star Wars — putting 19th and early 20th century adventure tropes into a space/sci-fi context. Nothing especially new, but enjoyable enough.

Iron Fist: Heart of the Dragon

Larry Hama and Dave Wachter
9.0/10 · May 30, 2022

Sometimes legacy creators coming back to characters with whom they’re closely associated can feel tired or byzantine, but I really enjoyed this Hama miniseries. It clearly pulls in a bunch of stuff from recent Iron Fist lore that I haven’t read — I never did catch up with any of that Brubaker/Fraction/Aja stuff. There’s a little girl, a little old dude, various Iron Fists from other… times? realities? Whatever. The tone was a lovely mix of sacred and silly, the action was exciting, the villain was credible, and seeing Okoye all Iron-Fisted was cool from both a visual and a story standpoint. And it ends with Danny getting depowered! This has apparently made way for a new Iron Fist who is actually Chinese. Cool developments!

X-Men Legends #1-11

Marvel
8.7/10 · May 30, 2022

There are a lot of ups and downs in the X-Men franchise, so when the point of a series is to bring back old creators and tell stories set sometime in previous continuity, the results are obviously going to be all over the place. Louise Simonson and Fabian Nicieza? Still not my favorites. Larry Hama on Wolverine is a pretty good time though. But what gets me in the door is Peter David on my favorite era of X-Factor. More Wolfsbane stories? YES PLEASE.

Marvel Rising (2018 4-part series)

Ryan North, G. Willow Wilson, Devin Grayson, Irene Strychalski, and Ramon Bachs
8.3/10 · June 5, 2022

So, obviously the best thing about this is another issue of Ryan North Squirrel Girl. Second best thing is another issue of G. Willow Wilson Ms. Marvel. Which must mean that Devin Grayson is the worst thing about it. While North and Wilson are solid as always, the piece overall has a real “adults writing for kids” vibe. “Let’s do one about those video games the kids love so much! Like the Donkey Kong! I used to love the Donkey Kong!” Our villain can make video games come to life, except the twist is that she’s really a good kid who got misled by an online friend. “Watch out for those randos online, kids! They could turn out to be supervillains!”

Share Your Universe sampler

Eugene Son, Nuno Plati, Christos Gage, Chris Jones, Fred Van Lente, and James Cordeiro
7.0/10 · June 5, 2022

This is clearly aimed at younger readers — everybody’s a kid or a wholesome adult. I certainly prefer it to things like Hickman’s Avengers where everyone is awful, but I’m pretty clearly not the target audience either. It was fine for what it was.

Marvel Tales: Annihilation

Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio, John Byrne, Steve Gerber, Don Heck, Danny Fingeroth, and Mike Manley
7.6/10 · June 5, 2022

Collecting Marvel Two-In-One #53, Daredevil #105, and Darkhawk #6. This was a tie-in to the Annihilation Scourge event, which I read in June 2021 and concluded was pretty weak sauce. This compilation issue has as little reason for existing as the event did, and even the issues it compiles are a strange lot. You can’t really go wrong with Gruenwald/Macchio/Byrne MTIO, but Gerber’s Daredevil is odd even for Gerber. Of all the titles to go cosmic with… Daredevil? Then there’s Darkhawk, who frankly I never had the time of day for and still don’t.

Marvel Team-Up (2019)

Eve L. Ewing, Joey Vazquez, Moy R., Clint McElroy, and Ig Guara
7.2/10 · June 6, 2022

I was so excited to see a new Marvel Team-Up series announced, and signed up for it right away at the comic book store. The result was a disappointment though. The reason I loved the original MTU was that it was like a monthly Spider-Man book with a guaranteed monthly random surprise hero. I loved being able to visit all those different corners of the Marvel Universe without having to buy a boatload of books. This, though, was pretty much a 3-issue arc of Spider-Man + Ms. Marvel, then a 3-issue arc of Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel. Surprises, not so much. Also, this is another one that feels like it’s writing down to its audience. I’m partial to the era where comic book writers were trying to elevate the form rather than water it down.

The Complete Illuminated Books

William Blake
5.7/10 · June 19, 2022

I love the idea of this book. And some things about the reality are amazing. The plates are absolutely the right way to read Blake, though far from the easiest. His words and images are intended to be taken together, and extricating one from the other does violence to both. And some of the reproductions are absolutely breathtaking. That said, there are some real downsides to this tome. First of all, it is gigantic and heavy, which — fair enough — is a result of like 400 quality reproductions bound together, but some of the reproductions are tiny!

Songs of Innocence and Experience in particular is deeply disappointing — postage-stamp reprints that require a magnifying glass to read. I guess they’re accurate to-scale reproductions, but why on earth would we favor that over readability? Beyond that, there’s the fact that a lot of this is just difficult material no matter how it’s presented. Much of Blake’s prophetic stuff has a bonkers Unabomber vibe, at least to me. Looking forward to William Blake Vs. The World illuminating it for me.

Marvel 2-In-One + Annual #1

Chip Zdarsky et al
8.9/10 · June 20, 2022

Like the Marvel Team-Up reboot, this series strayed from the premise of the original by only pairing the Thing with FF members, and making the first 10 of those the Torch. Also, a whole bunch of it was multiverse stuff with all the standard ingredients of switching alignments, dystopia, etc. That said, there were a few things that elevated it. First, Zdarsky is a strong writer, and I don’t think I’ve read anything of his I didn’t enjoy. He is one of the few I trust with “What If?” scenarios, especially based on his real-time Spider-Man series. Second, and related, is the fact that this series does lovely character work with Ben and Johnny, and even Doctor Doom. They are circling well-traced spirals, but it feels real and emotionally grounded. Finally, this is the series that brought the real FF back from limbo! How could I not love it at least a little, just for that?

Marvel Universe Avengers and Ultimate Spider-Man

Slott, Templeton, Yost, and Jones
8.4/10 · June 20, 2022

Promo comics advertising 10-year-old cartoons. Based on that premise, they’re better than they need to be, thanks to the good writers assigned to them. Still, a trifle.

The Marvels #1-10

Kurt Busiek and Yildiray Cinar
9.5/10 · June 25, 2022

Where Marvels was Busiek showing the Marvel Universe from a unique point-of-view, and implicating political issues in the process, this series foregrounds the politics and switches among many points of view to give us a healthy diversity of perspectives on the issues. All of it is enriched by Busiek’s beautiful saturation of MU lore — there are tons of delightful Easter eggs to be found by a reader like me, who has spent a long time immersed in that lore. This series is still ongoing, so I’m only reviewing the first 10 issues here, but so far I’m really digging the intertwined stories, time-jumping, varied viewpoints, and exploration of how our wars affect both our targets and ourselves.