As Goki just alluded to, a special announcement about this blog is coming very soon. In the meantime, I have a smaller announcement to make that should whet your appetite.
My critically acclaimed* PROJECT series will be making its return soon. If you’re not familiar with the series, here’s how it works: I read an entire famous comic book run, fairly rapidly, then write long, gushing reviews about what made it so great. There have been three installments so far, all of which deserve your attention: PROJECT: FABLES, PROJECT: Y, and PROJECT: SWAMP THING. They’re long, especially the first one, but they’re also the best thing I’ve ever written for this blog.
So what run gets to be the fourth installment? First, some back story. On Amazon.com, and presuambly other sites, there is a brilliant series of products available: Every issue of certain Marvel titles, from their beginnings in the 1960s to the end of 2005, available on dvd-rom (as simple PDFs). Best part, it’s even legal — Marvel had a license with the company putting these out, up until 2006. As far as I know, here are the available discs: Avengers, Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer (together on one disc), Incredible Hulk, Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America. They’re each sold separately (except for FF and SS, which are together) and range from $40 to $100, incredibly cheap for 40 years of comics. A friend of mine bought all but Avengers and Captain America; I bought Avengers and we exchanged, so I have all of the above but Cap.
The main drawback is crossovers, because these contain just the main series’ issues; for instance, the X-Men disc has only the original X-Men series (which was canceled) and Uncanny – not the current X-Men book (later New X-Men and now X-Men Legacy) or X-Factor, X-Force, etc., so certain stories there might be hard to follow. And admittedly, it’s not the same reading comics on the computer as it is the real thing, but since most of these issues aren’t otherwise collected (and it would cost a fortune to buy the collections anyway), this is an amazing opportunity.
So with thousands of comics and most of Marvel’s greatest runs now suddenly at my disposal, it’s time for a new PROJECT. And what’s up first?
PROJECT: HULK–PETER DAVID is the lucky winner. I’m loving PAD’s work on X-Factor right now, so I decided to double my pleasure by going with his run on The Incredible Hulk, which spanned about 12 years (1987-1999) and is regarded as the greatest run ever on the title. I started a couple weeks ago, and am in early 1991 right now. It’ll probably take me another month to finish, but it’s already amazing.
So get excited about that, but also get to thinking, because I would love your suggestions on what comes next. Over on the DC side, where my first three PROJECTS were from, I still intend to do PROJECT: SANDMAN and PROJECT: STARMAN at some point, and I do own the first volumes of each of those collections. But I don’t want to start reading until I own the entire run, so Ican go through them all at once, and that might be a while still. So, since I have every issue of Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Silver Surfer already at my disposal, what run from those should be next?
My top choices right now are Uncanny X-Men–Chris Claremont or Avengers–Roy Thomas, both fairly obvious options. But I’m up for anything and would love some sleeper picks.
*Posts have never been acclaimed nor viewed by any critics of significant stature.
