Comic Book Coffee Break #48

  Thanks for joining me on my Comic Book Coffee Break. We were at a an Airbnb this morning so I had Donut Shop coffee from a Keurig with a little cream and sugar. Not bad.

Let's talk Comic Books!

I'm still reading and writing in the midst of Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage Month so that's still my guide at the moment.

DC Comics

My copy of DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Super Hero Celebration arrived in the mail from Midtown Comics and I was pumped to dig in.  I've been really enjoying these anthologies DC has been doing. This features 11 different stories with a stellar lineup or authors and artists. Here are some of the standouts.

• Dress Code by Minh Le and Trung Le Nguyen revisits the Green Lantern character Tai Pham from Green Lantern: Legacy. I thoroughly enjoyed the original graphic novel, and while this isn't a full sequel, it was nice to check in again with that world.
• Hawke & Kong by Grek Pak and Sumit Kumar was a team-up between the Connor Hawke Green Arrow and New Super-Man. It's an unusual pairing and has a fun, buddy-cop kind of vibe.
• Finally, a new character was introduced in The Monkey Prince Hates Superheroes. The story is by Gene Luen Yang and drawn by Bernard Chang. This was a lot of fun.  I really liked the team-up with Shazam. This ends with a teaser that the series will continue down the road and I'm looking forward to that.

Marvel Comics

My wife has been a fan of Runaways since the beginning, but I only became familiar with the series from the TV adaption. I picked up my wife's old copy of Pride & Joy and read through it.  This was in digest form, back when Marvel was doing that on the regular. It was interesting to read this coming from the TV show.  I really enjoyed the first season, but the premise is watered down by making the parents sympathetic. Here they are just plain villainous and it works much better. While I wasn't all in on this one, I would likely read more.  I know we have a stack of digests here, so why not?  It was interesting to see Nico's introduction because it seems her stock has risen more in recent years as Marvel tries to expand their magic characters beyond Doctor Strange. Also, interesting how quickly things changed. Some very obvious issues with words used as pejoratives here.

Image Comics

 While at that Airbnb, we had access to the streamer that is airing Robert Kirkman's Invincible and we took full advantage, binging the full season over of the course of two nights. My wife had never seen it before so it was fun to see her reaction to some of the more shocking moments. My love of the comic books series is well documented across The All the Books Show and Comic Book Coffee Break, so I was excited to see this. While I did enjoy it, it's not the kind of adaptation that really adds much to the experience. The voice cast is great and I don't really have complaints about the series; I guess it's more that I just didn't need it. When the change presents itself, I'll likely watch the future seasons, but I'm not particularly invested.

Next Time...

I picked up a few graphic novels at a comic shop while we were away, so I'm going to read some Captain America, continue my New 52 Superman reread and dig in to my Simon & Kirby Library: Crime collection.

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You can find back issues of the video version of Comic Book Coffee Break here.

The audio version of Comic Book Coffee Break is over there. 

You can find me as the co-host of 9021 Here We G0: A 90210 Rewatch Podcast and This Endorian Life, both for the Radio Meanwhile Network. 

I also host Howe's Things, the podcast and radio show of the David A. Howe Public Library.