edited by Scott Allie
Started: January 21, 2010
Finished: January 22, 2010
This was the weakest of the three Buffy comic volumes I've read so far, but I think that's because this volume was actually the one that reprinted the very first of the comics so the artists and writers hadn't quite figured out yet how to make a comic that still appealed to fans of the television show but wasn't a total copy either. There's nothing just horribly bad in the comics reprinted here, but there's just a whole lot of minor stories that don't really grab you either. Plus the puns they have coming out of Buffy and Xander's mouths are excruciatingly bad at times. Still, this was a fast, light read that I can't say I didn't mostly enjoy. 304 pages. Grade: B-
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Detective Comics #31 -- September 1939
Started/Finished: January 22, 2010
Like I've said before, I'm really only grading these by the Batman comic contained within, though I am also reading all the other comics just to get a better perspective on the time period these were written in. The Batman comic in this one was a lot better than the first few had been. The artwork was getting stronger, the artists were starting to mess around a bit with the panel structure, mixing big action-filled panels with smaller, more dialogue-driven sequences. This was also the first Batman story to show him using some different "bat gadgets." The story itself was OK, not great, but it did end on a good cliffhanger with his fiance--Julie Madison, who I'd never heard of before--kidnapped. Also, the cover for this issue was stellar, one of my favorites of the very early Batman covers. 67 pages. Grade: C+
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Detective Comics #32 -- October 1939
Started/Finished: January 22, 2010
And the ending of the cliffhanger from Detective Comics #32 didn't live up to the hype at all. It was weird to see Batman use a gun to kill his opponents, even if the opponents were vampires--which was also funny in its own way since that method of killing is not a part of the modern vampire lore. Kind of a lame ending to a good start in the previous issue. None of the other comics in this issue were anything special. 67 pages. Grade: D
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Total # of Books Read in 2010: 40
Total # of Pages Read in 2010: 6,962
Total # of Non-Comic Books Read in 2010: 13
Total # of Non-Comic Book Pages Read in 2010: 4,315
Currently Reading: Pulp Stories by Raymond Chandler; The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Reading Soon: More Tintin; Raymond Chandler novels; Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy; The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer by Tom Dardis; Chuck Klosterman IV; Seasons in Hell by Mike Shropshire; More Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus; More Detective Comics/Batman
