Is It Wednesday Yet?

My blog is experiencing a modest little boost in popularity right now, which I find very flattering and gratifying. Not that I'm reaching thousands of hits a day or anything (not even close), but it's nice to know that some people are reading, responding and linking to my posts.

So to all my new readers: welcome. And thank you. And please, keep posting comments. Also, consider following me on Twitter, where I also engage in a lot of comics-related discussions, with creators, fans and fellow bloggers alike. That's pretty much what the internet was made for, so you don't want to miss out, do you?

I wonder if it's going to be possible to keep the momentum when I shift my reading habits (and therefore also the focus of this blog) away from monthly superhero comics and toward indie and creator-owned comics in September. As a consumer, somehow who pays money for comic books, I'm pretty confident in my decision to jump off this bandwagon, but as a blogger/reviewer/writer-about-comics, I really wish that I could continue to be this involved in the serialized aspect of it all. Is this weekly  "Is It Wednesday Yet?" column even going to make sense anymore without all the super-hero comics on my pull list?

I also have to confess that I feel very intimidated by the idea of reviewing almost exclusively non-superhero comics. I keep wondering if I'll have anything smart to say about them. But that's probably just me being silly.

New comics this week!

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Lost Adventures TPB (Dark Horse)
• Batman: Gates of Gotham #2 (of 5) (DC)
• Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #1 (of 3) (DC)
• Flashpoint: The Outsider #1 (of 3) (DC)
• All Nighter #1 (of 5) (Image)
• Sigil #4 (of 4) (Marvel)
• Silver Surfer #5 (of 5) (Marvel)

I'm a huge fan of the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series, and aside from the free comic book in May, I haven't read any of the comics inspired by it, so I look forward to this collection. It might end up being a little too kid-oriented for my tastes, but I figure if that's the case I can probably just give it to my nephew in a few years when he's old enough to appreciate it.

I wasn't that excited by the first issue of the Gates of Gotham mini-series, and now that we know the DCU is going to implode in September, I have a hard time understanding how this is supposed to "set the stage for a bold new direction in the Bat books," as the August solicitation text claims. I know that most comic fans only seem to care about stories that "matter" in the overall continuity of the shared universe, but I'm the opposite: I want stories to be able to stand on their own and be satisfying without simply serving to "set the stage" for whatever comes next. (This is all part of my reasoning for why I'm dropping these books in September.) So now I don't really know if I should even bother reading this. I guess I'll give it another issue to convince me.

I wonder also why anybody would bother reading Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing, the first issue of which comes out on Wednesday. I didn't put it on my list, because it already seemed like pointless filler and even more so now that we know about the relaunch. I know DC keeps saying old stories are still in continuity, somehow, but I just can't wrap my head around how it's possible to have it both ways!

The two Flashpoint tie-ins I'm mostly just getting out of curiosity and because I decided to stick with this ridiculous event all the way to the end. Bart is one of my favourite characters, so that explains the Kid Flash book. I wasn't going to pick up the Outsider one at first, but based on Graeme McMillan's review at Savage Critics, it sounds like this is one of the better tie-ins, so I guess I'll give it a shot.

All Nighter #1 is available as a free PDF download on David Hahn's website. You should check it out, and then pick it up on Wednesday if you like it.