Dan and I take some time to discuss our top picks from the 2012’s Comics of the Year. http://youtu.be/Uifp0tTlYxA Top Marvel Book: right at the beginning Top DC Books: 7:20 Top Creator-Owned Book 12:40 sec Top Marvel Arc 19:14 Top DC Arc 23:46 Top Creator-Owned Arc 27:49 Best Old Comic 31:35 Biggest Surprise 40:14

Enjoy as Dan and I take on the best of the best in comics for 2012! Books: Top Marvel Book This Year Eric Runner(s) Up: Fantastic Four/FF (Jonathan Hickman) Fantastic Four #605.1 - Nazi Fantastic Four I’m going to cheat and consider both of these to be one book because, plot-wise they were. Hickman used them in the same way that Chris Claremont used the X-Men/Uncanny X-Men books in the 90s - as a way to double-ship a story and tell it from two different perspectives. This year we saw an end to his run on these two books and what an ending it was. But what put these books into the runner up category for me were the epilogues Hickman wrote. Standouts included the alternate universe where the Fantastic Four worked for Nazi Germany. What makes Hickman rise above the rest is the attention to detail. Ben Grimm is one of the famous Jewish characters in the Marvel universe and so in this alternate world he is an unwitting member of the Fantastic Four. And while he is best friends with Reed in our world, Nazi Reed looks at him with disgust. All of that was pretty great on its own, but the way Hickman tied it into his Reed council sealed the deal on that story. ...

http://youtu.be/OfNCS5Pi78o AvX:Consequences #2 This time on Comic POW! I’d like to talk about AvX: Consequences #2. In this issue Kieron Gillen has really, really outdone himself. He’s taken a gamble, in the sense that the entire issue takes place in just one scene, basically. There’s a second scene that takes about two pages at the end, but for the most part the entire book is just scene. And you really don’t see that too often in the Big Two. You see that more often in the more experimental comics, the more indie comics. So it’s really neat to see someone take a chance and he really makes this into a character study. We’ve got Cyclops and we’ve got Wolverine and it picks up right where the last issue left off. ...

AvX: Consequences #1 I decided to combine both Uncanny Avengers #1 and AvX: Consequences #1 because they both are dealing with the aftermath of Avengers vs X-Men. These aftermath type books aren’t anything new for Marvel. At the very least they did the same thing with Fear Itself. After the main book they had Fear Itself:Consequences or some similar mini-series where they dealt with the aftermath. And Uncanny Avengers, itself, kinda swings directly out of the events of Avengers vs X-Men. It has a team of Avengers teaming up with a team of X-Men in order to show the world that they can all work together. ...

Sorry that the audio’s a little off, I was originally just going to use the audio to write a text piece. But I decided it’d be better to let you hear Stan “the Man’s” voice yourself.

[caption id=“attachment_634” align=“alignright” width=“195” caption=“Detective Comics Vol 2 #13”] [/caption] I did not like Detective Comics under Tony S Daniel’s short run. It just wasn’t a good time for him. He had to assume the mantle on Detective Comics after Scott Snyder’s phenomenal run. And Snyder has also been going gangbusters on Batman. This was not a time for anyone writing Batman that wasn’t in the top tier. So I stopped reading after the first story arc. Then, a few months ago I heard that John Layman of Chew was going to be taking over the writer’s chair on Detective Comics. This was something that for the next two months I had an impossible time wrapping my mind around. ...

[caption id=“attachment_625” align=“alignleft” width=“195” caption=“Gotham City Sirens #20”] [/caption] I’ve written a lot about ComiXology recently and, really, I just discovered one of the biggest benefits. And that’s the fact that I can go back and find issues that have come out months or even years ago and I can get them really cheaply. I don’t have to worry about a premium on the fact that they are issues that are very rare. I can get issues like Batman #38 for only a dollar or two dollars. So I decided part of what I’d do at Comic POW! is take an issues that I’d like to take a look at from Comixology and the issue’s going to be at least a month old if not a little more and in that case all these reviews will have spoilers and reveals because we know what happened. The issues are old enough that you don’t have to worry too much about spoilers. ...

Avengers vs X-Men - Cover Man, Avengers vs X-Men was quite a doozy, eh? I wanted to hate it. First of all, Marvel is getting way too ridiculous with the events. If nothing else, when events drags all these books into them, they have to spend time dealing with the events rather than allowing the characters to exist and grow in the way the book would prefer. For example, when Wolverine and the X-Men spun out of Schism and Regenesis we finally had a neat little slice of life book with some new, young X-Men. We also got to see some old, young X-Men and the evolution of some characters like Kitty Pryde. Ever since AvX we have barely seen the kids. There hasn’t been any more of the fun school stuff. In fact, my favorite X-Men books of late have been Uncanny X-Force and X-Factor which were allowed to continue the stories they started a few years ago. So they’ve had some pretty amazing character growth moments and some incredible drama. But, AvX was a thing so how was it? ...

[caption id=“attachment_598” align=“alignleft” width=“194” caption=“Robin Year One #1”] [/caption] Last weekend Comixology was having a Nightwing 101 sale. Basically, their editors selected a group of comics they believed was representative of everything you’d need to know about Dick Grayson’s life. Of course, there’s the caveat that some or all of this might have been altered by the New 52 Reboot and its Five Year Timeline, but it’s still a pretty neat way to structure a sale and give readers a way to explore a character. I picked up a few different issues that I’ll be reviewing over the next few days, but so far I’ve only read Robin Year One Volume 1. ...

Everyone who gets into collecting comics seriously eventually ends up asking the question - how do I keep track of my comics? It becomes hard to remember which ones you have and where they are in your house. I ended up using Tellico. It works on KDE which is primarily a Linux desktop environment, but there is also KDE for Windows and OSX. It looks something like this: Tellico main view ...