Greetings! Following is my pull list for September.

First issue of Red Hood! I'm splurging on a foil virgin variant cover so that at least if the contents of the comic fill me with anger, dismay, loathing, malaise, or any other unhappy emotion, I'll still have something pretty and shiny to look at. September 10th is appartenly the week for foil variants, because I also requested the foil variant for Birds of Prey. For other variants, I'm getting the Jorge Fornés‬ ‪variant of Nightwing.

Batgirl #11 features the conclusion to "The Three Swords" arc, and the summary promises that this issue "propels Batgirl into the next year of story and a new era for the Bat Books!" which is a bold statement that I struggle to believe because I suspect whoever writes the summaries for DC is a lying liar who lies for drama and profit, but we shall see.

Red Hood aside, I think my most anticipated pull for this month is Green Arrow. I've been loving this arc and I'm eager to see what Chris Condon has in store for us next with the Crimson Archer.

Batgirl #10:

Some sibling drama in this issue and a little bit of backstory on Tenji, Cass's recently-revealed brother. Cass is not happy about having to share her mother with someone else (relateable older sibling experience, honestly).

Birds of Prey #24:

Hail, hail, the gang's all here! The Birds launch their rescue-Barda plan and face down the Shadow Army. It was fun getting to see Birds from previous arcs come back for an issue (even though big casts mean you don't get a lot of time to focus on individual characters much).

Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #1:

Gory and a little horny about it. (Gory for a mainline DC rogue story, anyway, so not really that gory). This first issue was mainly character work for Jade and Barbara and set-up for the premise of the whole series: what they're stealing. I'm excited for what comes next, but I do wish there was a little more meat to this first issue. (Ha! Meat. Maybe not the same kind of meat that Cheetah was eating.)

Monkey Meat: The Summer Batch #5:

Final issue! Three stories in this one, all of them with the same Juni Ba humor and wit. I liked the stories in this issue, though none of them were my favorites from this 5-issue run; that honor goes to the entertaining and meta Batman-and-Robin parody in issue #1 and the vacationing family in issue #4. Still, I think the things Ba had to say in these stories were once again thought-provoking and funny, and I highly reccommend picking up the trade paperback when it comes out in October if you can't get your hands on the individual issues now.

Notes:

I'm quite annoyed with my comic book store. I still haven't gotten Birds of Prey #23 and it's been a month. I had to read the issue online. It will be very irritating if they don't get it in and I'm missing one comic out of the whole run, since I've been subscribed since the series started. I'll have to track down the issue and buy it online somewhere, likely at a premium, and then pay shipping on top of that. To be fair, it's not entirely the comic store's fault; they said they ordered it and it just didn't come. The interesting thing is that Batgirl #9 also didn't come in that week, but they reordered it and it has since arrived.(Side note: Two female-character led titles didn't arrive on time? I [jokingly] cry sexism!) I suspect this is once again my nemesis Lunar Distribution playing mind games with me. The store blamed Diamond's bankruptcy, which is a convenient excuse. Surely it's far more likely that Lunar Distibution hates me personally.

Oh well. It gets here when it gets here.

It's a summer day in Gotham, one of those days where the sidewalk is hot enough to fry an egg and you pray for a breeze to blow a cloud over your head for some blessed shade. They don't have AC in their apartment, so he's outside with no shirt on and his pants rolled up past his knees. His mom had handed him a sandwich and sent him out with ruffle of her hand in his curls and a warning "don't get sunburnt!" He'd picked the layers of the ham and cheese sandwich apart, eating the slice of cheese first, then the cold pieces of ham, and now all he's left with is the bread. He's nibbled down one slice to the corner, not so much hungry as he is bored, but too hot and sweaty to go find anything else more interesting to do. He's kicked his shoes off, a pair of cheap foam flip-flops that are bound to fall apart any day now, the thong threatening to pop out of the hole in the sole from use. He tries not to move his feet too much; the ground is hot where his feet haven't already shaded it, and he finds himself wishing for rain, a reversal of the week before when it rained three days in a row and he was trapped in the apartment, bored the whole time. Maybe later he’ll go back up to the apartment and get some of the dollar bills he has hidden under his dresser and walk down the street to the corner store and buy a box of popsicles, and spend the rest of the afternoon staining his tongue in a rainbow of colors, but right now the thought of walking up through the heatbox of a stairwell sounds like too much work, so he’ll stay here and pick at his bread, at least until the pigeons spot him and come to beg for his crumbs.

• Batgirl #6


• Birds of Prey #20


• Cruel Kingdom #4


• Deadpool #13


• Two-Face #5

• Batman and Robin #20

• The New Gods #5


• Nightwing #125


• Sam Wilson: Captain America #4


• Titans #22

• Absolute Wonder Woman #7


• Green Arrow #23


• Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #3

• Black Canary: Best of the Best #6

• Captain America: Sentinel of Truth Vol. 1: Revolution


• Wonder Woman: Agent of Peace, Vol. 1: Global Guardian (Amanda Conner, Graphic Novel)


• SPYXFAMILY Vol. 1-3 (Tatsuya Endo, Manga)


• Ms. Marvel: Super Famous (G. Willow Wilson, Graphic Novel)


• Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: BFF (Amy Reeder, Graphic Novel)


• The Foxhole Court (Nora Sakavic, E-Book)


• The Daily Show (The Audiobook): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests (Chris Smith, Audiobook)


• Thornhedge (T. Kingfisher, Audiobook)


• Saga of the Swamp Thing Book One (Alan Moore, Graphic Novel)


• Captain America Comics #1-10 (Joe Simon, Comic Issues)


• All Winners Comics #1-2 (Carl Burgos, Comic Issues)


• Young Allies Comics #1 (Stan Lee, Comic Issues)


• Fantastic Four, Vol. 1: Whatever Happened to the Fantastic Four (Ryan North, Graphic Novel)


• Fantastic Four, Vol. 2: Four Stories About Hope (Ryan North, Graphic Novel)


• Captain America: Symbol of Truth, Vol. 2: Pax Mohannda

The Daily Show (The Audiobook): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests

Saga of the Swamp Thing

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: BFF

Thornhedge

Batman/Dylan Dog #1

• Comic Series: Batman/Dylan Dog


• Issue Number: 01


• Title: The Shadow of the Bat


• Writer(s): Roberto Recchioni


• Artist(s): Gigi Cavenago & Werther Dell’edera


• Colorist(s): Gigi Cavenago (Prologue); Giovanna Niro


• Letterer(s): Pat Brosseau

This was genuinely one of the most enjoyable comics I’ve read in a while. The dialogue was funny, the art was great, the characters felt alive. And you got 88 pages for $4.99! For comparison, Action Comics #1063, which released the same week, was also $4.99 and only had 36 pages. That’s 5.7 cents per page vs. 13.9 cents per page. I love a great deal almost as much as I love a great comic!

Why You Should Read This:

(Oh lord, where to start?) It’s funny, and pithy. The comic pokes fun at Batman’s whole brooding loner shtick, but not in a mean way. It has a ridiculous number of pages, but there’s no useless fluff to it. Check it out if you want to laugh and be entertained!