Okay.  I GOTTA find a copy of this.  

Super happy to have Black Hammer back.  It's been a long time with nothing but the X-over with JLA which I don't give two hoots about. 

I'll see if I can come up with a list.  

I thought about all of the comics I read this year, and these are the 5 issues that stood out the most to me. No particular order.

Punisher Soviet #3

I thought the entire 6 issue story was good, but I’m a sucker for Garth Ennis’ Punisher comics, so my bias is showing. The third issue though, was just brutal. It was graphic and powerful in its depiction of violence and loss in a story of Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan during the 1980s. It was told through flashback by the Punisher’s comrade Valery, and really gave me a greater appreciation for his character and motivations, as prior to this issue, he hadn’t been fleshed out very well. Here it is probably 9 months or so after the series ended, and while I remember bits and pieces of the overall story arc, Valery’s story in this issue is still vividly in my memory.


Ice Cream Man #21

This issue stood out for me this year due in large part to its poignant denouement which offered a bittersweet reprise of sorts which has typically been rare for Ice Cream Man as the comic often mires itself in cynicism and sadness, albeit generally in a clever and satiric manner. But while the story in this issue unfolds around a detective becoming obsessed with his case, we can see that he has been putting work before everything else in his life as has his wife, and gradually their marriage deteriorates. The art accompanies this gradual dissolution as well, you can literally see the angles and shapes change and become more dissonant throughout the course of the issue. But something positive happens in this story, and I feel that its message is an important one as it can be easy for us to get caught up in our work or other things forget about what is truly meaningful.


GI Joe #7

I don’t read much new GI Joe, although I was a big fan of the Marvel series when I was a kid in the 80s. However, I came across an article on an armed services website earlier this year that talked about this issue, so I sought it out. It deals in frank detail with Scarlett’s post-traumatic stress disorder in the time after her discharge from the military. As I have family members who are veterans and still dealing with this problem, the issue really hit home for me. I think it is one of the more important comic issues to come out this year, but seeing as it’s GI Joe, it has likely flown under the radar.


Joker: Killer Smile "Book Two"

This 3 issue story was a part of the DC Black Label series, and it came out at the very beginning of the year. The set up is that a young up and coming psychiatrist brings his wife and son to Gotham so that he can go to Arkham to work with the Joker. He believes he can cure him. The first issue was the set up, but the second issue really came to life with a complete mind blowing finale that had me on my ear for a while as I awaited the release of the third issue. Naturally, the third issue couldn’t quite live up to the promise of the second, and it left me rather disappointed with the overall story. But when I was thinking about all the books I read this year, there was nothing else quite like the mind-eff that Jeff Lemire gave us in issue 2 of this series.


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #1

While I grew up with the Ninja Turtles as a kid in the 80s/early 90s, watched the show, had the action figures, read the comics, played the video games (sheesh, they were everywhere), I hadn’t really thought about them in years. And as I only got back into comics about a year and a half ago, I hadn’t read any of the recent Ninja Turtles comics. However, last summer I saw a poster at my LCS about The Last Ronin, and it stated that Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were collaborating for this book. They’re the original creators of the Turtles and they hadn’t worked together on a comic in many years. So, that had enough of my interest to put it onto my pull list, and am I glad I did. This issue is full of action and intrigue, and the dark art style really takes me back to those old 80s comics, but with more polish. It really is stylized in a noir fashion, and the pages just pop. The story is years into a dystopian future, and our hero is the last remaining member of the Turtle clan. I can’t wait for issue 2.

Lonestar currently has copies available. Amazon does not. It doesn't even list it. only the 2006 biography of Parker with the same title (is the comic an adaptation of that biography or just riffing off the title?)

-M

Cool, I got zero results on my initial amazon search, but it's good to see it there too.

-M

Let's see, my favorites of 2020 list, right now in no particular order my top 12 reads...(this is a bit tough a sI am way behind on my new comics reading, so it may be well into '21 before I catch up on all the new stuff I got in '20).

-Something is Killing the Children (BOOM! Studios; Tynion)
-Folk Lords (BOOM! Studis; Kindt)
-The Last God: Book One of the Fellspyre Chronicles (DC; Johnson)
-Superman Smashes the Klan (DC; Yang)
-Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower GN adaptation (John Jennings; Abrams)
-Invisible Kingdom (Dark Horse; G. Willow Wilson)
-Seven Secrets (BOOM! Studios; Taylor)
-Department of Truth (Tynion; Image)
-Pulp OGN (Brubaker/Phillips; Image)
-Reckless OGN (Brubaker/Phillips; Image)
-Wynd (BOOM! Studios, James Tynion)
-Bang! (Matt Kindt; Dark Horse)

lots of recurring creators and publishers there for me. I still have a huge TBR list of 2020 offerings, so the list could change as I read more of it.

-M