Six by 6
Six free comics we can’t wait to get our hands on today
Free Comic Book Day is once again upon us, the day that current and hopefully potential comic fans flock to their local comic shop to sample a buffet of comic choices from publishers large and small. There’s a lot to sink your teeth into this time around, from previews of new or upcoming stuff — like Marble Season and Superman: The Last Son of Krypton #1 to first issues of brand new comics — like The Strangers #1 and Aphrodite IX #1. There are original comics, licensed comics, kids comics, anthologies … basically something for everyone.
Some retailers will offer all-you-can-eat options, while others might have limits on what you can get … so if you have to make a choice, here are six comics we’re particularly looking to sink our teeth into.
Six by 6 | The six best superhero costume redesigns of all time
One of the most symbolic moments of Superman is when he changes from his guise as Clark Kent to become the Man of Steel. The idea that the wearing of a costume imbues some kind of unquantifiable power is a key part of what makes superhero comics work; otherwise, they’d just be adventurers and action heroes.
But speaking of change, changes in superhero costumes have become as much a part of the comics as the heroes themselves. From Superman’s early days with his golden emblem to the modern “S” today and on through to other years (including Batman’s countless wardrobe changes), the design of a superhero isn’t static and a redesign has proved, many times, to be just the thing to make a character work.
In this week’s “Six by 6,” I pinpoint six of the most dynamic and powerful redesigns in superhero comics. Redesigns that saved a character from obscurity, put them in a new light or simply simplified what was already there.
Six by 6 | Six characters M.I.A. in Marvel NOW!
Marvel’s turning over a new leaf, so to speak, as it enters the Marvel NOW! era. But in that amid the flurry of new titles, new line-ups and new creators, we’re finding some notable absences — notable to us at least. While some missed heroes like Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Mockingbird have popped up in cameos here and there, there are still a significant number of popular players waiting to be brought onto the field. In this installment of “Six by 6,” we suss out six such characters and zero in on their last whereabouts, and where some of them might show up next.
Six by 6 | Six great superhero comics outside of Marvel and DC
There’s more to superheroes than those residing at Marvel and DC Comics. Sure, they might dominate the market, but that doesn’t mean they’re by default the best.
Outside the realms of the Big Two, superheroes are thriving on the more independently minded scene. From a mixture of throwback superheroics to off-beat adventures, and even some superheroes who are willing to go where DC and Marvel wouldn’t let their own properties, there’s a cornucopia out there for readers. And now, we’re spotlighting six standouts in that superhero mix in this week’s “Six by 6.”
Six by 6 | Six largely ignored Daredevil stories worth tracking down
Having just edited, and written some of, a collection of essays titled The Devil Is in the Details: Examining Matt Murdock and Daredevil (debuting from Sequart at Emerald City Comic Con), I’ve spent a lot of time reading Daredevil comics. I’ve soaked them all up, processed them, and seen them analyzed scores of ways.
Daredevil is an amazing character and title, and there will always be runs and stories that get praise; we hear about them constantly. So I wanted to quickly bring light to some of my lesser-known favorites. Here are six Daredevil stories that are consistently ignored and yet I think you should track them down.
1. Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir
This 1993 graphic novel was a gem I didn’t even know existed until very recently. I had never heard anyone mention this weird and violent tale from Jim Starlin and Joe Chiodo, and I worried that might be because it was terrible. I was happy to discover, after finding a secondhand copy on Amazon, that wasn’t the case.
The story has Black Widow chase down a brutal butcher family of sorts that’s killing telepathic S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Daredevil nominates himself as the guardian devil for his old flame, and the game is afoot. What follows is as much a psychological game as it is a barbaric fighting match. Axes and chains are as dangerous as flashbacks and barbed words. This book is a mature read, as the blood flows loosely and we even get a narratively charged female-on-female kiss — something I have to assume was risqué for a Marvel book in the early ‘90s.
Six by 6 | Stopping for books on a snowy evening
I live north of Boston, and as I write, my front door is snowed shut (don’t worry, the neighbor kid is shoveling it out) and my car is immobilized behind a large berm of snow. The nameless blizzard of ’13 didn’t wreak any major damage in my area, but I’m going to be staying in for a while.
This doesn’t bother me; I grew up in Northern Indiana, where you could count on being completely snowed in at least once a winter, and we sort of liked it. It clears a space in your life; when you can’t go out and most of the activity in the outside world has stopped, it’s a great time to light a fire, pour the drink of your choice (for me it’s hot tea) and hunker down with a good book. Here are six graphic novels that evoke that winter feeling, all of which are equally enjoyable whether you are reading them by a snowy window or on the beach.
Chikyu Misaki | This three-volume manga, published many years ago by the now-defunct CMX, is a charming all-ages story about two children who find a shape-shifting lake monster in their country town. It’s structured like a caper movie, but one of the things I really enjoy about it is Yūji Iwahara’s wonderful art, which perfectly evokes the feeling of a country house on a snowy day. You’ll have to pick it up used or from the library, though, as it’s long out of print.
Six 2012 Shelf Porn submissions I envy
Our Shelf Porn feature almost died from natural causes earlier this year. It wasn’t because we wanted it to die, but after four years, the submission well began to dry up. Could we have reached a point where everyone who wants to show off their shelves has shown off their shelves? I thought. You always hear about this limited number of comic collectors out there in the world, so maybe, statistically speaking, we’d hit critical mass on the subset of that number who own cameras or like to take pictures or read the site or whatever.
It wasn’t the first time we’d seen submissions slow down, but there was enough of a gap between February and July that I thought maybe that was it. But you can’t keep a good Shelf Porn down, it seems; over the past few months, we’ve had a bit of a resurgence in submissions. In fact, I think I have enough submissions to make it through the end of January. So thanks to everyone who submitted this year and kept it from going the way of the dinosaur.
With it being the end of the year and all, I wanted to look back at the year in Shelf Porn, and as I started going through the ones we’ve posted here, it occurred to me that a lot of them had some defining element that really jumped out at me–usually in the realm of “Man, I wish I had one of those!” So instead of doing a “best of” list, I thought I’d focus in on six 2012 submissions that made me envious …