Happy New Year! I’m late posting since I had to wait a couple extra days to get new comics.

And the comic book store I go to finally opened to the public again (instead of being only curbside pickup since the pandemic started). So it was nice to be in the store again.

Though the two people I’ve known the past 9 years decided to retire, so I have to get to know the new person running the store. I’m a bit apprehensive about such a big change and I really enjoyed chatting with Joel and Greg. Hopefully I can foster a similar relationship with the new person eventually.

And for the new year and the store opening up properly again there was a sale, so I decided to get all the magazines I had in my box since this would be the cheapest I would get them for. Hence all the magazines in this post. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about them piling up for a while now.

Photos of covers below.

This is the next decade themed connecting (though I”m not sure how) cover for the Avengers Assemble event.

Another awesome cover by David Nakayama!

DC had a few winter postcard themed covers. There was one for a Flash issue but the cover was cancelled for some reason.

And of course this gorgeous Jen Bartel cover.

Since I’m posting this on Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! Also, Happy Hanukkah to those of celebrated that during this past week. And Happy Kwanzaa to those who will celebrate that next week! And Happy Holidays to everyone else!

The next issue of Hitomi dropped. The Wakanda run is great. All the X-titles have been good. T’Challa has been having a bad few years. Hopefully Clea and Stephen can figure this situation out soon! The next issue of the Avengers Assemble event dropped. The next could issues for Dark Web dropped too including Kamala’s first of two issues! I still hope for a new run for her soon and not just a miniseries this time. Fingers crossed. Catwoman got her 50th issue. And Nightwing is at #99 this week. The BvR mini-event is heating up. The next issue of the Harley animated series tie-in comic dropped. And finally, the final issue of Dark Crisis dropped with many variants.

So many covers to talk about below!

I loved this cover because it shows an Avengers-like team from the past. I assume this is the next fully new team after the 1 Million BC Avengers team. I would love to have covers from every era eventually, even if we haven’t met some of the characters yet.

Another fantastic Peach Momoko cover. Betsy looks great!

Of course I had to get another other copy of the A cover and then the only variant for this issue. I still hope that a new run will come for Ms. Marvel because of people liking the show. But we’ll see, maybe they’re waiting till after “The Marvels” movie debuts next year.

The next in the non-connecting-but-should-connect cover for Gold Goblin 2.

This great Catwoman cover is by Stjepan Šejić. I was so excited to see a new cover by him.

I thought that this issue would have a similar creative theme like the past few covers for Nightwing have had, and this is nice, but I mainly just got it so it could be part of the set. Can’t wait to get issue 100 soon!

This is the first in the next variant covers set for the DCeased title. I hadn’t even realized that this was a wraparound cover at first. I almost missed it. I’m not quite sure what this is paying homage too, I think it’s album covers. Someone let me know!

This one I got mainly because Spectre is in the background.

I really like this A cover for the next Harley animated series issue. Very well done.

These are all the variants for the final Dark Crisis issue that I got. There are many more.

This is paying homage to the Final Crisis cover art of the hardcover by J.G. Jones.

This is the glorious tribute cover for the wonderful George Pérez. I was hoping this would get a wraparound variant and it did! Though I also wanted a poster of this. Now, if I forgot that there was a poster I got already, forgive me, haha.

These are all the DC characters he created, helped create, or wrote or drew for over his life.

If you want to know who drew which character, take a look.

These are the promo images for the new era of DC (which I think starts after the Lazarus event). I’m not sure, but I saw that there are partner images to these that are the younger hero counterparts to each of these characters. But I’m not sure if they will be covers or not. So, until I know for sure, I’ll post these here and if the others pop up, I’ll make a completed collection post for all 8 covers. But Dan Mora has been doing a lot of covers recently, I’m enjoying them.

I haven’t started these yet since I just took the photos before posting these.

I’m excited for WildC.A.T.S. Batgirls has a fun arc going on. I think that Superman SOK issue is late since that Kal-El returns special dropped last time. The penultimate (I’m 95% sure it is. Some of these events have an aftermath issue, so I’m not sure. But the “last” issue of the event is in the next week’s post) Dark Crisis issue dropped. That Harley book I’ll get to when I talk about the variant below. The Planet Hulk story is interesting since it takes place a thousand years in the future. So, apparently I have been wrong and this Savage Avengers run doesn’t connect to the Avengers Assemble event more directly. I thought that they would connect, but it’s only been Avengers and Avengers Forever that have crossed over. It’s so weird that there are multiversal elements in the Savage Avengers plot and there’s even a Deathlock and mention of Avenger Prime. But I guess it won’t cross over into the event. And here is the Dark Web event truly starting beyond the first issue. I have some things to say about the covers below. It’s a bit nuts. But I’m liking the story even though I still am not sure if this is before or after the End of the Spider-verse event. Iron Man is starting a new run. And Photon is getting her first title! There seem to have been two one-shots in the late 80’s and early 90’s respectively, so this is great for Monica Rambeau’s character.

Covers below.

So, I’ve mentioned before that I thought these Dark Web A covers could connect once I got them and could see them next to one-another, but sadly, they don’t seem to. Which I think is a wasted opportunity. There are 18 issues in this event, and that could have made a nice 3×6 grid set of connecting covers in the shape of an actual web in the background with all the various cover artist’s art in the foreground. It could have looked amazing all together. It seems like a waste of a background web design in an event with web in the name. So now I will just have all these issues double-ordered. I’ll have have them all in a Dark Web set anyway. They’ll still look nice together when I have all the ones with the web background (Yes there are a couple a covers of issues in this event that don’t have the web background, which makes less sense). Oh but that’s not all. It seems that the two connecting covers here and in the next photo, are the only connecting covers in the event at all! I thought that even if they didn’t have a big collage set, that they would at least have a few connecting covers throughout the event, but nope. So I guess that means that will be the next completed set cover post I’ll make. Oh, but wait, there’s more! AMS 15 comes before Dark Web: X-Men 1. And yet, the cover for DW:XM 1 shows the first connecting image and the ASM 15 variant is the second connecting image. That just seems like a logistical error that they couldn’t catch in time. But wow, they really didn’t organize the variants for this event very well. Though I suppose that means I spend less money, so, woot! And of course all the covers look great.

This new Iron Man run has a nice set of connecting covers coming starting with this one. We’ll have a bunch of covers with Tony’s hall of armor on display. I might event find a good multi-comic display frame and display these an action figure or art in the future. I’m not sure yet. Though finding good frames for that purpose has been tough.

I really love this cover. I think this is my favorite of the bunch. The colors and the details are just brilliant.

Now this, and the A cover, are interesting (I totally forgot about this). This is a little celebration of some of the popular variant covers from the past years depicting Harley. Some of the covers inside I have, most of the others I’ve seen before and I couple others I hadn’t seen. It’s a nice little compendium. Normally I’ve seen variants collected in a particular artist’s portfolio collection book, so this was a surprise. And then another surprise since I forgot about it.

Late variants and normal issues. The first two are from November and the others are from December 7th. Talking about the variants below.

So, Marvel have been starting these Demonized variants that are themed for the Dark Web event. I’ve seen some and liked them but didn’t love them enough to get them or they were exclusives or incentive covers. This one was the first that I saw that wowed me.

Of course, here’s another fun Momoko cover.

I actually hadn’t planned on getting this one but I ended up liking it. I think I have another Miles graffiti cover somewhere, and I’ve seen others over the past few years, but hadn’t gotten them.

This is certainly my favorite cover of this bunch. This is technically more of a movie poster cover than those Star Wars ones that I posted the completed variant set for in the post before the Avatar 2 post. Mainly because this one has the creative team on the bottom in that font that is used in movie posters for the cast and creatives involved in the movie. I had thought I would display those SW covers together but I may use them and this to start a movie poster themed variant cover part of my collection.

Monkey Prince sure is getting around. A new arc starts in Poison Ivy. The next one-shot of Dark Crisis is here. The next issue for Quick Stops dropped. MTG’s next issue arrived. So excited for GARGOYLES!!! This is the last issue of Damage Control. I do wonder if the Punisher and Daredevil comic will crossover because it seems like they are essentially doing that in the Daredevil issues but not the Punisher issues. This is also the last issue of The Variants. I think this arc of Captain Marvel is ending with this issue. I’m very excited about X-Men Red’s story currently. And I know that the Immortal X-Men story will be leading to Sinister’s plans crashing into his own event next month. Steve has to deal with Bucky’s choice. This Thanos story is exciting because I didn’t know it would be a two-title crossover with the Thor comics, but it says at the end that this story will continue in the next Thor issue. We’ve been waiting on this plot-line for a while now. Here is Moon Girl’s next run starting. And also Miles’ next run. Hidden Empire is continuing, although, I’m still unsure about if the reading order includes the other Star Wars titles or just the HE title, so I’m delaying my reading of this event till I’ve caught up on a couple volumes of the other titles I generally get as tpb’s. The next issues of the End of the Spider-verse, the Secret Invasion miniseries event and the Avengers Assemble event all dropped. And the Dark Web event has started.

Covers to follow.

The A cover of this issue had so many characters I love on it that I had to get another copy of it. Plus the colors look great. And of course I had to get this variant with all those huge villains on the right.

Both top and bottom halves of this cover are great. Now, I may be totally wrong in this, but starting here, most of the issues of this event have that web background. I know that they don’t all connect since all 3 issues of each little limited series sized title has the same web background. But, I’m unsure if the backgrounds connect into 3 webs of characters. I’ve ordered two of each for almost this whole event, so, we’ll see? Hopefully I’m correct!

For the Avengers Assemble event they have connecting covers based in a particular decade. It does confuse me because the Avengers Assemble issue 1 itself didn’t have a connecting variant but this Avengers issue (which is issue 2 of the event) does start out with a connecting cover. I guess I’ll have to wait until next time to see if that connecting cover connects to this one. It’s just a weird choice to have every other issue in this event connect but not the first.

Miles having a connecting cover set for his new run is cool. Though I do feel like I should stop connecting Spider-verse themed cover sets after this since I feel like there are new ones very frequently. But we’ll see!

Two obviously gorgeous Peach Momoko covers.

And here are these two MAGNIFICENT David Nakayama covers. Ivy and Spawn (It’s Spawn’s 30th anniversary this year so almost every major publisher’s comics have been having Spawn on some of their comic’s variants over the past few months) look great here. And when David posted the art for Gargoyles and the upcoming Darkwing Duck comics, and that he was the main cover artist, I was blown away! I mean look at this!! Also, I did try to get some more variants for this issue because so many of them were amazing, but of course, most were exclusives.

I mean, LOOK AT THAT!!!

Posting this late and haven’t started on reading this pile yet. I will today.

I’m very excited for Nahiri’s comic! I know a bit about her history and her relation to Sorin and Ugin. I had forgotten that Dark Horse was taking over The High Republic Adventures title, so when I saw the comic pop up when I set my list to include Dark Horse comics for a different comic I was getting, I was like oh yeah! Vader will meet the Techno Union leader again. Interested in seeing what happens with Clea and Stephen. This Planet Hulk stand-alone story is intriguing being set 1000 years in the future. Finally the Avengers Assemble event is beginning! We got Wildstorm’s 30th Anniversary special. And of course the next DC Holiday issue. And then there are the annuals for Detective Comics, Batgirls, Nightwing. Nubia got a special for the anniversary of her creation. Blue Beetle has a miniseries.Coming from that one-shot a couple weeks ago we have the JSA getting a new run. And of course, the return of Kal-El special! Though its very poorly timed since the end of this special leads into JL 75 from a few months ago, DC either timed out the Dark Crisis too early or these other titles that happened before JL 75 had delays.

Covers to follow.

I totally forgot that this was a wraparound cover, so I have another added to my list. I would like this as a poster too.

This month has Marvel doing a bunch of homage covers to classic covers. This is based on Avengers #4 from the 1963 run (I think. if not someone let me know which cover it’s based on!).

Another David Nakayama cover, love that yellow theme.

I just loved this the moment I saw it. The colors and shapes are all fantastic!

This is the A cover for Vader 29 by Razzah. I was very happy to see this artist become the A cover artist for a bit since I really like their covers and a lot of the time they are tough to get. The other cover is of course, the last of the Revelations themed covers by Taurin Clarke. This means that I should have a complete set post for those covers after the post for this past week.

These are a couple of those 90’s DC variants (of which I need 2 more I think), and some recent Dark Horse Star Wars comics that I didn’t know existed.