This Wednesday I won’t mind living in a city without a comic shop at all.

I’ve been up and down the Diamond shipping list for new releases this week repeatedly, and it looks like this is another one of those increasingly frequent books where there is absolutely nothing for me to buy (Which actually works out quite well, since my current base of operations is local comics shop-less)

Oh, there are a ton of interesting looking comic books coming out this week, including quite a few I’m dying to flip-through, read and/or buy, but nothing that I would buy this New Comics Day if I were in the shop.

I’m trade-waiting or have decided to trade-wait Age of Reptiles: Journey, Astro City, the Sam Kieth Batman Confidential arc, The Boys, Conan The Cimmerian, ‘TEC*, First Wave, Girl Comics, Invincible Iron Man, Jonah Hex, Mighty Avengers, Milestone Forever, Sweet Tooth, Underground and Warlord.

Of course, trade-waiting for me means I put those trades on a list of trades I plan to buy some day, so it could be next month or it could be in four years. Of those, I’m most looking forward to First Wave, Girl Comics, Sweet Tooth and Underground…those are the ones I’ll probably snap up the month they come out in trade paperback.

I would buy Kevin Smith’s Green Hornet #1 out of curiosity, but it violates my personal no-singles-at-$3.99-for-22-pages rule. Same goes for Ultimate Comics Avengers. (Hey, is anyone even reading this series? I hardly ever hear anything about any Ultimates books any more).

And there are several graphic novels and collections that look interesting, but since my personal budget for new comics each week is down to $20 (from a lifetime high of $40 in 2005), Last Days of Animal Man, Starr the Slayer: A Starr is Born, Strange Tales and Tezuka’s MW all go on the To Buy Someday list.

If I were to find myself magically transported to a shop tomorrow afternoon, and I had to spend that $20 on new comics releases, I would probably go with Cactus’ Secret Vol. 1 ($9.99) and…hmmm…Sam Kieth Sketchbooks Vol. 1 (also $9.99).

But since there’s little danger of me being magically transported to a comic shop and forced to spend money there against my will, I guess those will just go on the To Buy Someday list too.

In the meantime, I still have a good 300 pages worth of classic Doom Patrol adventures to read through, and my dust-collecting, spider web-anchoring To Review pile to keep me busy.




*By the way, when I first saw J.H. Williams III’s cover for this issue, I totally thought that the character on it was supposed to be Mr. Mxyzptlk, but it turns out it’s “a gruesome new villain who has grafted knives onto his skin.” Of course it is.