Troy’s Book Club: overdue part 2

Morrrrrre books and comicbooks from 2025 that I read and didn’t get around to posting about! 🙂

I can’t believe I didn’t post about this, but I FINISHED READING HELLBLAZER. HELLBLAZER was a DC/Vertigo comicbook that ran for 300 issues, between 1998-2013. This comic was written and drawn by many folks over the years, but one core “rule” that was supposed to be followed, was that it was always supposed to be written by a British writer, a rule that was followed for most of the character’s run. 🙂 Anyway, this 300 issues were compiled in 25 volumes, and they are all on HOOPLA, and I read them allllll…I’ve been an on-and-off fan of the character for pretty much as long as he’s been around. You might not wanna read all the series, but if you wanna try it, the Garth Ennis- and Brian Azzarello-written volumes were my faves.

And here’s a few more comicbooks I read…

ROUGHNECK by Jeff Lemire. Lemire is a talented writer/artist whose work isn’t generally to my taste, but I gave it a shot because this book is a darn nice production. THE WRONG EARTH: DEAD RINGERS by Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle is a good superhero comic with a neat premise…what happens when two “identical” superheroes from VERY different universes get swapped into each other’s universe? CAPTAIN SWING… by Warren Ellis and Raulo Caceres is a fun, steampunky, alternate-history book and was pretty good. ROCK BOTTOM by Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard isn’t the best work I’ve ever read by these two creators, but was another neat idea with some beautiful line-art from Adlard, who has long been one of my fave artists.

Final two entries here for good for different reasons…TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY by John Steinbeck was a fun read, as it’s been too long since I’ve read any Steinbeck. I think of his writing fondly, and have read a handful of his books, but it was years ago. It was nice to revisit his stylings, in a more personal book, as he drove across the United States, with his dog, trying to that classic “get a real view” of America journey. Suffice to say, America is and isn’t different than it was in 1960 when John took his drive-around.

And then there’s SIN CITY: THE HARD GOODBYE (1991) and BATMAN: YEAR ONE (1987) (contrast that with THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS from 1986), all written by Frank Miller, and SC/TDKR drawn by Frank, and Year One drawn by David Mazzucchelli. I re-read these as part of Naomi’s and my “two-person book club”, where she and I take turns choosing books for us to read simultaneously. I thought it would be fun to read these two stories, as they are both written by a creator I admire a lot, and were two times that Frank CHANGED the comicbook industry with his work. There has been plenty written about both of these works – I don’t need to add to that. Suffice to sat that they are still both masterpieces (and it blows my mind that there are only 5 years between TDKR and SIN CITY).

SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARIES AND THE PEOPLE WHO WORK THERE.

SUPPORT WRITERS AND ARTISTS WHEREVER, HOWEVER YOU CAN.

Troy’s Book Club: Special DG Chichester Edition

This Spring, I had a fantastic opportunity to chat with a writer whose comicbook scripts have been pretty significant to me over the past years. And this is kinda a big deal, as DG Chichester hasn’t written any comics in the past 20 years! Chichester was a very busy editor and writer in the mid-80s to late-90s…then he disappeared from comics until 2023!

(below, a DG-penned DAREDEVIL comic from 2024 on the left, and 1998 on the right)

Thanks to the power of social media, I came across DG on Bluesky, and had some comments back and forth about how much I enjoyed the comics he wrote in years past. I found out that he still had a passion for comics, and being rather accessible, I asked him if he’d consider participating in a group-Zoom chat with the comic book-reading group I am part – The ComicBook Panel – and he said YES!

(below, two panels from my favorite of his works, TERROR INC.)

So, to prepare for the Zoom, which would be done as an interview between me and DG, I read and re-read as many of his comics as I could track down! 🙂 It was a fantastic time, locating comics, and being transported back to the early 90s of Marvel Comics!

I managed to read his entire run of: ST. GEORGE, TERROR INC., CRITICAL MASS, a few issues of NICK FURY, AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D., a bunch of issues of DAREDEVIL and DAREDEVIL BLACK ARMOR, the HELLRAISER/NIGHTBREED: JIHAD crossover, and a pair of issues of WOLVERINE. It was great seeing how his unique style of writing traveled from one character to another…

The interview with DG was a real blast, and I and my comicbook friends had a darn good time talking with him about all sorts of topics! You can find the entire interview at my YouTube channel. Enjoy!

You can also find my interview with Emil Ferris at that channel, too!

Troy’s Book Club: Spring of 2025 has been BUSY

This Spring has been a busy reading time for me! LOTS of books, tons of comicbooks, and some re-reads snuck in there, too!

First up, the “regular” books…ESCAPE: THE STORY OF THE GREAT HOUDINI, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, and AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. These were each darn interesting…ESCAPE had to be the 4th or 5th Houdini biography I’ve now read.

This time was extra fun, though, because I read this book with my literacy student at LITERACY SERVICES OF WISCONSIN. I’ve been a literacy tutor since 2011, and our weekly lessons always include some “unassigned reading”. So, this time I got my student to read about Houdini with me!

Maya Angelou’s CAGED BIRD was a book Naomi and I read together as part of OUR Book Club. It had been on my To Be Read Pile for quite awhile, and finally, I got around to reading it. Very interesting book about Maya’s early life.

Dunbar-Ortiz’s INDIGENOUS HISTORY book was another one Naomi and I read together. This one was her selection, as the racial justice team at her church was reading it, so we read it, too! Suffice to say…the formation of the United States is messy, tragic, and I guess, was of its time – the time of colonialism and conquering and conquest. The United States has a lot to do yet to fulfill its potential.

And now the comics! I read some more BLACKSAD, which is a GORGEOUS film noir-by-way-of-Disney-ish-animals. Serious, it’s sooooo beautiful illustrated! EDWARD HOPPER THE STORY OF HIS LIFE was a quick read and kinda neat. It was not a typical biography, but did a good job of hitting all the big points of his life. YOUNG AVENGERS had some great scripting from Kieron Gillen and fantastic art by Jamie McKelvie. RASL was some interesting Jeff Smith work; a good first volume, but I was satisfied to just read that one. EARTH TWO by James Robinson and Nicola Scott is a very interesting reimagining of what the DC Universe could be like…I may need to read the next volumes of this, and see where they take it. Nicola’s art is quite impressive!

STRANGE TALES was an anthology of Marvel stories, where Marvel allowed some of the biggest names in art/indie comics to tell their own style of stories…with Marvel characters. It was a pretty daring decision, and made for some novel, unique stories.

Will Eisner’s CITY PEOPLE NOTEBOOK was a re-read and a pleasure. It easily reminded me why I enjoy his art so much, and was neat to see his observations on “life in the big city”. I was also reminded that I got this book for $5 from Half-Priced Books, and that included an autograph by Eisner!

The most interesting book I read was THE CARTOON HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE VOL. 1-7, THE BIG BANG TO ALEXANDER THE GREAT. This book, by Larry Gonick, was exhaustively researched, and so well put-together. Just so dang ambitious and was quite to cool to read. WOW, what an artistic effort!

Also, I continued my through-read of HELLBLAZER, and got through one more volume of the adventures of John Constantine! I also read GARTH ENNIS’ THE COMPLETE BATTLEFIELDS VOL1, which was very interesting. Ennis has long held a massive interest in WWII, and here he wrote some informative, emotionally-taxing war stories. Good stuff, as always, from him .

day 2187

 

day 2187

she curled up to me,

as I sat reading comics –

nightly ritual