Bookshelf #6

This week's shelf is my Marvel shelf, containing various Marvel trades (and one hardcover) I had acquired between 2012 and 2024 or so. This is around the time that I started buying fewer and fewer serially published single issues and then stopped altogether. 

It's probably harder to tell exactly what exactly is on this shelf compared to some of the past posts of this sort, given how Marvel often has all of their trade spines look alike, no matter what book it is, hence all those all-white spines with the red Marvel logo at the top facing you here. 

On this shelf you will find the entirety of Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm and company's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (a dozen trades plus an original graphic novel), Rainbow Rowell and company's Runaways, the first five volumes of Ms. Marvel, five Secret Wars tie-ins and some various Avengers books (two volumes from Mark Waid's All-New... run, the first three volumes of Jason Aaron's run, the first volume of Kelly Thompson's West Coast Avengers and something called Avengers Mech Strike, which I think I bought specifically to review at Good Comics for Kids...well that, and because it was the Avenges piloting giant robots).

The rest of the books are more-or-less random ones, purchased either because I liked the characters, or the creators or, ideally, both. 

You'll note that despite the relative uniformity of Marvel's trades here (only The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe juts up a bit), there are also some smaller, digest-sized books on the far right. 

These are more kid-friendly comics that Marvel published during that time: Marvel Rising (Squirrel Girl! Ms. Marvel! Ryan North! Devin Grayson! G. Willow Wilson! A Gurihiru cover!), Spidey: Freshman Year, The Unstoppable Wasp: G.I.R.L. Power (so good, and with superior art by the great Elsa Charretier)...and one that is actually an IDW book, Marvel Action: Spider-Man: A New Beginning, from that weird time in which Marvel was farming out their kid-friendly comics to a different publisher for some reason. 

As for that stack of books on the far right that are laying down on their backs, those are Image trades purchased during that time. But, because I ran out of good bookends, I didn't have a way to stand them up spine out. 

I'll temporarily do so just so you can seem 'em though:

It's a particularly random assortment, all purchased because I liked the artist (some of my all-time favorite artists are represented here, including John McCrea) or because someone recommended them to me (as in the case of Maneater and those Rat Queens volumes). 

Seeing Chynna Clugston Flores' Blue Monday there reminds me that I never bought the rest of the collections of it (looks like there are four total). I have all of her Blue Monday comics in singles, of course, but I like the book enough that I wouldn't mind having a more easily accessible version of it too. (Oh, and writing this post also reminded me that I never bought the future volumes of The Black Panther by Christopher Priest: The Complete Collection, having stopped after acquiring the first. Maybe I shouldn't be doing these posts at all, doing so is only adding to my to-buy list...)