Bookshelf #20

It probably won't take you long to figure out the contents of this week's bookshelf. To the left, my Star Wars comics with spines. To the right, my Dynamite and Boom books (plus a few random books that would maybe be better off shelved on this bookshelf from many weeks ago now). 

On the Star Wars side, you'll notice a couple of comics from best Star Wars publisher Dark Horse (Star Wars Tales Vols. 2 and 4 and The Crimson Empire Saga) and a couple from current Star Wars publisher Marvel (Star Wars Vol. 1, Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 1, Star Wars: Vader Down), but the majority of that side of the shelf is devoted to Dark Horse collections of Marvel's 1970s and '80s Star Wars comics, via the A Long Time Ago... omnibuses (and a single Wild Space volume). These omnibuses I bought in a panic when I heard Marvel was getting the license back, as I was afraid they either might not collect the original comics, or do so in a way I didn't care for. 

Of course, Star Wars is so big that, like some other licenses Disney now owns, the franchise is apparently too big for Marvel alone to handle, and so there are a couple of other books, from IDW (Star Wars Adventures Annual 2019, featuring a Jaxxon cover by Stan Sakai; Star Wars Adventures: Return to Vader's Castle, featuring art by EDILW favorite Kelley Jones under a cover by EDILW favorite Derek Charm), Viz Media (The Legends of Luke Skywalker: The Manga) and Yen Press (Lost Stars). 

Looking at this assortment on the shelf now, I regret not buying more of the Dark Horse collections, as I don't really care for the way Marvel seems to be collecting and publishing them now (In continuity-specific "Perfect Collections"). At the time, I just assumed whoever had the license would keep everything in print in one form or another and readily available from the library, this being the perennially popular Star Wars and all, but that doesn't seem to be the case, as I found while trying to read the post-Return of the Jedi, "New Republic"-branded material. Not only was much of it not available from the library systems I belong to, but a lot of it was also out of print.

I probably also should have bought more of the kid-friendly Star Wars Adventures collections from IDW, as those tended to be much better (and, visually, head and shoulders above) what Marvel has been cranking out at too-fast-for-me speed. 

On the other side of the shelf, you'll note that collections of Dynamite's The Boys dominate. I did start reading the series when it was originally serially published on DC's WildStorm imprint (I mean, it was Garth Ennis writing superheroes, of course I would!), I soon decided it would be better read in trade...and then never actually bought any trades. I did finally decide to read it via these omnibuses relatively recently, when I realized that the TV show was actually going to be rather popular, and this was likely a comic book that civilians in my real life would actually ask me about. While far from Ennis' best, I thought it worked pretty well, and it probably read better all at once as I read it, rather than 20 pages at a time here and there over the course of years. (The conversations I have had with fans of the show quickly made me realize that it doesn't stick too closely to the comics at all.)

The other Dynamite book there is Lords of The Jungle, which teamed Tarzan with Sheena; I haven't mentioned here in a really long time, but I am intrigued by the original, Golden Age version of the character and, while I've checked out more modern comics featuring her here and there, what I really want is a big collection of her original adventures. 

As for the Boom books, there are some pretty great kids books on their "Boom Box" and "Kaboom" imprints (Ryan North and company's very clever Midas Flesh, Roger Langridge's Abigail and the Snowman, Caitlin Rose Boyle and company's Jonesy and a volume of Adventure Time, which was then being written by North). There's also a King Kong book I didn't really care for, a Power Rangers book I got because Kelly Thompson co-wrote it and I used to be in love with the original Pink Ranger and Judas, which I found quite intriguing). 

Finally, there's a tri of completely random books: Oni's Terrible Lizard, a Cullen Bunn-written adventure I got just because it had a dinosaur (I'm not really that hard to sell a comic book to); Legendary's "We'd like this to be a movie, please"-looking The Tower Chronicles: GeistHawk, which featured an unlikely creative team composed of people I like in writer Matt Wagner and pencil artist Simon Bisley (It never did make it into a movie, did it? I'm now not even sure if they made a second volume); and, finally, Moonstone's The Black Bat, a black-and-white reimagining of the intriguing pulp hero that kinda sorta inspired both Batman and Marvel's version of Daredevil (I don't recall caring for it although the cape on Tom Grindberg's cover looks neat). 

And that covers all of the bookshelves on the ground floor of my house, mostly containing books purchased or gifted to me by publishers between 2011 and 2024 or so. Starting next week, we'll head upstairs for even more bookshelves full of even more comics, dating from 1991 to 2011 or so.