I’ve noticed something odd recently: I no longer care about the recency of the comics I’m reading, or reading about — or reviewing, for that matter. Once upon a time, I thought reviews that went up Sunday for books that had come out the Wednesday prior felt stale and useless. Now, a smart and entertaining bit of comics reviewing and/or criticism feels like a smart and entertaining bit of reviewing and/or criticism, regardless of if the book is a day old, a month old, or half a decade old.
I think a lot of factors have contributed to this shift. Some, like being a so-called grown-up and the associated responsibilities and timesucks, are obvious. (I never thought my college Wednesday afternoons, reading new issues of Preacher and Stormwatch in a bar or divey Chinese restaurant, would become quite such objects of personal nostalgia.)
But then there’s other, external factors. Like the way digital comics remove the risk of a comic being hard to find after its first week of sales. Or the way Marvel Unlimited has basically timeshifted most of my Marvel reading by 6 months. Or the way that Marvel has, y’know, totally disrupted the continuity and flow of their books by ending the universe and telling like 800,000 What If stories. Or the way that the library has made single issues and collections unexpectedly available at times of their choosing, not mine. Or the way sales on Comixology will suddenly bring a whole host of new books into my life.
All of these things have made me much less concerned with only reviewing books that came out in the last 20 seconds; hopefully you all feel similarly. Because if not, it’s going to be really jarring when you see that, like, half the capsules below are from earlier than Wednesday — starting with last week’s All-Star Section Eight #3 after the jump.
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