Hi Heralds! I’m excited to announce my plans to kick off a new monthly reading club, where you, me and like-minded comic book fans dive headfirst into renowned major runs throughout comic book history!
In order to get there, though, I need your help. If you like Comic Book Herald, and are able to support, contributions to Comic Book Herald’s Patreon go a long way to building a better CBH. We’re 70% of the way to the Mega-Run reading club goal, so a few more supporters and we can get there in time for the Post-Avengers: Endgame May 2019!
Here’s the goal as detailed on the CBH Patreon page:
Launch the Mega-Run Reading Club, where we binge 1 great series per month, like Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Grant Morrison’s New X-Men, and Marvel Star Wars!
Access will be applicable to all tiers, with the following exclusive benefits added to patrons at the $5 tier:
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- Access to Mega-Run Slack channel for book discussion (thanks to Zack at My Marvelous Year for the idea!)
- A random patron from this tier will be selected every month to discuss the book on the Best Comics Ever podcast with me
- Priority voting on selecting the club’s next read-through
We’ll vote each month on the club’s run of choice, but it wouldn’t be a Comic Book Herald production if I didn’t already have a list in mind.
Here’s what I’ve concocted so far, completely unedited with lots of doubt baked in to each pick:
- April – Hellboy!
- May – Moore’s Swamp Thing — bonus… Marvel Godzilla (?)
- June – New X-Men
- July – Dan Slott Spider-Man (Spider-Island, Superior… Whole thing?)
- August – Post Claremont New Mutants
- September –
- October – Tom King Batman (?)
- November — Sonic the Hedgehog comics (?)
- December — Marvel Star Wars (new canon, or 70’s?)
So, if this sounds like something you’d be into, check it out and consider supporting CBH directly. As always, even if you don’t, thank you for checking out Comic Book Herald and I hope to see you around the site.
Enjoy the comics!
Dave
I have a question about this reading club. What would be a way that we could all engage in more active discussion on the runs as we’re reading? I was thinking we could have checkpoints like after the first week of a month we agree to have spoiler-ridden discussions of issues 1-12 or whatever actual numbers work for that series and month. But, I’m not really sure what the best outlet would be for our discussions. A FB group, a subreddit, Patreon posts, something else?
Hey Gideon,
There will be a Slack channel launching for the $5 tier (and up), which will provide good opportunity for discussion. I think carving out spoiler/non-spoiler spaces depending on people’s pace is a great idea!
Well I was already planning on upping my patreon amount to 5 for the other benefits of the reading club, but it seems you’ve really left me no choice. 🙂 I’m excited about this!
That’s awesome, thank you!
Ok, you caught my attention. I have not participated in the current iteration of My Marvelous Year because it came so close on the heels of the last Marvelous Year. But this has potential.
Except: Tom King Batman is too recent, as is Dan Slott. I admit the Slott run on Spidey is tempting, (I read the end of it today) but still it is fairly recent. New X-Men and Mutants are covered by Marvelous Year, no?
Moore’s Swamp Thing is obvious, but how about going deeper into DC for a bit: Geoff Johns Green Lantern? Or Keith Giffen Legion? Or go even a little meta with the Mike Carlin era editing Superman?
Maybe there could some sort of polling option to gauge interest for each series before starting it for the month? I think you have good points but I could also see where there might be enough of us who haven’t read My Marvelous Year that there would still be interest in reading selected Marvel runs like New X-Men. And obviously no matter what system we use some of the readers are going to be disinterested in a series and skip a month’s reading. Personally, I could see reading a single issue or two of Sonic, but unless the books are wildly different/better than what I imagine I don’t see myself reading the whole run. But again, if lots of other people are interested in Sonic than who am I to get in their way?
Yep, definitely planning a poll 🙂
Hey Claude, thanks for the feedback! I guess I’m unsure… why are those runs too recent?
There will be a poll prior to each month so everyone can vote on what we’ll be reading. My initial selections are primarily based on 1) Topical connection to cross-media (i.e. there’s a movie, tv show, publisher initiative) 2) Stuff I actually want to read again/for the first time myself. But I won’t be picking without input!
With the My Marvelous Year connections, there will be some overlap for those who’ve participated before (like yourself), but a lot of people haven’t done. Plus, we rarely covered a full run with the curated lists – so it’s a more concentrated burst. The New Mutants bit I mention is hardly covered in MMY at all.
Going deeper into DC is absolutely an option! This is where the reader vote will come into play. But yes, you’re absolutely on the track of books I want to be covering. Giffen on Legion would take no convincing at all 🙂
Just my perspective, I guess.
Isn’t Tom King currently writing Batman? And Slott finished his run on ASM about 8 months back.
Seems to me that people who will be up on comics, and frequent a site like yours which has a lot of content related to recent Spidey and Batman, would already be up to date on these two in particular.
Maybe I am showing my age, but when I think “History making Mega-Runs”, I still think Stan and Jack on FF, Byrne on FF, Simonson on Thor, David on the Hulk, etc. Runs that we can look back on with the filter of time to judge in a different light. I re-read all of Byrnes FF during the Marvelous Year event and was blown away by the quality, same for Thor.
For me I’d like to go back to those really influential runs.
Like Wolfman/Perez on Teen Titans needs to be re-read…
I can definitely understand your perspective here. I think that for me at least, I have a lot of time constraints regarding what I can read each month so there are plenty of series I would like to read but just haven’t prioritized yet, and having a group go through the series together would be great motivation to work through a series. Also, while I can see the argument against reading a run that’s currently unfolding, I also know that as someone who’s been reading King’s Batman, I haven’t read the first few volumes since close to their publication, and I would be happy for the opportunity to re-read them with fresh eyes and in light of my knowledge of where the run will go over the next 50 or so issues. I’ve read through TWD all the way through 3 times now, each time getting a little further based on what the last published books are, and every time I have a different take on some of the events and characters and pick up new details and I always enjoy it.
Reading through some of the more foundational and classic runs sounds really exciting too however, and I definitely see the place for both kinds of reads.