FIST OF THE BLUE SKY VOL. 1-4 by Tetsuo Hara
MEGA MAN TRIBUTE HC (art book)
INFINITY WARS #4 (of 6)
BLACK HAMMER: THE QUANTUM AGE #3
PROJECT SUPERPOWERS #3
RED SONJA/TARZAN #5 (of 6)
A WALK THROUGH HELL HCF 2018 #1
ALBERT EINSTEIN: TIME MASON #1
DETECTIVE COMICS #888-890
PLASTIC MAN #5 (of 6)
HAWKMAN #5
SWAMP THING HALLOWEEN HORROR 100-PAGE COMIC GIANT #1 - One new 12-page story, the rest reprints, but not bad for $5. A Walmart exclusive.

ARCHIE'S MADHOUSE MAYHEM (HCF 2018) minicomic - This year's ACP Halloween ComicFest offering reprints two 6-pagers, Betty in "Scaredy Cat" by Angelo Decesare & Stan Goldberg, and Archie in "The Halloween Scene" by George Gladir & Fernando Ruiz. Apart from the relative rarity of ACP Halloween stories, neither of these two stories are particularly noteworthy, but on the whole, I enjoyed this minicomic more than either of ACP's previous two HCF Archie's Madhouse minicomic reprints.

ARCHIE HALLOWEEN SPECTACULAR (Dec. 2018 issue) - Unlike the above free giveaway minicomic, this one's a regular-format floppy comic with a $2.99 cover price. It contains reprints of four 5-pagers, all of which were written by Dan Parent: Archie in "Something Is Missing" (with art by Bill Golliher); B&V in "They're Creepy and They're Kooky" (art by Jeff Shultz); B&V in "A Bewitching Tale" (art by Bill Galvan), and B&V present "The Ultimate Halloween Bash!" (art by Dan Parent). The last of those was more of a "special feature" than a story per se, being mainly instructional in nature, but it contains some relevant tips on how to throw a Halloween-themed party, and even though it isn't really a story, Dan P. remembered to end the feature with a final-panel gag to wrap everything up nicely in the Archie Comics tradition. The special feature originally appeared in BETTY & VERONICA SPECTACULAR #85, back when it was given a face-lift by Dan P. to be styled more like a magazine, and each issue featured at least one special feature (usually fashions, sometimes quizzes, but sometimes other things, depending on the season and theme of the individual issue). I really liked the idea of special features, and never felt like those were robbing the reader of the equivalent number of pages of story, simply because they added variety and were usually interesting in and of themselves. All of them were the work of Dan Parent (showing off his design talents using computer graphics software), and they always had an attractive look to them.

I think I've read all of these stories previously somewhere before, although it's hard to say definitely in some cases. One oddity struck me in the story "They're Creepy and They're Kooky", in which Archie, Betty & Veronica meet the Addams Family-like Plumley family and their daughter Monica (whom of course, B&V are immediately suspicious of because of Archie's interest in her), who have just moved into a reputed haunted house that's been abandoned for years. When Archie goes inside the Plumleys' house to visit, B&V are sure that the family is up to something no good (because, of course, they've SEEN The Addams Family), and start freaking out. Wandering away, they discuss what they should do to extricate Archie from the family's (and especially Monica's) clutches, and they recruit Jughead to help them. Veronica works her dander up to the point where by the time they've returned to the house, she bangs on the door. When Monica answers the door, Veronica demands to see Archie, and she responds that she doesn't know any Archie, and that they've just moved to the neighborhood, and slams the door in her face. While B&V and Jughead are still standing in front of the house discussing what to do now, Archie approaches from behind them and surprises them. B&V are overjoyed to see he's just fine, but then Monica shows up again, seemingly from nowhere, and invites them all into the house for some snacks, in an attempt, I guess, to allay their fears that there's just something weird about her family. I was a little confused because Monica never attempts to justify her earlier behavior when she answered the door -- I'd already decided that Monica must have a twin sister whom none of the gang had seen before, who had arrived home after Archie & Monica left, but it's never mentioned one way or the other, so I was left scratching my head about why Monica answered the door earlier and claimed she didn't know anyone named Archie. Not only that, but B&V and Jughead had never left the front of the house, while trying to decide what to do, before Archie and Monica reappeared, and Monica didn't come out the front door of the house, either, but seems to have followed Archie (from wherever, but not from inside the house). Or is it possible that the story, as it originally appeared, was longer than the 5 pages reprinted here? 

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR: Master Edition Vol. 1-9 by Buronson & Tetsuo Hara [Raijin Comics, 2004] - Great story, and the single best presentation of any manga I've seen in English translation. Each volume was 196 pages, 7"x10" (same page size as a golden age comic book, or Shonen Jump, but on heavy glossy paper and digitally colored), with a b&w cardboard cover wrapped in a color dustjacket, and contains some extras. These were originally priced at $17.95 cover price, but I got them on sale about 10 years ago for $11 per volume. The same story had an earlier, different translation (with reversed pages) by Viz, in both the 'prestige format' standard comic size, and as 4 smaller b&w trade paperback volumes, but covered less than half the story contained in Raijin's 9 volume set. Unfortunately, those 9 volumes still barely scratch the surface of the complete Japanese saga, which ran for 5 years (245 chapters serialized in Shonen Jump) and was collected in 27 tankobon volumes, while the Master Edition only got as far as reprinting the first 74 chapters, so there are still 18 1/2 volumes in the saga of Fist of the North Star that I'll probably never get to read. An anime TV series which originally ran for 152 episodes from 1984 to 1988 (and is a fairly faithful adaptation of the manga) is available on an American DVD release with English subtitles, and even that doesn't adapt all the events of the manga's 245 chapters, but I guess it's the best I'll be able to do unless I learn to read Japanese.

The real point I'm getting at here is that I wish some of the current English-localized manga publishers would do something in a format exactly like these deluxe editions.

MARVEL KNIGHTS (2000) #1-15

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.

A high school comedy about a sixteen year old with psychic powers. He has pretty much all of them, and he's anything but happy about it. All he wants is to live a normal, boring, ordinary life, but he can't turn off his powers, so it's impossible. For example, he can't enjoy games or sports because he always knows already who's going to win. He can't even enjoy a surprise party, because nothing will ever surprise him. And he'd rather not have to eavesdrop on what everyone's thinking, but it can't be helped. He's pretty annoyed about it too. It doesn't help that he's surrounded by his weird classmates and weird parents' odd behavior. Still, that's his life and he's got to put up with it, so the series deals a lot with his coping mechanisms.

THE COMPLETE COSMO THE MERRY MARTIAN TP by Sy Reit and Bob White - This was a fun six issue series (the trade collection also includes "Good Guys of the Galaxy", a Tom DeFalco/Fernando Ruiz semiparody of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy from ARCHIE 655, which happens to be my personal favorite of their collaborations, and a 5-page ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST story written & drawn by Fernando, both stories featuring guest appearances by Cosmo, plus a couple more only-tangentially-related 5-pagers written by Dan Parent, and a complete reprint of the 1st issue of the new COSMO series). The Sy Reit/Bob White collaboration on COSMO, which originally appeared in 1958-59, was unusual in style, as well as in being essentially one long (if episodic) story, continued from issue to issue. It's hard to think of any other standard comic books that were doing that at the time. Absurdity and gags are the main focus here, plus just a teensy amount of actual factual science educating readers on the basics of what was known about the Moon, Mars, Venus and Saturn at the time. Characterization is fairly minimal, with the standout character being Orbi, a likeable but devout coward, who's always getting into trouble (and thus helping drive the plot, such as it is, forward). The basic plot of the series is a travelogue around the solar system, discovering what life exists on other worlds. It has a certain goofy nostalgic charm that amuses me, however, particularly in the way it's drawn. Martians as drawn by Bob White look a lot like Al Capp's schmoos (from Li'l Abner) or slightly overweight bowling pins. The body proportions vary a little otherwise, as drawn by Fernando Ruiz in the two more modern stories.





COSMO VOL 01: SPACE ACES TP by Ian Flynn and Tracy Yardley - I really liked this reboot, despite its lack of strict adherence to the earlier versions of the characters by Reit & White. Given that there wasn't a lot of characterization in the original to begin with, that was probably a good decision. I'm not sure a straight-up modern version of the earlier Cosmo would have really worked. The character that survives the transition mostly intact is Orbi, who retains his character as a dedicated coward but a nice guy. Cosmo is somewhat younger, more of an adventurous/heroic sort of space explorer, and Astra (Cosmo's girlfriend and sometimes damsel-in-distress in the original series) is given a more active role as the pilot of Cosmo's spaceship, the "Ufo" (pronounced "You-foe"), and there's a friendly rivalry/romantic tension between her and Cosmo. Orbi's doglike Martian pet Jojo in the original series becomes a metamorphic alien pet, giving him in effect a superpower the rest of the crew don't have, and making him very useful to have around. The elderly bearded Martian scientist-inventor Prof. Thimk from the original series is missing from the rebooted version altogether, replaced by the much younger female Martian scientist-inventor Dr. Medulla. It was a good idea to add more (and more proactive) female characters to the updated COSMO. The final new addition to the cast is Max Strongjaw, an American astronaut of the near future who is rescued by Cosmo & Co. when his ship has technical difficulties on the first earth-mission to Mars. Max is more or less a parody of the usual square-jawed, typical American space-hero type. Not too bright, and more than a little xenophobic, but with a heart-of-gold, who gradually comes to a grudging friendship/rivalry of sorts with Cosmo and his crew. This was a good cast, and the series as a whole was a valiant attempt to launch a new series which would have been a ACP-owned IP replacement for the loss of the SONIC and MEGA MAN Archie Action imprint titles. At least they were willing to give this a shot, for which I applaud them. Who knows, maybe the graphic novel could be discovered by someone interested in turning the characters into an animated series. Tracy Yardley is a very talented artist, working in a pleasant, attractive modern style that would not be out of place among cartoons aired somewhere like Nickelodeon (or is it just Nick now?) or Cartoon Network (or is it just CN now?). One could but hope. The collection also includes all of the variant covers of the floppy comic from issues #1-5, along with character profile pages offering more background tidbits of information, and some sketch pages showing Yardley's design development for the series. At least you should buy the trade collection, if you didn't give the 5 individual issues of the floppy comic version a try.

DEATH NOTE [All-In-One Edition] TP by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata - Chapters 81 to 108+bonus chapter (of 108 + bonus chapter); pages 1763 to 2398 (of 2398). That was ONE long read! ... but interesting all the way through. It ended just how it HAD to end, because we know almost from the beginning of the story how it was going to end -- the shinigami (Japanese death god) Ryuk told Light Yagami (the protagonist-villain of the story) how it would end, and indeed that's exactly how it ends. Hope that's not too big of a spoiler, because it's in there almost from the start. I really enjoyed this.

This was originally published as 12 tankobon (regular-sized paperback books) which would have cost $9.99 per volume SRP, so $119.88 total before any discount. Or I could have purchased a complete boxed set of all 12 original volumes for $114.99 SRP, that included a special 13th volume, "Death Note: How To Read" which contains all of the shinigami rules for humans using the Death Note, plus a character guide and detailed plot summary of the series. It's not strictly needed as part of the main story, but it did originally contain the bonus chapter which was later reprinted in the All-In-One Edition. The All-In-One Edition had a SRP of $39.99, so it was a huge savings over buying each of the individual tankobon volumes separately, or buying the boxed set. The "How To Read" extra Volume 13 is also available separately, and I was interested enough in the series as a whole to order a copy of that (SRP $14.99). So as a result of having 'missed the boat' when the series was first running and kind of a hot item (manga-wise), I wind up paying less than half what it would have cost me otherwise to read the whole series -- and I think it was probably better as a result of my having read it over a very short period of time. This is one time where the old saying "you snooze you lose" proved to be untrue. I guess my next move is to buy (or watch streaming somewhere online) the anime adaptation (not so interested in the live-action films) of Death Note which spun off from the manga.

The downside of saving money in reading the All-In-One Edition of Death Note was that at 2400 (5"x7") pages, the book was over 3 inches thick, and rather heavy (I didn't actually weigh it), and to try to hold it in your hands for any length of time at a comfortable enough distance for optimal viewing was somewhat awkward and tiring. I found myself, on several occasions of prolonged reading sessions, propping the book up on a small empty box on a desk (or on a lap desk) so I wouldn't need to actually hold it up close enough to read the pages for hours on end. The extreme thickness of the book also tends to make it want to close itself unless your thumb is inserted between the pages you're reading or you have some heavier piece of cardboard to lie across the top or bottom of both pages to keep it from closing. I wouldn't want to own another book of this size, I think. It's somewhat of a problem already with the Archie 1000 Page Comics collections, although those are more easily viewable from a somewhat greater distance and are less than half the number of pages -- plus they're much faster to read than 1000 pages of something like Death Note. The Archie Giant Comics collections are actually more of the ideal digest-sized format in terms of thickness and page count, but when you compare them to the 1000-pagers in terms of cost-per-page, nowhere near as good of a bang-for-your-buck bargain... so it's a trade off, sacrificing the ease-of-reading experience for getting more for your dollar. The Giant Comics digest format recently reduced its original page-count without reducing the cover price, while it seems that the 1000 Page Comics are pretty much locked into the page count they have -- they'd have to change the title, which would be too obvious. I suppose they could increase the cover price, but people tend to notice things like that immediately, while page-count is something you wouldn't probably notice before making the decision to purchase.

DEATH NOTE [All-In-One Edition] TP by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata - Chapters 41 to 80 (of 108 + bonus chapter); pages 901 to 1762 (of 2398). There are so many rules for humans using the Death Note that I'm starting to get confused about whether some of those rules were already broken prior to being made known to the reader. I wasn't originally thinking of it as such, but it occurs to me that this is a supervillain story. A guy who gets supernatural powers and uses them to kill and manipulate people through fear, whose true identity is kept secret, and whose ultimate goal is to rule the world is a supervillain story, right? Even if he is a young, good-looking guy whose goal is to murder criminals in order to make the world a better place, he's a just a cunning sociopath. And he's the main protagonist. If the main antagonist opposing him (whose true identity is also secret) had superpowers as well, then I guess this would be a superhero story, but a supervillain story isn't so different.

Quote from: rusty on October 08, 2018, 09:35:09 PM
I've enjoyed My Hero Academia quite a bit.  I had two friends recommend the series to me within the last couple of months.  I also helped out at a graphic novel booth part time at the Chicago Comic Con in August and the My Hero Academia volumes were very popular.  MHA does have a focus of the training academy plus there is a tournament or two mixed in, but they are done in a pretty interesting way and the tournament doesn't drag on as many tend to do.  There is also a mentoring aspect involved with the main character being mentored by the hero who gave him his powers.  Students at the academy also end up interning at superhero agencies.  All in all, I would give the series 8/10 and I think it is worth checking out.
There are actually two spinoff series.  Vigilantes is the first one and it focuses on several people who hunt down bad guys and do other good deeds while outside the law since they are not licensed heroes.  It crosses over with the main series tangentially, but can be read on its own.  I've enjoyed the first two volumes as much as the main series.  The second spinoff is due in the U.S. next spring.
I haven't read One Punch Man yet, though I do have a copy of the first volume and plan to give it a try.
If you do give Black Butler a try, let me know what you think.

Thanks, rusty!  I was actually thinking I might start with the MHA Vigilantes spinoff because it would be easier to catch up on that one sooner, then proceed back to the main series, if I liked the spinoff well enough. I'll definitely do that now.

I think I would have replaced the two Archie Giant Comics trades they showed in that COSMO TP ad page with the hardcovers The Art of Betty & Veronica and The Art of Archie Comics: The Covers, and added another row showing the covers of the five most recent Archie 1000 Page Comics digests, but other than that, the collections shown in the COSMO TP ad were the ones I'd have included in an ad aimed at BACK ISSUE's readers. And maybe replace the Archie at Riverdale High TP (I don't think it's really that good a collection, despite the appropriate vintage) with... ARCHIE MEETS KISS. Hey, they're Bronze Age fans, so some of them are bound to like KISS, right?

Quote from: DeCarlo Rules on August 23, 2018, 04:07:22 PM
One other thing I noticed was that ACP had two full-page ads in that issue, but I guess they just love to flush an opportunity to make some money right down the drain. What are the ads for? The New Riverdale trades and the Riverdale TV series. Uh... yeah, thanks for bringing those to our attention, we somehow just spaced out and plain didn't realize they existed.

Apparently they don't bother targeting the ads to the consumer base of the magazine they're advertising in. It's for fans of BRONZE AGE comics, you dummies!!! Instead of trying to target the ads to spotlight the creme-de-la-creme of their existing trade collections of classic Archie material (and oh, as long as they're at it... how about selling some of those Red/Dark Circle trades in a magazine whose usual readership is superhero fans?). What about selling some digest subscriptions and 1000-Page Comics bricks? No, they waste the ad space on something pretty much everyone already knows about. If they care about such things (in itself doubtful), BACK ISSUE's readers have already bought the comics or trades, and watched the show, but what they might NOT be aware of is the digests are still being published (because you don't really SEE them much in comic book stores), and that ACP has an extensive line of material targeted towards readers who already LOVE the old classic stories from the 1970s and 1980s. The Best of Archie Comics Deluxe HCs? "Archie Comics Presents..."? Archie Americana? They could easily have squeezed the covers of 25 different TP collections onto a single magazine-sized ad page. Nah, just toss 'em the same old ads we run in the digests and regular floppy comics we publish. It's not the same audience, you idiots!!

It's funny -- I was just flipping through my copy of COSMO Vol. 1: SPACE ACES trade collection, and there's an ad on the inside back cover for classic Archie trade paperbacks that's nearly exactly what I was picturing in my mind for what ACP should have used for one of those ad pages in BACK ISSUE #107 for. It only pictures 20 collected editions (but this ad is appearing on a page sized 6"x 9", not the larger magazine-size 8.5"x 11" page), but they're almost precisely the ones I'd have chosen to try to sell to readers of a comic book fanzine dedicated to Bronze Age comics.

Pictured were the covers of:
Row 1 - The Best of Archie Comics Deluxe Edition HC Vols. 1 & 2; Archie Americana Vols. 1-3 TP (Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age)
Row 2 - The Best of Archie Comics: BETTY & VERONICA Vols. 1 & 2 TP; Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Complete Collection v1 TP; Betty & Veronica Spectacular TP; Archie at Riverdale High TP
Row 3 - ARCHIE'S BIG BOOK Vols. 1-4 TP; Jughead's Time Police TP
Row 4 - Archie Giant Comics Roll TP; Archie Giant Comics Surprise TP; The Best of JOSIE and the Pussycats TP; Archie's Coloring Book; YOUR PAL ARCHIE TP

I bet they could have sold some of those collections to readers of BACK ISSUE, too.

Okay, I've had a look again at the story, "Corvette Calamity". The two remarks that you found anachronistic are one where Veronica said "I've checked the internet!" and another where Betty said "She made me go through all the classifieds posted on the net - DAILY!  Do you know how many there are worldwide?!" I don't know the exact answer to Betty's question, but I did look up the story at the GCD (comics.org) and it was originally published in Betty and Veronica (Vol. 2) #141 (cover-dated Nov. 1999). That would make it quite possibly one of the very last dozen or so new stories by Dan DeCarlo that Archie Comics published. I can tell you this much... Betty must have been spending a lot of time searching the key words "1969 Corvette Stingray". A search for that exact phrase today brings me 5,020,000 results. Even back in 1999, Betty must not have been getting much sleep while Veronica was on her quest for the perfect '69 Stingray.

The internet itself was originally called ARPANET, a project of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects begun in the 1970s. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the very late 1980s. ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990, by which time the World Wide Web had come into existence by way of the hypertext markup language and web browsers. By 1995 dot-com companies and the web were booming. Plenty of time for Betty to do her blogging, and Veronica to switch her 'virtual' shopping from the cable-based Home Shopping Network to the World Wide Web. And plenty of time for Dan DeCarlo to draw lots more stories between then and the time "Corvette Calamity" was published, if Archie's writers chose to write them.

Quote from: ASS-P on October 05, 2018, 10:39:57 PM
In B&V FRIENDS #264, a Dan DeCarlo-penciled story has Veronica looking for a collectible car on the Web. Dan D. passed before the 20th Century was over, and had left Archie on bad terms by then.  Would a story from earlier in the 90s have dropped the term/concept?

Well, yeah, there was that whole mess about DDC's claim to ownership of JOSIE because of the movie. But DeCarlo was still alive until December 18, 2001.

I didn't look up details about when the story in question first appeared, but I remember which one you're talking about. Doesn't seem like there's anything particularly implausible about Veronica wanting to purchase a very particular out-of-production make & model of car. Car buffs do that all the time, and always have, as far as I can tell. I think the story was pretty clear about the fact that Veronica had read up and researched a very particular car that she wanted; that exact one, not merely one similar.

Even if the story was from the '90s, so what? It's not like the internet was just invented or something. It's been around longer than MOST people have owned computers. Sure, there was even a time when everything was DOS-based... no graphical interface and HyperTextTransferProtocol. It was pure text-based computing. By 1990 the first web-browser had been created, and was in use by the general public by the end of 1991. Of course Archie and the gang were using computers in the 1990s... you just haven't read enough of those stories, I guess -- and in fact, it's really not hard at all to find Archie stories with PCs in them from the 1980s, either. Just because Dan DeCarlo didn't do any more work for Archie in the 2000s, there were still plenty of years in there for him to draw stories with PCs. Hell, even I've had an Amazon customer account since 1998, so believe me, by then there were plenty of people on the web shopping for stuff. Before that though, there were internet sites for buying and selling stuff, especially collectibles and cars.

Maybe it would even surprise you to learn that computer-generated comic book art existed in the 1980s. Mike Saenz created SHATTER on the first version of the Apple Macintosh home computer (memory capacity 128k), introduced in 1984. The artwork was printed out on an old-style low-resolution black-and-white dot-matrix printer and then hand-colored.

SHATTER Special #1 (June 1985)  First Comics

SPACE PIRATE CAPTAIN HARLOCK: The Classic Collection HC Vol. 2 (of 3) by Leiji Matsumoto - This 1977 manga sounds like it would be a simple space opera adventure, and it is, in part -- but there's a surprising depth to its powerful themes and sometimes-moving characterization.

KAFKAESQUE: Fourteen Stories OGN HC (adapted from Franz Kafka) by Peter Kuper - Didn't realize it at the time I ordered it, but 9 of these stories had been in the earlier Kafka/Kuper collection GIVE IT UP! and Other Short Stories, which I already own. Still, the remaining five new adaptations were definitely worth having, so I guess I would have bought it anyway. Standouts among the newer ones were the longer adaptations of "The Burrow" and "In the Penal Colony".

MÉNAGE À 3 VOL 02 TP (Udon Entertainment) by Gisèle Lagacé & David Lumsdon - I'd love to give this a full critique, both positive and negative, but I can't... here, without discussing its adult themes (if anyone's that interested, just PM me). So I'll just say I have mixed feelings about some aspects of it, but I absolutely adore Gisèle's artwork. (Not to be TOO mysterious about it, but let's just say that if the reader were really clueless, they'd have to conclude upon reading this that most of Montreal's population was bisexual, with a definite leaning in the gay direction, because that's the theme this comedy relies most heavily on.) I only wish it could be in full color, though Gisèle makes great use of spotting her blacks and applying gray tones and patterns.

DEATH NOTE [All-In-One Edition] TP by Tsugumi Ohba & Takeshi Obata - Chapters 23 to 40 (of 108 + bonus chapter); pages 515 to 900 (of 2398). As I stated earlier, this continues to be a real page-turner, with new plot twists coming at the reader all the time.

Quote from: rusty on October 05, 2018, 08:01:55 PM
I finished up My Hero Academia 13-15 and My Hero Academia Vigilantes 1-2 earlier this week.  It is a fun series where just about everybody has a superpower (called a quirk), though only some are licensed to use them.

How would you rate those on a scale of 1 to 10? I remember reading one of those FCBD preview books of MHA, back when it had just come out from Viz. My thoughts at the time were that it seemed like a definite reaction to the breakout popularity of One-Punch Man (which began as a webmanga in 2009, and was then remade as a print manga in 2012, a couple of years prior to MHA's debut). I mean that MHA seemed to follow a similar general pattern as far as how its superhero universe was set up (as opposed to most superhero manga, which tend to either follow the Japanese model of the 'henshin hero' genre, or the American superhero model, or some combination of the two). One-Punch Man has nothing to do with the 'hero high'-type training academy trope, but that could easily have been influenced by a lot of earlier things (including the original X-Men, New Mutants, Avengers Academy, or movies like Disney's 2005 film Sky High). The FCBD preview floppy comic was enough to give me the general premise of how the universe worked, but I didn't like the art style (which reminded me a little of Yu-Gi-Oh) anywhere near as much as One-Punch Man, and the FCBD preview comic didn't have nearly enough pages to get a true flavor of it, so I kind of just shrugged MHA off as a One-Punch Man bandwagon jumper, I guess. I never imagined that it would become as successful as it seems to have (and if it gets both an anime adaptation AND a spinoff manga series so soon, it must be pretty popular; then again, I don't always tend to like what's most popular in anime/manga).

Black Butler sounds interesting too, so I'll probably check out the first volume of that, if it's still easy to order a copy through Diamond.