Top Comics to Buy for August 14, 2019: Powers of X, Catwoman, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — I’m starting to be predictable, week in and week out putting the new Jonathan Hickman X-Men comic on top as our PICK OF THE WEEK. The thing is, I really feel like we’re witnessing a genuine important moment in comics here—the restoration of a once-vaunted franchise that had fallen into neglect. It’s like watching a community come to its sense and restore a gorgeous art deco theater instead of razing it and building a supermarket on top of it. 

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Top Comics to Buy for August 7, 2019: House of X, Die, Lois Lane, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — As regular readers must have noticed by now, there have been some big changes to the site this week, namely...the name. We are no longer Batman’s Bookcase, moving instead to the less ironic (and, in my opinion, less funny) but far more original content friendly title of Comics Bookcase. As I wrote on Twitter, the main reason for this is that the site has grown bigger than I ever thought it would, covering an increasingly broad range of comics, and I wanted a new name to reflect that.

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Top Comics to Buy for July 31, 2019: Powers of X, Paper Girls, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — It’s kind of odd how a single comic can really make a week feel so much better in terms of new comics. For me this week, that comic is Powers of X #1. I absolutely loved House of X #1, a grandiose and confident comic that seemed for the first time in nearly 20 years to announce that the X-Men were starting something that will feel both new and important. As a child of the ‘90s, this feeling is one that I have greatly missed. And I get to have it again this week…

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Top Comics to Buy for July 17, 2019: Jimmy Olsen, Assassin Nation, Little Bird, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — So, some good news: my backlog of comics for 2019 is down to only 62. This is a minor miracle, considering that at one point immediately after my move (Sacramento -> Washington, D.C.), I found myself with a (figurative) pile in the triple digits. Now, I’m going to enjoy this, but only briefly—going to San Diego Wednesday through Sunday is sure to push it right back up. 

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Top Comics to Buy for July 10, 2019: Batman Universe, Criminal, Second Coming, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — I’m sure I wrote in this space last week that this was OMG such a great week for comics! And to be sure, I loved my books last week. There were many flashy comics (from the War of the Realms finale to the consistently-excellent The Green Lantern to the journalism wish-fulfillment of Lois Lane). Trust me when I say after looking at the Top Comics to Buy for July 10, 2019...that is also OMG such a great week for comics!

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Top Comics to Buy for July 3, 2019: Lois Lane, Heathen, The Wild Storm, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — The day before Fourth of July is a great day for comics to come out, because if you’re like me, it means you can shuck a decent number of your responsibilities to sit and read your books on America’s birthday. Before venturing out into the thick humidity in search of bright flashes, loud noises, and maybe a hot dog (if that’s not an advert for staying in…). Anyway, this year we get a great crop of comics for the holiday, too.

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Top Comics to Buy for June 26, 2019: Ascender, Eve Stranger, War of the Realms, and more

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By Zack Quaintance — I know I keep talking about this, but I just cannot get entirely caught up on comics after our three-week move across the country. I am, however, making progress! In fact, I think I’m down to only 90 comics left to read, 90 comics that came out between May 29 and this coming Wednesday, mind you. And you know what? I’ve been (as usual) reading some really…

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Top Comics to Buy for June 19, 2019: Monstress, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — Phew, well well well, we’re back! I spent the past three weeks and change relocating from Sacramento, Calif. To Washington, D.C….which is obviously a pretty massive move. In between, my wife and I did a mammoth 12-day road trip, where we stopped off and saw as many friends and as many national parks along the way as possible (check out some of it on the site’s Instagram feed!).

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Top Comics to Buy for May 22, 2019: Action Comics #1011, Monstress #22, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — So, I don’t mean to spend this Top Comics to Buy for May 22 intro space on Game of Thrones, but, actually, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. The finale was last night, and people have...strong feelings. I get being disappointed. What I maybe don’t get is being devastated, furious, moved to action, or otherwise made unhappy in any lasting sort of way. This is, after all, something we’re all congregating around because at some point it made us feel very good. We’re engaged here for entertainment, ideally saving any lasting discomfort for, oh, I don’t know, thinking about real life politics, or our work, or just the struggle that is daily life...you know?

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Top Comics to Buy for May 15, 2019: Little Bird #3, Superman #11, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — It was tough to start building our Top Comics for May 15, 2019, what with the fantastic books that came out last week still bouncing around my mind. Last week was really an embarrassment of riches in terms of the exact type of comics I like to read. I had such a great time reading comics last week, from new series like Eve Stranger and Excellence, to ongoing superhero stories like Shazam and Hawkman, to series that just keep getting…

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Top Comics to Buy for May 8, 2019: Black Hammer Age of Doom #10, Vault Comics, and more!

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By Zack Quaintance — This is a nice week for new comics, one in which the releases are mercifully a bit smaller in volume. This can perhaps be attributed to Free Comic Book Day taking place on Saturday. Publishers wisely got as much of their product as they could on shelves last week, so the hordes of FCBD attendees could scope it out and (hopefully) buy it.

Nevertheless! There are plenty of great choices for our Top Comics to Buy for May 8, 2019. This week’s group is headlined by…

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Top Comics to Buy for May 1, 2019: The Green Lantern #7, Paper Girls #28, and more

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By Zack Quaintance — This was a big weekend for pop culture, with Avengers: Endgame and Game of Thrones: The Battle of Winterfell marking a massive concentrated culmination of the zeitgeist's ongoing concerns for the past decade. This is all a fancy way to note that this Monday morning I am very tired. Yet, here we are as always just two days away from new comics. Commerce must go on, even more so than Thanos or…

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Top Comics to Buy for April 24, 2019: The Replacer, Criminal #4, and more

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By Zack Quaintance — One of the things I’ve pushed against since creating this site is recency bias. All of us—fans and critics—have a shared tendency to praise and promote new #1 comics above mid-run installments or even finales. While there is a certain and acute level of brilliance required to create a strong debut, I think we as an industry tend to lose site of just how impressive and also difficult it is to sustain an interesting graphic sequential story for five, 10, or—as is the case with one of our...     

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