This Week in Marvel Unlimited 2019-11-25

November 25th, 2019

Hello all and welcome to the final This Week in Marvel Unlimited… for November. (Sorry, sorry… just couldn’t resist for some reason. 😀 ) It’s Monday again, so let’s get into it!

On the “new” side of things, from the week of May 22nd, 2019… it’s the War of the Realms show! This week we have nine, count ’em, NINE crossover titles hitting Marvel Unlimited! By contrast, the X-Men crossover “Age of X-Man” only has one book, The Amazing Nightcrawler.The X-Men as a whole are reasonably well represented this week; besides the two crossover books there are four more X-titles this week plus a Nightcrawler story in Marvel Comics Presents. That one’s written by none other than Chris Claremont, so I’m definitely going to have to check that one out!

This week is also a good week for younger super-heroes, with Miles Morales, Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur, Shuri and the Runaways all with “new” issues.

There’s one more “new” book I’m going to talk about, but I’m saving that one for last. Skip to the end of the column if you really want to know!

The back catalogue gets a smattering of X-Men issues this week, including the Xavier Institute Alumni Yearbook, which is exactly as advertised: a yearbook for the X-Men’s school. There’s an Xtreme X-Men Annual by Claremont and Salvadore Larocca I’ll probably re-read some time. (I own all of Xtreme X-Men. What can I say, I’m a big Claremont fan.) There’s a one-shot called Wolverine: Switchback that I’ve never heard of. An issue of X-Men Unlimited that ties into Kurt Busiek’s enjoyable Maximum Security crossover (circa 2000.) And, before we get to the final couple of back-issue X-Men, I’ll mention there’s also an Avengers sourcebook (called Strikefile) from 1994 and the Avengers Annual for 1993.

Now on to the most interesting additions to the back catalogue, at least for me: Ben Raab & John Cassaday’s X-Men/Alpha Flight two-part limited series from 1998. Now, I’m a huge Alpha Flight fan (more on that later) and this was an enjoyable period piece set around the time just before Alpha got its own series. For the most part I enjoyed Raab’s writing (I was a fan of his run on Excalibur) although the plot had a few aspects that strained disbelief. (And yes, I know I’m talking about straining disbelief in a Marvel comic book series.) For the X-Men fans, this story purports to show Kitty Pryde’s first date with Piotr Rasputin, which of course goes horribly, horribly wrong. Fans of the Van Lente, Pak & Eaglesham 2011 Alpha Flight series will find that Gary Cody is once again playing into a super-villain’s hands. (This is a recurring theme for Cody, who has done so at least three times over the years.) Plus, the always reliable John Cassaday provides some lovely art.

I already own this LS in electronic format: Amazon occasionally has phenomenal sales on Marvel trades and I took advantage. Still, the Alpha Flight fan in me is happy to see the material available to the Marvel Unlimited audience.

Which brings us to the final comic book I wanted to discuss here, which was part of the “new” stuff… but only technically. I’ve mentioned before that Marvel has been celebrating their 80th anniversary by targeting the nostalgia market in various ways. One of their initiatives are the “Facsimile Edition” comics, where they not only reprint the story from an issue, but all the ads from the time as well. This week the Facsimile Edition of Alpha Flight v1 #1 (1983) joined Marvel Unlimited.

This book is special to me. It’s the book that started me collecting comic books. I was ten years old, and my family was going to drive to El Paso, Texas, to see relatives. I was already a fan of comic books, and my mom decided to let me get some from a drugstore in Baddeck for the trip. I had never seen a book like this one before:

The thing that really caught my eye was the guy in the Maple Leaf uniform. I was fascinated, and AF #1 joined the small pile of comics I was allowed to buy.

Then my mom hid all of them away so that they’d be new to read during our big trip. Grrrr. 😀

While we were away on our trip I found #2 and #3. When we got back home my brother and I managed to talk our parents into letting us subscribe to a number of Marvel comics (as I recall, the more you subscribed the cheaper the individual subscription.) And the rest, as they say is history.

I’ve read a lot of comic books since that time of my life. Alpha Flight still has a special place in my heart though. I get a real kick out of being able to read the first issue with everything just like it is in the copy in my longbox.

Hope you’re all reading some good comics and I’ll see you again next week!

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This Week in Marvel Unlimited 2019-11-18

November 19th, 2019

It’s Monday yet again, so welcome back to another This Week in Marvel Unlimited post! In the “new” column, it’s a fairly big week for the War of the Reams crossover, with the main book hitting #4 and three crossover books joining the service. Of those, the one I find most interesting is Giant-Man #1, The premise intrigues me: The All-Mother, Freyja, needs a team to infiltrate New Jotunheim. How do you do that? Get four characters who can grow to giant size: Tom Foster, the current Goliath, Erik Josten, the former Thunderbolt called Atlas, Scott Lang, the current Ant-Man and Lang’s friend Raz Malhotra, the current Giant-Man.

Elsewhere Spider-Man: Life Story #3 becomes available, Uncanny X-Men and Age of X-Man continue their parallel tracks, and MU readers get a chance to check out The Immortal Hulk #17. There are a few others, of course, but those are the ones that caught my eye.

As often happens, the most interesting part of the week for me is the back catalogue. This week we get fifteen issues of Classic X-Men… kinda.

So, the year is 1986. The X-Men are the cast of the most popular comic-book in North America. Chris Claremont has been writing the book for 11 years. Back issues are hard to come by, and expensive when you do. So Marvel sees an opportunity: a reprint series that will allow current fans to read the older material at a reasonable price.

The thing is, Marvel’s comic books had changed during the eleven years that had gone by since Claremont began his run. Specifically, the page count was now higher than it was in 1975. So, in order to pad out the books, (and to entice readers who may have already bought or at least read the originals to buy the reprints) Marvel included new X-Men stories written by Claremont. Each story was set around the same time of the reprinted issue, filling out details or showing things from a perspective not seen in the original book.

Now the thing is, all of those originals are available already in Marvel Unlimited. So the Classic X-Men books now available (and those issues on the service before this week) only have the new stories. They don’t have the reprints. There are holes in the collection of Classic X-Men, but a lot of those holes are because not every issue of the reprint series had new stories in the back.

It makes for an odd read. I’m one of those people who eagerly picked up Classic X-Men. I only really got into comics in 1983, so being able to read all these older stories that were referenced in the X-Men was great! The back-ups often dovetailed nicely into the main story. One particular favourite was Classic X-Men #26, reprinting the first appearance of Alpha Flight. In the original issue (Uncanny X-Men v1 #120) Wolverine is wandering in Calgary. As was normal for comics of the time, we got to “hear” his thoughts courtesy of thought balloons. At one point, he wonders if “Cracklin’ Rosa” is still running her “social club”. That was published in 1979.

The backup in Classic X-Men #26, published nine years later, took that inconsequential line and from it spun a fairly amusing tale of how Banshee’s work for Interpol resulted in Wolverine getting into a memorable brawl at “Cracklin’ Rosa’s.” The story is almost evenly split between a night out at Harry’s HIdeaway, where the tale is being told,  and flashbacks to the events at Rosa’s.

Now, the reason I’m going into so much detail is this: With the backup happening just a page or two after the reprint of Wolverine’s musings, it was easy to connect the two. Without the original story, reading the backup loses something, in my opinion. Still, it’s great to be able to read that stuff without digging into my longboxes (I still have my run of Classic X-Men.)

I don’t know how much more material there is to reprint from Classic X-Men; Marvel eventually stopped adding new material when the length of the originals reached “modern” page counts.

See you here next week!

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Out Of The Basement Podcast – Episode 86

November 18th, 2019

The boys get together to talk about various geeky topics, including video games, RPGS, MMOs, movies, comics, etc. In this episode, we are joined by Patrick Ramsahoye, and Dwayne McKinnon, and we discuss a lot of what’s we’ve been into, and dive into news and rumours.

The episode can be downloaded directly from the following link, or automatically downloaded if you have already subscribed to the RSS feed through iTunes or any other feed reader.

We’d like to thank Radio Free Music for providing our new Intro and Outro music. The first track is called Drop and Roll, the second Grand Navy Plaza. Both are by an amazing artist called Silent Partner.

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This Week in Marvel Unlimited 2019-11-11

November 12th, 2019

Well, Monday has come around again. This time it’s Remembrance Day here in Canada, and Veterans Day in the United States. If anyone who’s served is reading this, thank you.

For those of you playing “cross-over scorecard” at home, this week in “new” additions (week of May 8th, 2019) we have one Age of X-Man book (Apocalypse & the X-Tracts #3) and three War of the Realms ones. Of the War of the Realms books, the most interesting to me is Agents of Atlas #1, featuring Greg Pak’s reimagination of the concept to an all-Asian team of heroes fighting the War on the Pacific Rim. At least Jimmy Woo (Khan of the Atlas Foundation) is involved. I really like Pak’s writing though, so I’m looking forward to this.

In the nostalgia market, Marvel Feature #1 gets a Facsimile Edition. This one features the first appearance and origin of the Defenders, Marvel’s first “non-team” superhero team.  Also serving the nostalgia market is a reprint of Marvels #3, the excellent Kurt Busiek/Alex Ross series. I’m doing it a disservice though. This is much more than a reprint… this is a 25th anniversary annotated re-release. If you’re like me and love both Marvels and an insider look at everything that goes into making a fantastic comic book, this re-release is a gold mine.

There are actually five Spider-Man books out this week, and three of them caught my attention. The first is the May 4th Free Comic Book Day book (yes, Free Comic Book Day 2019 was also Star Wars Day.) Also catching my eye was Symbiote Spider-Man #2 and Spider-Man/Deadpool #50. My reaction to the Spider-Man/Deadpool book is “wow, that book lasted fifty issues?” (#50 was indeed the final issue and features a cover appearance of the Grim Reaper. Not the Marvel villain one either. 😀 )

Symbiote Spider-Man is a series set during the time after Spider-Man got his living costume, but before he found out the truth about it and got rid of it (creating Venom.) I’m interested here because the writer is Peter David. I’m a big fan of David’s Marvel work (you may recall my mentioning his X-Factor run in my last column.)

That’s it from the “new” side this week (I’m trying to avoid just listing everything that comes out.) On to the back catalogue! This week illustrates why I love Marvel Unlimited so much. This week we get issues #91-#107 of Power Man and Iron Fist.

Now, Power Man and Iron Fist was a book I was aware of when I started seriouslyreading comics back in the early 80s, but it wasn’t a book I actually read. I was aware of it because of Marvel’s house ads. The sales on PM/IF weren’t the greatest (although they would blow away most of today’s books) and so Marvel supported the book by running house ads in their other titles. The ads were striking because there were two main ones, both full-page spreads. One featured Luke Cage, the other Danny Rand… and they were both breaking the fourth wall, talking directly to the reader. Luke threatens the reader. Danny talks about Luke getting mad (and violent) when he finds out people aren’t reading their magazine. They were great ads. I didn’t have the budget to get more comics (I consider myself lucky my parents subscribed me to the handful I did) but those ads have stayed with me for well over thirty years now.  Check them out here!

Power Man and Iron Fist is a great example of Marvel just not saying die. It all started with Luke Cage, Hero For Hire #1 in 1972. That lasted sixteen issues, and then re-branded itself as Luke Cage, Power Man with #17. In the meantime, Iron Fist got his own title in 1975 (after appearing in Marvel Premiere for several issues). Neither title was doing that great. Iron Fist’s book was actually cancelled, and Chris Claremont wrapped up some storylines in Marvel Team-Up. Then, Claremont introduced Luke & Danny in Power Man #48. Two issues later, Luke Cage, Power Man became Power Man and Iron Fist.

Power Man and Iron Fist lasted from issue #50 to issue #150, and featured some really fun stuff. With this newest batch of books, Marvel Unlimited now has everything Power Man and Iron Fist right from the beginning through to #107, and then it jumps to #121 (which is a Secret Wars II cross-over issue.) There is onemissing issue between #50 and #107… #73. You’ll have to forgive Marvel for that one though. It featured Rom, Spaceknight, and Marvel doesn’t have the rights to reprint anything with Rom in it.

I’m really hoping Marvel will eventually reprint #108 through to #150. This is a series that I’d love to binge-read. The reason we have as much as we do is obvious: Luke & Danny’s profiles got a major boost thanks to the Marvel/Netflix collaboration that brought them both to millions of subscribers. Here’s hoping that we get the rest of it.

See you in this space next week!

 

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This Week in Marvel Unlimited 2019-11-04

November 9th, 2019

Hello all! Yes, I’m deeply aware that this post is five, yes five days late. Mea culpa! Regardless, there’s a lot of stuff worth talking about this week, so let’s get right into it!

On the “new” side of things, from the week of May 1st, 2019: In crossover land, things are a bit slow this week. War of the Realms hits #3 in the main title, and two crossover books: Champions #5 and Strikeforce: The Dark Elf Realm. This is an interesting team-up of Hulk (Jen Walters, having dropped the “She-” of late), the Punisher, Blade, and Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes,) They’re being led by a very young-looking Freyja. Age of X-Man meanwhile only has one book this week, Prisoner X.

Star Wars has three books this week, including a facsimile edition of Star Wars #50 from the original Marvel run forty-odd years ago. Amusingly enough, the description of the issue on MU is a complete mistake. The description/synopsis is taken from Donny Cates’ Silver Surfer: Black #1, which won’t be added to MU until January.

Elsewhere Dead Man Logan continues with issue #7 of 12. The purpose of the story is to bring to a close the surprisingly popular “Old Man” version of the berserker mutant which first appeared back in 2008 and was brought into the main Marvel universe in 2015’s Secret Wars crossover. We also have issues of Deadpool, Domino: Hotshots and Spider-Gwen: Ghost-Spider. Rob Liefeld’s Major X hits #3 and Meet the Skrulls is in with #4.

The second issue of the short-lived Marvel Team-Up revival is in this week, as is Amazing Spider-Man (2018) #20.1. I’ve never understood why Marvel does .1 issues. Anyways, I don’t want to bore my readership by talking about all the issues on here. I’m just going to mention two more. Warning: Here be spoilers!!! (For a six month old comic, but still…)

Uncanny X-Men (2018) #17 features the funeral of Rahne (Wolvesbane) Sinclair and shows how she died in a mind-reading flashback. Easily the stupidest hero death I’ve ever come across. Doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Thankfully, reversed by Age of X / Power of X.

And the final “new” issue I want to mention: Cosmic Ghost Rider Destroys Marvel History #3. Cosmic Ghost Rider is a classic case of “you never know what’s going to be popular.” CGR is Frank “The Punisher” Castle, bonded with a Spirit of Vengeance and granted the Power Cosmic by Galactus. I have no idea how Thanos scribe Donny Cates came up with this idea but it’s pretty nuts… in a good way. CGR has gone from those Thanos appearances to star in two limited series so far, and a role in the most recent Guardians of the Galaxy series.

On to the back catalogue! There’s an interesting mix of old and new here. First, did you know that Marvel outsources? It’s true! Marvel has had smaller publisher IDW put out all-ages material under the “Marvel Adventures” banner for the past year or so. A bunch of the Marvel Adventures stuff has been added to MU this week. I’m not sure if I’ll read any of these ones, but I’ll probably check out Sam Maggs’ Captain Marvel book if/when Marvel Unlimited adds it.

The other part of the back catalogue this week is eight issues of the original run of X-Factor. Specifically, #s 93 to 100. Now, that era of X-Factor had two distinct incarnations. The first, introduced by Bob Layton and Louise Simonson, dealt with the original X-Men complete with a back-from-the-dead (kinda) Jean Grey. (Long story, blame Kurt Busiek. 🙂 ) Then, after the Muir Island Saga X-Men crossover, the book was re-imagined as a group of government sponsored mutant heroes led by Alex “Havoc” Summers.

This run (93-100) is from the second incarnation, and follows Peter David’s excellent run. It was David who shepherded the Havoc X-Factor to great success after Muir Island, and set the tone for the book until it finally ended in 1998. These issues are by J.M DeMatteis, who’s been hit or miss with me in the past. Still, I’ll probably find time to read them at some point.

That’s it for this week! Tune in next week to see if I’ll get the blog out on a more timely basis! (Oh, and to hear more about what’s available on Marvel Unlimited. 😀 )

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This Week in Marvel Unlimited 2019-10-30

October 30th, 2019

Well, sometimes real life gets in the way of blogging. Hence, a two-days late edition of This Week in Marvel Unlimiited!

I’ve been fairly upfront in this blog that I find the back issue library adds the most interesting thing about Marvel Unlimited every week. I have to say though, I don’t think I’ve ever been through a three week stretch like this one.

This week, the back issue adds are mostly just six issues (#7-#12) of X-Men Adventures, a mid-Nineties adaptation of the X-Men animated series. Marvel is very fond of adapting their animated shows into comic-book format; they do it with most of their animated properties. Now, if you enjoy those stories, this is a very good thing, as it completes the run. If you’re me, however, it just adds up to a massive shrug.

On the Marvel.com website, they’re also listing Amazing Spider-Man Annual #15, from 1981. I don’t have my tablet available right now, but I could’a sworn that on the tablet, there was just the X-Men Adventures issues. Anyways, this is an early Spider-Man/Punisher tale, written by Dennis O’Neil and penciled by the legendary Frank Miller. Well worth a read, imho.

On the “new” side of things we have 24 issues from the week of April 24, 2019. (My birthday! Woo! 🙂 ) We have three separate Star Wars titles (if you like Star Wars comics, MU is definitely the service for you; there are tons of stuff dating back to the original Marvel 70s comics.) Marvel Rising #2 joins this week (remember what I just said about Marvel loving to adapt their animated properties? Here’s a modern example.) Two other adaptations are worth noting: Wolverine: The Long Night Adaptation #4 ( adapting the scripted podcast from Marvel & Stitcher) and a prequel to Spider-Man: Far From Home.

We have three War of the Realms crossovers (Avengers, Uncanny X-Men & Venom) plus a single Age of X-Man one. The Avengers one is interesting; Agent Phil Coulson plays a major role… but he’s definitely not the Phil Coulson we all know from the MCU and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The rest of it is a the usual grab-bag. Everything from a new issue of Moon-Girl & Devil Dinosaur to Mark Waid’s Doctor Strange. (I’m a big fan of Waid’s work generally; I look forward to reading this eventually.)

That’s it for this week. See everyone back here next Monday (I promise I’ll have the next one out on time. 🙂 )

 

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This Week in Marvel Unlimited

October 22nd, 2019

Welcome back to another installment of This Week in Marvel Unlimited. I’d hoped to get this out earlier, but as it’s not quite time for people to wake up on Tuesday morning I’m gonna say it’s still Monday night and go from there. 😀

With Mondays come more new comics on the Marvel Unlimited service! On the “new” side of things, coming at us straight from the week of April 17, 2019, we have the usual mix of crossovers and unrelated titles. War of the Realms is still happening, with issue #2 of the main limited series and another three crossover titles (including, oddly enough, the Punisher in his own War of the Realms one-shot.) On the X-Men side Age of X-Man continues on… along with Uncanny X-Men, which shows what’s happening with those mutants that got left behind from the crossover. Keeping with the X-Men side of things we also have the oddity of Rob Liefeld’s return to Marvel, Major X #2.

There’s a couple of comics from April I’d like to discuss for a few minutes. Chip Zdarsky’s Spider-Man: Life Story hit #2. The conceit behind this LS is interesting: Have Spider-Man start his career in the sixties (matching when his first comics came out) and then age him in real-time after that, with each issue covering a new decade. Issue #2 covers the 70s. I’m looking forward to reading this eventually; Zdarsky is a talented writer and a Canadian to boot.

Another limited series that stands out is Meet the Skrulls; issue #3 joins Marvel Unlimited this week. Meet the Skrulls is an interesting beast: if you’re familiar with the hit cable tv show “The Americans”, you have the general idea for this book. Just substitute Skrulls for Russians and throw in a lot of MU flavour. I haven’t heard a lot of buzz on this one, but the concept interests me.

The final one is actually a new reprint of an old comic: Amazing Spider-Man Facsimile Edition #252. Marvel has had a good amount of success tapping the nostalgia market with these facsimile editions. The concept is simple: reproduce a significant issue of a comic-book exactly as it was first published, advertisements and all. This one is the first appearance of Spider-Man’s black costume, which would lead to the most significant Spider-villain/anti-hero of the past thirty years: Venom.

 

On to the back catalog! The issues added to Marvel Unlimited from the back catalogue always interest me. Sometimes, the selection follows a theme. I’ve seen a week where they added a whole bunch of different Chris Claremont titles, for example. Or all the issues will fill in the holes of a particular title, like last week’s Mutant X run.

Other times, it’s a complete hodgepodge. That’s this week. If there’s a theme here, I can’t find it. We have a two-issue Dave Cockrum Starjammers LS from 1990. Claremont & Byrne’s Phoenix: The Untold Story from 1983. (That one’s moving onto the read list for sure.) An oddity called Blackwulf (#1) from Glenn Herdling (who?) and Angel Medina. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning doing a Century one-shot (Century being a cast member from the short-lived Force Works series. Force Works was an Avengers offshoot.) Two issues of Bizarre Adventures from the early 80s. A Marvel Handbook style one-shot for Planet Hulk called the Gladiator Guidebook. A similar title for House of M. And on, and on…

There’s not a lot in there that I want to read. One of the Bizarre Adventures issues (#27) is a Claremont/Cockrum X-Men story, so there’s that. I definitely want to read the Claremont/Byrne Phoenix one-shot. I own the Cockburn Starjammers LS, but I haven’t read it in twenty years or so, so I might give it a re-read. The rest? Probably not.

What I like, though, is that the oddball nature of most of these books shows Marvel’s commitment to digitizing its catalogue. Gives me hope that more of the comics I really want will be put on the service eventually. (There’s a lot of Alpha Flight that’s not there yet, for example.)

Hit the comments and let me know what you think! If you’re on Marvel Unlimited, is there anything this week you really want to read? If you’re not with MU (yet), is there anything that makes you think you’d give it a try? Am I being way too long winded? Let me know!

See you here next week!

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This Week in Marvel Unlimited

October 15th, 2019

Welcome to the first edition of “This Week in Marvel Unlimited.” It’s Monday, and for Marvel Unlimited, Monday is New Comics Day. If you’re Canadian, hope you’ve had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend, and hope the return to work tomorrow is an easy one.

So, in the “new stuff” this week (which hit comics shops and ComiXology six months ago), the main thing is that the War of the Realms crossover is starting to ramp up. The first issue of the main Limited Series hit the service last week, and this week has the first cross-over issue of Asgardians of the Galaxy. (Yes, that throwaway line that Thor uttered towards the end of Avengers Endgame actually came from the comics.)

This is a huge crossover. The lead-in was eight issues spread over three titles. The main title was a six-issue mini, but there was around fifty tie-in issues. Big. Huge. This is the sort of event that Marvel Unlimited is great for, because there’s no way you could buy even half the issues for the cost of a one year subscription to MU.

Other issues of interest: The X-Men “Age of X-Man” event continues on, and the Spider-books continues warming up the “Web of Venom” event with Cult of Carnage #1. This leads into the “Absolute Carnage” event that’s happening on ComixOlogy or at your local comic shop right now.

In the back catalogue is an… interesting… choice. Marvel has put up a bunch of issues from the 1998 “Mutant X” series, and now all 32 issues are available. Now, the 1990s were a period when I wasn’t reading as many comics as I did in the 80s, largely because I cut back during university. (Comics weren’t as expensive then, but they still added up.) I doubt I would’ve read Mutant X though. Mutant X was the brainchild of prolific (but, imho, decidedly mediocre) X-Men scribe Howard Mackie. Mackie had replaced Peter David on X-Factor (David’s first run of X-Factor was simply excellent IMHO) and X-Factor was ultimately cancelled to make way for Mutant X. For an idea of what Mutant X was like, check out an archived “Year in Review” post from longtime X-Men reviewer Paul O’Brien.

Mutant X is much more interesting for a three-way lawsuit mess involving Marvel, 20th Century Fox and Fireworks Entertainment in the early 2000s. Marvel used the Mutant X name in conjunction with Fireworks in what appeared to be an attempt to make an X-Men tv show without involving Fox. Fox owned both film and television rights to the X-Men at the time, so it’s not terribly surprising the lawyers got involved. Mutant X the tv show, due to the lawsuit mess, had absolutely nothing in common with Mutant X the comic-book except the name.

That’s all for this week. Hope to see you in this space next week for another new batch of Marvel comics.

 

 

 

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New feature: This Week in Marvel Unlimited (Intro)

October 14th, 2019

Hey! So, my fellow castmembers/commentators/contributors on the Out of the Basement Podcast have been wanting some more content on this site, so I thought I’d try to do this.

If you’ve listened to the podcast (and if you haven’t, but you’re here, download a few episodes and give it a try!) you know that I do most of my comics reading these days through the Marvel Unlimited service.

I’ve been reading comics for over thirty-five years now. Reading comics is pretty much baked into my DNA at this point. Proof would be that my daughter (9 years old) enjoys them as well, (although not as much as I do, to be honest).

The problem is, comics are *expensive*. Take a look at ComiXology (https://www.comixology.com) . The average cost of a Marvel comic these days is $3.99… U.S. (I should mention that this is a Canadian based site & podcast.) Some issues cost even more… $4.99, $5.99, etc.

Marvel Unlimited helps with this. A lot. If you’re willing to pony up $69.99 US (a little over $90 CDN) you can subscribe for an entire year. In return, you get access to all the comics Marvel publishes… six months after they hit the shops.

In addition, Marvel Unlimited adds stuff from their huge back catalogue every week. Sometimes it’s something that just wasn’t there before; sometimes it’s adding to or filling in gaps of collections that were incomplete.

So, every Monday, (Marvel Unlimited adds things on Mondays, unlike the usual New Comic Book Day, a.k.a Wednesday) I’m going to talk about what MU has added. The focus is going to be more on the back catalogue adds than the newer stuff, but I’m not going to lock myself down too much.

I hope you’ll take a look, and chime in with your own thoughts in comments.

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Review of the Clones – Episode 11: Conan The Barbarian

October 10th, 2019

In today’s episode, we are joined by our friend Patrick, as we do a full blown comparison between the original 1982 version of Conan, the Barbarian, and the 2011 remake.

The episode can be downloaded directly from the following link, or automatically downloaded if you have already subscribed to the RSS feed through iTunes or any other feed reader.

 

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