Book 76: Batman Under the Cowl by Grant Morrison et al.

About six years ago, I started to think that maybe I should get into comics. I watched Batman: The Animated Series when I was a kid, and I liked it fine, but the comics had always been something that my brothers were into and I wasn't. But comics were always something that other creators of things I liked tended to like, and so I thought I would give them a shot. So I bought this because I knew of one of the writers of one of the comics in it, without realizing that it was a comics sampler, more or less.

This means that while there are six issues in this trade, they're all from different runs and involve different Batmans and villains and Robins and all that. Each of them is fine on its own, and I have enough knowledge of the Batman backstories to follow them, but so far what I have found with comics is that every time I attempt to read them, I encounter tropes I love (noble self-sacrifice, secrets, amnesia), but they're rarely the narratives I want about them. It's like the fun house mirror version of all of my favorite things. So like. This trade is fine for what it is, but thus far there's no there there for me in comics. But if I decide to try out comics again in the future, I'm definitely asking my comics-loving friends for specific recommendations on which runs to read, because I know that makes a huge difference, too. I think it's okay to also acknowledge that it just might not be my thing, though.

Grade: B 

Book 7: Hawkeye, Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction

I am not a big comics reader, but I had heard very good things about Matt Fraction's Hawkeye, and so I gave it a shot. This book is a collection of the first five issues of Fraction's Hawkeye run, as well as a Young Avengers issue that focuses on Kate Bishop, who also appears in four of the Hawkeye issues included.

I enjoyed this collection! One of the things I found really interesting was comparing the art; the first three issues were drawn by David Aja, and the fourth and five issues were drawn by Javier Pulido. It definitely informed how I saw the characters and their world, and made me think more about the interplay between the story and the art in comics. I'm currently in the middle of reading a very dense (but good) novel, and reading this was a lovely break from it, bite-sized complete narratives that connected to each other and are clearly building something larger. I don't know if I'm going to read more of this run, but I'm glad I read this volume of it, at least.

Grade: B