It’s April and I can’t believe we’ve burned through 3 months of 2019.
My February was pretty busy and I didn’t expect my March to be (haha! Jokes on me). It started with the Indigo YA Spring Preview and I can’t link to a Twitter thread because my phone was dying. What I will do is highlight the books I’m excited to check out:
I watched Captain Marvel which was a delight but also long overdue. I’m hoping that the post-Avengers: Endgame films will reflect their audiences more than the way that the first ten years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn’t.
I went to the launch of Ausma Zehanat Khan’s A Deadly Divide at Ben McNalley’s Books as part of the In Her Voice series. It was great to see Ausma and to hear her discuss her book which is inspired by the 2017 mosque shooting in Quebec. I got to ask her a question: how do you make sure this stuff doesn’t get to you and how do you engage in self-care?
She responded that she relies on her faith (Islam), community and remembers that as a society we’ve gone through worse. We also need to remember that there are good people out there as well as those who do horrible things. I thought about her answer a lot when Christchurch mosque shootings happened not long after the event.
Going into March, I didn’t expect that the tail end of it would be dominated by Batman. I’ve always been a Batman fan but after DC Comics decided to move away from DC You which focused on increasing their audiences and accessible storytelling (and art styles that weren’t the typical “house style”) and shifted to DC Rebirth. When DC Rebirth began in 2016, it was obvious that it wanted to cater to its “core audience” which was overwhelmingly white straight cis male and that’s when I decided that I needed a break from the company and its books. I think it was the final nail in the coffin as someone who felt beaten down by comics so I was pretty disconnected with what was happening with superhero comics and the critical comics community
Cut to the end of mid-March. I was a guest on a Canadian radio show, Viewpoints with Todd van der Heyden, to discuss Batman’s 80th anniversary. This prompted me to give Tom King’s Batman series a read (got as far as mid-volume 2) and think about Batman in the way that I haven’t in a while. Then everyone was talking about Batman’s No Killing rule (or is there?) after Zack Snyder’s comments about the character which had me taping into my own thoughts about Batman’s rule in the criminal justice system. Finally, I ended up reviewing Detective Comics #1000 on a whim after reading an advance copy days before its release.
Summary of my Batman thoughts: He’s a big messy bag of consequences.
My 2019 March reads:
- Invisible Kingdom #1 by G Willow Wilson and Christian Ward
- Super Sons: The PolarShield Project by Ridley Pearson, Ile Gonzalez and Saida Temofonte
- Mera: Tidebreaker by Danielle Paige, Stephen Byrne, David Calderon and Joshua Reed
- Batman vol 1: I Am Batman by Tom King, Mikel Janin, David Finch and more
- Batman vol 2: I Am Suicide by Tom King, Mikel Janin and more
- A Matter of Malice by Thomas King
- Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers
- Detective Comics #1000 by various creators
So I’ve been on track with my reading resolution although I haven’t been reading as many books as I’d like. I’ve read mostly superhero comics from DC Comics but at least two of them are for kids/teens so that’s different. The one comic that offered a variety would be Invisible Kingdom which is a story in space.
I haven’t read any translated works. I’ve re-read one book which is Courtney Summers’ Cracked Up to Be and I haven’t read any works by Somali authors. I did however attend a reading/discussion featuring two Somali authors from the diaspora: Cristina Ali Farah and Mohamed Abdulkarim Ali.
Until next time…
Ardo Omer 