Possibly Maybe

Here's the list of what I'm thinking of getting this week:

Batman #688
Captain America Reborn #1 (of 5)
Dark X-Men Beginning #1
Green Lantern #43
No Hero #6
North 40 #1 (of 6)
Stand American Nightmares #4
Superman World Of New Krypton #5 (of 12)
Unwritten #3
Wednesday Comics #1 (of 12)
X-Men Legacy #226

There are a few titles there I'm not sure about yet. Dark X-Men I probably will give a try, but North 40, which is (I think) a new Vertigo miniseries about a community in America plagued by demons or something (I think), I'm really not sure if I'll buy or not. I'll probably flip through it, see if it's shiny enough to spend money on. World of New Krypton is in the relegation zone if it doesn't buck its ideas up soon, and The Stand is on thin ice too. Not because it's not competently done; it is – it's a very literal adaptation of Stephen King's novel (which I love). There's just one fatal flaw that kills it for me every issue: the captions are in the past tense. That may not seem like much, but it's an adapting choice that pulls me out of the story every time. I don't know if it's something Marvel didn't have any say in, but if they did, they slightly shot themselves in the face. Comics (or at least American comics) have a well established etymology, whereby captions describing or embellishing the action in the panels are written in the present tense, adding to the immediacy of the action. As soon as you go against that dictum, you risk losing that immediacy, and that's what's happened with The Stand. Which is a bugger, because Mike Perkins's art is decent enough, and I'd be happily enjoying the comic if it weren't for that one niggle.

You'll notice that Green Lantern is back again. And yes, I will be buying it. I am mentally unwell.

And in a further illustration of mental illness, Captain America: Reborn #1 actually came out last week, but I bought the John Cassaday limited variant instead of the main Bryan Hitch cover, and now I'm considering buying the Hitch cover as well.

It is a sickness.