Weekly Reading: December 14

Can you spot the secret independent mainstream titles?

Well, I did it again! For the second consecutive week, I've only just today gotten around to mentioning my weekly funny book reading; this time two days before the next week's purchases! I can only claim that I have been busy with holiday shopping and indoor track meets... oh, and that other past time of mine, teaching. At any rate this was another week in which I inexplicably started collecting not one, but TWO new titles. Though one, Sweet Tooth, is  already 20+ issues into its run, the other Animal Man, was part of the New 52 DC Universe re-boot and issue 4 was just recently published. Despite how much I loathe coming late to the party (mostly because I  prefer reading books in their intended chronological order so I have the full narrative going into new issues), I couldn't resist Sweet Tooth, I book I'd thumbed through many times since issue 1 but just kept failing to commit to.

This week's total purchases included:

Animal Man #1-4 (DC)
Sweet Tooth #24-28 (Vertigo)
American Vampire #21 (Vertigo)
Uncanny X-Force #18 (Marvel)
Zorro Rodes Again! #6 (Dynamite)

Both Sweet Tooth and Animal Man are written by (formerly) independent comic book writer-artist Jeff Lemire. I first took notice of Jeff's stark visuals when he pencilled an issue of Jonah Hex earlier this year (at this point Sweet Tooth was already a modest "hit," and he had been brought into the stable of DC/Vertigo creators). While Lemire writes Animal Man, he plays both the writer and artist roles with Sweet Tooth, His writing/drawing style is clean and heady offering action and subtle food for thought. The personal challenge ahead for me is culling the back issue longboxes for the other issues so that I can get caught up on the compelling story of Sweet Tooth's eponymously nicknamed protagonist Gus, the antlered hero of this post-apocalyptic world...