I just ordered the first 4 volumes of Fantastic Four by Hickman and volumes 2 and 3 of Chew. I am so stoked to read Fantastic Four after hearing so many great things and more Chew is always good!

I have noticed over the past couple of months that Marvel has been experimenting with paper quality in monthly issues. I am perfectly fine with this or I should say I was until I noticed they are doing it with their trades as well. I bought the ASM: Big Time Ultimate Collection the other week and started reading it about an hour ago. The whole book felt cheap in my hands for something that retails for $40 (Even though I payed $26 for it). The pages are some of the thinnest paper I have ever felt. I mean I am fine with a glued spine but come on I am afraid that I will tear a page out if I use too much force. Anyone else have any similar experiences with Marvel trades?

This weekend I picked up a signed Wonder Woman #1 from my comic shop. The owner got Cliff Chiang to sign 52 of them a couple of weeks ago at a con in Charlotte, NC. I got number 7 and I am so psyched to have it in my collection!

With the New 52, the majority of my reading from it is from the "Dark" family. Justice League Dark, Animal Man, and Swamp Thing (Batman is my other series and I dropped Detective last week). After catching up with JLD tonight I was thinking that if the Animal Man/ Swamp Thing crossover that is quickly approaching goes off without a hitch, which it should given the creative teams, that there should be a crossover between all of the Dark titles. I know that crossovers between more than 2 or 3 books upset a lot of people because they must buy everything to get a complete story but seeing as it looks as if the majority of the dark books are cohesive it seems that it could work. Just a thought of mine. A man can wish can't he?

I feel that the first ac of Detective Comics in the New 52 was treated unfairly. Everyone was slamming the lame villain which I do admit Dollmaker was pretty lackluster despite the concept of him being really creepy. I also did not help that each issue ended with a big "shocking" cliff hanger either. The positive I see in that arc is Tony Daniels is trying to establish his version of Gotham after Snyder came in with the Black Mirror which I can appreciate. Trying to follow up Snyder's run is a tall order and whoever takes it upon themselves to so has their work cut out for themselves. Hopefully this new arc with the Penguin puts the book in the right direction that it should have started off with.

I finally set up a subscriber box at my local shop (Ssalefish in Winston-Salem, NC) and it is as follows:

• Batman
• Detective Comics
• Animal Man
• Swamp Thing
• Justice League Dark
• Uncanny X-Force
• Wolverine and the X-Men
• The Shade
• American Vampire
• Hellblazer (gonna jump on with the upcoming arc and then catch up through trades)

Super stoked and after reading Fatale #1 I have another to add to that list.