SHUT IN THEATER: Weekend Reading 178

September continues, and it brings Weekend Reading 178! As usual, the Beat elite will be spending our weekend in Stately Beat Manor, getting lost in a good book.

What will you be paging through this weekend? The Beat wants to hear from you! Let us know in the comment section.

AVERY KAPLAN: This weekend, I’m continuing the trend of reading Rebecca Oliver Kaplan’s leftovers with Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare Vol. 2 by Yuhki Kamatani with translation by Jocelyne Allen, adaptation by Ysabet MacFarlane, lettering and retouch by Kaitlyn Wiley and cover design by KC Fabellon. Then as far as prose goes, I’m checking out some nonfiction: San Diego’s Most Haunted: The Historical Legacy and Paranormal Marvels of America’s Finest City by Nicole Strickland. It’s an interesting perspective on nearby locales, and a fun way to learn some history about a lot of places I’ve visited. I am already planning to track down the author’s other books on the RMS Queen Mary!

BILLY HENEHAN: While I patiently wait for the wonderful Brooklyn Public Library to bring me That Texas Blood Volumes 2 & 3 by Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips, I’ll be diving into my other recent obsession: reading through all of the original Annihilation crossover in the Marvel Unlimited app. I’m currently on issue 3 of Super Skrull by Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Gregory Titus. I’m looking forward to being done with all these preamble miniseries and onto the main comic. I never read Annihilation and am greatly enjoying it so far. 

DEAN SIMONS: This weekend will be a slightly longer (and partially offline) one with Yom Kippur inbound. Now that I am back in the UK, I have access to my weekly subscriber copies of 2000 AD to resume my catchup. I’m still pretty behind – March’s Prog 2322, as of writing – but with so many great strips I am reluctant to rush to catch up, instead preferring to take my time. My favourites from the early part of this year have been Michael Carroll and Jake Lynch’s newest series of Proteus Vex, and Dan Abnett and Mark Harrison’s The Out. Nothing like a bit of crazy scifi with great art to make a weekend.

TAIMUR DAR: I’ve been a fan of Mike Allred’s art and work since I got back into comics in the mid 2000s. However, it only recently dawned on me that I never properly read his Madman series. So I’m finally going to rectify that by reading the first trade collection of his Madman comics. 

CY BELTRAN: Last weekend, I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of American Cult, an anthology from Silver Sprocket tracking the trajectory of, well, American Cults from the colonial era to today. The collection is edited by Robyn Chapman.

DEB AOKI: I’m re-reading River’s Edge by Kyoko Okazaki, a 1-volume story from Kodansha about a group of high school kids who share a secret hidden in the tall reeds by the river near their school. It’s a little bit like Stand by Me, but with much older kids, more sex and well, it’s more dark, stark, raw and a little quirkier in that grown-up way than the 1986 flick with River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton.

It’s by the creator of Helter Skelter and Pink, and it’s the first time in years that another work by this influential creator of comics for women is available in English. The Becky Cloonan-designed cover is also a bonus – it’s the nicest version of this book’s cover design produced yet (even compared to the Japanese and European editions of this same book!) 

You can peruse the 177 previous entries in The Beat’s Weekend Reading archive by clicking here.