SHUT IN THEATER: Weekend Reading 188

It’s Saturday once again, and that means Weekend Reading 188 has arrived. As usual, we’ll be holing up in Stately Beat Manor and getting lost in a good book. What will you be paging through? The Beat is waiting to hear from you! Let us know in the comment section.

AVERY KAPLAN: First up this weekend is Big Ugly by Ellice Weaver from Avery Hill Publishing. I’m going into this graphic novel sight unseen, but am already spellbound by its incredible aesthetic. Next is Everything Sucks: Friends Forever by Michael Sweater. I’ve been hooked on this series from Silver Sprocket since I discovered it, and I’m wholly confident this new issue will continue the trend.

YAZMIN GARCIA: After reading the wholesomeness that is Hirano and Kagiura by Shou Harusono I’m in the mood for something messier. I picked up The Remarried Princess with art by SUMPUL, adapted by HereLee, and original story by Alphatart. The series is about the empress Navier who gets cheated on after the emperor Sovieshu is smitten by a beautiful girl he finds in the forest. Sovieshu requests a divorce so he can marry his mistress and Navier’s only condition is that she gets to remarry the man of her choosing. I flipped through a few pages and I’m excited to keep reading and see how the story develops. 

DEAN SIMONS: I am bouncing between a lot of things at the moment, reading-wise, but one thing I picked up this past week is Hiroaki Samura’s Blade of the Immortal. I hadn’t looked at it in years but picking it up again, seeing the art afresh, it gives me chills; the level of detail and pencil effects…I can stare at a page forever. This weekend will be continuing my read/reread of that seminal series (and building my excitement about the Angoulême exhibition taking place next month).

TAIMUR DAR: The cold I had last week knocked me out more than I expected so I didn’t get as much reading done as I liked. Thankfully, I’m back to full health and ready to rectify that. My library got a copy of Spy x Family Vol. 10 by Tatsuya Endo. I’m not a huge manga reader but like many I fell in love with the Spy x Family anime and devoured the manga. Keen to see the latest from the Forger family. 

KRISTINA ELYSE BUTKE: I’m reading the fourth volume of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi The Comic by author Mo Xiang Tong Xiu with illustrations by Luo Di Cheng Qiu. I’ve been following the manhua since its beginning as my introduction to the world of Mo Dao Zu Shi (there are the books, the television series, and the animation). After that, I’m going to dive into the BL manga Cover My Scars with Your Kiss (Volume One) by Io Amaki. I’ve been devoting my weekends to BL and I don’t think that’s going to stop any time soon! I’m looking forward to cracking these open. 

BEAU Q.: December is the time of year we make all those Best Of lists…and for me, it’s when I try to finish books I started earlier in the year. I started reading Hayao Miyazaki’s Shuna’s Journey during SDCC– it’s this cattle herder adventure about resource warfare between Tibetan-inspired hamlets that Miyazaki watercolored in 1983! After spending two weekends cozy in bed, reading about crime up Mt. Everest, Shuna’s Journey is the perfect respite.

CY BELTRAN: I’ve had it for months now, but I’m trying to catch up on everything I’ve missed, so I plan to jump into Kate Beaton’s Ducks. I know, I know, I missed it last year, but there’s just so much to read… and I read only Stephen King for a good majority of the year. So now’s the time to check it out. I also finished Jaime Hernandez’ Perla La Loca last night, which represented the last chunk of Locas stories told in the original run of Love & Rockets. It blew my mind how well the two halves of that book build up to this really lovely conclusion, and now I really want to catch up to Xaime’s current run of stories. That means I’m onto Penny Century, which tells the eponymous character’s origin, as well as some miscellaneous shorts from the late 90s and early aughts.

REBECCA OLIVER KAPLAN: It’s a manga and manhwa explosion in this weekend’s weekend reading. While I know I’ve taken up the manga torch as of late, this weekend I’m reading something from another part of the world. Two graphic novels, both of which are based on the all-new, all-different original works of William Shakespeare, to be read in the voice of Steven Toast (Matt Berry): Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Graphic Novel, adapted by Steve Barlow and Steve Skidmore, with illustrations by Edu Coll, and Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing: A Graphic Novel, adapted by by Barlow and Skidmore, with illustrations by Tan Shian Wei.

You can peruse the 187 previous entries in The Beat’s Weekend Reading archive by clicking here.