25 Series I Want To Read in 2015

I began this particular reading challenge in 2013, as a way to motivate myself to read widely across genres and also to kind of catch-up on some big names of the various genres I haven’t been able to get around to as yet. The 2013 challenge was a close one for me, and last year’s challenge I completed in full, though there was a bit of a snag with that one early on. Either way, I still love this challenge immensely, given all the different flavours and styles I get to sample with it, and so here’s the 25 series I am looking forward to reading in 2015.

You can see the previous list for 2014 here and 2013 here.

Grimm Fairy Tales #106 (Comics Review)

The first arc on the softly-rebooted Grimm Fairy Tales ended last month, and it was a fairly good end to a fairly strong arc. We got to meet with the next generation of probable Realm Knights and saw how they all interacted with each other and how they were all influences by their own past events, their histories and their own experiences. It created what I think of as a really volatile mix since they are all coming off the Realmsopcalypse that was Age of Darkness, and while things are back to normal, there are still some things needing a work-out.

In this week’s Grimm Fairy Tales #106, we are witness to the start of a new arc, and it doesn’t go off without its own troubles. The students begin combat training under Shang, and their differences quickly rise to the fore, especially between Ali and Wulf, all of it leading to some rather dark things in the second half of the issue. On the other hand, we have Sela seeking answers as to whether her new charges just might be too powerful for their own good, or if there’s a way that their immense powers can be curtailed. I didn’t enjoy this issue as much as I have the other ones, especially from an art perspective, but it was a decent issue still.

Ant-Man #1 (Comics Review)

The next couple of movies from Marvel are going to be Avengers: Age of Ultron in May this year and then Ant Man in July this year. The latter will close out Phase 2 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and we will then have to wait till next year’s Captain America: Civil War for the next phase. Ant-Man will leave the MCU in a rather interesting place, what with the hero being a reformed thief who wears a Sci-fi suit that can shrink him down to the size of an ant and he goes around riding on top of ants as his shtick. Rather interesting premise, and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing this movie.

This is where Ant-Man #1, out this week, comes in. As with many other comics released recently by Marvel, this too is meant to highlight the titular hero, who also goes by the name Scott Lang, so that fans old and new alike can grow comfortable with him by the time the movie rolls around in about 7 months. The first size, with almost ten extra pages than a regular comic, does some interesting things, but it also feels like a going-through-the-motions kind of comic. The art is actually pretty decent here, but the story, not so much.