I’m behind on quite a few things this month because of both work and some personal stuff. Those few things not only include work (in fact, I have a ton of essays to grade that are sitting to my left) but two podcast episodes and a bunch of blog posts for this site.

What’s been helping, though, is comics. Specifically, the theme months for the back end of the year because in my unread piles are several books that have been arranged by theme for September (fantasy), October (horror), November (war), and December (holiday). I mix up a few other types of books here and there, of course, but the theme months have been really fun for when I am bin diving because I’ll deliberately grab something if it’s cheap just to read it during a certain month.

That being said, my fantasy book pile is pretty solid this time around, encompassing books both new and old and of different tones. Case in point, the books from the four series I’m writing about here.

I guess I’ll start with Showcase #83, which stars Nightmaster. It’s the second of a three-part storyline. The story, which is written by Denny O’Neil and has art by Berni Wrighston is about a guy thrown from the real world into a medieval adventure where he’s trying to rescue his girlfriend from various creatures and magical beings. The book was published in 1969 and has a number of the tropes that you’d expect from that time, right down to some of the mod fashions the main characters are wearing in the flashbacks to the previous issue. I originally was going to just read this and chuck it–after all, who needs yet another falling apart comic book in his collection–but I have to say that O’Neil’s writing and Wrightson’s art is stupendous, and I was intrigued by the story. So I’m going to track the others down … and might actually look at some of those other latter-day issues of Showcase because there’s some really interesting stuff in there.

Moving on through my DC books, I’ve got three issues of Warlord–#48, 51, and annual #3. Issue 51 reprints the very first issue of Warlord and since that issue is a bit hard to come by, I thought that for the very little I paid for it, it would be worth the read. It was enjoyable and the “Dragonsword” backup story by Paul Levitz was nice. But when I got to the annual, I was a little disappointed. This story has Travis Morgan in space and fighting alien dinosaurs or something. There’s magic involved as well and while I enjoyed the art by Dan Jurgens and Mike DeCarlo, I didn’t think it was a very memorable story.

Issue #48, though, was procured for a very different reason. I fished it out of a quarter-bin sale because it has the very first appearance of Arak, whose adventures I have been collecting for a while now. And speaking of Arak, I managed to grab two issues of that series–#27 and #45–at last weekend’s Baltimore Comic-Con. I don’t have much to say about those issues beyond the fact that every single one of these books that I’ve read has been a really solid story and I’m looking forward to trying to finish the run. I picked up a ton of them years ago at a convention and I am hoping to maybe run across them when my LCS has their annual Thanksgiving tent sale (crosses fingers).

And then … there’s Groo. Honestly, it’s hard to review any issue of Groo because they’re all great. I love the way the book pokes fun at the barbarian comics tropes and never takes itself too seriously, and as a fan of Sergio Aragones’ art in Mad Magazine for years, I will never pass up a chance to grab an issue. So I guess I’m going to try to collect the Marvel run of Groo as well? Thank goodness I don’t care about the condition of the books.

Anyway, most of these are keepers. I’ll probably get rid of the Warlord annual and will definitely hold on the Arak books as well as Groo. And I’ve got plenty more where that came from.