I followed Ed Brubaker’s Captain America until Steve Rogers returned during Captain America: Reborn. Rogers’ return was not great to put it mildly. It was equal parts story and shipping schedule that hurt it, but I’m over it and I’m ready to enjoy Secret Avengers. Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter are running the show here and this is really Brubaker’s continuation of their story as Bucky Barnes has taken over the pages of Captain America. I did fall behind in reading as this book was shipping, but diving back into them made for some fun reading. Intrigue, an interesting cast and a mandate to protect the world from unknown threats combine to form something special here.

Spoilers may follow.

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X-Men #6 (Volume 3) arrived in late December concluding the Curse of the Mutants (X-Men versus Vampires) storyline, and this is a good point to discuss the new series by Victor Gischler and Paco Medina. I fell far behind in reading this series as it published and I had to catch up on nearly every issue today. Apparently, I didn’t even make it all the way through issue #2 when it first shipped! I’ve been a huge X-Men fan most of my life and have been reading for decades. Falling behind like that says a lot about this book and my feelings regarding it.

Spoilers ahead.

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Yesterday, I took Mrs. Lydonwrites and Mother Lydonwrites to see the Cirque du Soleil show DRALION. I owed Mother Lydonwrites for her birthday in November, and this was the Mrs’ Xmas gift, but of course, I went along too. If you’ve never seen Cirque du Soleil, you don’t know that seeing it is a gift to yourself, even if it’s the second time you’ve seen a particular show. Allow me to explain.

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This morning I discovered Angie had made an “appointment” for me to experience Chic-Fil-A‘s new breakfast sandwich, the “Spicy Chicken Biscuit.” Apparently, this is the “premiere” week for the new menu item, and it’s actually not yet for sale to the public as sandwiches are available by appointment only.

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It really feels like ever since playing a crucial role in ending the Final Crisis, Superman has basically been missing from the DC Universe. He spent a year away from the Earth on New Krypton amongst 10,000 other Kryptonian supermen including General Zod. During this storyline, Superman did not star in either Action Comics or Superman as those books highlighted a series of replacement heroes operating in and around Metropolis. The New Krypton storyline climaxed with the destruction of New Krypton and an extremely short but brutal war between the surviving Kryptonians led by General Zod and what I guess amounted to the American military lead by General Lane (Lois’ father). Upon the conclusion of the World of New Krypton series, Superman returned not just to Earth but also to his namesake comic, Superman, as superstar writer J. Michael Straczynski (JMS) took the book’s reigns amidst much fanfare. Things, however, have not worked out quite as DC Comics may have planned.

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