Weekly comic books are a big part of my life and below is a list of what I’ll be picking up this Wednesday along with cover artwork and previews courtesy of Comixology’s Pull List app.

Six new books for me including one of the three DC books I follow. I’ll also be checking out IDW’s Frankenstein Alive, Alive! #1 and John Byrne’s Trio #1 with reviews throughout the rest of the week.

• BATMAN #9 – I haven’t read Batman regularly in years, but Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s New 52 series may be the best book on comic shop shelves today. Snyder’s run with the character goes back quite a bit and it appears he’s been planting seeds all along the way. As the Bat-titles enter the Night of Owls event, I’m just hoping I don’t miss too much by not reading the other books.
• JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #637 – Part two of the Exiled crossover with New Mutants. Kieron Gillen’s Asgard series gets a lot of praise, but this is my first time reading it. If his Uncanny X-Men is any indication, I should really enjoy it.
• NEW AVENGERS #26 – I went into the Avengers tie-ins to AvX unsure what to expect and the Iron Fist story in New Avengers has really intrigued me. It’s introducing a previously unrevealed connection being the Phoenix force and the monks of K’un-Lun and Mike Deodato’s art looks fantastic.
• UNCANNY X-FORCE #25 – This book lost some steam coming out of the epic Apocalypse story that ran through the first eighteen issues. The Otherworld story that followed was by no means bad, but everything before it had really raised the stakes for this title. A landmark 25th issues, the start of The Final Execution, and Mike McKone art are just what this title needs.
• WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN #10 – Last issue was one of the best AvX tie-ins out there and there’s no signs things will be slowing down with an appearance by Cylops.
• X-MEN: LEGACY #266 – AvX hits another X-Men title that I regularly read, and the prospects of Rogue versus She Hulk are epic.

Check back every week to see what’s on My Latest Pull List and please share your thoughts on these titles and everything you’re reading this week in the comments.

It was going to be difficult to follow the events of Uncanny X-Force #18, but writer Rick Remender continues to impress as the series enters the X-Men: Regenesis era. The X-Force team has been put through the wringer and the status quo for a number of characters has dramatically shifted. Issue #19 provides a coda for what’s come before and sets the cast on the next stage of their journey. It’s a good example of how the latest X-Men rebranding effort should be applied to a later issue of an ongoing series.

Spoilers for Uncanny X-Force #19 will follow.

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For the past two weeks, Marvel Comics has been releasing a set of their trademark silhouetted teaser images, this time focusing on the X-Men line. With the promise of big changes to the X-Men’s status quo following the current Schism series by Jason Aaron, these teasers suggest a very different landscape for Marvel’s mutants beyond Cyclops simply being at odds with Wolverine. It appears that Regenesis will be a line wide revamp similar in nature to 2004’s X-Men: ReLoad and 2000’s X-Men: Revolution/Counter-X.

The initial promotional image for November’s X-Men: Regenesis focused on the division between characters that would be part of the new Wolverine and the X-Men title and the relaunching Uncanny X-Men. As these latest teasers have rolled out, we now see that no less than eight ongoing X-titles will be part of Regenesis.

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When Marvel’s May solicitations appeared earlier this month a group of books were very conspicuous by their absence. Four X-Men titles (Uncanny X-Men, X-Men: Legacy, New Mutants, and Uncanny X-Force) had no listings and it was clear that something was up. Last week Marvel released a set of teaser images for these titles and they’re giving more details all this week on Marvel.com. Every day at 3PM Marvel will host a series of “liveblogs” focusing on what they’re calling MMXI: Year of the X-Men featuring X-editor Nick Lowe and the creators behind each of these titles kicking off yesterday with New Mutants.

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There was a lot for this X-Men fan to be thankful for this week as all four major X-titles shipped on Wednesday. While in many ways this is great, I can’t help but recognize how much the publishing scheme for these books has changed after they had been coming out weekly for almost all of 2010. With this in mind, I thought it might be a good time revisit the state of the books post-Second Coming.

This will probably contain what some would consider spoilers, so keep that in mind if there are things you’d rather not know about these books.

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