[For this year’s
installment of my annual
Beach Reads series, I wanted to highlight books I’m looking forward to
checking out. That means I’ll have less to say about them, of course—but I hope
you’ll share your thoughts on these and/or your own Beach Read recommendations
for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll go great with suntan lotion and iced
beverages!]
The comic book that’s
gonna make me return to the genre after decades away.
When I was
around 10 I was a voracious comic book reader; I believe Superboy
and Justice
League of America were my favorites (perhaps also G.I. Joe, if that
counts), but I had a ton of other titles as well. It was never a sole or
central reading interest—even within the sub-genre of illustrated literature, I
was at that age at least as interested in Tintin, Asterix, and (most shamefully
from my current perspective) Garfield the cat as I was in comic books—and I don’t
recall frequenting the comic book store to find the newest issues. But while
those details might mean I don’t have the bonafides to call myself a true once
or future fan, I can and would argue that comics were a formative genre through
which this young AmericanStudier came to understand many elements of
storytelling and world-building.
By middle school
I had carried my interest in those elements over to the genres
of fantasy and science fiction, and a good deal of my adolescent pleasure
reading would focus on them, to the exclusion of comics. When I worked in book
stores during and just after my time in college, I realized how much the world
of comic books had passed me by, how little I recognized even the series with
which I had grown up, much less the plethora of new series that had entered the
scene. (Or, just as likely, which had long been around but with which I had in
my limited knowledge not been familiar.) As I’ve moved into my professional
career, it’s only been when a particular book I was teaching demanded it—looking
at superhero comics to help contextualize Watchmen, trying to
read up on at least a fraction of the comics references in The
Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao—that I’ve even dipped my toes into the
comprehensive ocean that is 21st century comic books.
Well, that’s all
about to change, and the motivation is one that I share with many, many other
AmericanStudiers and readers. The great Ta-Nehisi Coates,
about whom I’ve written
plenty in this space already, is two issues into his run with Black
Panther, one of those long-running comic books about which I know far
too little. The reviews have been uniformly positive, the sales have been off
the charts, and, thanks at least in part to Coates’ successes, Ryan
Coogler’s upcoming Black Panther film keeps adding amazing actors to its
roster. Quite simply, it sounds like every fan of good storytelling needs to
check out Coates’ work here (along with that of his collaborator/illustrator
Brian Stelfreeze), and I’m excited to make a long overdue return to the
world of comic books in the process.
Next prospective
Beach Read tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts on
this book? Other Beach Reads you’d share?
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