Comic Book Tuesday #4: Secret Wars #1 by Jonathan Hickman

Author: Jonathan Hickman
Series: Secret Wars
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Release Date: January 1st 2015
My Rating: 3 cups
Blurb (from Goodreads):

The final incursion is happening! The Marvel Universe is colliding with the Ultimate Universe, and neither will survive!

I think I may have chosen the wrong order in which to read comic books. The (short) blurb should have clued me in on the fact that this issue is probably one in a long story line within the Marvel Universe, but for some reason I decided to ignore my instincts and go ahead and read it. I have to mention that this issue was part of the 12 Days of Comics on ComiXology this year, so that's how I found out about the book.

The art is fantastic. The colors are rich and beautiful, the drawings themselves are gorgeous. There are certain panels in which I felt like I wanted the characters to have a little bit more variation to their various facial expressions. but all in all the art is beautiful and I could watch it all day.

The plot is interesting. Two Earths, with their respective heroes, fighting each other. The problem was that it was too full of characters. Too crowded. Maybe it's because I'm still new to comic books, but I felt a bit overwhelmed by the number of characters in this issue. Also, it was kind of difficult keeping track on which character is on which side of the battle.

I did enjoy the idea of the two Earths fighting each other, which makes me wonder if there's a possibility to have two versions of each superhero in the final battle. I am curious to see who wins in the end, so I plan on reading the entire series.

Obsessed with Covers #27:The Crown's Game, The Cresswell Plot

Y'all know how much I love a pretty cover. I think about...40% of the books that end up on my shelves (be they physical or digital) do so because of the covers. Call me shallow but you have to admit that a pretty, shiny cover will catch your eye faster than a dull, boring one. Two, simple rules that I'll follow:

• 1, 2 or 3 (no more than 3, though) covers per week;
• books should be new-ish; no more than 2 years old.

Oh, before I share the covers that made me drool or want to stare at them for hours and hours, I have to say something. This is a semi-original idea. Why semi? Because almost every book blogger has something similar. The only thing I came up with was the title. If by any chance there's another blogger with a similar feature with the same title, I assure you I'm not stealing your idea. I'm just THAT bad with titles. Believe me, I'd love to be smarter and have a witty name for this feature, but I don't. So, no copyright infringement/theft/steal or anything of the sort was desired. All I can say is sorry :P

So, here are the prettiest covers I've seen this week.

I love this cover so much. First, that's a crown and who doesn't love a crown? Second, the crown is tricky, because the image in the front is also in the back, but it's made so that it looks like a shadow. At the same time, the reflection of the "shadow" or the back image is kind of stronger than the reflection of the original castle, so I'm wondering what the cover art is actually trying to show. I want to know how does the cover art relate to the story, so I will be adding this to my growing mountain of TBR.







The Crown's Game - Evelyn Skye

This is an extremely interesting cover. The doll's limbs are twisted in some really weird angles, each kind of pointing towards different directions. Also, they seem way smaller for how big her head is, which makes me wonder if that's not symbolic for that tagline too. I also love the white, pure dress of the doll. I'm all for symbols today, as you can see. I definitely will be checking this book out, because just the cover is making me highly curious about the story.

The Cresswell Plot - Eliza Wass

Did you see any cool covers this week?

2016 Shelf Love Reading Challenge

It's BAAAACK! We all know I did a horrible job this year for this challenge. I think I read only two books from my shelf and I bought a few books. To be fair, I didn't read all that much in general, what with my thesis and all. And ever since I graduated I've been in a reading funk. However I am very determined to make a good job in 2016. So I'm signing up again.

Shelf Love Challenge is hosted by the very awesome girls from Chapter Break, Second Run Reviews and Bookworm Brandee. The rules are simple:

• Read books that are in your personal library that were obtained before January 1, 2016.
• Responsibly obtain books for your personal library. You may wish to abstain from purchasing books or set a book budget for yourself. You decide the best way to get control of your TBR pile and read the books you already own.
• Library books (and textbooks) do not count for the challenge. You may use your library to obtain different formats of books you already own and count those towards your goal.

Like last year, I'll only count physical books into this challenge. I'm setting my goal to 21-30 books: give your shelves a warm friendly hug.

Unlike last year, however, I won't pick a list of books in advance. I'll use the tag selflove16 here on my blog for the books I've read for this challenge. And I'll also list them on Goodreads on this shelf. I think I have more than 30 books that I need to read, but I'll settle for that.

Anyway, I can't wait to get started once January gets here :)