Canadian Mash-Up

Sarah McLachlan
15 December 1997: UCF Arena, Orlando, Florida

The other week, there was a parking and traffic mess in trying to get the kiddo to and from his drum lessons on the campus of the University of Akron because there was an event across the street at EJ Thomas Hall that night. On the way off campus, I finally saw the marquee and realized Sarah McLachlan was performing that night, which immediately transported me back 13 years to a concert Tracy and I attended at the University of Central Florida.

We went through a stretch there in the late ’90s where Tracy was winning every flipping contest she entered! Didn’t matter if it was a radio call-in, or at our local CD store, or drawings, or whatever. If Tracy threw her name in the hat, it inevitable was the one selected. We had dinner and VIP tickets to see Duncan Sheik and Lisa Loeb at the Atlantic Dance Club at Disney’s Boardwalk; we saw the Wallflowers at the Hard Rock Café; we attended New Year’s Eve at Disney’s Pleasure Island with Joan Jett and Men at Work that included a night’s stay at the Contemporary resort and limo service to and from Pleasure Island. It was crazy how she scored over and over with these contests.

The particular contest tied to Sarah McLachlan was through Disc Go Round. I don’t know if they are still around, but they were a sort of used CD store franchise. “Ours” was on SR 50 in Colonial Plaza across from TooJay’s, one of our favorite eateries back in the day (and around the corner from Beefy King!). Tracy and I lived nearby in the Conway and Lake Underhill area of Orlando at the time. Because we had both worked at CD stores back in the day and have always been lovers of music, we would go to the store often and got to know the owner.

The cool thing about Disc Go Round (and, as I recall, CD Warehouse had a similar model but with less friendly staff) was that they were the first used CD store I had been to with listening stations. But unlike full booth style ones you used to have in old vinyl record stores, these were just multi-disc players set up on a kitchen bar type counter with barstools and headphones for each station. You could take the empty CD case to the staff and they would pull the corresponding disc and queue it up for you on the player. Tracy and I could waste all kinds of time there!

Tracy had entered the contest at the store because we wanted to see Barenaked Ladies. It’s rare for me to queue up the Barenaked Ladies anymore, but there was a time they were in heavy rotation. Tracy introduced me to their music, and we saw them perform numerous times around Orlando, including in the parking lot of the Hard Rock Café (they had a cool concert series at the time that was cheap and fun and took advantage of the weather). Tracy ended up winning the tickets, and we were treated to one of the most peculiar line-ups we’d ever come across. We joked it was an odd sort of Great White North bill, with Chicago’s Freddy Jones Band opening (who we had, admittedly, never heard of before that night), followed by Canada’s Barenaked Ladies, and headlined by their then-label mate and fellow countrywoman Sarah McLachlan. At the time, she was huge, touring behind the Surfacing album and riding high off the success of the inaugural Lilith Fair music festival she had organized earlier that summer.

Tracy had McLachlan’s Solace, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, and Surfacing, but we were clearly going to see Barenaked Ladies! We wanted jokey, goofy, Kraft Cheese throwing fun! We were definitely in it for a good time. It was a cold December night in Central Florida, and the university is nowhere near where we lived. I remember finally getting to the venue after a long line of traffic snaked its way through campus and finding our seats. We weathered the Freddy Jones Band, then had a rollicking good time with Barenaked Ladies touring on Born On a Pirate Ship, and they were amazing.

Eventually, though, they finished their set and soon McLachlan took the stage and the entire tone of the night changed. Melancholy, wistful, longing, and lovely. Decidedly not what we had come for with the Barenaked Ladies set. Soon, some of the girls near us began shouting “We love you, Sarah!” It was, well, odd. Tracy and I hardly knew what to make of it initially, then we began to realize that we were surrounded almost entirely by college girls. Crunchy, granola college girls so overwhelmed with emotion they had tears running down their cheeks as they screamed in adoration.

We quickly figured out that “gay college girls” were a key demographic of McLachlan’s at the time. (Maybe still?) The combination of overwrought emotion and cries of love seemed to only grow as the show continued. Tracy and I ended up leaving the show early, maybe halfway through McLachlan’s set. We were just too unnaturally amused by this clearly odd mix of acts, the completely different tones of both their sets, and their core audiences. It was a strange, strange night.

Another Time Undone

I finally got the deluxe edition of The Cure's Disintegration. It was a long time coming – both for the long-delayed album to finally be released last year and for me to actually get around to picking it up. As much as I love The Cure’s music up to that album, they peaked with Disintegration. Then everything changed after that: The ’80s were over, high school had ended, I left Ohio.

Originally released in May 1989, this was the sole Cure album to come out while I was deep (deep!) in my punk phase. And while I can and do love their other work like “A Few Hours After This…” and Pornography and “The Caterpillar” and Head on the Door and (especially) Faith, there is something to be said for the album that is released when you are actively a fan of a group that makes it that much more personal. Similarly, for example, Nine Inch Nails will never be as good as they were with Pretty Hate Machine, or Depeche Mode with Violator, to my ears.

Disintegration was the soundtrack to the end of my senior year of high school and that turbulent summer immediately after. My girlfriend at the time, the one who pushed me to explore my creative side and expand my musical tastes and really helped set me on the path to becoming the person I ultimately grew into, left me and moved to San Francisco to be with her ex-boyfriend (I never said the relationship was healthy), and I was left alone to process the emotional void.

The album was both the background against and inspiration for the bulk of my first real attempts at creative writing and poetry. That summer, I would go to the lone punk bar in Akron with my friends Jen and Nancy and others. We’d close the place down at 2am, then head over to the Country Kitchen on Arlington Road for sustenance. I’d come rolling into my parents’ house usually sometime after 3, put Disintegration on my stereo in the family room, and write until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more.

I wrote on unruled goldenrod yellow sheets of 8 ½ by 11 paper that came from I don’t know where. My weapon of choice was a fine tipped Sharpie. I had a manila folder that I had scrawled “Random Thoughts Escaping” across the cover (the masthead of this blog is a scan of that original folder turned into a negative). My first angst-y poetry collection. I wrote about all the things that were going on in my life, but primarily about the loss of love filtered through the dark and droning aesthetic of Disintegration.
Opening with the simultaneously crashing and swirling “Plainsong”, every last song on Disintegration is a masterpiece, epic in scope and often in length. From “Pictures of You” to “Last Dance” to “Prayers for Rain” to the thematically anachronistic “Lovesong” to “The Same Deep Water as You”, there isn’t a single song among the twelve that I wouldn’t consider brilliant, but “Closedown” and “Untitled” have always stood out for me.

The liner notes on the original album say “THIS MUSIC HAS BEEN MIXED TO BE PLAYED LOUD SO TURN IT UP,” and the opening tribal drums of “Closedown” are relentless. You feel them thrumming in your chest with urgency at any volume. The immediacy of those four minutes of music – one of the shortest songs on the album – is underscored with a mere 11 lines of lyrics compacted into 40 seconds of song, making every turn of phrase, every word matter. The lyrics are well within lead singer Robert Smith’s doom and gloom wheelhouse, but the music feels uncharacteristically hard. While Cure songs of the era are typically dense, “Closedown” actually seems to apply pressure, actively pushing the air out of the listener’s lungs, suffocating them.

The final track is by far my favorite of the album. To my young man’s sensibilities, it seemed so brazen to not name the song at all and simply refer to it as “Untitled”. Four short verses. No chorus to speak of. “Untitled” never meanders but isn’t too terribly fond of rigid song structure either. The words Smith crafts matched the then-fresh emotional wreckage of my ended relationship. With the exception of Cowboy Junkies’ “Dreaming My Dreams With You”, no other song completely encapsulates that feeling of loss I was experiencing the summer before college when my girlfriend and muse left me. I leaned on this album, and “Untitled”, in particular, to fuel my fevered scribblings.

My dad was a meat cutter for a local grocery store and worked horrible hours, either getting up at four in the morning or working the closing late shift. My parents and I were barely speaking at the time – they didn’t understand what I was going through, and I was an unyielding 18-year-old – but on those early morning days, we’d often pass on the stairs, both of us bleary-eyed as one was heading to bed and the other heading to work.

The Cure didn’t come to Northeast Ohio behind Disintegration until just after I had moved on to Bowling Green for college, but I ended up being able to come home for the Prayer Tour stop at the Richfield Coliseum in late August. I had worked at a local record store in high school and the summer before college, continuing there on breaks from school. I attended the Cure show with Jen and Nancy (who drove across the state to pick me up), along with my record store boss Ron and part-time co-worker Randy, whose full-time job was box office manager of the Coliseum. Thanks to him, we had front row, center floor seats, but it would have been an amazing show even if I’d had to watch from the rafters. The only downside was that although The Cure had The Pixies and Love and Rockets – two bands I love – opening for them on their west coast swing, we ended up with Shelleyan Orphan.

Although I was moving on from the muse in San Francisco, the powerful connection between this album and those events wreaked havoc in me that night. I remember tearing up during “Untitled”, thrilled that they were playing such a deep album cut so important to me. It was a crazy night, and I remember being deposited afterwards in my dorm room on the other side of the state somewhat more worse for the wear, to be honest. I never saw The Cure live again.

The Cure never released another album as good as Disintegration. Wish swung far too much in the opposite direction, and the schizophrenic Wild Mood Swings was aptly named. The lone bright spot was the single “Wrong Number” off Galore, which hinted at late ’90s relevance.

Ten years after Disintegration, in an attempt to link a new album to the glory days, Smith stated 2000’s Bloodflowers was the final part of a retrofitted trilogy that includes the band’s brilliant works of Pornography and Disintegration. Regardless of the manufactured trilogy concept, Bloodflowers was a return to form and hit me as I was turning 30 and returning to Ohio after a decade away. Succumbing to waves of nostalgia, I gave it a pass.

The Cure faded from relevance for good after that, both for me personally and, apparently, commercially with releases of The Cure and 4:13 Dream. I still love the old albums and listen to them regularly. I can reliably queue up a Cure playlist and enjoy the music for what it is, but Disintegration I can also appreciate as an aural marker for some of the messiest stumbles along my path to young adulthood. Without regret.

Youthful Resolve

The kiddo brought this home earlier this week for Tracy and me to sign. Thought it was a pretty awesome resolution, explaining both the problem and the consequences of not changing the behavior.

Plus, the drawing of the student crying because he’s getting bad grades is just priceless!

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Brothers In Arms

So, that circle of friends I mentioned I ran with back in high school? Here we are on graduation day nearly 22 years ago. A motley crew if ever there was.

We were the Kings of Inside Jokes. I don’t remember who suggested it, but we decided to take out a “senior ad” in the back of the yearbook and simply list as many of our in-jokes as we could fit.

Once we hatched the idea, I started a handwritten list. Then I typed it all up and printed it out on a dot-matrix printer and circulated it among the group again to add anything else we’d overlooked. We crammed everything in there from Monty Python quotes to movie lines to references to ex-girlfriends and teachers to stupid stuff we’d done that had entered into our personal lore. Ultimately, it fell to yearbook editor John to sneak as much past the faculty advisors as possible. And, frankly, I don’t recall anything being cut from the ad – even blatant stuff like “Freddie Uncle Charlie Kate” made it through.

I have no intention of explaining any of these, but here is the ad scanned from my yearbook.

Storming the Fourth Estate

When I was in high school, I wasn’t super popular, but I was well-known, I suppose. That comes with the territory when your mom is a teacher in the district and your older sister was captain of the cheerleading squad. My circle of friends was an interesting bunch. Among the five of us were the yearbook editor (John), the president of NHS (Giac), a football stud (Larry), the most uniquely creative person in school (Gary), and the editor of the school newspaper (me).

Ethics weren’t high on my list of things to strive towards, and I leveraged the hell out of that newspaper editor position for personal gain, including giving my best friend his own column – Scribblings by John Booth. My favorite of his columns was one that chronicled our trip to the Akron-Canton Airport to cover then-Vice President George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign stop.

There was a lot going on around the whole rally. John and I used to play racquetball on a regular basis (The physical resiliency of youth is amazing. Consider this: at 18 I had a pack-a-day cigarette habit, but played racquetball weekly. Ah, to be young and stupid.), and on one particular outing we had either picked the press passes up just before playing or received them earlier in the day. We stopped at the mall after racquetball for smoothies as we sometimes did and had the passes with us. We were giddy and amazed that we, two high school kids, had been issued press credentials for a presidential rally. I stepped away from the table for something and when I returned, John informed me that the two girls at the next table were asking about me and for my name. John, inspired by the press passes in front of him, told them my name was “George.” And, according to John, their response was to coo “Georgie.”

More scheming went into just getting to go to the rally, let alone not have to ride with the band on their bus. The faculty newspaper advisor gave me a lot of leeway with things – to my ultimate detriment, I suppose – and I was able to sell her on the idea that both John and I needed to attend this event. I’m sure part of our reasoning was that our high school’s marching band was selected to perform at the rally. Of course, the only coverage we actually gave the band in the paper was some passing mentions in John’s column. There was also a lot of effort behind convincing the principal to let us take my car. I was initially surprised rereading John’s account of things to learn we didn’t pull that off until the day of the event. But in retrospect, I think we planned it that way to not give the administration much time to debate our reasoning – we were taking one of our parents’ good cameras and we certainly couldn’t take that on the bus with the band and risk it getting broken. (wink, wink!) I was also surprised at how much of our shenanigans John alluded to in his column that I allowed published. I mean, in theory we could have gotten into trouble for some of the scamming we did if the administration wanted to pursue it.

We froze our bits off in the hangar waiting for the Vice President, but I have very fond memories of everything about that day, including going over to John’s house immediately afterward to heat up leftover beef stroganoff and peas and watch those old episodes of Mission: Impossible and chatter away about how cool the whole experience was and that we had honest-to-goodness press passes and how about those Secret Service agents and, man, did you see how hot that national news chick was and can you believe we talked the principal into letting us take my car and it was your job to remember where we parked and, holy cow, was it ever cold!

A week later I voted for the first time in a presidential election, but that’s not what I remember about politics in the Fall of 1988. It was the heady experience of a high school senior and his best buddy at a presidential campaign stop posing as journalists; no matter how much of a sham it all was on our part.

And I can still corroborate John’s assessment of that national news chick. It may have been cold that fall Ohio day, but she was hot.

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At the Turning of the Year...

I have no real complaints about how things went in 2010, but my lack of reflection on events or the significance of anniversaries is odd for me. This year I finally was able to really reconnect with my oldest son who grew up in Florida. It marked the 10th anniversary of Tracy’s and my move back to Ohio after a decade away. And we celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary and my 40th birthday. Yet, for some reason, I have struggled with writing – or even journaling – about these events and milestones. I have been out of sorts for months really. Freelance writing job deadlines sandwiched between a family vacation in August and a month of work travel in October threw me completely off my game.

There has been plenty to chronicle, but the last half of the year knocked me out of any sort of writing routine. If this were any other year I would have been reflecting on my blog and in my personal writing, talking endlessly about how much more of a milestone turning 30 felt like ten years ago than turning 40 did this past year. I’d be exploring my thirties and how they treated me and what I hope for from my forties. Our August trip included Star Wars Celebration V, and warrants a write-up that I have yet to find the motivation to tackle.

There was the piece I started to write about the tenth anniversary of the release of U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and the importance of that album on me. My “End of the Eighties” track-by-track review was sidelined by my own distractions, and I never really recovered. There were book reviews and thoughts on comics and all other sorts of pop culture seeds that were planted but never really took root over the last half of the year.

The reconnection with my son Mikee has been amazingly rewarding, but the emotional experience for our family is incredibly personal. Not necessarily something appropriate for the wider audience. We are blessed to have him in our lives again and able to share this new chapter together. There are things to be recorded, but form and format are a curious animal I’ve yet to get my arms around.

I guess if I have a new year’s resolution, it’s to get back to writing regularly. Writing for me, for my family, for my friends and extended family. Finding my voice again and using it, whether it’s a personal journal entry, a blog post, a letter to a loved one, or organizing book ideas.

Book List 2010

Non-Fiction

1. The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 - John Farmer (Not as good as I was hoping for.)
2. Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin - Kathy Griffin (Fantastic read from one of my favorite performers!)
3. I am the New Black - Tracy Morgan with Anthony Bozza (Ditto.)
4. Shooting Stars - LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger
5. The U2 Reader: A Quarter Century of Commentary, Criticism, and Reviews - Hank Bordowitz (A re-read. Whenever I need some music journalism inspiration, this is always a good pick-me-up.)
6. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime - John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (A page-turner, though it really focused on the Democrats and kept McCain and Palin as footnotes, and I was hoping for a complete picture across the aisle.)
7. The Happiest Days of Our Lives (audio) - Wil Wheaton (I have read this book and listened to the audiobook many times, though I admit I probably prefer his keynote address at PAX better than anything else he’s written or performed.)
8. Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled over the Marvel Comics Empire - And Both Lost - Dan Raviv (Was hoping for a comic industry version of Storming the Magic Kingdom and was really let down. Had to slog through this one.)
9. The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks - Nicole Laporte (A nice coda to DisneyWar.)
10. Lips Unsealed: A Memoir - Belinda Carlisle (I couldn’t put this book down. Fantastic read.)
11. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut - Rob Sheffield (My first Sheffield book. Amazing.)
12. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebooook – A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal - Ben Mezrich (Like most of Mezrich's books, perhaps this book should have been on my “fiction” list instead?)
13. Just Kids - Patti Smith (The story of the friendship between Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorp is stunningly beautiful. Cannot recommend this book highly enough.)
14. Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son - Michael Chabon (Chabon’s books have never taken hold of me like this one did.)
15. Bicycle Diaries - David Byrne (An interesting take on sustainable transportation from former Talking Heads frontman.)

Fiction

1. A Gentleman’s Game: A Queen & Country Novel - Greg Rucka (I loves me some Q&C.)
2. Lost Horizon - James Hilton (A classic. One of my all-time favorite novels.)
3. Night of the Living Trekkies - Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall (I was skeptical of this one, but ended up not being able to put it down.)
4. Flawed Dogs: The Shocking Raid on Westminster - Berkeley Breathed (Oh, how I miss Bloom County. But this was a nice reminder of the magic Mr. Breathed is capable of.)

Trade Paperbacks and Hardcover Collected Editions

1. Spider-Man: Blue - Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
2. Hulk: Gray - Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
3. X-Men and Spider-Man - Christos Gage and Mario Alberti
4. Marvel Divas - Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Tonci Zonjic
5. Marvel 1602: New World/Fantastick Four - Greg Pak and Peter David
6. Queen & Country: Definitive Collection, Volume 3 - Greg Rucka (Another fantastic volume!)
7. Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin - Joe Casey and Eric Canete
8. Wolverine First Class: The Rookie - Fred Van Lente
9. The Immortal Iron Fist Omnibus - Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, David Aja (Possibly my favorite Christmas present from my wife last year, and maybe the best omni Marvel has produced.)
10. DC and Marvel Present: Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk - Len Wein, Jose Garcia Lopez, Dick Giordano
11. Afrodisiac - Jim Rugg, Brian Maruca (A must read!)
12. Daredevil Omnibus, Volume 2 - Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev (Bendis and Maleev’s run on DD is topped only by Frank Miller’s legendary run.)
13. Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. - Warren Ellis, Stuart Immonen
14. Air, Volume 2: Flying Machine - G. Willow Wilson, M.K. Perker (Meh. I ended up skipping volume 3 altogether.)
15. Dead @ 17: Afterbirth - Josh Howard (I’m a sucker for this series. Always a fun read!)
16. Spider-Man: The Death of the Stacys - Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, John Romita, Sr., Gil Kane
17. Batman: Year One, Deluxe Edition - Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli (Wow.)
18. Robot Dreams - Sara Varon (Wonderful storytelling.)
19. The Astounding Wolf-Man, Volume 2 - Robert Kirkman, Jason Howard
20. New Avengers/Transformers - Stuart Moore
21. Cloak & Dagger: Child of Darkness, Child of Light - Bill Mantlo, Rick Leonardi (A key limited series from my childhood that has stood the test of time.)
22. The Losers, Volumes One & Two - Andy Diggle and Jock
23. Empowered, Volume 1 - Adam Warren (Fun read!)
24. Uncanny X-Men: Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire - Ed Brubaker (I love so much of Brubaker’s work, but this left me a little cold.)
25. Star Wars Adventures, Volume 1: Luke Skywalker and the Treasure of the Dragonsnakes - Tom Taylor (Fun stuff recommended by my kiddo.)
26. Star Wars: Tag & Bink Were Here - Kevin Rubio, Lucas Marangon (Again, one of my kiddo’s favorites!)
27. Mercury and the Murd - Shawn Pryor, Chad Cicconi, Dave Dwonch
28. Athena Voltaire: Flight of the Falcon - Steve Bryant, Paul Daly
29. Blacklisted - Adam Witt, Pat Loika
30. Star Wars: Infinities, A New Hope – Various (Another recommendation from my kiddo.)
31. Nova, Volume 3: Secret Invasion - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
32. Nova, Volume 4: Nova Corps - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
33. Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1: Legacy - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
34. Catwoman: Crime Pays - Will Pfeifer, David Lopez, Alvaro Lopez
35. Ms. Marvel, Volume 4: Monster Smash - Brian Reed
36. The Walking Dead, Book Five - Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Cliff Rathburn (The brilliant series continues.)
37. Indiana Jones Omnibus: The Further Adventures, Volume 2 - Various (Childhood revisited.)
38. Daredevil - Visionaries: Frank Miller, Volume 2 - Frank Miller (Re-read it for the Elektra piece I wrote for an upcoming issue of Back Issue. So entertaining. This is the best DD has ever been.)
39. Daredevil - Visionaries: Frank Miller, Volume 3 - Frank Miller (Ditto.)
40. Super-Villain Team-Up: MODOK’s 11 - Fred Van Lente, Francis Portela
41. Ms. Marvel, Volume 5: Secret Invasion - Brian Reed
42. Elektra Omnibus - Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz (Another Christmas present from my wife last year. Amazing.)
43. Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition, Book Three - Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra (A must-read series!)
44. Avengers: Hawkeye - Mark Gruenwald (More of my childhood reading captured for posterity. Probably my favorite four-issue limited series of the ’80s.)
45. Avengers: West Coast Avengers Assemble - Roger Stern
46. Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle - David Michelinie and Bob Layton
47. Powers: The Definitive Hardcover Collection, Volume 3 - Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Avon Oeming
48. Star Wars Adventures, Volume 4: The Will of Darth Vader - Tom Taylor (Another kiddo recommendation.)
49. Spider-Man: The Gauntlet, Volume 1 - Various
50. Ms. Marvel, Volume 6: Ascension - Brian Reed
51. The Astounding Wolf-Man, Volume 3 - Robert Kirkman, Jason Howard
52. Dark Rain: A New Orleans Story - Mat Johnson and Simon Gane (A captivating story.)
53. Proof, Book 1: Goatsucker - Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo (Recommended by my friend Vince and others. Enjoyed every volume of it!)
54. Proof, Book 2: The Company of Men - Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo
55. Proof, Book 3: Thunderbirds Are Go! - Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo
56. The Invincible Iron Man, Volume 1 - Matt Fraction, Salvador Larroca
57. The Avengers: Vision and the Scarlet Witch – A Year in the Life - Steve Englehart
58. Revolver - Matt Kindt
59. The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects - Mike Mignola (One of the best books of the year. Period.)
60. New Avengers: Luke Cage - Town Without Pity - John Arcudi
61. Dan Dare - Garth Ennis, Gary Erskine
62. Chew, Volume 2: International Flavor - John Layman, Rob Guillory
63. Spider-Man: The Gauntlet, Volume 2 - Various (Not as good as the first or third volumes.)
64. Marvel Essential: Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Volume 3 - Roger Stern, Bill Mantlo (Loved every minute of this trip down memory lane.)
65. Guerillas, Volume 1 - Brahm Revel (Really dug this fascinating look at war.)
66. Y: The Last Man - The Deluxe Edition, Book Four - Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra (This series gets better and better with each volume. So sad the story is going to end for me soon with the final volume finally solicited.)
67. Daredevil Omnibus, Volume 1 - Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano (Not as good as Miller or Bendis’ runs, but certainly in the top three.)
68. Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2: War of Kings, Book 1 - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
69. War of Kings - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning and Various
70. Nova, Volume 5: War of Kings - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
71. Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 3: War of Kings, Book 2 - Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning
72. Torso - Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyke (I love these kinds of stories that are rooted in non-fiction and set in places I’m familiar with.)
73. Spider-Man: The Gauntlet, Volume 3 - Various
74. Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers - Reginald Hudlin, Denys Cowan
75. Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America - Jeph Loeb, Various
76. The Immortal Iron Fist: Immortal Weapons - Various
77. Daredevil Omnibus, Volume 2 - Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano