U2 performs New Year's Day in 1983.

Happy New Year. I hope 2022 is good to us all. Headline courtesy of my favorite band, which I hope puts out an album of new music sometime soon. I don’t know if their songs saved my life, but if any band’s music has ever done that for me — it’s theirs.

I have been busy with life and unable to find the time to post regularly to this blog. I’m currently holed up in a mountain home near Lake Arrowhead, with more than a foot of snow expected in the next 24 hours. It’s like old times for this ex-pat Canuck, and my kids are loving their first exposure to winter fun.

If you’ve been reading the blog, or wanting to see what I have to say about the last few Marvel Star Trek comics, I apologize. I promise they’re not that great, which is probably why I haven’t been keen enough to write them up to get it done.

Mage 2 cover
Cover to Mage #2, by Matt Wagner.

Comics-wise, the year’s end saw me go on a big Matt Wagner kick. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I’ve acquired a full run of the original Mage series. I’d read that story before, when Image reprinted it in the late 1990s. But those prestige-format reprints had issues with the glued binding, and I wasn’t a fan of the re-colored and re-lettered pages. The original issues, as soon as I saw one, was the only proper way to read it. The wraparound covers are fantastic.

Cover to Mage #5. Art by Matt Wagner.

Having just acquired right before Christmas the final issues of that 15-issue run, I’m ready to read through The Hero Discovered, the original issues of The Hero Defined, and then finish it off with the relatively recent The Hero Denied series. It’s 47 issues in all, and I’m looking forward to it.

Cover to Mage #9. Art by Matt Wagner.

Along the way, it was impossible to not reawaken my interest in Wagner’s other major character, Grendel. I found in some long boxes the first 12 issues of the color Comico series from 1986 or so and read them — I think for the first time. It’s becoming clear that I’m going to be happier going forward reading rare 1980s gems than most of the current crop of comics being published by Marvel, DC, etc.

Cover to Mage #15, the series finale. Art by Matt Wagner.

I acquired via eBay a cheap copy of the 2007 collection, Grendel Archives, which collects the original black-and-white Grendel tales from Comico Primer #2, and the original Grendel #1-3. That was a fun read. You can really see the early elements of Wagner’s art and writing style that quickly matured over a few short years into Mage and the later Grendel projects.

Cover to Grendel Archives, a hardcover collection published by Dark Horse Comics in 2007. Art by Matt Wagner.

It may seem strange for a grown man to say this, but as I face a new year that promises great successes alongside tremendous challenges, I take great comfort from this strange hobby of reading and collecting comic books. It is art. It is story. And it offers experiences no other medium comes close to offering.

So, thank you, comics. Happy New Year.