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It seems like we're enjoying the pick-your-own format so we're going to keep it going!

This month, pick out a comic anthology you would like to read. As a reminder, an anthology contains multiple, independent short stories, whether that's from multiple sets of creators or just one.

If you have any recommendations, don't hesitate to let us know!

This month's episode is a public one, released on April 27th. As before, the IRCB crew will pick from your selections for a book to read and discuss on the show!

I'll throw in my latest creation from the 5 issues of Creepsi Twisted Tales. /book/show/6...

Starting in 2013 Dark Horse took over the publication of EC Archives, i.e., republishing the output of Bill Gaines� comics, including Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror, both of which originally ran from 1950-1955. I’ve dipped into a few of these collections in the past and thought to continue with one or two for this month’s theme, starting with The Vault of Horror, Volume 4 .

I have a recommendation that i've read a couple months ago, DC's introduction to various characters in giant 400+ pages here /book/show/2...

I intend to read Broken Frontier: Anthology. It has been catching my eye for quite a while now, so this is a good incentive to finally give it a shot.

I'm not a big fan of comics anthologies. The stories tend to be too short to be interesting.

However, Image is starting a new monthly anthology called "Image!" and I may give it a try. Some comics will serialize monthly through the compilation. This is a standard model in Europe, but doesn't seem to catch on in the US. Dark Horse tried it with "Dark Horse Presents".

Anyway, here is the info on "Image!"

Before I heard the allegations of misconduct about Brian Wood, I loved his Northlanders saga. Seven books gave us intimate portraits of Viking individuals and families throughout the years, in three geographic areas- Iceland, Europe and the Anglo-Saxon regions. I also really enjoyed his two-book series Rebels which shared short stories about America's founding, esp set in the northeast corner of the US. While all these stories were penned by Wood, he utilized different artists.

I hope to read You Died: An Anthology of the Afterlife, but I might wait all the way until October for it to be a Halloween read.

I highly recommend We Spoke Out: Comic Books and the Holocaust. Comic and Holocaust historians discuss the context of each issue, and there's a fantastic forward by Stan Lee. Jews were speaking out on the Holocaust in comics decades before it entered public discourse.


My pick to read is Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, Volume 1 - or volume two, depending on which one gets to my library first!

I will be reading Anthony Bourdain's Hungry Ghosts

Well, this worked out nicely. I read Bitch Planet: Triple Feature, Vol. 1 - a group of 15 stories spread over 5 issues collected into a trade. I enjoyed how they fleshed out the world in which the main story takes place.

Ashleigh wrote: "I will be reading Anthony Bourdain's Hungry Ghosts

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I was struggling with my choice this month and I like the look of this one, thanks for the suggestion!

Ashleigh wrote: "I will be reading Anthony Bourdain's Hungry Ghosts

"

Whoa, this looks wild!

I did "The Old Guard: Tales through time" for this one. Not a great fan of anthologies, but had just picked this one up, so thats a win!

I changed my mind and am going to read The Silver Coin, vol 1 for this month.

This month's BotM episode is available now on the main podcast feed!

The discussion went a little differently than we had planned at the beginning of the month. We all had multiple anthologies we wanted to talk about, including a few of the suggestions from this thread!

We talked about:
- The Old Guard: Tales Through Time, Vol. 1
- Image! 30th Anthology #1
- Killing and Dying: Stories
- The Neil Gaiman Library Volume 1
- The Silver Coin, Vol. 1
- Hellboy, Vol. 3: The Chained Coffin and Others
- Femme Magnifique: 10 Magnificent Women Who Changed the World
- The Wicked + The Divine: The Funnies

Thanks for your input this month! I hope you all like the new discussion and episode formats. I know I have added a lot of suggestions from you all to my to-read list in the last few months.

This week's trip to my LCS. Lots of big fat anniversary issues.

Amazing Spider-Man #1
Dark Knights of Steel #6
Justice League #75
Knights of X #1
Shadow Service #11
Something is Killing the Children #22
The Swamp Thing #12
Thor #24 (#750)
TMNT: The Last Ronin #5

I don't know why I always wait until the end of the month to do the BotM but I read The EC Archives: Piracy! I see EC Archives collections on Hoopla when I browse and figured, why not? Old school anthology style with a bunch of different creators doing short stories every issue. It was pretty fun! I like me some pirate stories, and looking through older golden/silver age comics. Basically every story followed a similar pattern of "guy sails the seas, guy is a mean pirate, guy does mean things, guy dies", but there were some neat twists on that as the book went on.

Paul wrote: "I intend to read Broken Frontier: Anthology. It has been catching my eye for quite a while now, so this is a good incentive to finally give it a shot."

“Broken Frontier� has long caught my eye. The Robbi Rodriguez cover art is stunning against the blank background, and the anthology contains enough of my favorite creators (Cullen Bunn, Daniel Warren Johnson, Noel Tuazon, Joshua Hale Fialkov) that I likely would have backed the Kickstarter had I known of it.

Creating short self-encapsulated fiction is hard. So many anthology stories feel like pitches for bigger stories, end up with trite “he was dead all along� twists, or are five pages of abstract art with what the author must have felt to be profound metaphysical musings. While I don’t feel “Broken Frontier� turned out to be a gold standard for anthologies, I do feel overall it does a solid job exceeding the expectations set by others.

The ostensible theme of “breaking boundaries and exploring the unknown� is kind of consistent through the stories if you squint hard enough, but it’s probably better if you don’t make it a requirement for reading. Sure, the stories were sometimes Twilight Zone-ish, but that’s a pretty solid goal in itself. The art quality is of much higher standard than most multi-artist books I know, which kept me engaged with each turn of the oversized hardcover’s pages.

Far and away the story that impacted me most was Robert Sammelin’s “The Wave,� a gorgeous wordless adventure that made me want to know so much more about what was going on. I found “Quin Returns� (David Hine/Mark Stafford) to be an excellent version of its kind of story, punched up with grotesque and bizarre aspects. And “Plunder� (Phil Hester/DWJ/Doug Garbark) is one of the best self-encapsulated stories here, even if you likely know exactly where it’s going.

“Inside Outside� by Karrie Fransman is the one story that might need a bit of content warning. If the first fairly innocuous page saying “This summer I came off the meds. And it started soon after.� makes you feel uncomfortable, you should consider skipping it. I know it made me uncomfortable, and that’s not easy to do.