New Comic-book Night - 2/13/13

Once again, it is New Comic-book Night (or NCN, for short).  For the last couple of weeks, I have only purchased back-issues of the older "Matrix" Supergirl series, because I did not need any of the new releases on those weeks. It's not that I didn't want to read any of the comics that came out over the last two weeks, but rather, I mostly read digital comics now, and those can be bought any time. I'm still frantically trying to catch up on most of the New 52 series from +DC Comics, having gotten current so far with only four (Batgirl, Supergirl, Superman, and Justice League), and one of those (Superman) is about to get the hook.  For most of the other titles I collect, I am many months behind, still (for example, I just read Wonder Woman #10, and #17 is about to come out this month).

However, there are a few titles that I want to collect "on paper," for various reasons I shall not discuss here.  Those include one that came out this week, Batgirl.  Indeed, Batgirl is on my pull list at my comic shop (one of only three titles to earn that distinction, the other two being Supergirl and Justice League).  Also this month, the new JLA title is being launched (but it's not out yet), and one of the new series affiliated with it is Katana, debuting at #1 this month.  I don't know much about Katana as a character, but I tend to like Samurais, and I will be picking up JLA for the first few months, at least, to see how it is going, so I thought I'd give Katana a try.  I haven't read it yet, so I don't know if I will like it or not.

Along with those two new comics, I also picked up a few more "matrix" Supergirl issues -- 61, 65, 67, 70, and 71. Now, before tonight, I did not have any issues of that series past 60, so you might be wondering why I didn't continue to move up in chronological order.  Well, I wanted to, of course. But my comic-shop was missing most of the 60s. The three I purchased were the only ones they had.  They're also missing about half of the 70s as well, so I am going to have to do a lot of mail-ordering to complete the series.

I noticed with some dismay that Gail Simone did not write Batgirl #17. I wonder if this issue was written during the brief period after she was fired, but before she was re-hired.  It wouldn't be surprising to have one such issue, but I'm a bit befuddled that it would come out so quickly.  They fired Gail in early December, and this is only two months later. I always thought comic-books had a longer lead time (3-4 months from scripting to publication). But maybe these days they are not so far ahead as they used to be.  They did re-hire her, so hopefully Gail will be back by #18.