Funnybooks @ Taco Bell!

Yep, that’s right I went to Taco Bell yesterday and I found a complete set of the (four) Marvel Comics. The set consists of four brand new, full-sized 12-page comics featuring four Marvel characters or teams (Thor, Captain America, Avengers, and the Fantastic Four).



Each comicbook features 11 pages of a main story, plus a 1-page back-up by cartoonist Chris Giarrusso. Chris is perhaps best known as the guy who produces an on-going — if irregular— feature running through many Marvel comics called Mini Marvels. The Mini Marvels are kid-like incarnations of the main marvel characters in, well, silly adventures. Many of these stories have been collected into digest-sized books and re-issued. If you can find any of them I highly recommend you pick them up.

More Spidey Tchachkas!

As promised, here are more Spidey-related items that my beautiful family has acquired for me recently.

I truly have to hand it to my wife and kids, because not only do they put up with my funnybook habit, but they often supply me with a fix, by hooking me up with all sorts of comicbook-related goodies. (When my wife took my daughter to Micky D’s a month or so back, they had Spidey toys, and my daughter had my fie acquire one foe me, which was totally cool, as I hadn’t known that the Spidey toys were there at the time.)

Any ways, first up for this post is an old-fashion metal Spider-Man alarm clock that my son acquired for me when he was recently in Florida on a school vacation/field trip (how he arranged all that is a bit beyond me, but he did).

This is followed by the bag that it came in when he delivered it to me (no, he didn’t go to Universal, apparently he did his souvenir shopping in the Airport. He is, after all, the laziest kid alive).



This next item is a regular handkerchief that (apparently, and for no discernible reason) someone drew a Spider-Man figure on it. A buddy of mine came across it (I think it was his nephew that drew it). Well, he had no use for it, and knew of my love for all things Spidey, so he gave it to me.



If you look close at Spidey’s face, it almost looks like it was drawn upside down.

Finally, here are a couple of pics of a Spidey Easter Basket that I acquired (for 75% off) a couple of days after Easter from my local CVS. I love after-holiday pricing!



And here is the other side.



Is my family great or what?

Mini Marvels @ Taco Bell

I just heard from Chris Gar that there are going to be Marvel mini comics (staring Chris’ Mini-Marvels) at Taco Bell. I heard this on Tuesday, and ran out to my local Taco Bell, only it had a different promotion (I’m guessing the out-going promotion). These things usually change on Friday, so I’m hoping that this weekend to score a set (Whoo-Haa! more funnybooks on Free Comic Book Day weekend! What could be better than this?



By what I can see it is going to be FF, Cap, Avengers and Thor.

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!

OK, I just heard back from Chris, and he says that some Taco Bells are already distributing the comics while others haven’t seem to have gotten their shipments. So I’ll be monitoring this situation and let you know when I’ve acquired a set.

Spidey Bubbles

Yep, you heard me right, Spidey Bubbles! When my daughter returned from Virginia a week or so back, she brought with her some Spidey gifts (always a good thing). Well what she brought me was a trio of Spidey bubble-makers (one I already had, but no matter, I always love this stuff).



(This one I already had.)



This one was new.



This one was also new.

Stay tuned for more new Spidey gear!

When Parodies go bad

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m as big a fan of goofy crap as the next guy (yeah, this includes parodies) but this is such a tricky genre, that it can go horribly wrong, so quickly. That’s what I’m assuming happened with this badly-don Watchmen parody.

Sure, I suppose that when it was written, the author and his backer simply assumed that satirizing Watchmen was good enough, only it really takes more than that. This book was such a big swing and a miss that I felt the breeze from here.

Truth of the matter is that, I’ve read some parody comics from Marvel years after the event that they were parodying, and had that same sense of WTF I had when I read this piece of dreck.

Tomorrow, I’ll have more pics of new Spidey stuff I’ve acquired.

What I got for Easter

Yeah, yeah, I know that Easter was like a month ago, but right after Easter (actually ON Easter), the wife and my daughter went south to Virginia for a week (the little one had school vacation, and was invited by a friend to head south, needless to say Management went as well). Well, as can be expected, they took the camera.

Then, no sooner then they returned then the boy had school vacation, and headed souther, to Florida. Well, I had assumed that he took the camera with him as well, but apparently he didn’t. Only it wasn’t until he got back that I realized he hadn’t.

What has all this to do with the Webbing in Freedonia? Well, without access to the camera, I was unable to take pics of all the wicked-cool Spidey stuff I had gotten for Easter. (Yeah, yeah, I could have used my cell-phone camera, but, well, I was having tech issues with that little piece of hardware as well, but that’s an entirely different story).

So what we wind up with this time is a Spidey Sticker, a Spidey Tic-Tack-Toe game, and (believe it or not) Spidey kite string (which will actually go quite nicely with the Spidey Kite that I have sitting out in my garage.



Well, that’s it for now folks, I have to hustle off to a CAG-CT meeting, and I’m already running late for that.

A Blast from the (far distant) Past!

So, a couple of weeks back I attended I-Con with my friend and colleague, Mark Mazz. Our visit there was fruitful on a couple of levels (in that we got to meet with a number of our contemporaries while at the comicbook portion of the event). Plus, I got to hang with Mark, and his lovely family.

As I was leaving, Mark handed me a copy of the very first comic that Mark helped produce (As you all know, Mark was the creative Director on the three issues of Psychosis!, and issue #7 of CAG all of which contained stories of mine (see sidebar). The comic Mark gave me was Utterly Strange Stories #1. The 1991 comic features a full color Plasma Baby cover by Joseph Michael Linsner, a nine-page story, entitled Mercy Street written by David Quinn and entirely illustrated by Linsner in his classic CFD B&W style, a super vintage CFD ad and an ad for Plasma Baby with a Linsner painting!

The second story in the comic is Plasma Baby by Writer artist Mitch Waxman. Plasma Baby is Waxman’s homage to Japanese monster flicks. After it’s debut in Utterly Strange Stories it moved on to Caliber Press where it was appeared in a pair of critically acclaimed miniseries.

Both of the stories in this comic are quite entertaining, with Quinn & Listner’s tale a haunting story of confinement, loneliness, and feeling trapped, while Waxman’s story is a more lighthearted entry into the genre of giant monsters. After reading the comic, I realized that Mark (the comic’s Creative Director) really had this long history of producing high-quality independent comics, and it made me wish that I had spent a greater part of my early career self-publishing.

Fun stuff, all around. As I did a quick search across the net, I discovered that copies Utterly Strange Stories still exist and are available for sale. If you are interested in what a high-quality Indie comic looked like in the early ‘90s (with work from top-flight creators in the field), then you should look this one up and grab a copy for yourself.

The Marvel Way

Curiouser and curiouser...

In a sort of Catch 22 we are hearing more about the issue of when is a President not the President, apparently this issue can be answered by saying when he appears in a comicbook. You see, Current U.S. President Barack Obama has appeared in so many comics over the past several months that it appears that the various publishing companies may very well be infringing on his privacy.

At least that is the way a story on Newsarama is saying.

With all of these appearances, one might assume that the most popular President in a generation is something akin to “public property” and anyone can use his likeness or even him in any story as they see fit, just as they would set a scene near the Lincoln Memorial. That’s not quite the case.

Yep, everybody loves the President and everybody want’s to put the Pres in their funnybook, hoping to get Spider-Man 513 numbers for their book.

Currently, there is no uniform Federal standard that governs an individual’s right to publicity – publicity rights are governed by state law, with the First Amendment placing a limit on how far the laws can go. According to Newsarama’s legal analyst (and Blogger) Jeff Trexler, Wilson Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Pace University, state and case law generally recognize a public affairs exception, that is, an image that is clearly a comment on a public figure or official (such as an editorial cartoon, a parody or a satire) will be protected. The amount of protection the representation enjoys tends to decrease with the increasing commercial use of the image.

Then, according to a quote by Editor-in Chief Joe Quesada, that dark-skinned man man in the grey flannel suit appearing in Marvel Comics may not be the the President after all...

[T]he character wasn’t intended to be President Obama and merely representative of the current president in the Marvel Universe, not necessarily Obama himself.

As it turns out nothing can be funnier than the truth itself.

A-Googling, we shall go!

Hey, ever Google yourself? (keep it clean.) Well I just did, and found this old link to an article that was published in regards to the book I wrote in 2001 about fast food toys.

The kiddie-meal toys your children collect are more than child's play. They may be worth money.

They already are to Robert J. Sodaro of Norwalk, Conn., author of his first book, "Kiddie Meal Collectibles," a comprehensive price guide for the ever-growing market of fast-food toy collectibles.

"Many of these toys have a great level of ingenuity," says Sodaro, an avid superhero comic book, toy and gadget collector. "Some would be worth $3 to $5 at any toy store, and people are getting them for free."

Check it out in its entirety if you wish.

7-Eleven & Wolverine

I just checked on it, and in addition to the Papa John’s X-Man/Wolverine Pizza (which I’m already planning on getting tomorrow for lunch), there is a Slurpee tie-in with the pint-sized Canadian Mutant anti-hero. That’s right, following on the heels of the Iron Man and Hulk Slurpees from last year, this year’s hot fast food toy tie-in is going to be Wolverine Slurpee cups.

7-Eleven partnered with the film for a month-long, storewide promotion that hits customers as they walk in the door with life-size standees of some of the film’s most popular characters—Wolverine, Sabretooth and Gambit...

A new flavor, Mutant Berry, was developed in partnership with Dr Pepper and was a top vote getter in taste tests held last summer.

Customers will also find a special silver-colored Big Gulp cup inspired by Wolverine’s indestructible adamantium skeleton that is part of the secret Weapon X program.

Read the whole story here.

I haven’t been able to determine if there will be any kid meal toys, but I’m strongly leaning towards McDonald’s as having Wolverine Happy Meals, due in part to the company’s recent Spider-Man promotion.

I’ll keep you posted.

Free Comic Book Day is Coming!

I just wanted to remind everyone that Free Comic Book Day is coming (Saturday May 2nd). I was able to score a couple of early copies of free comics from my comics guy who surprised me yesterday with copies of Avengers (Marvel) and Bongo Comics (which contained a fun interior reference to Spider-Man).

The Avengers features a throw-down between two of the teems currently claiming to be Avengers (New and Dark) going up against Yimir the Frost Giant, and includes a special appearance by Thor. This story is written by Brian Michael Bendis, who turns in a very fine job, and is illustrated by Jim Chung and Mark Morales. I believe that it is a stand-alone, original story (that is to say not one that will show up in the regular continuity of whether New or Dark Avengers), but it is a part of the current continuity. In addition to being very well done, it has the added benefit of being a great peak into what kind of a match-up we can expect to see in the regular comics.

The Bongo comic is from their usual group of creators and is an equally well-done bit of Simpson and Futureama bit of absurdism. Personally it makes it makes me look forward to the the first Saturday in May every year.

As for me, I'll be at A Timeless Journey in Stamford in the morning, and then at Sarge’s in New London later in the day (both stores are in CT). Hope you all have fun.

Knit Yourself a Superhero

OK, here is a silly one, across which I recently stumbled. Artist Mark Newport has learned how to keep all the superheroes warm in the winter, with his knitted super-onesies. But that's not all. They also make an important statement about masculinity.



I gotta tell you, silly as this looks, I gotta tell you that it does seem, well interesting.

The Secret Life of Joe Schuster

While the unfortunate image to the left may make it appear otherwise, Superman is a mythic, fictional figure that inspires trust, and safety in us (unlike Batman, for instance), we all feel pretty comfortable with the history of Superman.

We all know that Joe Schuster is one half of the most famous duo of comicbook creators (he and Jerry Siegel created Superman, and essentially created this entire genre). Well, comics historian Craig Yoe recently made an incredible find when he unearthed a rare find of an underground comic produced by Schuster back in the early 1950s when the artist was down on his luck, because he had been repudiated by DC. The comic, titled Nights of Horror — crude in form — is actually a group of stapled pamphlets of erotic horror art that were sold under the counter at drugstores for $3.00 each.

According to a published report:

Yoe, who found the complete 16-issue run of the crude publication at a used-book store: “There are some who say I should have left this stuff buried and not ruin Joe’s reputation. But this is a major body of work by the creator of the superhero. Some of the drawings are beautiful, showing the great craftsman that he was. There's even an innocence.

“I can’t say I'd frame it and put it above my mantel, but it’s a very important find for comic-book history and cultural history.”

Yoe reproduced the work in a new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts, $24.95). Personally, I’m thinking of picking up this book myself, just for it’s historical value, in the ever-unfolding “secret history” of the early days of comics.

We Gotcher Watchman Rite Here!

Yep, you heard me, these days DC Comics is all Watchmen all the time. So much so that the company has gone so far as to re-issue a number of ground-breaking series with a yellow “Beyond Watchmen” logo bar over them.

While I personally that the re-issuing of these non-Watchmen series(that have nothing at all to do with Watchmen) is completely whorish on the part of the company, the fact that the single-shot comics are being issued for only a buck apiece certainly goes a long way to diminish that feeling. So if you were to see any of these comics in your local shop, I highly recommend that you check them out. You may not like the comics themselves, but you just might encourage DC (and other companies) to continue to offer “sampler” comics at a low price to the public to help stimulate the market.

The three books in question that hve been (thus far) been issued are Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson, Swamp Thing by Allan Moore, Stevenph Bissette & John Totleben, and Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. All of these series were ground-breaking in their own right and all deserve to be sampled by today’s audiences.

So if you never caught these series the first time around, I think that you would do youself a favor by checking them out now. At a buck an issue, you certainly can’t beat the buy-in.

A Year in Belkis: April

If you haven’t yet experienced a year in Belkis, then you are a poor soul indeed, not only is she one of the loveliest (and talented) ladies in comics, but she is the subject of James Rodriguez, NovaStar Studios Fantasy Art Calendar. This month, her delightful image was eye-poppingly rendered by none other than the very talented (and lovely in his ow right) Ravi Wilkie.

Ravi is a member in good standing of the The Filament Factory— a cadre of talented NYC artists and writers (who throw wicked-cool parties). according to his stream-of unconsciousness bio Ravi originally hails from Boulder, CO. Back then, Ravi spent his days painting intense images culled from what he saw when he closed his eyes.

Eventually, he ventured off to New York with the stench of dead squirrel carcasses in the air and a taste for glory. Ravi now defends his art against the ravaging hordes of time. Now with The Squeecher on his shoulder and his compatriots at The Filament Factory (http://www.filamentfactory.com) by his side, Ravi knew the monsters of time stood no chance. An extremely talented artist, Ravi, as you can probably tell from this (abridged) bio, is a little bit off his nut.

Still he is an OK guy who loves Zombies, and will one day actually make this writer uber-famous by consenting to draw the Zombie story that we gave him some time back.

Ravi, are you listening?

the Main Comic Fan

Jim Main is an old friend of mine., I met him a couple of decades back through mutual friends, one of whom being D.W. Armstrong. Back then Jim was running a comic shop up in New Milford, CT. Well the years passed and I lost track of Jim, only to rediscover him again a few months back when an artist friend of mine, Hal Jones, brought him back to my attention.

Well, it seems in the inter veining years, Jim has been publishing magazines about comics. Well, he was kind enough to send me a copy of his most recent, Comic Fan #4, which spotlights one of my favorite band of 60’s superheroes, The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. The issue is a very wonderful walk down memory lane as well as revealing of some T.H.U.N.D.E.R. tidbits that even I did not know. Like Steve Skeates was not only there at the dawn of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. age, but that he worked at Marvel as Stan’s assistant for two weeks before Roy Thomas showed up.

Anyway, Comic Fan is but one of a number of comic mags that Jim publishes, stop by his site and check out what else he has to offer, and as long as your there you should probably buy something from him. I know that he’ll enjoy that.

One from the Giveaway Trunk

Personally, I love giveaway comics. Not just because they are free, but because they often give you the opportunity to see something that you wouldn’t normally see. Well, we are about to have one of those days coming up (Free Comic Book Day, Saturday May 2, 2009), but I just was able to snag myself a free comic that was produced by Marvel’s special projects department. Over the years, Marvel has produced a bunch of comics for specific markets, from advertisers who have paid to have their product hawked by Marvel heroes, to companies that wanted to have Marvel Heroes endorse their cause.

These have met with a varying degree of success. Still, they are all fun to read, and I have managed to acquire a great big group of them over the years. This past weekend I attended I-Con 28 (not a very well-organized Sci-Fi Con out on Long Island), but one of the cool parts of it was that I did manage to meet up with some fellow funnybook pros, and well, I did get my hands on a Marvel giveaway that I had been previously unaware.

This comic was a Sleepy’s comic staring The Hulk. Iron Man and (the Sam Jackson) Nick Fury also appeared). The comic (produced last year) was cute and simple, and well, was really fun. If you ever find it, scoop it up (oh, and proceeds — it sold for $3.00 — from the comic went to The American Cancer Society) which technically doesn’t make it a giveaway per se, but roll with it, it is a fun comic and a good cause.

The end of the World as we know it

No, really, this time I mean it. I know that there have been touting the end of days pretty much since I began this blog, but truly, I totally mean it this time.

I was just forwarded a release from a friend of mine, and it, well...

Sorry, I can’t, I just can’t.. Here, read it for yourselves...

Forget Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian and meet Barack the Barbarian in his latest fictional role.

The U.S President is featured in yet another series of new comic books which will be published in June.

In one called Barack the Barbarian: Quest for the Treasure of Stimuli the Democrat leader is pictured as the muscle-bound, loincloth-wearing President of ‘Kickassistan’.

Yeah, you all read that right, but unfortunately that isn’t all of it, and it does get worse...

In another called The Righteous Retribution of Barack the Barbarian, he is pictured in a fight to the death with a screeching enchantress.

In the Quest for the Treasure of Stimuli, he takes on his Nemesis, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who sports a cape made from wolf skin and her trademark glasses - and very little else.

Chicago-based comics publisher Devil's Due revealed its titles will involve Obama-related storylines.

It released promotional images for the comics featuring the US President and a unique take on Palin.

And of course there is art (Lord is there art).





Please, for the love of God, would someone shoot me now.

The rest of the story can be found here.

Another dip at the Marvel Well

Sometimes it is heard for us here in the States to remember that Marvel is a multinational corporation, that is ti say, that it publishes comics all over the world. Well, sometimes, even those of us who know that are often surprised by the appearance of non-US-based stories. Well, that is precisely what happened when I discovered Marvel Europe last month.

The comic contains three previously-unpublished stories staring Spider-Man, Wolverine, Captain America, Daredevil and Captain Britain. The Wolverine story has our clawed mutant running around in Brazil fighting a new mutant presence, Cap and DD team up in NYC to fight Mr. Fear on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D. While Spider-Man and Captain Britain team up to fight the Red Skull that came out of the pages of Marvel's British offices.

All three stories were very interesting, and I hope that the sales of the comic do well enough for it to precipitate the publications of other non-US stories. I think it is only fair, all of our comics get reprinted overseas (eventually), so having some of their comics reprinted over here just seems to make sense to me.

Another Marvel comic I want to talk about here is the newly-released Marvel Assistant-Sized Spectacular. This anthology comic purports to be helmed by the assistant editors who finally get the chance to strut their stuff. there is a second volume of this series that is due out later this month. I really liked it quite a bit (unfortunately, at first I thought that it was being done in the spirit of the previous outing in this venue, in that 12 years ago the assistant editors all published a one-off comic in the regular lines of their respective titles, that were supposed to be goofy.

These stories weren’t (to be sure the one silly story was Chris Giarrusso’s Mini Marvels). Given that I personally can’t get enough of Chris’s work, I would have loved it if the whole book was his work. Still the other two stories (staring D-Man and American Eagle) were also quite good. Truth to tell, I’m not a big fan of D-Man, but this story was a good read (even if I found the art to be sub-par). On the other hand both the story and the art on the American Eagle story were quite excellent. While Chris’s story was up to his usual most-excellent standards

Again, I’m not only looking forward to the second installment of this two-shot, but I hope that they issue another version of it again next year.

More Marvels worth reading...

If you are like me (and there is more of a possibility that you are so Not like me more so than that you are possibly like me, but that’s just what my wife and kids say).

Anywho, I’ve been reading Spidey since the dawn of the Silver age, and (like the good Heroist that I am) have have disliked the Green Goblin (all of ’em) just like I was supposed to dislike them. However, the other day when I read Dark Avengers #3 (a series I had vowed to hate), a funny thing happened. I got sympathy for the Green Goblin.

Yeah, you read that right. I began to see Norman Osborn's view.

Sure he is still a lying, thieving, murdering, scumbag, but somehow, over the course of the Brian Michael Bendis story, I began to understand a little of what it might be like to be Norman Osborn. I don’t think that I have ever read such an insightful look into to this monstrous character. It almost made him appear to be human.

If you want to read a story that will challenge everything you think about a character, then you owe it to yourself to read this. I kid you not.

Then, if you think that the Dark Avenger story was a random hit by Bendis, well I have to tell you that simply isn’t true. Yea. Bendis can write (true, I realize that much of the time it seem like he is phoning it in, but when he puts his mind to it, he can truly make a story sing). Just take New Avengers #50. I think that with this issue the series has returned to the hint of glory it that it appeared to have back when it started.

This issue has the New Avengers going up against the Hood’s criminal army, as directed by Osborn, and they do an amazing take-down on those yabos. You know how when you read most comics, you never really believe that the bad guys will win because, well the good guys always come out on top? You don’t get that feeling with this story. There is actually a point where you believe that the villains will be triumphant.

Are they? this one you are going to have to read to find out.

And now, for something completely different...

If you were to have been following this blog for the past week or so, you might think that I only read Independent comics (written by my friends). Truthfully, I tend to read more Marvel Comics (sorry kids, it is a long-standing addiction that I’m simply unable (and unwilling) to completely kick). I’ve been reading them since ‘62, and regularly purchasing them since ’71. Unfortunately, these days, I’m admittedly not having as much fun reading them as I did even a few years back. Still, there are (every once in a while) comics that do rise above the fray, and are worthy of mentioning. Off the top, I want to mention Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man which I regularly review for SpiderFan.

Another comic that always gets me smiling, is anything by Chris Giarrusso. in addition to his own work (G-Man) Chris produces the Mini Marvels. These are usually one-page humorous takes on the heroes from the Marvel Universe. As a rule, they tend to follow a theme for a period of time, and then are collected in a digest-sized comic. With the recent release of Mini Marvels Secret Invasion, Chris tells an alternate version of the Secret Invasion. All things considered, I prefer Chris’s version. In addition to the Secret Wars are broad swipes at Civil War, Spidey, and the whole Green Hulk/Red Hulk (Blue Hulk) storyline.

Chris also likes to pick on Hawkeye, and does so with gleeful abandon. As stated, another favorite target is Spidey himself, whom Chris loves to posit a young Spidey who is a paperboy for The Bugle, and regularly goes up against the Osborns (who are customers) and Venom (a competing paperboy). Again, all of this is done in good fun, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face. I strongly suggest that — even if you have read all of the Mini Marvel stories in the various Marvel Comics in which they have appeared, you spring for this collection. You’ll be very happy that you did.

Here is a fun Spidey comic that my buddy James Rodriguez brought back with him from his trip to South America. It is a copy of Spidey in , well, Spanish. I have a few of these foreign language comics in my collection, and I always love getting them.

I want to also talk about The Amazing Spider-Girl. This comic ran a single issue of What If, 100 issues of Spider-Girl, 30 regular issues of Amazing Spider-Girl, plus a 0 issue and an annual, not to mention assorted issues of various other “M2” titles. I went on record several times (once in person to writer Tom DeFalco) how much I enjoyed this title. It always reminded me of being 15 again and the thril I got every month reading Spidey at that time. I’m sorry to see the series go, but I understand that it will continue in Amazing Spider-Man Family and on-line ion Marvel’s ecomics. Now while I’m not so happy about the ecomic version, I am pleased that it will still continue in print in ASMF.

Anyway, Issue # 30 of ASG was easily one of the most moving issues of this series. I could tell that DeFalco really loves this title and these characters, and really pulled out all of the stops to deliver one of the most emotionally moving stories that I have ever read. Too bad all the Spider-titles couldn't be written this consistently well.

This story proved to be quite a nice coda to the run of this title, as well as a delightful wrap-up to the final arc of this series. I truly enjoyed what Tom did in this story, and I truly have to say that I completely didn’t see the big reveal coming, even though I was looking for it.

Personally, I’m looking forward to reading the new series.