Books 3-4

 3)  Secret War: A 108 degree turn on Brian Michael Bendis' work from _Fortune and Glory_, this one epitomizes everything I really don't like about modern Marvel comics. I have no real issue with Bendis' telling a Nick Fury story constructed on the realization that bank robberies and other conventional crimes would ever produce enough cash to support tech themed super-villains - it's a great concept for an elseworld's style story. But Secret War is right there front and center with regular continuity, and in so doing messes up dozens of existing villains, the half dozen other major heroes in the book, Nick Fury, SHIELD and, most damningly, the logical structure of the Marvel Universe. To my mind there is no point in looking at an existing supers world and pointing out what wouldn't work. Why, none of it would work, thank you, so breaking it down on a particular point is like yelling out how the magic tricks are done from the audience. The harder job is making us believe that it _does_ work. This ranks up there with the "no the Justice League has consistently mind wiped all the villains they capture in order to maintain their secret identities" Identity Crisis nightmare that DC published a while back. Dreck, all of it, I don't care how well it sells. 

4) Thieves World Graphics vol 2 & 5: Got these for Christmas, just as good as I'd hoped last year. Need to get the rest of them. The inter-linking of the stories in the graphic format makes them better in my mind than the originals, which were always choppy due to their short story nature.