As promised, I recently completed my Astonishing X-Men re-read. And as I finished the series, a key scene between Colossus and Kitty Pryde helped me make sense of how I’ve felt during key moments in this bullshit year:
For a beat or two, Keys to the Kingdom might convince readers that Locke and Key is becoming a typical, ongoing comic series. By which I mean, the story could continue indefinitely, allowing Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez, and the Locke children to live in the book’s premise for as long as sales or Hill’s interest allowed.
But believing anything about Locke and Key is typical would be a mistake.
Atomic Robo is one of the relatively few comics that has managed to stay good across decades-worth of stories. I highly recommend you read it all. But there is one volume of Atomic Robo that, to me, stands head and shoulders above the rest, because it includes one extra element that no other Robo story has.
Which is why Atomic Robo and The Shadow From Beyond Time is my favorite volume of Atomic Robo.
Recently, I re-read the first issue of Jason Aaron, R.M. Guéra, and co.’s Scalped – and was surprised to realize just how exactly it adheres to the first issue structure that writer Kieron Gillen later laid out on his tumblr, in 2018:
