And some graphic novels

MARVEL MASTERWORKS: Dr. Strange collects the Silver Age run from the first Dr. Strange story by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee (there’s one story by another writer) through his second and final battle with the Dread Dormammu (though it has enough loose ends that it’s not an ideal finishing point). This is superb stuff, for which a lot of the credit goes to Ditko, not only for the altered-realities he captured in the art (definitely see this in color for the full effect—the b&w Essential Dr. Strange is a poor substitute) but his contributions as co-plotter: After he left the series a few issues later, the stories really sagged, whether it was Denny O’Neil filling in or Lee writing without Ditko (although I’ve never heard anyone credit Ditko with writing the dialog, it got a lot more pretentious); Marie Severin and Bill Everett are good artists, but they couldn’t match what Ditko did with the book. A favorite of mine.
BPRD: Gods and Monsters by Mike Mignola and various artists is a so-so installment in the current arc, kicking off plotlines with Abe and Liz dealing with various horrors (trailer park human-sacrifice cults, teenage mystics and killer bat-creatures) but not doing a lot with them. Not bad as much as incomplete.
THE TROUBLE WITH GIRLS, Vol II by Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs continues the adventures of Lester Girls—the action hero other heroes wish they could be—as he copes with Chinese pirates, foreign spies, native tribes (“I think those are the words for ‘white jungle god.'”) and his high-school reunion while trying to figure out why he can’t have the quiet, ordinary life he dreams of (it turns out his father Chester had much the same burden). Great fun for the most part, with occasional misfires (by the 1980s, surely Terry and the Pirates‘ Dragon Lady was too outdated to parody) and some of the ethnic gender parodies seem too close to what they’re sending up. Worth reading even so (a shame this is as far as the TPBs went).