Jumping in Headfirst

I'm two weeks late, but given this is supposed to be the "pull list" month, I can't skip any weeks.

Hello and welcome to a new version of Bottom of the Pile.  For quite some time now, BOTP has gotten away from its core design: to talk about the comic books I saved for last every week because they were so damned good.  Probably a lot quicker than I care to admit, it went from talking about my favorite comics to just going off about whatever was most popular or whatever was making the biggest "waves" in comics whether it was good or bad.  I wasted time talking about comics I barely even enjoyed, and as much as I'd like to say the intent was to gain popularity that's just not true.  The truth is it's easy.  It's so impossibly, stupidly easy to rail against something you DON'T like.  Largely because, not to get overly high-minded, we've created a society that is about tearing things down rather than building them up.  Some of the most sardonic people online, known for writing 2000 word diatribes about something they hate, will admit its more difficult ...

Jeez Caitlin, why you gotta be so...nah, I can't do it. This week's Flash sees the plotline about Dr. Alchemy continue to take a backseat, instead choosing to focus on Team Flash, with Caitlin visiting her mother to learn more about her powers, the team discovering the "truth" about Harrison Wells, and Barry finally figuring out a way to make peace with his new CSI partner Julian. 

Cocky with a nonchalante disdain that isn't her, Roulette is the perfect foil for Supergirl "Survivors" balanced a story between our two primary alien characters dealing with coming into contact with aliens all too similar to themselves--with J'onn J'onzz it's a fellow martian, and with Supergirl it's Mon-El, while also having to deal with lesser-known illegal fight club organizer Roulette after finding the dead body of an alien who lost their life in one of the battles.

Tiger Mask W is a series that I likely never would've noticed if I hadn't gotten into wrestling, and while my enjoyment enhances the show, it's still actually quite a well put together series.  It starts out with two young wrestlers--Naoto Azuma and Takuma Fujii--watching Takuma's dad and their mentor, Daisuke Fujii, get destroyed in the ring by a rival team's wrestler, Yellow Devil.  As Daisuke finds himself seemingly permanently wheelchair bound by his match, the two young men set down two opposite paths with the same goal: defeating Yellow Devil, "ace" of the foreign wrestling company, Global Wrestling Monopoly. I won't pretend like this is anything deep--it's a simple story that's told effectively, operating on the pretense that kayfabe (the staged events that occur in wrestling) is real, and that each wrestler is winning their matches based on their own strength and techniques rather than putting on the best athletic performance for ...