Deportation & Comics

My brother Dan went off to college today, the second kid in our family to do so. Dan was accepted to The University of Hartford down in Conn. where he's going to be double majoring in Music Education and I think Music Theory. It's going to be weird without him in the house, although I think that it's going to make things easier all around, at least for me, for a while. I'll have freer use of the car, and I found that when I went to Norwich, even though I was living in the house, I got along better with my sibblings. Probably the same thing will happen here. I gave him my contact information, AIM, E-mail and web addresses, so we'll talk during the year, that's for sure. I think that he'll enjoy college.

Over the summer, I've become more of a comic fan. I've begun to read more than just Star Wars Republic/Empire, broadening my horizons a little. The Amazing Spiderman was the first comic that I picked up, I love the author, J. Michael Straczynski, who also wrote the entire Babylon 5 series. Love Spiderman, then picked up the Fantastic Four, also by JMS, which has proven to be an interesting read as well. I've also picked up some random back issues of Iron Man, who's been a long time favorite, as well as Hellboy(Love the artwork) and Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men. I've also accumulated random issues of other Spidermans, Sin City and Freaks of the Heartland, among others.
I was never really into comics as a kid. I know that I owned some, although I have no idea where they ended up, but the one or two X-Men comics that I did own confused me a great deal. I didn't really know what was going on at all during the stories, and really didn't know anything about comic art and storytelling to pay much attention anyway. I was more into the Marvel Trading cards. Third through Fifth grades in primary school, man, I loved those cards, and still have them, in a box. Those were more interesting to collect and just look at, at least at my age. Me and my friends would talk about them all the time, and during Recess, we'd play X-Men on the playground.
Star Wars Republic and Empire really got me more into comics. Working with the Unofficial Clone Wars Site (www.clonewarz.com), I worked at reviewing the Clone Wars comics as they came out. Looking back over the older reviews that I wrote, I can see that I had almost no idea what I was talking about, and as I wrote more reviews, I learned more about comic art and writing. Along the way, I've since talked to quite a few comic authors, artists and editors, all really cool people.

So, anyone have any recommendations for new books and series?