It is not lost on me that there is going to be a sad irony as I read this, given that it compiles one of Image's flagship characters by one of their founding fathers who has very publicly come out in support of embracing genAI.

I collected Spawn as a kid, loved the visuals and brutal storytelling as any teen growing up in the mid 2000s and early 2010s would. It is truly wild to me that McFarlane would support genAI when he literally helped create a comic book studio in revolt against the corporitization and abuse of the Big Two.

To think that Spawn would likely not even recognize the man who created him is an understatement.

Hullo, Pagebound! My first post here, so I thought I would share some insight into my reading journey!

From August of 2016 to February of 2026, I was stuck in the middle of the biggest reading slump I had ever been in. In middle school and high school, I voraciously devoured books, close to the 100s every year, sometimes over it. And yet, when I went to college to become a teacher - I found myself slowly beginning to read less and less for pleasure and more just for classes. I was exhausted, and kept telling myself that I needed to actually do some fun reading, but often I fell through on it. Couple that with entering into the commercial writing world for a time, everything that I loved about reading became work - especially when I became a teacher during Covid.

2020 to winter 2026 was a wild time: teaching for four years as lead humanities and English teacher, a myriad of different seasonal jobs, getting married, becoming a dad - a lot of life changes. And in that, I started to find the spark again - it clicked back into place: I wanted to read again, not needed, wanted. Finding this app has been a godsend, truly, cause it has given me a way to actively track what I am reading, follow what I am doing, and connect with other readers all over. It has been wild that comic books were my way back into reading, finding what my ten year old self loved about the page all over again.

I went from reading maybe ten books in ten years to now almost 40 in just a few months! And I can't wait to read more and meet more folks here!

I saw this HILARIOUS video about what not to say before kissing someone and would love what you guys have to say about that but… book edition. DUN DUN DUN. Like you’re the Apollo to my evangeline or smth yk? The people on this app just make me laugh so hard so I would love to hear what you all have to say.

Hiya! I’m having a conundrum… I’ve never annotated my books and my body sorta freaks at the idea of highlighting pages etc and I really don’t know if I can bring myself to do it However! I am really wanting to start making notes and diving deeper into the books I read, and feel that perhaps I am being silly and I should annotate my books… Does anyone have any advice or ideas -im not against having a seperate notebook but would need to set it up properly 🤷‍♀️📚

You get a slump, you get a slump, everybody gets a slump!

Is it just me or is everyone in a reading slump? I’m not in one, which probably makes this post kind funny but everyday I feel like I see a slump post so I’m wondering if July is just that girl. The slump girl.

I’m not really not in a slump I guess either tho. Idk why but I start the year off so strong every single year and then my reading is usually very bumpy up and down road to the end. I got a busy month tho so I am behind.

What about July do you think makes it a heavy slump month? Too many of the good summer reads in June so nothing stands up in July? Too hot?

I'm not a fan of the way the book stages this "revelation" about Sophia's brother. Which of course is not actually a revelation about him so much as one about Sophia, since we've already heard a contradictory story about the brother, told to Paul many years earlier. Both stories can't be true (heck, maybe there was never any brother at all), and so we know Sophia was lying in either one or both tellings.

But here's the thing. As readers, we're already aware that Sophia isn't trustworthy. If we have any sense (and if we've read the publisher's synopsis of the book), we've been suspicious of her from the start. The dramatic tension in the narrative so far has come from the ironic distance between Shelley's positive perception of Sophia and our perception that something more nefarious is going on.

So, to give the reader explicit evidence against Sophia's integrity at this juncture in the story is pointless. What the story needed at this point was not for the reader alone to feel more confident in doubting Sophia; this mission has already been accomplished. What the novel actually needs is a moment in which a crucial moment of doubt in Sophia takes place simultaneously for the reader and for Shelley (thus making us feel something at the same moment that Shelley feels it, strengthening our connection with her).

What I'm saying is that plot twists have the greatest emotional force when they are simultaneously revelatory for the reader and for the character(s). Unfortunately, a plot twist can't untwist itself once delivered. In this case, specifically, the novel can only definitively blow up Sophia's trustworthiness once. That genie is now out of the bottle, without the benefit of having deepened our relationship with Shelley. Now we'll have to wait while this book spins its wheels for at least a few dozen more pages (maybe more) before Shelley reaches the same conclusion that we already have.