Previews for May

I had intended to have some comic reviews up by now. I'll be receiving some books in the mail next week, so I'll definitely get caught up in the next week or so. In the meantime, I picked up the new Previews at my local comic shop on Wednesday, so I may as well take a look at everything else I'm considering for the month of May.

Dark Horse has another issue of Conan. There's also a Conan mini-series by P. Craig Russell . . . I won't be picking up the singles, but I'll consider the eventual trade. Russell's definitely got some fantasy art chops.

AIT/Planetlar has a new TP for True Story: Swear To God. I've heard nothing but good things about the first volume, and especially TSSTG: 100 Stories . . . and those two are resolicited here, along with the new TP (This One Goes To 11). I'm still hemming and hawing a little here, but I'll probably take the plunge and pick these up. Randy and Tegan have some reviews, if you're interested.

Slave Labor Graphics is re-offering Egg Story. I can't find my copy . . . maybe I'll pick up another, and if the first one turns up it'll become a gift. Here's the solicitation copy:

These eggs talk. And in their conversations they decide that sitting in a cold, dark refrigerator waiting to get gobbled up is definitely not for them. So they stage a daring escape. Carefree, the eggs have loads of fun. But life takes a grim turn when one of them turns into a suicidal maniac who yearns to become a souffle, and it all ends up tragically (and messily) on the kitchen floor. What does an egg do after witnessing so much pointless, random death and destruction? For Feather, a good-hearted boy egg, the answer is simple. He becomes a ninja.

Hmmm . . . Digital Manga has the first two volumes of Worst listed. I just read Dorian's review of the first one recently . . . sounded decent. I need to broaden my manga horizons.

Damn you, DR Master! Where's the next volume of Iron Wok Jan? Don't play with my emotions, man!

Oni Press is offering Sharknife once again, for those who didn't see Warren Ellis' recommendation in time to order it before.

I see that Viz has the first volume of Fullmetal Alchemist coming up. I've been digging the show on AdultSwim, which is based on this manga (as opposed to the other way around). I have enjoyed both manga and anime in the past, but there's just so much product on the market nowadays that I had to take off my "Hardcore!!!!!" cap and throw it back in the closet. I know I want to check out Samurai Champloo, solely because it's by the Cowboy Bebop team (and I want to see what Yoko Kanno does with hip-hop music), but other than that, I'm slow to dip my toes in the water . . . though I do appreciate the reviews and recommendations from fellow inhabitants of the blogosphere.

Okay, time to get caught up on my reading . . .

WonderCon Bits

There were some newsbits from WonderCon this past weekend. They've all been covered fairly well by Newsarama and the Pulse, among others. There were two things in particular that caught my interest.

1. Joss Whedon and John Cassaday will be doing a second year of Astonishing X-Men, which will be capped off by a Giant-Sized annual issue. I'm really looking forward to seeing these stories in hardcovers when they're all done.

2. Some art was shown from Morrison and Quitely's All-Star Superman.

Damn.

(Strangely enough, thanks to Graeme, I discovered something interesting at John Byrne's forum; apparently there are a number of Scottish artists like Quitely who tend to draw figures with large chins, due to the influence of strips such as Desperate Dan.) Hmmm . . .

. . . well, human chins aside, Quitely impressed me greatly with his work in We3. This Superman cover piece is giving an interesting impression of the tone that he and Grant will be aiming for.

If nothing else, I'm glad that Kal has found his "happy place."

Marvel and Image Solicits for May

Time for some more early peeks, thanks to the usual suspects.

Marvel Heroes

Fantastic Four gets a new creative team, with JMS and Mike McKone jumping on board. I like McKone’s pencils, and I’ll miss him on Teen Titans. JMS . . . I dunno. I tend to prefer his work when he’s playing in his own sandbox. I believe I’ll stick to Supreme Power.

Gotta love that cover for Incredible Hulk #81.

I’m going to be picking up G.L.A. It’s Dan Slott . . . he’s earned my trust with She-Hulk and Arkham Asylum: Living Hell. He seems to work well with Paul Pelletier, too, so I’ll take four issues of comedy from that team.

New Avengers will be focusing on the Sentry.

Secret War: From The Files of Nick Fury? Why is this being written by someone other than Bendis? Who’s Mike Raicht? Who’s doing the interior art? Too many questions for me.

I don’t have a link to a cover, but Runaways is awesome. I just wanted to say that.

Marvel Nemesis

Marvel Nemesis: The Imperfects? What is this? Hmmm . . . I seem to recall a press release from EA back when Marvel signed up with them to do videogames a year ago. Here’s a portion of that press release, found at EA’s Web site:

Redwood City, Calif and New York, N.Y. – February 6, 2004 – Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) and Marvel Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: MVL) announced today that they have entered into an agreement, whereby EA will develop a new generation of fighting video games pitting Super Heroes from the Marvel Universe against a new, original set of EA heroes.

Under the multi-year agreement, EA has been granted a license to develop and distribute fighting games featuring the Marvel Super Heroes. Additionally, EA has granted Marvel the exclusive rights as worldwide licensing agent for all consumer products and media licensing for the new EA heroes. Marvel will publish new comic books introducing the EA characters. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

So . . . there you go. May also happens to be the month that E3 is held, and many new games (and game systems) will be put on display for the first time. I’m not familiar with Renato Arlem, the penciller. I’ve heard some good things about Greg Pak’s writing, but I didn’t check out the Warlock mini and I’m not reading Phoenix: Endsong. The cover looks somewhat funky, but I have no clue what the interior pencils will look like.

Ultimate Marvel

It looks like Mike Carey will be handling a two-parter on Ultimate Fantastic Four before Mark Millar comes back as regular writer. Art by Jae Lee? I’m cool with that.

The cover for Ultimate Spider-Man #77 seems to provide a clear look at Ultimate Hobgoblin. There’s also another Spidey/Fury chat promised in this issue—those are always fun.

We finally get a look at the Ultimate Defenders in color. Ultimates 2 has been pretty good so far . . . I want to see where they’re going with Thor.

Spider-Man

I’m not really reading any of the regular Spider-Man titles, but Dan Slott’s presence has me picking up the Spider-Man/Human Torch mini-series. The last issue is solicited here.

Marvel Knights

I haven’t read the first issue of Black Panther yet; I should receive it in a package from DCBS in two weeks or so. I’ll give it a couple of issues and see what I think.

Wolverine, X-Men and Tuk the Cave Boy?? Oooooooookay then. Marvel is making some . . . interesting choices in packaging these Milestone issues together.

X-Men

Giant Size X-Men #3, with a new story by Joss Whedon and . . . Dave Cockrum? Interesting.

Wait a second . . . these guys are wearing red. They can’t be Hellions—it’s supposed to be pink! They ain’t reppin’ correctly, yo.

It looks like Excalibur will be starting up early for the House of M event.

Icon Comics

Another issue of Powers . . . that’s good . . .

. . . and a Powers hardcover! Excellent. I’ve got to give Marvel credit for their relatively inexpensive hardcover collections.

Marvel Hardcovers

Uh . . . what was I just saying? Despite reading the description in the solicitation, I’m having trouble fully visualizing the Maximum Fantastic Four hardcover. It appears to be an in-depth examination of Fantastic Four #1, panel by panel . . . in a 224 page hardcover for $49.99. Not FF #1-12, or #1-6 or anything . . . just the first issue. I’m sure something’s just not clicking for me here. I love Mark Evanier, and I’m sure his commentary will be insightful, but I’m just not that hardcore of a FF fan.

Okay . . . over to Image.

There appears to be a new book by Doug TenNapel (Earthworm Jim, Creature Tech, Tommysaurus Rex). Here’s the description for Earthboy Jacobus:

Chief Edwards retires from the Modesto Police Department a lonely man. On his way home he hits a flying whale with his car, opening the beast's mouth to find a boy from a parallel universe named Jacobus. Chief discovers that a society of insect monsters want to kill this boy due to a mysterious virus that grows on his hand. The Chief becomes a father figure to the boy and trains him how to survive insect monsters by becoming a great American ass-kicker.

Sounds like a party to me.

This new Jim Mahfood thing looks intriguing . . .

Here’s a collection of Deep Sleeper by Phil Hester and Mike Huddleston. I finally picked up The Coffin last year and was amazed . . . I hope these two continue to work together.

There’s a new ish of Invincible, but I’m just pickin’ up the trades on this title. Gotta love Allen the Alien, though.

Hmmm—this is new . . . a new City of Heroes comic, written by Mark Waid. Once I get a new PC, I’ll have to try that game out . . .

DC Solicits for May

DC’s full solicits can be found at Comics Continuum and Comic Book Resources.

Let’s see now . . .

Batman Section

The Batman: Dark Detective mini reunites the creative team of Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin. This is definitely not a bad thing; I was all about Silver St. Cloud and Joker fish back in the day. Speaking of which, it looks like they’re reoffering the trade paperback collecting their original run, Batman: Strange Apparitions.

There’s finally a second collection of Gotham Central. This one contains issues 6 through 10 and focuses on Officer Montoya. I have yet to read any GC, surprisingly enough. (I say “surprisingly” since I love Powers, and I dug most of the first arc of District X, so this should be my kind of book, right? I guess I just suck. I’ll work on that.)

Superman Section

Here lies a small dilemma. Gail Simone’s the new writer on Action Comics, and I love her work. However, the new penciller is John Byrne, who I’m not feeling right now, and the cover isn’t working for me. We-ell, I’ll give the first couple of issues a try, run ‘em up the flagpole and see who salutes. Or something.

DCU Section

I had forgotten that Joe Bennett was going to be the new penciller on Birds of Prey! I enjoyed his Marvel work with Priest on The Crew and Captain America and Falcon, so I’m looking forward to seeing his work here. Oh, and Gail Simone is still handling her business here. Hey, Dorian—Wildcat is popping up here, as well.

Day of Vengeance continues. On the one hand, the “Identity Crisis spinoff” marketing thing is not a plus for me. On the other hand, I like the Spectre and general DCU magic stuff. So, yeah—I’ll check it out. Possibly the Wrath of the Spectre TP as well.

Firestorm #13 will be Dan Jolley’s last issue as writer. It’s unfortunate that this book couldn’t convince hardcore Ronnie Raymond fans to give it a look. It seems quite likely to me that *POTENTIAL SPOILER* Jason will end up being the physical/active part of the Firestorm fusion, with Ronnie taking over the role of the Disembodied Floating Invisible Head Guy role *END SPOILER* but that still may not satisfy those particular fans. Ah, well.

The new Green Lantern series begins here. I’ve been surprised at how well I’ve enjoyed Rebirth, and rotating art teams of Carlos Pacheco and Ethan Van Sciver sounds like a plan to me. I just hope they keep Moose Baumann on colors; he’s done a lot for the atmosphere of Rebirth.

Speaking of Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner apparently has a role in The Rann-Thanagar War series, spinning out of Adam Strange. I know that Adam Strange was sort of retroactively declared to be another turnip from the garden that is Identity Crisis, but it hasn’t read that way, at least to me; true, it’s got a Travelogue-of-DCU-Space thing going on, but I expected that going in from the interviews I’d read, and besides, how else am I going to see Tigorr and Vril Dox in a new comic book? Anyway, the new mini will be written by Dave Gibbons, with art by Ivan Reis, and it’s more outer-space stuff, which is good. Actually, all of the concepts for the mini-series sound interesting by themselves; it’s the IC mentions that make me leery-slash-cynical.

There’s a new printing of JSA: The Golden Age. This was written by James Robinson before his excellent run on Starman. Good stuff.

Huh—there’s a hardcover collection of Alex Ross and Paul Dini’s oversized specials, for less than the total price of the individual specials. (It’s probably not quite as “oversized”, though—I’d have to check the dimensions.) That’s not a ”must-have” for me, but I’ll keep my eyes open when I’m going over things at DCBS. If the price is right . . .

Wildstorm Section

Desolation Jones. Warren Ellis. J.H. Williams III. Yeah, man.

There’s another issue of Planetary solicited as well. A look at the Drummer is welcome.

The final issue of Sleeper is here. I hate to see this book go, but I’m looking forward to a hell of an ending.

Top Ten: The Forty-Niners. If you haven’t read Top Ten yet, you, uh . . . you might wanna do that. I’m just sayin’. (Of course, I haven’t read Smax yet, so I can’t claim to be hardcore or anything. I’ve heard conflicting reports on that series, but I’ll check it out when DC drops a softcover TP.) At any rate, this is a prequel to the original series. More Top Ten = Good Thing.

Vertigo Section

I don’t really read a lot of Vertigo titles, though I note that there’s a new Losers trade coming out. I see that they’re re-releasing Preacher trade paperbacks. Preacher is on my list of Comics I Intend To Read But Haven’t Yet. (That list has a lot in common with Comics That My Friends Keep Telling Me Are Awesome So I Need To Get Off My Butt And Read Them.) Also on that list are Transmet and Sandman.

You should check out the DC listings for yourself, if only to get a look at some funky covers.

Alan Moore: Craft and Mad Theory

Thanks to Neil Gaiman's Journal, I found this interview with Alan Moore here. It's an interesting look at the craft of writing, and what one can accomplish when one goes beyond fundamentals. I was going along with it fairly well, and then somewhere around the time that Moore began breaking down the meaning of the word "technology," I became somewhat distracted by the sensation of my brain attempting to expand. It's probably an air pressure thing.

I read quite a few articles today, but everything's already probably covered by Thought Balloons or Fanboy Rampage. I need to work on some sidebar links. (I also need to ask some people if it's okay to link them!)

Top 100 Meme!

Hello there.

I'm Charles W. I've been reading and enjoying several comics blogs for some time, and I finally decided to take a shot at it myself. My primary goal here is simply to write more often and exercise (or gain) certain skills, but I also enjoy good conversations and discussions, so I look forward to that. I may branch into other things at some point, but for now, it's strictly comics.

It looks like I'm just in time to chime in with a list of 100 Things I Love About Comics. (Alan David Doane at Comic Book Galaxy did one recently, inspired by Fred Hembeck's lists from the eighties, and many bloggers have come up with excellent lists since then. Mike over at Progressive Ruin has provided links to several of them.)

This isn't a complete list of everything I love, and it's in no particular order, but here goes.

1. Miracleman.
2. Uncle Scrooge by Carl Barks.
3. Mogo.
4. Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme.
5. Planetary.
6. Frank Miller's 300.
7. Tintin.
8. Steranko's Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
9. Christopher Priest's Black Panther.
10. "In loudest din or hush profound,
My ears catch evil's slightest sound
Let those who toll out evil's knell
Beware my power: The F-Sharp Bell!"*
11. DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke.
12. Street Angel by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca.
13. Calvin and Hobbes.
14. Akira.
15. Walt Simonson's run on Thor.
16. Powers by Bendis and Oeming.
17. Marshal Law.
18. "For the Man Who Has Everything," by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
19. Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness' run on Deadpool.
20. The original Captain Marvel.
21. Hostess Fruit Pies ads.
22. Batman: The Animated Series.
23. Mage: The Hero Discovered.
24. Suicide Squad.
25. Claremont and Byrne's run on Uncanny X-Men.
26. Rocket backpacks that don't burn your booty. (See Adam Strange and the Rocketeer.)
27. Sleeper by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.
28. Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai.
29. JSA.
30. The Spider-Man/Wolverine one-shot written by Jim Owsley (Priest).
31. "Batman: Year One" by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli.
32. Peanuts.
33. The Legion of Doom.
34. Art Spiegelman.
35. The Gen13 "Grunge: The Movie" mini-series by Adam Warren.
36. Alan Moore's run on Supreme.
37. The Invaders.
38. Julie Schwartz covers.
39. Bernie Wrightson.
40. Atari Force.
41. We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.
42. Rocket (from the Milestone book Icon).
43. Peter David on Hulk.
44. JLA/JSA crossovers.
45. Lone Wolf and Cub.
46. The original Books of Magic mini-series.
47. Marshall Rogers' art on Batman.
48. Claremont and Miller's Wolverine.
49. Bat-Shark Repellent.
50. Winsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slumberland.
51. Benjamin J. Grimm.
52. Mad Love by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm.
53. Jack Kirby.
54. Krypto.
55. Kitty Pryde's bedtime story to Illyana.
56. Watchmen.
57. The art of John Cassaday.
58. Walt Simonson's run on Fantastic Four.
59. Grant Morrison's run on JLA.
60. Starman.
61. Spider-Man 2.
62. The DC Digests from back in the day.
63. Frank Miller on Daredevil.
64. George Herriman's Krazy Kat.
65. Spider-Man's "alternate costume" of an old FF uniform and a bag over his head.
66. Asterix.
67. Superman the Movie and Superman II.
68. The Sin City "Electric Chair Marv" "action" figure.
69. Ultimate Spider-Man by Bendis and Bagley.
70. Jack Cole.
71. Top Ten.
72. Ace the Bat-Hound.
73. Boondocks.
74. The Golden Age.
75. Peter David's run on X-Factor.
76. Iron Wok Jan.
77. Mr. Majestic by Joe Casey, Brian Holguin, and Ed McGuinness.
78. Luke Cage.
79. "One punch!"
80. The Fleischer Superman cartoons.
81. Steve Ditko.
82. Super-Gorilla Grodd.
83. Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross.
84. The Authority by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch.
85. The Golden Age Flash.
86. A biker with a flaming skull for a head.
87. x2: X-Men United.
88. Opus.
89. All-Star Comics #3.
90. Lockjaw.
91. New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Perez.
92. Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday.
93. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud.
94. The Incredibles.
95. The Legion of Super-Heroes.
96. Major Bummer by John Arcudi and Doug Mankhe.
97. Crisis on Infinite Earths.
98. The art of Bryan Hitch.
99. The fastball special.
100. Superman . . . just for being himself.