The only good thing about weeks where new books ship a day late, like last week, is that it makes the wait between new comic book day and the next new comic book day a day shorter, so I guess some good has come from the out-of-whack shipping schedule. Things are thankfully back to normal this week, and here’s what should be waiting for you tomorrow morning when you hit your local comic shop…
Action Comics #872: DC Comics would like you to know that this is the seventh chapter of the “New Krypton” epic story, but that’s not really important. All you really need to know about this issue is that it involves Superman teaming up with The Creature Commandos to fight robots. I’m sorry, what’s that? Who are the Creature Commandos, you ask? I can’t really get into it here. I suggest you let Dave Campbell, Chris Sims and Dr. K explain them to you.
Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes #2: Given the fact that the first book in this two-issue miniseries offered just 16-pages of comics for $3.99, with unsolicited “bonus” material padding out the issue, you might want to give this one a pretty thorough flipping-through before buying it.
Batman: Joker’s Asylum: This $14.99, 128-page trade paperback collects the five one-shots from earlier this year that each featured a different Batman rogue, with the Joker acting a bit like an old-fashioned horror host. Creators including Jason Aaron, Jason Pearson, Juan Doe tackle The Joker, Penguin, Two-Face, Scarecrow and Poison Ivy. The story quality varies wildly, but this shouldn’t be a bad beginner book for newcomers to Batman comics who want to get to know some of the Bat’s badder villains.
Camelot 3000 (Deluxe Edition): A pioneer in the field of late shipping big company comics, Camelot 3000 is a pretty self-explanatory 12-issue series by Brian Bolland and Mike Barr. And you know how rare Brian Bolland interior art is. This $34.99, 320-page hard cover collection will get you the whole shebang, plus some bonus material.
Courtney Crumrin and the Prince of Nowhere: This 56-page, $5.95 one-shot follows Ted Naifeh’s titular nose-less heroine and her uncle Aloysius as they adventure through Europe, encountering the monsters on the other side of the Atlantic.
Death-Defying Devil #1: The Golden Age Jack Cole Daredevil, recently resurrected and given a new, less-objectionable-to-Marvel codename in the shockingly dull Project: Superheroes miniseries, gets his own series, courtesy of Joe Casey and Edgar Salazar. John Cassaday and Alex Ross provide covers.
Final Crisis #5: Marvel’s Secret Invasion ended last week, and “Dark Reign” begins this week, while DC’s only five-sevenths of the way through their big crossover story. Does that mean Marvel just lapped DC? In addition to the new issue of the main series from the creative team of Grant Morrison, J.G. Jones and Whatever Artists Got Called In To Help Jones Meet Deadline, this week will also see a new issue of one of the main FC tie-in series, Final Crisis: Revelations. Pages of background-free action from the latter available for preview here.
Herbie Archives Vol. 2: That’s right, volume 2. The blogosphere’s favorite fat fury is back for another round of insane adventures in another pricey but nice $49.95 hardcover collection.
Justice League of America #27: The good news is that DC is committing to bring back the Milestone characters (let’s get those trades rolling, gang!), and they’re having Dwayne McDuffie handle the honors. The bad news is that they’re having him do it in the pages of Justice League of America, and they’re still paying Ed Benes to draw the same two figures over and over again. Newsarama has a four-page preview here; check it out and see if you can tell who that black-haired woman is—Wonder Woman? Zatanna? Dr. Light II? Shiva? Huntress?—without reading the words.
Nocturnal Conspiracies: Nineteen Dreams: Epileptic author David B. chronicles nineteen of his dreams in this 128-page, $14.95 book from NBM. Preview here.
Phonogram 2: Singles Club #1: Kieron Gillen and Jamie McElvie’s critically-acclaimed series gets a seven-issue sequel series, each issue of which will be a stand-alone story featuring different characters but occurring in the same club on the same night. (Ohhhh…Singles Club. Now I get it). The first issue will feature back-up stories by artists Marc Ellerby and Lauren McCubbin.
PX! Book 2: In the Service of the Queen: I really loved Eric A. Anderson and Manny Trembley’s first PX! book, about a girl and her robot panda, a disco roller skating assassin and a Victorian secret agent battling an evil funny animal goat with a name that means “chicken” in Spanish. This is the next installment of that. Billions of preview pages here.
Punisher: War Zone #1: The Wednesday after the latest in the long line of bad live-action Punisher flicks opened, Marvel launches a new weekly six-part series by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, the team responsible for the best Punisher story ever told, “Welcome Back, Frank.” The weekly pacing should be fun, but since this is a Marvel Knights series, Marvel is tacking on the completely arbitrary extra $1 they typically do for Knights and Max series (Swearing and violence are apparently more expensive). So, pay $24 to read this over the course of six weeks, or wait until the trade is released in, like, eight weeks, and get it all in one chunk? Decisions, decisions…
Secret Invasion: Dark Reign #1: My favorite part of last week’s ultimate issue of Secret Invasion was that last panel, where we saw the cabal of villains crowded around the smallest meeting table ever. This one-shot apparently picks up there, with a pretty random assemblage of bad guys and bad-ass good guys having a meeting. Will there be a PowerPoint presentation? Only Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev know for sure.
Sulk Vol. 2: Deadly Awesome: Jeffrey Brown’s roughly illustrated, painfully confessional autobio romance comics are still what I think of when I think of Jeffrey Brown’s work, despite the fact that what was once his niche is now just one of the many genres he worked in. Still, no matter what he does that isn’t a whiny but affecting comic about his own lovelife—Transformers parody/celebrations, superhero parodies, observational comics about a house cat, gag strips—that I always think the whole idea of them inherently hilarious. For example, this is 96-page graphic novel that, according to Top Shelf’s solicitation, “explores the world of mixed martial arts and the nature of violence”, is “a tribute to no holds barred fighting,” and contains an 80-page fight sequence. My first thought? A mixed marital arts comic, from the guy who did Clumsy? Ha ha ha ha!
Of course, Brown always surprises me with how good his stuff is no matter what the subject matter, so this is really just an in-joke I have with myself. Here’s an eleven-page preview. It does look pretty awesome. But will it be deadly awesome? I guess I’ll have to read it to find out.
Superman and Batman Vs. Vampires and Werewolves #5: So wait, what’s this book about, exactly?
December 9th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Welcome Back, Frank the best Punisher story ever? Surely you jest.
December 9th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Marvel, where the Event never ends.
DC, where the Event never ends, either, but for different reasons.
December 9th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
What’s with all of the snark? If these books are so inferior as to be snark-worthy than why bother giving them any mention at all? The new regime is here and now we have to suffer yet another last angry young pop culture iconoclast.
December 9th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
“All of the snark?” Dude, if you think what Caleb is writing is snarky, then you’re a fucking idiot.
December 9th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
YAWWN… Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Incidentally, you’re absolutely right to ask what Superman & Batman vs. Vampires & Werewolves is all about… I’ve read it at my LCS and I still can’t quite figure out why this miniseries got greenlighted in the first place. Having “Superman” in the title is a misnomer. He didn’t show up until the last page of issue #2 and has been pretty much done nothing in the books since then.
There’s the reason for your “snark,” Scot. What you call snark, I call being truthful.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I don’t think it’s fair to claim that Marvel has lapped DC just because they’re able to end one series that (while it shipped closer to on-time and with its original creative team) started BEFORE Final Crisis did anyway, and immediately segue into the next big event (which, by the way, given the lack of any real ending to SI begs the question of whether Dark Reign IS actually another event or not–let’s look at Johns and Ross’s three or four “different” Kingdom Come-inspired story arcs in JSofA lately for guidance there).
That was a long sentence. I’m going to bed now.
December 10th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Those are brave words coming from behind an alias, bananahead.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
What’s with all of the snark? If these books are so inferior as to be snark-worthy than why bother giving them any mention at all? The new regime is here and now we have to suffer yet another last angry young pop culture iconoclast.
I don’t know if you’re still reading, as it’s now the night before Thursday and this post doesn’t even seem relevant, but I guess I should clarify the criteria for what I mentioned going forward. I’m not planning on a straight listing of what’s coming out each week, as you can click on over to previewsworld.com for that, and, frankly, that’d be just as boring to write as it would be to read. (Ditto my weekly shopping list).
So I’m pulling out books that look like they’ll be really good, or really bad, or really popular or otherwise noteworthy in some way.
It’s always flattering to be called young; thanks. As for having to suffer you, uh, don’t. Reading this column, this blog, this site and/or any part of the Internet is completely voluntary. If someone is forcing you to read something, just let me know your location and I’ll try to contact the proper authorities to come rescue you.