Agents of Atlas trade paperback: In 2006, Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk teamed up Namor’s cousin with a talking gorilla, a killer robot, a weird alien, the Greek goddess of love and the SHIELD Agent that used to fight Godzilla, setting them up against an imaginatively conceived conspiracy involving evil ethnic stereotype The Yellow Claw. It was pretty awesome. The Agents are getting a new ongoing series shortly, one spinning out of the events of Secret Invasion somehow, so if you missed the original series or its 2007 hoity-toity hardcover collection, don’t sleep on this. Your $24.99 will get you all six issues, plus seven classic stories from the ‘40s and ‘50s starring the individual Agents and a couple of other goodies, like What If #9 and the weird blog entries used to promote the series.

Groo: Hell On Earth: Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier’s latest story about their dim-witted barbarian is now available in a $17.95, 112-page trade.

Archibald Chases The Dragon: The third Archibald the Aardvark one-shot finds the black and white funny animal star addicted to opium. No wait, I think they mean chasing the dragon literally here, as there’s an actual dragon on the cover. Grant Bond illustrates, and my fellow Columbusite Dara Naraghi scripts.

Black Lightning: Year One #1: Just two years after Brad Meltzer brought DC’s first black superhero into the Justice League, raising the character’s profile and multiplying the rate of his cameos by about 500%, DC decides to give him his own miniseries and re-tell his origin. That’s it, strike while the iron’s luke warm! Writer Jen Van Meter and artist Cully Hamner do the honors of reintroducing B.L. to 21st century readers. Will he still have an afro-wig attached to his mask? Find out tomorrow!

Blue Monday: Thieves Like Us #1: Chynna Clugston returns to her signature series in a new five-part series from Oni Press. I’m pretty excited about this.

Castle of Dreams: Stories from the Kare Kano Creator Vol. 1: A $12.99, 400-page collection of short works by manga-ka Masami Tsuda, whose signature word is alluded to in the title.

DC Universe Illustrated By Neal Adams Vol. 1: This 192-page, $40 hardcover is the first of three planned volumes collecting just about everything Adams ever drew for DC that hasn’t already been collected in other volumes. In addition to Adams, the book also features writing by Robert Kanigher, Bob Haney, Gardner Fox, Cary Bates and Len Wein, and art by Joe Kurbert, Nick Cardy, Dick Dillin and others. In other words, it’s pretty much Adams and a who’s who of talent covering a who’s who of DC characters.

Faces Of Evil: Grundy #1: I didn’t notice until I looked at the Diamond shipping list this week, but “Faces Of Evil” acronyms quite nicely into “FOE.” Neat, huh? “Faces Of Evil” is DC’s month-ish long promotion in which various comics will surrender their covers to portraits of various villains, and the DC heroes will either share (or have stolen from them) the limelight by those same villains. This Grundy one-shot is both drawn and written by Scott Kolins, and some guy named Geoff Johns helps out on writing chores. The other “Faces” books this week are Detective Comics #852, which features the first half of a Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen two-parter pitting Hush against Catwoman in the wake of their “Heart of Hush” arc, and Secret Six #5, which features Deadshot on the cover, although in this book, all of the faces are faces of evil, aren’t they? Gail Simone, Nicola Scott and Doug Hazelwood will continue their story pitting the five members of The Secret Six against the mysterious Junior and his army of mercenaries for the ultimate prize.

RASL Vol. 1: Drift: Jeff Smith’s first big creator-owned project after the completion of Bone gets its first trade collection. It’s the story of a scientist turned parallel dimension-hopping art thief, with some romance, murder and mystery involved. Your $13 gets you 120-pages of black and white art comprising the first three issues of the series, plus a bonus scene that wasn’t in the comics.

Secret Invasion: War of Kings One-Shot #1: Secret Invasion may be over, but the tie-ins continue! This $3.99 one-shot is actually a bridge between crossovers, having both “Secret Invasion” and “War of Kings” in the title. The focus here is on The Inhumans (who provide one of the Kings, Blackbolt) and where they stand after the Skrull attack, and on Vulcan (another of those Kings that will be doing the warring). Marvel’s space aces Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning write, and their first Guardians of the Galaxy pencil artist, Paul Pelletier, draws. As for the Secret Invasion, if you were trade-waiting it, the eight-issue flagship series by Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Francis Yu and Mark Morales is available this week in a $29.99, 200-page trade paperback collection.

Where Has Love Gone?: I find the title of this Digital Manga Publishing Yaoi graphic novel by Ryoku Tsunoda insufficiently hilarious.

Wolverine: Switchback #1: Somewhere at Marvel HQ there’s a huge store room…more of a warehouse, really. Or a flight hanger that’s been converted into a warehouse. And within it are nothing but shelves and shelves holding stacks and stacks of one-off Wolverine stories. That’s the only reason I can come up with to explain why Marvel keeps releasing these stand-alone Wolverine one-shots every other week or so. It can’t be that there’s that much demand for the character that isn’t being met by his three monthly titles and the dozen or so team titles he appears in. This $3.99 one-shot is by Joseph Clark and Das Pastoras, and involves Wolvie stumbling into some kind of sinister road trap. If that’s not to your liking, ther’es always the latest issue of Wolverine and Power Pack #3 by Marc Sumerak and Gurihiru, which is the issue featuring Wolverine in a top hat and monocle on the cover. I realize there’s some debate among X-Men fans over which is Wolvie’s best costume, the brown one or the yellow and gold, but really, how can you top this dapper combo?

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