Amazing Spider-Man #583 (Obama Cover 2nd Printing): A good six or seven news cycles later, Marvel rolls out a second printing of last week’s ASM, featuring Barack Obama. The cover on this printing is apparently the same Phil Jiminez image that was on the variant for the first printing. Frankly, I’m disappointed. How about Obamafied versions of classic Marvel covers, like the company did with their second printings of sold-out issues of Marvel Zombies? Barack Obama swinging through the New York City skyline, holding a cowering Joe Biden under his right arm, a la Amazing Fantasy #15! Barack Obama leading his cabinet into action a la Avengers #4! The four members of the first battling a giant monster rising through the pavement, a la Fantastic Four #1! But if Marvel really wants to garner another round of mainstream media coverage, I still maintain a zombie or monkey variant of the Jiminez cover is the way to go. Seriously; draw Obama as a corpse or monkey on the cover—I guarantee media coverage of a comic book like you’ve never seen!
Angora Napkin: Late January is an odd time for a graphic novel set on Halloween, but this one sounds kind of interesting, even if it does deal with zombies, a subject I’ve long ago reached my personal limit of. The title is also the name of a three-piece girl band who serve as the $19.99, 152-page, hardcover graphic novel’s protagonists. Late for a Halloween night show and taking a shortcut, they end up accidentally unleashing the threat of zombiepocalypse on the earth, and must try to save the day they themselves endangered. It’s the work of writer/artist Troy Little, whose Chiaroscuro was previously published by IDW.
Batman: The Strange Deaths of Batman: Can’t get enough of Batman “dying”? This $19.99, 160-page trade collects a bunch of other stories in which Batman “died,” by Gardner Fox, Gerry Conway, Carmine Infantino, Jim Aparo, Curt Swan and others.
Complete Aranzi Hour: A $17.95, 256-page collection of comics, games and crafts featuring mysterious creators Aranzi Aronzo’s cute, crazy characters like White Rabbit, Brown Bunny, Liar, Bad Guy, Sprite, Little Spirte and Mechani-Panda. Check out some sample pages here. Also from Vertical this week is the third volume of their new, handsomely designed Tezuka’s Black Jack collection, featuring the coolest two-fisted rogue surgeon in all of comicdom.
Dark Avengers #1: A new Avengers team with a new adjective in the title launches! New and Mighty Avengers scribe Brian Michael Bendis is joined by artist Mike Deodato to introduce a new version of the team, this one lead by someone going by the name “The Iron Patriot” and looking like Iron Man as decorated by Captain America. It’s $3.99, and a “Dark Reign” tie-in. Speaking of Bendis and Avengers, he’s leaving the Mighty book in the very capable hands of writer Dan Slott, who’s introducing a new team line-up in this over-sized issue, with art by Khoi Pham and Danny Miki, and apparently returning a semblance of big superhero action and adventure to the franchise. And speaking of action and adventure, Marvel Adventures Avengers #32 is promising “Action! Adventure! Taxes?” The IRS pays a visit to Avengers Tower in this issue by Paul Tobin and Matteo Lolli.
Doctor Doom and The Masters of Evil #1: New Paul Tobin Marvel Adventures series, featuring the bad guys.
Faces of Evil: Deathstroke #1: After nearly getting killed by Geo-Force, who blamed him for the death of his sister whom Black Adam killed, in the pages of the quasi-Elseworlds story DCU: Last Will and Testament, Slade Wilson’s at a pretty low point in his life. And hey, who can blame him? He fought the JLA to a standstill in Identity Crisis, but almsot got killed by Geo-Force. Writer David Hine and artist Georges Jeanty check in with ‘Stroke as he prepares to repair his rep. If you’d like some lighter fare starring Slade, this week’s Tiny Titans #12 is a special “Faces of Mischief” issue featuring Sidekick Elementary staffers Slade and Trigon. And hey, look, the DCU’s most famous rapist is on the cover! This week also brings five more “Faces of Evil” books: Birds of Prey #126 (The Calculator), Green Lantern #37 (a blood-puking Red Lantern lady), Justice League of America #29 (Starbreaker), Robin #182 (Anarky II), and Vigilante #2 (Vigilante himself…hey, isn’t that cheating?).
Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #2: This chapter comes out the week after a chapter of Grant Morrison’s story set after it sees release. How did Superman get from Superman Beyond #1, back in time to Metropolis, through five issues of the still incompleted Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds to be walking down a spiral staircase with Brainiac 5? The answers, and some great art by Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy, are, presumably, within.
The Flash: Emergency Stop: At last, DC starts collecting the Grant Morrison/Mark Millar run on The Flash! This is one of those trades I never understood why DC hadn’t put out yet. At the time, Morrison’s star was certainly on the rise, and Millar had done some great work, but since then, both have completely blown up in popularity, so a collaboration between the two seemed like a sales slam dunk. This 144-page, $12.99 trade collects the first half of their 12-issue run, and the stories within include a stint in a wheel chair for Wally, an encounter with The Mirror Master and a day in the life of Jay Garrick. Given that Wally mentions his race against death in the form of The Black Flash in last week’s Final Crisis #6, the second half of Millar and company’s Flash might seem a little more relevant to DC fans than it did a few weeks ago. If you haven’t already read these stories, they’re well worth a look today; like in Morrison’s JLA, you can see him grafting Silver Age sensibilities into modern DCU continuity, an interest of his that saw its ultimate realization in All-Star Supeman.
Frank Frazetta’s Moon Maid: The latest of these Image comics based on Frazetta images is called “Moon Maid” and it features a barebottomed young woman riding a centaur. I think that’s very funny, but perhaps only becuase I have the sense of humor of a fourth-grader. Jay Fotos writes, Tim Vigil draws.
Inu-Yasha Vol. 36: Wow. That’s a lot of volumes, isn’t it?
Justice League of America: The Lightning Saga: This was one of the absolute worst comic book stories I’ve ever read, although, in its defense, some of it is hilariously bad (I like the part where Karate Kid says he dodged a lightning bolt, a page or so after you see a picture of him getting hit by the lighting bolt, for example) At least one plot point is presumably relevant to Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds. It’s $17.99 for 224 pages of Geoff Johns, Brad Meltzer, Ed Benes, Shane Davis and Dale Eaglesham’s Countdown prelude. Also included is Justice League of America #0, that weird jam issue that kicked off Meltzer’s run and featured one page of art each by a myriad of great talents. If that doesn’t meet your weekly requirements of Ed Benes drawing butts, boobs and neck muscles, this week also brings JLoA: Sancturary, a 128-page, $19.99 hardcover featuring Dwayne McDuffie, Ed Benes and a passel of fill-in artists’ tie-in arc to Salvation Run, which was itself a Countdown tie-in. Plus, Benes is drawing the aforementioned JLoA #29.
Mysterius The Unfathomable #1: You know what I have a hard time fathoming? How it is that Jeff Parker, one of the best writers in Marvel’s rather impressive stable, doesn’t have an exclusive contract. If I were Joe Quesada, I don’t think I’d let Parker out of my sight, let alone writing a six-issue miniseries for the distinguished competition. At any rate, Parker and artist Tom Fowler kick-off a series about a magician. If Parker’s past work is any indication, this will be well wroth a look. Check out a preview here.
Ruins: Warren Ellis’ 1995 two-issue, presitge format, anti-Marvels miniseries gets collected into a new $4.99 package. The solicitation info on Marvel.com sets up the bleakness of an alternate Marvel universe as pictured by Ellis like this: “Nuclear warfare, internment camps, government oppression, drug addiction, degradation, suicide…and those are just the ones we have words for. Have the men and women we know as heroes made the situation better or worse?” Huh, aside from the nuclear warfare, that’s pretty much the state of the modern Marvel Universe, isn’t it? For more recent Ellis Marvel writing, this week also sees the release of Astonishing X-Men #28.
Thunderbolts #28: Andy Diggle and Roberto de la Torre have the new Thunderbolts attempting to take down the new president at Norman Osborn’s behest, and cover artist Francesco Mattina doesn’t even bother to put Obama on the cover.
Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights: This 192-page, $19.99 featuers two of the three “Vertigo Pop!”-branded miniseries, each set in an exotic foreign country (well, exotic to Americans like me, who consider Canada an exotic foreign country). There’s no real connection between the two, other than that basic premise, and writer Jonathan Vankin. Tokyo features art by the late, great Seth Fisher, and Bangkok art by the also pretty great Giuseppe Camuncoli and Shawn Martinbrough. I remember liking both when they were originally published, although Fisher’s art made Tokyo my favorite by a large margin.
January 20th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Ruins was terrible. Probably some of Ellis’ worst work…
January 21st, 2009 at 11:05 am
I really hope that the Faces of Evil:Deathstroke book consists of Slade going on a month-long bender, unable to face himself after being defeated by a doofus like Geo-Force.
By the way, that’s a heck of an Obama portrait! All he needs is Cap’s shield.