Oh Perez Hilton, Miss America’s not a beauty pageant competitor, she’s a red, white and blue Golden Age superheroine, and she’ll be starring in this week’s Miss America Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1, the latest in Marvel’s line of ridiculously long titled one-shots pairing all-new adventures of Golden Age heroes with classic Golden Age reprints.
They haven’t published a bad one yet, and some of them have been just excellent, so I imagine this one will follow suit.
The new story is by Jen Van Meter and Andy MacDonald, and there are some back-up stories featuring the, um, Whizzer. Who runs so fast that he, like, whizzes right by you. That’s why he has that codename. Not the other reason you might be thinking. The main site has a preview here; MacDonald’s art sure looks nice.
As for the rest of the week’s new releases, join me after the jump for an overview.
Batman #687: Last week saw the debut of the new Batman and the new Robin in Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s new series Batman and Robin #1, and this week the new adventures of the new Batman continues in the franchise’s former flagship title. Former Batman writer Judd Winick is scripting and JLoA‘s Ed Benes is drawing, so I imagine it will read poorly and look even worse. (But I guess someone somewhere must like Winick and Benes, right? They keep getting high-profile work at DC). It’s a special, 40-page, $3.99 issue promising to follow-up on Tony Daniel’s Battle For the Cowl, and to guest-star Superman and Wonder Woman.
Meanwhile, if Damian al Ghul is the new Robin, what happened to the old Robin? Presumably he’s the guy in the Alex Ross-designed costume that Jason Todd found in Countdown who’s starring in Red Robin #1 (Francis Manapul’s cover suggests a much older character than teenage Tim Drake, but then different artists draw him to look different ages all the time). The solicitation remains coy on who’s wearing the suit, but the book will be about the character searching for—and not finding—Bruce Wayne). Christopher Yost writes, and Ramon Bachs draws this first issue of a new ongoing.
Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter #1: Marvel calls Beta Ray Bill “oathbrother to Thor and the Korbinites’ defender,” but I like to think of him as simply as “the space horse who dresses like Thor.” This is the first issue of a three-part miniseries pitting the space horse who dresses like Thor against Galactus, which sounds rather promising, as does the creative team of Kieron Gillen and Kano. It’s $3.99 though, so I bet it will sound even more promising in a few months as a trade paperback.
Billy Batson and The Magic of Shazam #5: This the first of the non-Mike Kunkel issues (well, he does still provide the cover), and it’s being written by Art Baltazar and Franco, who have been killing on Tiny Titans. The art is provided by Byron Vaughns and Ken Branch. Vaughns’ Billy and Cap look like this.
Booster Gold #21: This is probably the comic to watch this week, whether you actually read it or not, as it’s the first of DC’s $3.99 comics featuring a ten-page back-up story. In the Dan Jurgens written and illustrated cover feature, Booster learns of Batman’s death and confronts a Batman in the Batcave, while in the ten-page Blue Beetle back-up, Matthew Sturges and Mike Norton continue the adventures of Jaime Reyes after the cancellation of the character’s solo book. Will it work? Here’s hoping so; if I’m being charged an extra dollar for a comic, I’d prefer to get extra comic for my money, unlike what some Big Two publishers seem willing to give readers.
Buck Rogers #1: Did Dynamite hook you with that 25-cent #0 issue? If so, you’ll need to part with $3.50 to feed your addiction. The first official issue in the new series is written by Scott Beatty and drawn by Carlos Rafael. We’ve got a preview here, and Troy reviewed it here.
The Color of Water: This is the second book in Kim Dong Hwa’s trilogy about a girl growing up in rural Korea. I really dug the first one, Color of Earth. This installment is $17 and 320 pages. You can read an excerpt of it here.
Douglas Fredericks & The House of They: Who are They? I don’t know, and neither does Joe Kelly and Ben Roman’s Douglas Fredericks, but it’s a safe bet that the young protagonist will find out before the end of this $18, 80-page original graphic novel from Image.
Dragonero: This $20, 300-page, black and white original graphic novel sounds like pretty generic fantasy fare… “Alben the Wzard…Ecuba, the fighting nun…Gmor the Orc…the barren Dragonlands”…but it is the creation of a bunch of European creators, and is published in conjunction with Bonelli Comics, who published Dylan Dog. Europeans make good comics, right? And it must not suck, or else why would Dark Horse even want to publish it for U.S. audiences? Well, even though this sort of thing’s not my personal cup of tea, I’ll certainly look forward to flipping through it tomorrow. The preview pages certainly look nice.
Flash: The Human Race: The next volume of the late ’90s Grant Morrison/Mark Millar run on The Flash contains probably the high point of their tenure, in which Wally West runs really, really, really, really, really fast to save the world. Or was it the whole universe? Well, it’ s been a while since I read it. Huge Silver Age cosmic action and huge stakes, just the way Flash comics should be. It’s 160 pages for $15, and features art from Mike Parobeck, Paul Ryan, Pop Mhan, Steve Lightle. That’s not the only Flash comic coming out this week, however. For a decidedly different take on what makes the Flash franchise run, check out Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver’s Flash: Rebirth #3, in which your dad’s Flash races Superman.
Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #3: Versus dinosaurs.
Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #12: The most erratic book in the Marvel Adventures line, MA Super Heroes varies in quality depending on which hero gets the spotlight and what creative team is in charge for that particular issues. This one will feature Captain America, and is being written by Scott Gray and Rober Langridge, and drawn by Matteo Lolli and Craig Rousseau, so it should be worth a look even if you’re not a huge Cap fan. Additionally, the solicitation promises “the menace of P.R.O.D.O.K.” Stories involving characters whose names end with “-O.D.O.K.” generally turn out pretty well.
Toy Story: Mysterious Stranger #1: Hot on the heels of The Incredibles: Family Matters and Cars: The Rookie comes the latest of Boom Kids’ Pixar licensed comics, based on the characters fromt he eminent animation studio’s very first film. This one’s written by Dan Jolley and drawn by Chris Moreno.
X-Men Forever #1: How small and specific is the target audience for this series? As far as I can tell, this is the latest attempt of Chris Claremont’s to re-catch the same old lightning in the same old bottle, in this case Claremont writing the X-Men series he would have written back in the early ‘90s if he hadn’t left the adjective-less X-Men comic he was writing with superstar artist Jim Lee (Which, by the way, was a really, really awful comic book series). On the other hand, I think the first issue of that series sold somewhere around four billion issues, so maybe there’s still enough readers around to make this series make some kind of financial sense for Marvel? Jim Lee obviously isn’t around to drive up sales, but it looks like the characters will still bear his (very dated) designs for them, and Tom Grummet will be doing the drawing (And Tom Grummet is a hell of a drawer). It’s $3.99, because Marvel has to make money somehow off this crazy thing.
If that doesn’t satisfy your non-canonical X-Men needs for the week, Fred Van Lente and Dennis Calero’s recent X-Men Noir miniseries gets a $20, 112-page hardcover collection, and Claremont and Sean Chen’s epic-sized X-Men: The End Trilogy gets a huge $35, 450-page softcover collection.
June 9th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Regarding your cartoon, thankfully Miss America is not equivalent to the evil Miss California!
Right on, Vermont!
June 9th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
“Former Batman writer Judd Winick is scripting and JLoA’s Ed Benes is drawing, so I imagine it will read poorly and look even worse.”
Are you serious?
If you weren’t such a lemming, you’d realize how bad Batman & Robin #1 really was.
June 9th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
What the hell does your retort have to do with the paragraph you copied & pasted?? What a maroon!
June 9th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I kind of thought the tone of these had changed, but I guess there’s no reason too right? More “snarky” pre-reviews of books that haven’t actually been read or seen yet, but of course *anyone* with *any* common sense must not like them. I mean, why bother reading and reviewing things when we can just prejudge them first, right? Because we don’t have to read something first to tell if we don’t like it, and anyone who likes it must be some sort of idiot.
June 9th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Yes, you understand this column correctly—it does indeed pre-judge books that will be released on the following day, based only on the solicitations, covers and creative teams. These are obviously not reviews, as in most cases I have not read the books, as they are not available to be read. (Well, I read the contents of Flash: The Human Race). If you would like reviews, you’ll have to wait until after the books are released.
I’ll review my weekly purchases tomorrow night at my blog EveryDayIsLikeWednesday.blogspot.com, and I’ll review two graphic novels here at Blog@ over the weekend.
But as you’ve deduced, this column is just previews. And yes, there is indeed commentary about them, because why would anyone want to read a plain old objective list of titles here? You do realize you can visit previewsworld.com and get an objective, opinion-free list of every book coming out on that particular Wednesday, right?
By the way, what the hell are you talking about? The only books I said anything negative about were the ones with the terrible writer and the terrible artist whose past work was all terrible, and that weird X-Men book in which Marvel’s having a writer return to re-write what he would have written almost 20 years ago.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
The hell I’m talking about is the constant, “snarky” crap that has no real basis in fact and is paraded out every week with the tone of “this is garbage, I don’t like it and you shouldn’t like it either, because no one possibly could.”
You think Winick is a bad writer? That’s your opinion. It’s not fact, not matter how highly you think of your own opinion. It’s this kind of smug, self-satisfied “I know better than you” garbage that’s the reason why we can’t have real criticism in the comic book field. Everyone is too busy showing you have clever they are by tearing down something *they haven’t even read yet,* or have “reviewed” for the sole purpose of eviscerating it print.
I’m not interested in reading reviews. I’m not interested in going to your blog. If you want to talk about the stuff coming out this week, that’s great. There’s a lot of back-of-previews stuff that gets showcased in this column that is quality work and should be given more attention, and I’m glad for that. If you don’t like it, or aren’t going to get it, fine. Why take the time to tear it down and take a cheap shot? It’s lazy and thoughtless and it’s one more article that I have to scroll through in my RSS feeder and make me wonder why I’m subscribed to Blog@ if this is what passes for content.
June 9th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Are you serious?
If you weren’t such a lemming, you’d realize how bad Batman & Robin #1 really was.
How about elaborating, instead of just drive-by sniping? Because that’s a pretty cowardly way to behave.
I kind of thought the tone of these had changed, but I guess there’s no reason too right? More “snarky” pre-reviews of books that haven’t actually been read or seen yet, but of course *anyone* with *any* common sense must not like them. I mean, why bother reading and reviewing things when we can just prejudge them first, right? Because we don’t have to read something first to tell if we don’t like it, and anyone who likes it must be some sort of idiot.
Ever read his blog? This is Caleb being nice and sweet.
June 10th, 2009 at 8:56 am
It’s lazy and thoughtless and it’s one more article that I have to scroll through in my RSS feeder and make me wonder why I’m subscribed to Blog@ if this is what passes for content.
It’s actually quite a bit of work. Much more work than the onerous task of having to scroll through an RSS feeder, but sorry to put you out like that man.
I’m afraid you’ve stopped making any sense to me with your second post. It’s unfair for me to say Winick is a bad writer because some people like him, however you have no problem saying this is bad writing. You’re unhappy that these aren’t considered reviews, but you don’t want to read reviews.
Please feel free to send me a S.A.S.E. and I’ll be happy to refund the money you spent on this content.
June 10th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Caleb,
Thanks for bringing back the cartoon! Awesome!
And I *LIKE* reading your PREviews, snarky comments and all, whether I agree or not. It’s FUN!
Those who don’t like what your column is about should STOP READING IT. They’ll feel better. And those that are here because we LIKE IT won’t have to wade through argumentative posts that make an argument out of something that can’t really be argued.
Keep up the FUN work, Caleb!
Chuck
June 10th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
@Thatcher:
It’s not Caleb’s fault you have crappy taste in comics.
It’s okay to judge things before they’re released. Like the other day I saw a trailer for Land of the Lost, and I thought “That looks like a really stupid, terrible movie I may end up seeing anyway because it has dinosaurs in it.”
Now you, Thatcher, might see the same preview and think “Sweet Jesus where’s my sleeping bag I need to camp out in line for that before they run out of tickets!”
Then if I blogged my thoughts and you read them you would get unreasonably upset because my opinions didn’t match your own even though your opinions are very, very wrong.
June 10th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Caleb,
What I’m saying is that its unfair to judge this particular issue as “read[ing] poorly and look[ing] even worse” without giving it any sort of actual critical review (or even seeing it on the stand) outside of your own biases for the creative team and a blurb of solicitation copy. I’m judging your particular style and approach to “review,” not your writing itself. Just because you don’t like Winick’s writing and Benes’ art doesn’t make it a fact. It’s your opinion, and while it obviously informs that you are not interested in this particular bit of work, the assumption and implication that there’s no one who could appreciate it (or should, really) is arrogant, intellectually lazy, self-aggrandizing and everything that I hate about the state of comics “journalism” and “criticism” today.
If you want to prejudge and then review books on your own blog, that is of course your right. My understanding is that this blog is part of a website that received an Eisner award for “Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism.” To me, that means the work on here should hold to something resembling standards. You guys give Wizard all kinds of grief for being lowest common denominator, but this is just as bad. It’s smug, elitist and self-congratulating, putting “snark” and “wit” before class and content.
I have no doubt that this takes you longer than it takes me to read my feedreader. I’m sure it takes you about as long as it takes Judd Winick to write or Ed Benes to draw. You are putting your work out there, just like they are, and I’m giving you criticism no harsher than what you are dishing out. I, at least, am doing it for something of yours that I’ve actually read. You don’t want to read it? Fine. That paragraph explaining the contents of the issue could easily be edited down to not have your “snark,” or better yet, that space could be used to promote some things that are coming out that you *are* actually interested in, and give a popular boost to something that may need it and could be overlooked by a retailer or reader.
No, you’d rather take your time (which is apparently very valuable, and my criticism of is unwanted and improper since I didn’t pay for it) tearing something down that’s going to sell well regardless of its quality. The only purpose I can see is to self-congratulate and self-promote at the expense of someone else’s hard work, and to do it on an international stage that an award-winning publication gives you. Plus, it has the added bonus of feeding in to an anonymous internet culture that can now make sweeping, insulting, generalizations about my reading habits and taste based upon my implied enjoyment of Winick and/or Benes’ work (plus not even spell my name right, even though it’s right there above my comments).
Whatever you do, don’t ever kid yourself that what you’re doing with these negative previews is anything resembling reporting or reviewing. The entire internet “snark culture” is no better than self-important teenage girls sitting in the cafeteria rating everyone else’s outfits as they walk by. As I said earlier, you want to blog your “reviews” on your own site, knock yourself out. The blogger/reviewer culture doesn’t interest me and I don’t pursue it. The variety of news, previews and interviews that Newsarama and Blog@ offer do, even though its occasionally peppered with self-important smug nonsense like this.
If we ever wonder why we don’t have real, honest comics journalism and review for mainstream books that could legitimately elevate the standard for those titles, this mentality is exactly why. All it’s left us with is an elitist clubhouse mentality that’s shallow enough to reward attitude and “flash” over actual substance.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Thatcher,
So, your point is that someone on a blog shouldn’t judge something before they’ve seen it, right? Like this?
“It has nothing to do with Will Eisner’s Spirit and everything to do with Frank Miller wanting to do something exactly like everything else he’s done, but not the stuff he’s already done because it’s boring and nothing new because that’s too hard. His next project will apparently be a total ruining of “Buck Rogers.” I can’t wait for Twiki to be a chain-smoking pimp bot and Wilma Deering to be a sexed out future babe looking for a real man to rip off her space suit and make a woman out of her. Oh, and it will rain white space-rain, and he’ll narrate pointless “hardness” while jumping from spaceship to spaceship. His galaxy screams, and he will Rogers it.”
Yeah, I wonder who bagged on a proposed Frank Miller Buck Rogers based on something that they’d seen before? Oh yeah. You.
And don’t hide behind “Newsarama’s won an Eisner”. Blog@Newsarama is still their opinion section by default.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Well, I guess I appreciate you taking the time to spell all that out, but I don’t really know what to tell you, so I guess I’ll just shut up for now.
Class-less-ly, witlessly snarking on books I haven’t read yet is kind of the whole point of this feature, so there’s no real getting around it. (I did flip through that Batman issue today though, and I must admit that Benes’ art seemed a bit improved over his JLoA stuff, at least near the end. I guess one of these inkers works with his pencils better, and/or the relative lack of scantily clad women made it harder for him to make the book about women’s butts instead of whatever the script was actually about).
As to why I mentioned the book at all, as I’m pretty sure I mentioned here before, these are books that a) seem like they might be really good, b) seem like they might be really bad, c) seem like they’ll probably be among the better-selling and most talked about books of the week and/or d) a joke about them may have occurred to me.
Batman fell into b) and c).
Tom Spurgeon, Matthew J. Brady, Jog and Robot 6 all do weekly preview posts; perhaps you’ll find one or more of those more to your liking.
June 11th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Interested Observer (who can’t even spell my name right, again, even though it’s right there above my post), I suppose you think you’ve got me in some sort of hypocritical dilemma because you’ve gone to my website and cherry picked some comment I made in December about something I hadn’t seen (and apparently won’t exist, thankfully), but I’m not a part of an Eisner-award winning (for *Journalism*) website. I’m not part of a journalistic endeavor, and I’ve never claimed to be by association with one. Where does it say Blog@ is *only* Op/Ed? It doesn’t, and it shows a hell of a lot more things than just Op/Ed, like Futurama coming back, or Iron man 2 pictures, which is one of the main reasons why I read it (of course, that’s another personal habit of mine for folks to put under the microscope and make anonymous blanket judgments about. Maybe they will even spell my name right…).
There’s no clear Op/Ed statement on the majority or Blog@’s content, but even when pieces are Op/Ed they are still held to a standard of journalism when part of a publishing effort. Going “it’s Op/Ed, you can say whatever you want” is technically true, but it garners you legitimate credential as an commentator. I think it just makes one sound lazy, and in the absence of an established professional journalistic body, sites like Newsarama and others stand as “it” for reporting among our community. If we don’t take it seriously, ethically (I’m speaking generally here; obviously Caleb takes this seriously, and while I disagree with the manner in which he reports, I don’t think he’s unethical) and with standards, then there’s no reason the “mainstream” should either, and the ghettoizing of the medium continues, by our own hand.
But at least I put my name on what I said (and apparently my personal blog, which I’d forgotten I’d put in and my browser remembered), instead of gutlessly sniping and stalking through the internet like a damn coward. I hope you feel so proud, and so full of self-righteousness since you “got me” and put me in my place. I hope your base cowardice and gutlessness doesn’t diminish that at all. I’m sure you have some noble reason (‘Rama associate? Comics professional? Porn star?) for it, or maybe you think I’d go after you on your “turf,” but I can assure you I won’t. I actually have class. Whatever “noble reason” you have, it isn’t good enough. It’s just cowardice, plain and simple, because you know that you were just bending the facts and truth to fit your argument.
Caleb,
Obviously, we will agree to disagree. I just hope that you’d consider that b) may just be a waste of time, and that the medium and site would be better served by focusing on a). You’ve done a consistently good job of finding back-of Previews gems in the past, and I wish a focus would continue on those in the hopes that more quality small-press work gets visibility to the masses and doesn’t disappear completely from distribution. That’s why I do pause and read this particular section, even though it occasionally annoys the crap out of me.
June 2nd, 2011 at 8:32 am
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