I think I missed last month (again) with this column, so my apologies for that. I know you’re all waiting with bated breath to know what comics I might buy, taste-setter than I am.

Let’s get right into it, starting in the back as I like to do.

A couple offerings from Boom! catch my eye: A relist for Stuart and Kathryn Immonen’s Never As Bad As You Think, a lot of which I’ve read online. Good stuff, been thinking about buying it for a while now. Good motivation to rethink it, but still think it’s falling just below the wallet marker. The new Disney license has me pretty excited, as I’m hoping Boom! will push out some Carl Barks-focused Duck collections. This month, they have a hardcover of Don Rosa’s Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. I have a Gemstone softcover, but I considered upgrading to the hardcover. It’s a story well deserving of HC treatment, but then I noticed that this is vol. 1 and only 112 pages. I’d rather have a single softcover than two hardcovers. Sorry, Boom!

I’ve read an advance of R.O. Blechman’s Talking Lines from Drawn & Quarterly, and it’s sharp stuff. Pretty fair chance I’ll get the hardcover. Imri Sakabashira’s The Box Man sounds like it’s going to be crazy cool or trippy idiocy, so that’ll get at least a page through. Definitely an eye-catcher though.

Negative Burn 2009 from Desperado has a pretty good chance of being added to my collection. I read the original Negative Burn run semi-regularly (it was hard to find in rural Pennsylvania), picked up the Best of trade, and upon its return, the first couple semi-annual issues. Unfortunately, I just don’t go to the comic shop enough to find issues of the latest run, but a 200-page chunk may push me back into the fold.

 I wish I could afford $125 (even the Amazon discount won’t bring that in line with my budget) slipcase, three-volume hardcover collection Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons. Looks like Fantagraphics did a great job with it, and the strips look pretty sharp too. I’ll definitely, 100% get Gilbert Hernandez’s The Troublemakers (here making its third Previews appearance!). I just hope it actually comes out this time!

IDW has two books I hope to fit into the budget. If I can’t afford one or both, I’ll watch eagle-eyed for both books to appear in the New York Public Library’s catalog, because I’ve heard so many good things about each yet never read them in any form at all: Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County: The Complete Library vol. 1 and Dave Stevens’ The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures.

McSweeney’s is putting out a new edition of Justin Green’s seminal underground comix Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. Really want to read it, kind of don’t want to spend $30 on 64 pages. New York Public Library, will you help me out?

Finally, though I bought the original issues to try to get his self-publishing venture off on the right foot, I really, really prefer to have the trade: Nexus Space Opera, from Rude Dude Productions is a sure-fire purchase. Even if it’s not the series’ best arc, Nexus remains my favorite superhero comic of all time.

 From the front of the catalog: Not sure how much life is left in Matt Wagner’s Grendel, but Behold the Devil is a likely purchase. Wagner’s got me hooked on his work pretty good at this point. Nexus Archives 10, if you didn’t guess a paragraph ago, is a guaranteed purchase. I bought the first nine; I’m not gonna stop now. I’ll probably at least page through Dean Motter’s Electropolis. Motter’s done some interesting work, but I doubt I’ll fit this into the budget when push comes to shove. Those three from Dark Horse.

Two DC titles catch my attention. DC Comics Classics Library: Shazam! – The Monster Society of Evil is one of those Golden Age classics that I’d like to check out. 50/50 chance, but I’m pulling for it. My weakness for Superman may be sufficient for Showcase Presents: DC Comics Presents – Superman Team-Ups to make the cut. I hate the Showcase format, and Jesus, there is a lot of presenting in that title, and the stories probably aren’t that great, really, but I like the character and there will be a few yarns inside that sneak up and surprise me with their quality.

I’m definitely, unconditionally getting Liberty Comics #2, the new CBLDF benefit from Image. I’d be in financial trouble if every publisher started donating a huge chunk of their profits to the CBLDF or Hero Initiative, because I’m a sucker for their benefit books.

Finally, Marvel, I may get the new Kabuki trade, Alchemy, but it’s been so long since I’ve reread any Kabuki that my enthusiasm for it is a little low right now.  I used to really dig that book back in the day.  Also, the new softcover Marvel Masterworks: Amazing Spider-Man vol. 3 is a shoo-in.  I’m liking this softcover Masterworks program.

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