Aliens: More than Human: After giving their licensed comics adaptations of the sci-fi horror film franchise a bit of a rest, Dark Horse brought the aliens from the Aliens movies back last year with this miniseries by John Arcudi, Zach Howard and Mark Irwin. Now that miniseries itself is back, in the form of a $16, 96-page trade paperback. Preview here.

Animal Crackers: A Gene Luen Yang Collection: If you’re anything like me (you poor devil), then for a split-second you thought this was a graphic novel adaptation of the early Marx Brothers play and got super-excited…only to have your hopes dashed a split-second after that, when the sub-title revealed that it’s not…and then you got super-excited again when you processed that sub-title and realized this meant more work from the author of American Born Chinese and The Eternal Smile. This is a collection of Yang’s early work, in the form of a $15, 215-page trade paperback.

Avengers: The Initiative #34: Plenty of Siege tie-ins available this week. Taking them alphabetically, there’s Christos Gage, Jorge Molina and Brian O’Dell’s story of Taskmaster versus a Captain America in Asgard, plus Dan Slott, Khoi Pham and Nestor Pereyra’s Mighty Avengers #35, Brian Michael Bendis, Stuart Immonen and company’s New Avengers #63, Kieron Gillen, Billy Tan and Kirk Jarvinen’s Thor #608 and Jeff Parker and Wellinton Alves’ Thunderbolts #142. Whew! NA is a $4 book, the rest are all $3.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #15: I hate to ever bet against Batman, especially in his own book, but his chances of winning this particular match-up don’t seem all that great.

Maybe Batman can take advantage of some sort of tortoise-and-the-hare situation?

Black Blizzard: Drawn and Quarterly continues their collection and republication of gekiga in general and the work of Yoshihiro Tatsumi in particular with this $20, 155-page graphic novel-length story from the young Tatsumi (circa the late‘50s). It’s a crime story about a young piano player accused of murder and handcuffed to a career criminal.

Book of Grickle: This $18, 200-page black and white hardcover from Dark Horse collects the best of Graham Annable’s Grickle. The solicitation copy boasts that, “If you’ve experienced Grickle before, this is the greatest collection yet. If you haven’t, there’s no better introduction than Book of Grickle!” I’d add that if you haven’t experienced Grickle before, you’d better get on that—these are some great comics.

Chobits Vol. 1: Dark Horse recollects CLAMP’s manga series about a college student Hideki and his the discarded pretty android in the shape of a young girl he finds in an alley in near-future Japan. It’s just $25 for a gigantic 720-page trade paperback, making for a pretty great way to catch-up with the series if you’re interested but missed it in digests.

Deadpool #21: Wade Wilson and the Webbed Wonder team-up to take on Hit-Monkey, the hitman who is a monkey in this comic by Daniel Way, Carlo Barberi and Steve Butler. What’s that you say? This doesn’t really grab you? Well don’t worry; Marvel’s got some other comics you might like instead. For example, Deadpool Corps: Rank and Foul, a $4, Marvel Handbook-style book profiling Deadpool’s enemies, allies and love interests. Or perhaps you’d prefer Prelude To Deadpool Corps #4, the penultimate chapter of Victor Gischler, Paco Medina and Takeshi Miyazawa’s miniseries about Deadpool teaming up with a variety of alternate Deadpools to form an all-Deadpool team? No? Well how about Deadpool: Suicide Kings, a $20, 150-page trade paperback collecting the five-part titular miniseries  by Mike Benson and Carlo Barberi and the Games of Death special?

Green Lantern #52: So supervillain Sinestro has a white power ring, and is the now the sole wielder of the power of life, standing against the embodiment of the darkness that came before the creation of life. What happens next? Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy will let us know tomorrow, in this penultimate issue of the inter-book Blackest Night storyline, which is set to wrap up in next week’s Blackest Night #8.

The Guild #1: I normally wouldn’t mention a media tie-in book like this here unless I had a joke to tell about it—mainly because I only have the vaguest sense of understanding what exactly this is—but this comic features artwork by the great Jim Rugg, and that’s always worth mentioning. It’s written by Felicia Day, an actress who has appeared in a couple of Joss Whedon projects, and who created, wrote and starred in “Internet phenomenon The Guild,” which I guess is some sort of Internet television show…? Maybe…? Anyway, this is a miniseries based on the show. You can read a short preview of the comic here, and check out the show itself here. Man, television on the computer! To think that I would live to see the day…next thing you know, there will be comics on the Internet…

Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal #1: Hey, I was just sort of kind of almost getting used to calling Roy Harper “Red Arrow,” and he’s already going back to “Arsenal?” Well, I suppose it’s better than “Lefty!” (What, too soon?) This four issue miniseries by J.T. Krul, Geraldo Borges and Marlo Alquiza follows up on the events of Justice League: Cry For Justice; it’s an over-sized, $4 book.

King City #6: More Brandon Graham awesomeness in the more album-sized format.

The Newsboy Legion by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Vol. 1: The latest of DC’s big, hardcover collections of Kirby’s work is this 360-page, $50 chunk of his kid gang comic with Joe Simon.

The Night Owls Vol. 1: This 190-page, $15 trade collects the Zuda Comics series about a trio of 1920s-era crime busters—a professor, a flapper and a gargoyle wearing a derby. Of course, you can read it online for free, but then you have to deal with Zuda’s weird interface that I never managed to get the hang of before deciding “Eh, if any of ‘em are any good they’ll probably end up in trade eventually.” Now another one has! So maybe it’s probably good. Maybe.

Orc Stain #2: The first issue of James Stokoe’s new fantasy series from Image was one of the most exciting new comic book-comics I’ve read in a good long time. Needless to say, then that I’m super-excited about this next issue.

Tor: A Prehistoric Odyssey: Joe Kubert’s recent six-issue miniseries, now in 160-page, $15 trade paperback format. In a real departure for the legendary comics creator, it’s a non-fiction book about the history of science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor Books. Oh wait no, it’s actually about a guy named Tor fighting dinosaurs and suchlike. That’s even better.

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