Bodyworld: Dash Shaw’s follow-up to The Bottomless Bellybutton, this book is set in a futuristic, dystopian planned community, and follows a high-schooler with some drug issues. It’s $28 for a 385-hardcover, and it was originally serialized online, so you should be able to check it out here, but I think you should buy the paper copy and read that instead. Because I hate trees.
Black Widow #1: Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuna launch the next Marvel ongoing series to be quickly canceled, a $4 ongoing featuring the always-a-bridesmaid, never-a-star supporting character. Will it outlast Doctor Voodoo or SWORD, maybe living as long as Captain Britain and MI13 or Agents of Atlas? We should know by the time the Iron Man 2 DVD comes out.
Brightest Day #0: The two Green Lantern comics writers, Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi, kick off their bi-weekly series with this 56-page, $4 issue that will pick up on all those back-from-the-dead-for-unrevealed-reasons characters from the second half of Blackest Night #8. Fernando Pasarin provides the art, while David Finch draws the cover, and boy, it’s not a very good cover, is it?
Cold Space #1: Actor Samuel L. Jackson gets in on the autobio comics craze with this graphic memoir, about the time his space ship crash-landed on a planet experiencing a civil war. No wait, I think it’s actually fiction. Jackson lends his likeness to, and helps co-write, this “hard-boiled sci-fi action-adventure” with his Afro Samurai collaborator Eric Calderon and artist Jeremy Rock. It’s a $4 book.
Dan DeCarlo’s Jetta: Ooh, here’s this week’s number one reason to wish I had an extra $22. Editor Craig Yoe and publisher IDW collect over 100 pages of futuristic humor strips featuring Jetta, Teen-Age Sweetheart of the 21st Century, by none other than Dan DeCarlo. As the creator and/or defining artist of such comic book characters as Betty, Veronica, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and her Pussycats, DeCarlo is responsible for many readers’ very first comic book crushes.
Deadpool Team-up #894: I’ve been trade-waiting the intriguing-looking Punisher-as-Frankenstein’s monster storyline from the Punisher title, so I’m not sure if I should get this issue, in which Deadpool teams up with the “Frankencastle” version of Punny or not. Any thoughts, readers? Is this Frankencastle business self-explanatory? Ivan Brandon writes, Sandford Green draws and Humberto Ramos covers this issue.
The Flash #1: After already having written Barry Allen in six issues of Flash: Rebirth, eight issues of Blackest Night and three issues of Blackest Night: The Flash, it seems like Geoff Johns has been writing Barry Allen forever already, doesn’t it? Well, following the Secret Files special, this is the real, no-kidding beginning of Johns’ run on the relaunched Flash title, with artist Francis Manapaul. It’ll cost you $4, but it’s an oversized issue; the price drops back to $3 with next month’s #2.
Kill Shakespeare #1: This comic features a clever pun of a title, and retailer/blogger Christopher Butcher once described it as “basically Shakespeare’s characters meets Marvel’s Secret Wars, where they all end up on an island together and fight.” That’s more than enough to intrigue me. It’s the first part of a 12-issue series from IDW, by writers Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col and artist Andy B. It’s a $4 comic, and you can learn much more about it here.
Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers: Unleashed #2: I loved the first Pet Avengers miniseries, but decided to trade-wait this second one, because how could one live without having this image in one’s possession—
—and that’s the variant cover.
Image Firsts: Savage Dragon #1: Image comics has two $1 reprintings of #1 issues this week, Erik-with-a-K Larsen’s first issue of Savage Dragon and Eric-with-a-C Shanower’s first issue of Age of Bronze. Together with DC’s $1 special edition of The Losers #1, and you can walk out of the comics shop with three pretty great comics for just three bucks.
Mercury: The latest from Hope Larson, of Gray Horses and Salamander Dream fame seems to be close in keeping to her 2008 book Chiggers. Like Chiggers, it’s a YA-friendly coming-of-age story…actually, it’s a pair of related coming-of-age stories set in two distinct time periods. It’s 240-pages, and available in both a $10 trade paperback or a $20 hardcover.
Prime Baby: This is Gene Luen Yang’s contribution to The New York Times Magazine, collected and re-publihsed as a strip-accomodating, horizontal graphic novel by First Second. It’s about new big brother Thaddeus K. Fong and his baby sister, who turns out to be an intergalactic alien portal of sorts. It’s a 56-page trade paperback, and a steal at $7.
PunisherMax #6:
(Note to self: Don’t forget to insert a penis joke here before hitting “publish”)
Teen-Aged Dope Slaves and Reform School Girls: I can’t find much out about this book in the minutes and minutes I’ve spent researching it, but I’m going to assume it’s a reprinting of Eclipse’s 1989 collection of eight old-school sensationalist comics, featuring work by Simon, Kirby, Kurtzman or others. It’s definitely $20.
Siege: Captain America #1: Bring on the Siege tie-ins! The Cap one, featuring both Caps, is by Christos Gage, Marko Djurdjevic and Fredrico Dallocchio. Also available this week are Siege: Loki #1, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (!!!), and Siege: Young Avengers #1 by Sean McKeever and Mahmud Asrar. Marvel.com has all of these bearing a “NOT FINAL TITLE” indication at the end of the solicitation, but Diamond’s shipping list is calling them by those names, which seems to indicate that it is indeed the final title. I dunno, I suppose they could end up being House of M tie-ins or something instead. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow
April 13th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Well, considering the Brightest Day #0 cover includes three of my favorite super-heroes, The Flash (Barry Allen), Hawkman, and Aquaman, and my absolute favorite super-hero of all time, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), I would have to say, gee, it’s a mighty fine cover to me!
April 13th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
“Black Widow #1: Marjorie Liu and Daniel Acuna launch the next Marvel ongoing series to be quickly canceled”
That’s the spirit!!
Peace.
April 13th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
John Kingman:
I’m pretty sure he’s talking about the actual composition or execution. Personally I’m not that big of a Finch fan. Something about his heavy use of black seems really unsettling to me and not in a “it’s creepy or tense” way that’s good when it’s on purpose but in a way that’s completely unpleasing to the eye. With a good inker and colorist it can help make it from being so harsh, but whoever worked with him on that cover didn’t help.
April 14th, 2010 at 9:18 am
Joe, I do understand J. Caleb’s point about the Brightest Day cover. Plus the fact that all the characters are leaping with determined glares in all directions towards some unspecified location(s) is nothing new under the sun. In fact, that kind of group pose gets WAY too much sun. But what wins me over is just the nostalgic rush of four of my nine favorite Justice Leaguers soaring — and dashing — heroically into the fray. Who knows? It may all be downhill from here.
April 14th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Come on Kingman, don’t curse it already! ha ha
April 14th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Now, having thumbed through Brightest Day #0, and giving it a partial read, I will say I’m intrigued by it. It’s basically a set-up issue for everyone depicted on the cover. There’s a HUGE historical error that jarred me out of the story long enough to conduct some research on the matter, and once I resolved that I kind of wish the editor had caught it, but these things happen. Overall, though, and so far, I like it.