Hmm, what ever could poorly-drawn Larfleeze’s problem be with The Grinch? Is it his green color? The fact that he was eventually infected by the Christmas spirit and converted from his wicked ways? Or does Larfleeze simply find The Grinch’s attempts to steal everything holiday related Whoville lacking in avarice? The breakout star of Blackest Night, Orange Lantern Larfleeze, will get a chance to see if he can better resist the spirit of giving on Wednesday, when DC ships Green Lantern: Larfleeze Chrismas Special, a $4, 22-pager by Geoff Johns and artist Brett Booth.

Archie #616: Finishing up a year of attention-grabbing stunt covers and stories, Archie finds President Barack Obama and reality TV star  Sarah Palin visiting Riverdale to take part in Archie and Reggie’s campaign for student council.

A Single Match: Drawn and Quarterly continues their publication of highly literate alternative manga from the post-war Japan. This $25,  240-page hardcover collects short stories by Oji Suzuki. You can download a preview here.

Axe Cop Vol. 1: This is it! Grown-up artist Ethan Nicolle’s cult favorite, attention-demanding collaboration with his five-year-old brother Malachai Nicolle is finally available in a Luddite-friendly, $15, 120-page trade paperback format. You can check out a preview here, or cut out the middle man and check out the  strip online here. If you prefer your online comics to have fewer axes and cops in them, publisher Dark Horse also has another hard copy collection of a popular web comic due out this week—Tatsuya Ishida’s Sinfest: Viva La Resistance, which collects another 210-pages in a $15 trade. You can check out a few pages of Dark Horse’s collection here and/or read Sinfest online here.

Chew #16:

I like the cover of this issue.

Dracula: The Dead Travel Fast: Er, did someone just straight up bite off the title of Eric Nuzum’s 2007 cultural history of Dracula and his vampiric descendants, The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires From Nosferatu to Count Chocula…? Because if so, that’s kind of lame.

Hitman Vol. 3: Local Heroes: This $18, 144-page trade paperback collects six more issues of Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s excellent (and under-appreciated) 1996 series. This volume contains the four-part “Local Hero,” in which super-hitman Tommy Monaghan fights Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, takes him out for a drink and then teams up with him. It also includes the two-part “Zombie Night at The Gotham Aquarium,” which is pretty much what it sounds like. That second story, by the way, is from 1997, waaaaayyyy ahead of the apparently still-current zombie craze. Anyway, if you didn’t read Hitman in singles the first time around, be sure to pick up this trade—it’s pretty much the best thing ever.

Reid Fleming: World’s Toughest Milkman Vol. 1: IDW collects David Boswell’s tales of a rather tough milkman—the world’s toughest, according to the sub-title—in a $30, 225-page hardcover. Inside you’ll find the first Reid Fleming comic, the miniseries Rogues to Riches and Heartbreak Comics.

Robert E. Howard’s Savage Sword #1: Well hell, this looks kinda cool. An $8, 80-page, bound anthology featuring reprints and original stories featuring Howard’s characters. The first issue includes work from Marc Andreyko, Roy Thomas, Paul Tobin, Barry Windsor-Smith, Tim Bradstreet, Robert Atkins and others. You can take a looksee here.

Teen Titans: Cold Case #1: Writer Mark Sable and Joe The Barbarian artist Sean Murphy tell a Teen Titans vs. The Flash’s Rogues story in an oversized, $5 one-shot that looks like it’s either set in the recent-ish past or has been sitting in a drawer for a while, based on Tim Drake’s appearance on the cover.

Ultimate Comics Doom #1: “The enemy has revealed itself and the Ultimate has been rocked to its very core,” says the solicitaion for the first issue of this minseries by Brian Michael Bendis and Rafa Sandoval. Man, the Ultimate Universe sure gets rocked to its very core a lot these days, doesn’t it? “Now, the surviving heroes must put together the most bad ass covert ops team ever if they have any chance of catching up to the enemy before he/she strikes again,” it goes on, “Ultimate Doom is a story you have never seen in a Marvel Comics, and we promise you–no hype–the Ultimate Universe changes forever.” So, more of the same then….? It’s a $4 comic. For more Bendis-written Ultimate Comics, this week also sees the release of Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #151, in which Ultimate Spidey gets a new girlfriend and some guest-stars. Sara Pichelli handles the art on this one, and it is, as usual, also $4 book. The main page has previews of both issues available for your perusal here.

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