I haven’t read Superman/Batman in a while, but then, they haven’t eschewed the World’s Finest team and instead used Bizarro and Man-Bat instead yet. They’ll give it a try in tomorrow’s Superman/Batman #66, in which the two characters will contend with Black Lantern Solomon Grundy. It’s going to be written and drawn by Scott Kolins, who recently completed a little-read Solomon Grundy miniseries. I hope it’s good. What else is there to hope for this week? Let’s find out below, after the jump!

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Cyborg’s name never strikes me as all that boring and prosaic until I hear it next to the name of another cyborg comic character, like Deathlok, who has one of the most metal names in the Marvel character catalog. Deathlok returns this week in Deathlok #1, the first part of a new, seven-issue Max series written by Charlie Huston and penciled by Lan Medina. Cyborg, on the other hand, seems to have the week off, which is probably for the best–he won’t be getting shown up by Marvel’s more bad-ass cyborg.

Who else will be waiting to see you at the comics shop tomorrow? Join me after the jump to find out!

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You probably wouldn’t know it to look at ‘em, but those little cartoons I usually draw to kick off this column so that there’s some non-comic book cover art to post each week take time to make. I spend minutes and minutes on ‘em each Monday night. Unfortunately, my schedule contained fewer minutes than usual this week, so I didn’t make one this time. I’m sorry to derpive you all of the poorly-drawn colored-pencil-on-index-card imagery you have come to expect at the top of each week’s here-are-some-comics-coming-out-this-week column.

But I did do the writing part! So join me after the jump for an all-words, no-pictures look at some of thise week’s noteworthy releases.

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I am so excited about Batman Unseen by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones, the second issue of which is due tomorrow (Preview here). The first issue magically transported me to a Wednesday afternoon in 1998 or so, and made me want to re-read Morrison, Porter and Dell’s JLA and Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s Hitman. Is this that feeling of nostalgia people are always talking about? Have I just never read a superhero comic book geared specifically toward my own personal nostalgia spot before?

Are any of this week’s books targeted at your personal nostalgia spot? Join me after jump to find out.

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What’s that? Mephisto Vs. Premiere Hardcover doesn’t deal with Marvel’s most diabolical character fighting their Premiere Hardcover format? Instead it collects a four-issue miniseries from the 1980s by Al Milgrom and John Buscema called Mephisto Vs., in which the marriage-eating villain fights the Avengers, the FF, and two X-Men teams?

Oh.

Well, that will probably be a better fight then. It’s a $20, 144-page collection.

What else is due out in shops this week? You won’t have to sell your soul and/or marriage and twenty years worth of continuity to find out. Just join me after the jump.

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Poor Stephen Strange. Marvel finally goes ahead and greenlights a new ongoing series featuring their Sorcerer Supreme, but they do so just as Strange loses the role to a character whose name the company found so embarassing that they had to change it before they put it on the cover of a comic book.

Don’t take it too hard, Stephen. Everything in super-comics is temporary after all. For the time being, if you wanna read about a guy in a red cape casting spells in the Marvel Universe, you can do so in the pages of Doctor Voodoo: Avenger of the Supernatural, which launches this week. It’s written by Rick Remender, penciled by Jefte Palo and will cost you $4 an issue.

What other new books are due in shops this week, and will any of them star Dr. Strange? To answer the second question first, no. To answer the first, join me after the jump.

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Serious question: Is this the single best Wednesday of the year? After poring over the Diamond shipping lists as I do at the beginning of each week, it sure looks like it. Some of the very best looking books of a crowded week of big releases, as well as a few oddities, after the jump.

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Marvel sure does publish a lot of comics, don’t they? This is one of those weeks where they unleash a deluge of new releases, so many that they seem to drown the direct market. The disparity between Marvel’s output and everyone else’s looked so significant this week that I counted the items on Diamond’s shipping list.

Unless I miscounted, it looks like Marvel will have 53 new comics and graphic novels on shelves this week, almost twice as many books as their nearest competitor DC Comics, which will have 28 books to sell. Heck, it’s almost as many books as Diamonds general, “everyone else” category of “comics.” There are 63 books in that category, which consists of all the publishers with direct market releases this week that aren’t Marvel, DC, Dark Horse or Image Comics.

Wow.

Anyway, enough counting and sadly shaking my head for now. Let’s look at what Marvel and the rest of the market have in store for us this week, after the jump…

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Yes, there’s another new version of “Armor Wars” headed to the stands this week (more on that below), which shouldn’t be confused with the new Iron Man: Armor Wars miniseries. What other comics are due in shops this week, and can any of their titles be made into terrible puns? Join me after the jump to find out!

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Good news, Pasty Walker, Hellcat!  This week Project Runway’s Tim Gunn, a longtime faculty member at the Parsons New School of Design, makes his Marvel Universe debut in the pages of Models, Inc. #1. Surely he can answer any of your fashion-related questions.

Models, Inc. features a bunch of Marvel’s model characters, including Millie the Model, Chili Storm, Mary Jane Watson and Patsy herself, as they become embroiled in a murder case during Fashion Week. Paul Tobin and Marc Sumerak are writing, Jorge Molina and Vincenc Villagrasa are drawing, and Scott Clark and Phil Jiminez are providing the covers. I’d go with the Jiminez one (if I were gonna shell out $4 for a comic, which I’m not), as the Clark cover looks positively Landian.

The heavily promoted (by Gunn…on TV!) Models, Inc. aside, Marvel’s actually got a pretty big week. Let’s take a look at what they have coming out this week…as well as other books of note from a few publishers that aren’t Marvel, after the jump.

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This week DC launches two new series that I find completely perplexing.

One is Red Tornado, a six-issue miniseries written by Kevin VanHook and illustrated by Jose Luisí and J.P. Mayer and starring the on-again, off-again Justice League member who is also an android.

The other is Magog, an ongoing series written by Keith Giffen and drawn by Howard Porter and John Dell, starring the recently introduced pregacy version of a minor character from a mid-nineties Elseworlds story whose sole reason for existence was to symbolize the Image Comics super-characters of the time in that particular story.

Both characters probably have some fans, and each of the creators do as well, but neither character seems popular enough to guarantee a hit (that is, they’re not Batman or Hal Jordan), nor are any of the creators in category of so-hot-people-will-buy-whatever-they-work on (that is, none of ‘em are Geoff Johns or Jim Lee).

So I’m not exactly sure why DC is publishing either book. But then, I’m not a comics publisher, I’m just some jerk who second guesses comics publishers constantly.

And speaking of which, more highlights from this week’s batch of new comics, after the jump.

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I’ve spend the last few months seeking out Transformers comics in an attempt to find which are the really goods ones (based on my suspicion that there must be some good comics for the franchise to have lasted so long). The best I’ve found so far have all been from Marvel UK and to have been written by Simon Furman, so I’ve got to assume Transformers: Best of the UK Omnibus has some pretty solid Transformers comics in it. It’s a 360-page, $25 collection collecting the contents of three other Best of the UK collections (Dinobots, Space Pirates and Time Wars), In addition to Furman, the creative roster for these old comics also includes Barry Kitson, Will Simpson, Doug Braithwaite, Bryan Hitch, Geoff Senior and others.

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This is the week that Archie #600 is finally released. In it,  Archie Andrews proposes to Veronica in the first part of a story entitled “Archie Marries Veronica.” Perhaps you’ve heard something about this one already….?

What else is out this week? Well, it looks like a relatively light week, but here’s what looks really good, really bad or somewhat somewhat noteworthy…

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This week you can choose your own Herc, with Marvel’s Prince of Power appearing in Incredible Hercules #132 by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente and Reilly Brown and a straighter, more traditional version of the hero appearing in Radical’s Hercules: The Knives of Kush #1, by Steve Moore and Cris Bolson. The former has Herc donning Thor’s duds for the cover, and beginning an arc in which Pak and Van Lente referred to him as “Hercu-Thor” in a recent interview. The latter is the start of Radical’s second Herc miniseries, this one sending lion skin-rocking hero and his band of mercenaries to Egypt.

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Unless I missed a version somewhere, this will be the third attempt at a new Doom Patrol ongoing series this decade, following John Arcudi and Tan Eng Huat’s 2001 series, which teamed Robotman with an all-new team of heroes and lasted 22 issues, and then  John Byrne’s 2004 series, which involved a continuity reboot that Geoff Johns undid in the pages of Teen Titans and only lasted 18 issues.

Will this attempt fare any better, and hit, say 24 or 36 issues? I can’t hazard a guess. It’s written by Keith Giffen (who’s had mixed success with franchise revitalization in the past), it’s drawn by Matthew Clark (who’s done a lot of work for DC lately, but mostly on out of the way stuff), and it seems to be playing it pretty safe, using the original characters and not rebooting the franchise or doing anything crazy.

It’s also going to be a $4 book, which may make it a tougher sell. On the other hand, it’s going to include a Metal Men back-up by the beloved Justice League International creative team of Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire (and Maguire draws real good Metal Men; just see 2000’s Silver Age: The Brave and The Bold #1 if you need proof of that).

So I guess we’ll see how the market receives it in a few months, and we’ll see if it’s any good tomorrow. I’m certainly going to give it a shot.

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It’s not often that I feel bad for a comic book, but I do kinda feel for Kid Colt #1. It’s written by Tom DeFalco, who writes that Spider-Girl comic no one wants to read (or, more accurately, that a few thousand people really, really want to read very badly, but no one else does), it’s drawn by the incredibly talented Rick Burchett and it even has a pretty nice cover by Luke Ross, but it’s still a random Kid Colt one-shot thrown out into the market the same week Marvel is releasing almost 40 other comics and trades.

I say I feel bad for it, but not so bad that I’d want to part with $4 for it. Kid Colt’s probably too proud to accept my pity dollars anyway.

A closer look at some of those 40 Marvel comics, and some stuff from their archenemy DC comics and some other publishers as well, after the jump.

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No, it’s Fantomah, the white Queen of the Jungle who wears a black negligee and whose face melts off when she uses her super-powers, which are about as random and god-like as Stardust The Super-Wizard’s! She’s on the cover of this week’s You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation!, the second and final collection of Fletcher Hanks’ Golden Age superhero and adventure comics work, covering the period in his career where his work took a turn toward the more representational and naturalistic, and began addressing issues relevant to—Aw, I’m just kidding. It’s a bunch more bat-shit insane weirdness and violence. Paired with I  Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets!, You Shall Die will comprise a complete collection of Hanks’ small but potent body of work. It’s 225-pages and will cost you $25. You can download two preview stories here.

It’s but one of a slew of worthwhile projects out this week. Join me after the jump for a rundown of some of the others.

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Hey, Vibe’s right! There is only one more day until Blackest Night #1. It might seem like this storyline has been in the works forever, but there’s a good reason for that—writer Geoff Johns has been setting it up ever since his first Green Lantern story, 2005’s Green Lantern: Rebirth. Will the climax of “The War of Light,” which kicked off in earnest during 2007’s Sinestro Corps War storyline, justify all that build-up? We’ll find out tomorrow. Expect zombies, gore, death, vomiting and cannibalism. Or greater quantities than usual, anyway. Johns’ GL collaborators Ivan Reis and Oclair Albert are the art team, and the book is 48-pages for $3.99. It should be gross, decadent fun.

What else is coming out this week? Let’s take a look, after the jump.

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Yeah, good point poorly-drawn Grimlock! When’s Michael Bay gonna wise up and start using the Dinobots? They’re giant robots and dinosaurs in one! What could be more popular? Squabbling robots with gold teeth who speak Hollywood stereotype street slang? An ankle-humping remote-control car version of Wheelie? Freaking Arcee? Feh. Well, even if you can’t find giant robots that transform into giant robot dinosaurs with speech impediments at your local cineplex, you can find them in Transformers: Maximum Dinobots Vol. 1, a 130-page, $20 trade collecting IDW’s miniseries of the same name, by Nick Roche, Marcelo Matere and, (of course) Simon Furman.

It looks like a huge week for big, must-read comics, even if the field of super-comics seems a lot lighter than usual. What looks good, and what looks not-so-good? Look after the jump to find out!

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If the goings-on at your average Big Two comics publisher sometimes look chaotic from this side of the comic book, just imagine how crazy they must be behind the scenes. Justice League: Cry For Justice is a good example of a book that makes one wonder about the process of comics publishing.

The series was first announced in March of 2008 at the Wizard World LA convention as a second ongoing Justice League title. A year or so later, it was down-graded to a six-issue miniseries. Then just a few weeks ago Cry For Justice writer James Robinson was named the new Justice League of America writer, so it seems as if his Justice League plans may be back to being an ongoing after all, just in the original JLA book, not a second one.

The timing seems awfully wonky too, as the events of Cry supposedly spin directly out of the events of Final Crisis, which wrapped up (late) back in January, and the events of the main JLoA title since March’s JLoA #31 have apparently occurred after the events of this book, which is just now starting, and won’t wrap up until the end of the year, if it stays on schedule.

None of that is terribly important though. Nor are the details of the book, like the fact that it’s painted by Mauro Cascioli, or that it’s $3.99 for 30 pages, or that the story “pushes our heroes to the brink and beyond as evil can no longer be tolerated to win.”

No, all anyone really needs to know is that this comic features the triumphant return of Congorilla, the giant golden gorilla who switches minds with great white hunter Congo Bill via magic ring. Buy two copies of each issue, and maybe we’ll get a Showcase Presents: Congrorilla out of it!

After the jump, the week’s Congorilla-free books!

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