Are you enjoying Marvel’s universe-wide “Dark Reign” mega-story? If so, you’ll have no shortage of Dark Reign-branded books to choose from this week. Dark Reign: Zodiac and Dark Reign: Lethal Legion are two new three-issue miniseries that are launching tomorrow, Dark Reign: The Sinister Spider-Man kicks off a new four-issue miniseries, and Dark Reign: Elektra and Dark Reign: The Hood each ship new issues. Each book is $3.99. These are only the books that have the actual words “Dark Reign” in their actual titles; there are a couple more tie-ins shipping this week, like Dark Avengers, Dark Wolverine, Avengers: The Initiative, Amazing Spider-Man and Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia. That’s…that’s an awful lot of comics right there.

And it’s only a drop in the bucket of new book’s shipping this week. As for the rest of the bucket’s contents, join me after after the jump.

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The book I’m most looking forward to this week isn’t a comic book at all, but a comic-like book about comics. Specifically, the Marvel Pets Handbook, which is one of those exhaustively researched reference books that Marvel puts out occasionally, this one apparently focusing on the various pets of the Marvel Universe, like Sentry’s Watchdog, the Runaways’ Old Lace, Thor’s goats and so on.

I assume the impetus for the book Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers, a miniseries about Lockjaw and a pack of Marvel animals questing for the Infinity Gems that I’ve really been digging. If you missed the first issue of that, there’s a second printing of it being released tomorrow.

What else is being released tomorrow?  A whole bunch of stuff. Join me after the jump for some discussion of some of that stuff.

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Oh Perez Hilton, Miss America’s not a beauty pageant competitor, she’s a red, white and blue Golden Age superheroine, and she’ll be starring in this week’s Miss America Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1, the latest in Marvel’s line of ridiculously long titled one-shots pairing all-new adventures of Golden Age heroes with classic Golden Age reprints.

They haven’t published a bad one yet, and some of them have been just excellent, so I imagine this one will follow suit.

The new story is by Jen Van Meter and Andy MacDonald, and there are some back-up stories featuring the, um, Whizzer. Who runs so fast that he, like, whizzes right by you. That’s why he has that codename. Not the other reason you might be thinking. The main site has a preview here; MacDonald’s art sure looks nice.

As for the rest of the week’s new releases, join me after the jump for an overview.

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Apologies to Deco, Chuck an Kevin, who asked for more poorly-drawn, not-terribly-funny cartoons at the top of each of these posts. I meant to do one for this week, but ran out of time. It turns out drawing is really, really time-consuming, even if you’re not drawing all that well. I’ll try to start again next week. Maybe.

In the meantime, tomorrow is Wednesday, which means the shelves at the comic shops will magically replenish themselves with brand-new books while we sleep tonight.

Here’s what looked noteworthy (i.e. really good, really bad or at least fairly interesting) to me on Diamond’s shipping list. Feel free to let us know what you’re getting and/or tell me to shut up Ultimatum rules in the comments.

Agents of Atlas #6: It is my firm and sincere belief that the Marvel Universe was created simply to give Namor many more people to be a jerk to and/or to punch. In the latest issue of the Jeff Parker-helmed super-team book, Namor should get to be a jerk to and/or to punch a killer robot, a talking gorilla, a man from Uranus and his own cousin. I expect it to rule.

Batman and Robin #1: The universally acclaimed All-Star Superman creative team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely reunite to launch an all-new Batman comic featuring the all-new Batman and all-new Robin. If anyone can redeem the phrase “Batman and Robin,” which since 1997 or so has been associated with this, Morrison and Quitely can.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Vampires: Attention people who don’t normally read/care about Buffy comics! This one-shot special is written by Becky Cloonan, features artwork by Vasilis Lolo, and features a cover by  Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon. Well, a cover. There’s two; the other cover is by the also always worthwhile Jo Chen. Short preview here.

Chew #1: This is a new Image series by John Layman and Rob Guillory about a “Cibopathic” detective who gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats. His name? Tony Chu. Which is pronounced like “chew,” but spelled different! Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Um, hopefully the rest of it is funnier? The art sure looks nice, anyway. Take a look here.

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This is the week where we celebrate the noble sacrifices of all those men and women who have laid down their lives to defends this country by…waiting an extra day to read new comic books. No wait, we honored them by giving everyone Monday off, which pushes new comic book day from tomorrow until Thursday. What will be waiting 24 extra hours to read this week? Let’s take a look at see what comics has in store for us…

Aliens #1: The aliens-with-a-capital-A  first introduced in Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie Alien are turning 30 this year, and Dark Horse is marking the occasion by returning the monsters to their comics in a big way. This is a four-issue, subtitle-less miniseries written by John Arcudi and featuring artwork by Zach Howard and Mark Irwin. The plot revolves around a group of prospectors who land on a distant but mysterious new world and, I think it’s safe to assume, are slowly picked off by eye-less horrors with stabby tails, acid drool and a very unpleasant way of reproducing. Preview here.

Batman in Barcelona: Dragon’s Knight: If you’re not digging DC’s current Batman-free Batman books, this should prove a perfect antidote. Mark Waid writes an over-sized one-shot about, well, Batman in Barcelona, and Barcelona-based artist Diego Olmos illustrates it. So let’s see, Batman, a great writer, and a great artist—I can’t imagine how this could possibly end up not being pretty good.

Jan’s Atomic Heart: This looks like a pretty interesting book. It’s a $5.95 graphic novella with nice, delicate black and white art with strong shading. The story revolves around a cyborg who gets a loaner body in the same model of a sort recently used in a terrorist attack, and it seems to wind through science-fiction, conspiracy thriller and slice of life scenes. You can download a hefty, 22-page preview of the book here.

Justice League of America #33: This is the issue with the cover depicting the Justice Leaguers all strewn about unconscious on the ground. Not, not that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. This one.

Last Days of Animal Man #1: This series looks like something of an odd duck. It’s written by Gerry Conway, who, you may notice, has a name other than “Grant Morrison.” And while Morrison didn’t create the character, it’s his version of Animal Man that is foremost in the minds of most fans, and which established the direction that other writers seem to have had the most success following (Most notably Peter Milligan, Tom Veitch and Jamie Delano). Is there something left to be said about Animal Man? I’m not so sure, but I really like the character, and I did enjoy seeing him pop up in 52, even if it was just to spend some more time with him. As the title indicates, Conway’s six-issue miniseries will be set in the near future, and, judging by future covers, squarely in the DCU. Chris Batista handles the pencils, and Dave Meikis the inks, so it oughta look nice. The covers by Brian Bolland sure aren’t going to hurt any either.

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Agents of Atlas #5: Is this issue a perfect jumping on point? I don’t know, but I’m going to say it is in the hope that it means more of you will try this series out. In this issue, the Agents battle the New Avengers, and since New Avengers has like 70,000 more readers than AoA, hopefully the guest-appearance will lead to more folks checking out this issue and sticking around for future ones. Here’s a six-page preview.

The Big Book of Barry Ween Boy Genius: Otherwise known as “Judd Winick’s good comics.” This Oni Press omnibus collects all 12 issues of Winick’s Barry Ween series in a 375-page, $19.95 package.

Batman: Battle for the Cowl #3: This is it! The one you’ve been waiting for, whether you’re on pins and needles about who the new Batman is going to be, or you just can’t wait for this event to end so all the cool new Batman titles and creative teams that follow it can get started. Here’s my guess: Dick Grayson and Jason Todd are both different, opposing Batmen, Damian al Ghul is Robin ( working with the good Batman Dick Grayson), and Tim Drake is Red Robin (provided he survived having a batarang shoved all the way up his chest cavity at the end of the last issue). Tony Daniel writes and draws this final, over-sized $3.99 issue.

Batman: Mad Love and Other Stories: You know, I have all of these comics and I still find this collection of them awfully tempting. The title story is Paul Dini and Bruce Timm’s excellent Batman vs. Joker vs. Harley Quinn story, and the book is filled out with some of the best Animated Series-style Batman stories, including works by Timm, Glen Murukami, Mike Parobeck, Matt Wagner, Dan DeCarlo and Klaus Janson. It’s $20 for about 200 pages of some of the best Batman comics of the last decade or two.

Boys: Herogasm #1: I fell really, really, really far behind on The Boys when I decided I’d start reading it in trade (I’ve noticed sometimes deciding to wait for the trade isn’t all that different from dropping). Anyone who’s totally up on it know how easy or hard this miniseries might be to follow? (I know Sarah dug it). I can generally trade-wait Garth Ennis comics, but I’ll have a much harder time being so patient when said Garth Ennis comics are being illustrated by his Hitman collaborator John McCrea…

Captain America #50: Ed Brubaker’s universally praised Cap series reaches its fiftieth issue, which would ordinarily be a big anniversary issue in which the writer might want to shake up the status quo by, say, bringing the dead title character back to life or something. However, Marvel has one of their crazy renumbering schemes planned for the title, and June’s issue will jump all the way up to #600, which would make that a bigger, better anniversary. This hopefully over-sized issue (it’s $3.99) will deal with Bucky’s birthday, and will feature his favorite and least favorite birthdays. Luke Ross provides the art.

Clover Omnibus: It’s been a good long time since I’ve read any of manga-collective CLAMP’s Clover, but I didn’t care much for the two volumes I tried. The art was typically great, and they were really nice well-designed books, but the storyline was amorphous to the point of incoherent. I thought it worked out okay as a heavily illustrated mood poem, but not so much as a comic book. But like I said, it’s been a while, and you may think I’m full of crap anyway. It deals with a government agent of some sort charged with rescuing/escorting/hanging around a young girl who is sometimes kept in a cage like a bird, and there are lots of delicate illustrated images of birds, cages and clockwork technology. This new Dark Horse edition collects the whole shebang in a 500-page, $20 softcover collection.  You can preview the first few pages here.

Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #1: Of the quartet of Final Crisis Aftermath books DC is in the process of rolling out, this one seems like the most natural extension from the original series, as it stars the Super Young Team, the Japanese fan version of the Justice League that creator Grant Morrison set-up as a new, modern version of Jack Kirby’s Forever People. Joe Casey writes, ChrissCross draws and however it turns out, at the very least you can go in assured that it definitely co-stars a character named Most Excellent Super Bat, whose super-power is being rich.

G-Man Vol. 1: Learning To Fly: Chris Giarrusso, the man behind the Mini-Marvels, has his own humorous super-characters, and you can catch them in his creator-owned G-Man comics.  This $10, 100-page trade collects the G-Man one-shot, Christmas special, plenty of comic strips and more.

Johnny Hiro Vol. 1: I sung the praises of Fred Chao’s amazing comic book about two young people living in New York facing the various giant monsters, gangs of blade-wielding kitchen staffers and other obstacles to their love in this space back in January, so I won’t go into it all again here. This trade collects the first three issues, which AdHouse Books released as comic books, and adds two more issues worth of material at the end, adding up to a $15, 190-page collection. You can dowload several previews of it here.

The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders: This seems interesting. The war that is doing the tearing in Afghanistan isn’t the current conflict involving the U.S., but was the 1980s one involving the Soviet Union. A French photojournalist went into the country with the titular non-governmental organization, chronicling their journey with his camera. This First Second collecion of the original French releases features an unusual mixture of Didier Lefèvre’s photos with comics panels created by Emmanuel Guibert (Alan’s War). You can read an excerpt here, and an interview my colleague Michael C. Lorah did with Guibert back in March here.

Pluto Urasawa X Tezuaka Vol. 3: Everyone’s reading this, right? Everyone should be reading this. It’s Naoki Urasawa loosely adapting Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy story “The Greatest Robot on Earth” in his own style, and it is something else. The volumes have been coming out at a quick clip too, so there’s very little lag time between volumes.

Skrull Kill Krew #2: Okay, so it’s a revival of a short-lived 90’s concept only really notable for its writers (who aren’t involved this time), and a spin-off that keeps beating the Skrull-fighting horse months after Secret Invasion has ended and everyone’s totally sick of Skrulls. On the other hand, here’s what Tyler Kirkham’s variant cover looks like for this particular issue:

Andrew Felber writes, Mark Robinson draws, and Marvel asks for an extra dollar.

Tiny Titans #16: Based on the cover, this issue apparently features a race between Supergirl and Kid Flash, and. Based on DC’s Source blog, it might also contain the “Battle for the Cow.” If you need to chatch up, this week also bring Tiny Titans Vol. 2: Adventures in Awesomeness, a $13, 144-page book collecting such tiny titanic tales as report card day, Blue Beetle’s birthday party, the one where Beppo steels Zatara’s wand and turns everyone into monkeys, Batgirl and Supergirl’s tea part, lunch lady Darkseid’s “Finals Crisis,” Deathstroke and Trigon’s “Faces of Mischief” team-up and many, many meetings of the Tiny Titans Pet Club.

I don’t blame Krypto. Superman’s best friend knows that his bosses at DC own a wider and deeper field of animal superheroes, and they even have a perfectly good animal superhero team name just laying around: The Legion of Super-Pets.

I’m sure the Dog of Steel is looking forward to checking out this week’s Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers #1 though. Who wouldn’t be? It’s the Inhumans’ giant teleporting bulldog with a tuning fork in his head teaming up with Kitty Pryde’s dragon, Speedball’s cat, Falcon’s falcon and an all-new, all-different Frog Thor. If that’s not the most unusual superhero team line-up to come out of the House of Ideas since Ghost Rider and Wolverine joined Spider-Man and The Hulk for a Fantastic Four line-up, than I don’t know what is.

Franklin Richards‘ Chris Eliopoulos writes and Marvel Adventures Avengers‘ Ig Guara draws, and although this is a limited series, Marvel’s giving it their ongoing, $2.99 price point. Huzzah!

This may be the book I personally am looking forward to the most this week, there are a ton of other new series starting up and big trades being released. Join me after the jump for my weekly scrutiny of the Diamond shipping list.

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Long-time ensemble cast member Power Girl finally gets a shot at solo star status with this week’s debut of Power Girl #1, a new ongoing featuring the always welcome art of Amanda Conner and scripts by Justin Gray and Blog@ columnist Jimmy Palmiotti.

Will the book manage to find an audience and stick around long, or at least as long as some of the other new superhero ongoings DC has tried out over the last few years? I don’t know, but it sure seems like it will have an uphill battle. Power Girl’s long presence in the DCU and supporting character status in several popular books gives her a fan base, but then, she’s always been a character who played off of other characters and, for the last 20 years or so, has been best known for having big breasts and one of the most confusing and oft-changed origins in the company’s character catalog. Additionally, she hasn’t been up to much lately that would seem to serve as a springboard for a new series; the wake of 2005’s JSA Classified arc (also featuring art by Conner) or 2006’s Infinite Crisis or last year’s Justice Society of America Annual #1 would have seemed like more ideal times to try a Power Girl series.

On the other hand, Palmiotti and Gray have certainly managed to defy market expectations in the past (witness the still surviving Jonah Hex), and Conner’s style is such a strong departure from the bulk of current DCU art that anything she draws automatically stands out. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what this trio can do with the book.

I’m also looking forward to tomorrow, it being new comic book day and all. What will I find awaiting me at the shop? Let’s see what the old direct market has planned for us this week, shall we?

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The twelfth and final issue of Steve Niles and Kelley Jones’ limited series Batman: Gotham After Midnight comes out this Wednesday, leaving me no Kelley Jones Batman comics to look forward to in the foreseeable future. This is devastating news. You would think given this twelve-issue series, hundreds of pages worth of Elseworlds stories and a long, late-nineties run with Dough Moench and John Beatty on the Batman monthly, I should have more than enough comics full of Jones’ Batman to re-read, and that maybe Jones has said all he has to say about the wacky world of Batman.

You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. He continues to surprise me with every issue of this series which, okay, isn’t really the greatest-written Batman story ever and, sure, reads a bit like a very poor poor man’s Long Halloween at times, but I still keep coming back to it to see Jones’ increasingly ridiculous Batcave architecture, the many absurd vehicles Batman tools around town in, the Bat-gadgets that look as if Dr. Seuss had a had in designing them and the may over-the-top ways the characters’ costumes, anatomy and whole settings reflect their moods and attitudes.

Hurry back, Kelley Jones Batman!

Luckily, there are many other releases this week with which I can seek to console myself. Let’s take a look at what looks good, what looks bad and what looks really bad, after the jump.

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According to this week’s Diamond shipping list, DC Comics will have 24 releases in stores this week, from all of their various imprints put together. Marvel, meanwhile, will have 47. I don’t generally pay that close attention, I just noticed that the Marvel list looked much, much longer than the DC than usual—is that an unusually dramatic discrepancy between the two companies?

What are some of the highlights and lowlights among those 71 Big Two comic books, and will there be room left on the shelves for anything else? Let’s take a look!

Avengers: The Initiative #23: Hey, it’s one of those weeks where every Avengers title ships! In addition to my favorite non-Marvel Adventures Avengers book, The Initiative, it looks like both Mighty and New will also have new issues out. The only ones not making it to the party are Marvel Adventures and Dark, but at least Dark will be represented by some reprints.

The Beats: A Graphic History: The latest in Hill and Wang’s “A Graphic History” series features 200 pages of pieces about Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and company from writers Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner, Trina Robbins, Ed Piskor, Peter Kuper, Summer McClinton and others. It’ll cost you $22.

Buck Rogers #0: Dynamite Entertainment shows off their latest with a specially priced twenty-five cent issue. Writer Scott Beatty and artist Carlos Rafael are in the pilot’s seat for this one, as they will be when the series kicks off with a proper #1. I like Buck’s space age jodhpurs.

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This month is Wolverine Art Appreciation month at Marvel, with Wolverine-ized riffs on classic (and a few “classic”) works of art being used as variants on various Marvel comics. I hadn’t seen what I assumed would be the easiest one to draw yet, so I took it upon myself to make it. That’s Wolverine Fights a Polar Bear in a Snow Storm.

They are both the best they are at what they do, but, unfortunately for the bear, all it does is fight seals and suchlike.

So this being not only a Wednesday, but a Wednesday shortly before a Wolverine movie comes out, how many Wolverine comics will be coming out tomorrow? Two? Four? Forty-two?

The answer will be revealed after the jump, as we take our weekly look at all of the things coming out this week that seem worthy of discussion/derision.

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Well, they do kinda look alike, what with the funny little beards and all…

Anyway, after the creative misfire of 2006’s Warlord miniseries by Bruce Jones and Bart Sears, DC is giving the hollow earth fantasy series another shot, this time with creator Mike Grell at the helm. Grell will be writing the new Warlord, and providing its covers, while Joe Prado and Walden Wong handle the illustrations.

What other new comics await discovery on new comics day? Find out, after the jump!

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The renamed and re-numbered JSA title reaches its 25th issue this week, and the story concludes an arc by Geoff Johns and Jerry Ordway that sounds like it may be resetting the Marvel Family status quo into something a little less stupid than it’s been since the Trials of Shazam/Countdown/Final Crisis cycle of nonsense. Featuring a fully-painted upskirt cover by Alex Ross. The main site has a preview here; be sure to check out Billy Batson’s lighting crotch on the second page. For a more traditional take on the characters (that is, one you could give to a child and/or a new reader without having to explain a few years worth of terrible comics), the fourth issue of Mike Kunkel’s all-ages Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam also drops this week.

They are but two of the ten thousand new comics appearing in shops tomorrow. What are the other 9,998? Find out, after the jump! (Note: Actually, there are only about a dozen mentioned below).

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No surprise that Statler and Waldorf, the two Muppets who sit in the back and make fun of the efforts of the other Muppets are a comics bloggers favorites, is it? The crudely drawn comic book in their crudely drawn hands is, of course, The Muppet Show #1, the first issue of Boom’s four-part miniseries by Roger Langridge. It’s really quite something, and I’d recommend anyone interested in comics as a medium at least give it a flip-through this week, regardless of your feelings about the original Muppet show, if only to see how Langridge takes live-action television puppets into comics (I’ll have an actual, formal review this weekend).

If Muppets, Langridge and the ways different media can present aspects of one another don’t do anything for you, well, I’m sure there are plenty of other comics coming out this week. Let’s take a look at some of the more noteworthy, shall we?

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This week DC launches a new Azrael miniseries, either as a public acknowledgement that they know they’re recycling Bat-event plot points from the ‘90s or because Azrael is meant to be a red herring for the gun-toting evil Batman seen in last week’s Battle For the Cowl. Azrael: Death’s Dark Knight will be a three-issue miniseries written by Fabian Nicieza, who seems to be writing every other Batman tie-in these days, with art by Frazer Irving and a cover by Guillem March, two creators who are very welcome in Gotham City, as far as I’m concerned.

If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea though, don’t worry! There are plenty of other comic books coming out this week, too.

Such as…? Well, you’ll just have to click on “Read the rest of this entry” to find out!

(Well, honestly, I suppose there are lots of other places you could find out, but click on “Read the rest of this entry” anyway, won’t you?)

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Why, a simple note on the fridge door like this and we could have been spared this whole spring Bat-event. Oh well. Anyway, yes, this week DC launches the three-part Batman: Battle for the Cowl miniseries, with a $3.99, 40-page issue both drawn and written by Grant Morrison’s Batman collaborator, Tony Daniel. Expect a lot of guest-stars, and a lot of pains being taken not to draw feet.

What else will be waiting for us at the comics shop this week? Join me after the jump and we can find out…together.

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Batman: Cacophony #3: Kevin Smith finishes a miniseries.

Daredevil  #116: Brian Michael Bendis returns…

…as a cover model? Oh wait, that’s the Kingpin, as drawn by Marko Djurdjevic. Well, the Kingpin returning to the pages of Daredevil is probably pretty exicitng too, isn’t it?

Goon #32 Tenth Anniversary Issue: Wow, thanks for making me feel old, Eric Powell. Jerk. (Oh and, by the way, congratulations!) This special $3.99 issue features 32 story pages by Powell, plus pin-ups by Mike Mignola, Jeff Smith, Kevin Nowlan, Bernie Wrightson and more. Preview here.

Hulk: Broken Worlds #1: Paul Benjamin, Roy Thomas, Fred Van Lente, Peter David, Herb Trimpe, Clayton Henry and others tell four stories about the Hulk journeying to…Aw, who cares who cares what it’s about, look at that line-up! An oversized, $3.99 issue.

Killer of Demons #1: Writer Christopher Yost and artist Scott Wegener launch a new series about a guy who, uh, kills demons. Hopefully there’s more thought and imagination given to the comic itself. The first issue will run you $3.99 for 40 pages.

Little Nothings Vol. 2: The Prisoner Syndrome: The next volume of short, whimsical autobio strips from the acclaimed, bird-headed cartoonist responsible for Dungeon, A.L.I.E.E.E.N., Mr. O and many  of the best comics being made today. This 128-page trade will run you $14.95, and if the first volume is a good indication, will be well worth it. Excerpts here.

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Blue Beetle #36: The ongoing series starring Blue Beetle III reaches its final issue, which no doubt bums out some Jaime Reyes fans, but I’m more impressed that it lasted this long than I am sad to see it go. DC’s last ongoing Blue Beetle series, the 1986 one starring Blue Beetle II, only made it 24 issues, after all. Matthew Sturges and Carlo Barberi will be dragging the title across the finish line, but don’t cry for Jaime! You can still see him in other comics, including two that come out this very week. He teams up with Batman in Batman: The Brave and The Bold #2 by Matt Wayne and Phil Moy, and, in Teen Titans # 68, Jaime joins Kid Eternity to try and explain to Kid Devil that no one has worn a backwards baseball cap for at least 15 years now in a tale by Sean McKeever, Eddy Barrows and Ruy Jose (Behold Kid Devil’s terrible fashion choices in this preview).

Fantastic Four #564: A “very special Christmas issue”…in the last week of February? Why on Earth would they…oh right, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch are still on FF, right? I guess that makes sense. This is part 1 of a two-part story, so look for the very special Boxing Day issue sometime around mid-April.

Larry Marder’s Beanworld Book 1: Wahoolazuma!: At one point this was scheduled for release a few weeks ago, I swear. That’s why I reviewed it here back when I did. But now it looks like it’s really, truly, actually coming out this week, so you can now buy and read it if you want. It’s probably the best thing I’ve read so far this year, but no sense getting into all that again here. This 270-page hardcover collection assembles the first nine issues of Marder’s unique series under one cover, and will cost you $19.95. Dark Horse has a brief preview here.

New Avengers #50: Why it seems like only yesterday fans were howling about Brian Michael Bendis’ radical new direction for the Avengers team, a strategy punctuated by taking all of the Avengers off of the team, putting in some of the most popular characters and/or ones Bendis just happened to like, and focusing on decompressed, written-for-the-trade, street level “adventures” (note the scare quotes) that mostly involved talking. Wait, it probably was yesterday, wasn’t it? At any rate, you can’t argue with success—enough people dug what Bendis was doing that New Avengers has not only become one of the most popular superhero comics in the direct market, but it’s made it all the way to 50 issues. This is a (hopefully) oversized anniversary issue that will run you $4.99. Art comes courtesy of Billy Tan and Matt Banning. It’s only one of three Avengers releases this week (Not counting trades and second printings). In Avengers: The Initiative #22, the old New Warriors show up to throw down against Clor, and in Mighty Avengers #22, Dan Slott and Khoi Pham continue to try to put the Avengers back into one of the books bearing their name.

Savage Dragon #137 (Fourth Printing): Jesus people, four printings? Really? This is the issue in which Savage Dragon endorsed Barack Obama, back when he was still running for president, rather than the president elect. Larsen, like Todd Nauck and Phil Jimenez, draws a pretty bad likeness of Obama, but at least he’s fixed the tie. I found the fact that Larsen and Amazing Spider-Man editor Stephen Wacker were arguing about their books’ use of Obama a few weeks back kind of amusing, but credit where credit is due—Larsen (and his character and his book) endorsed Obama the candidate instead of just slapping together a pretty embarrassing cash grab after America had already decided which presidential candidate was more popular.

Savage Dragon #145: And speaking of Larsen, Savage Dragon and Obama, in this issue the big green title character returns to his home town of Chicago, which also happens to be the home town of you-know-who. Obama appears in the story, which promises to be a “great jumping on point” and a lead-in to the upcoming “Image United” storyline, and the variant cover features a daps exchange between the Dragon and the president. Larsen’s gotten a bit better with drawing Obama apparently, and the cover is rendered in the Shephrd Fairey, “Hope” poster color scheme.

She-Hulk #38: The final issue of another superhero series that will be joining Blue Beetle in that great spinner rack in the sky. Steve Scott and Vicente Cifuentes illustrate writer Peter David’s last script for the series.

Sonic Universe #1: Archie Comics launches a new ongoing series intended to clarify and extend the now epic-length story of Sonic the Hedgehog and his many friends, foes and alternate versions. Ian Flynn writes, Tracy Yardley writes and Sonic endures. Preview here.

Tales of The Green Lantern Corps Vol. 1: DC milks the current popularity of the Green Lantern franchise with this $19.99, 160-page trade paperback collection of a 1981 miniseries of the same name, plus a whole mess of back-ups from Green Lantern. There’s no arguing with a talent roster that includes Mike W. Barr, Carmine Infantino, Len Wein, Kurt Busiek, Dave Gibbons and plenty of others, though.

Youngblood #8: Soon to be a major motion picture! I guess! The latest issue of the mostly Rob Liefeld-free Rob Liefeld book by Joe Casey and Derec Donovan also has something to do with Barack Obama this month. Why? Because the fine print in the stimulus bill mandated by law that at least two comic books a week must feature the president’s likeness on the cover. This Obama cover image also doesn’t look much of anything like Obama either—is photo reference of the guy that hard to find?—but considering the fact that this is a Youngblood cover, it could have been much, much worse. We’ve got a preview of it here; count how many times the same panels are re-used on each sad, sad page.

Amber Atoms #1: A new ongoing sci-fi series from Image Comics by writer/artist Kelly Yates, featuring “a modern day ‘Flash Gordon.’” Here’s a five-page preview.

Birds of Prey #127, Robin #183:  Two more Batman family titles ship their final issue and join Nightwing in cancelled-for-now limbo, making room on the schedule for the half-dozen or so new Bat-titles launching out of Batman’s “death” event and the upcoming Battle For the Cowl series.

It’s sort of interesting that all three of these are going down at roughly the same time, in conjunction with a new event story,  as they also all launched out of the various Bat-events of the ‘90s, and have managed to survive ever since, with sales that were never dynamite yet nevertheless never dropped into cancellation territory (Although Birds sure seemed awfully close of late; here’s a preview of its last issue).

They’re not the only series reaching the end of respectably long roads this week. Sabrina The Teenage Witch #100 brings to a close the long-running “manga-style” iteration of the title by Tania Del Rio, and Ultimate Fantastic Four #60 is the last issue of the Ultimatized version of the superhero team that essentially launched Marvel Comics.

Garth Ennis’ Battlefields Vol. 1: Night Witches: Hey everyone who trade-waited Ennis’ three-issue war comic (like me) the wait is over! Now, why is this more expensive than it would have been to just buy the three single issues…?

Grendel: Devil’s Reign: Matt Wagner and Tim Sale? That’s a combo to pay attention to. This $19.95, 185-page trade is written by the former and drawn by the latter, and is set in the far-flung future. This is “Tim Sale’s first major series in comics, collected for the very first time,” the solicit says, so it should be well worth a look from fans. Here’s a few pages worth of preview.

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All-Star Superman Vol. 2: Didn’t much care for the ending of Final Crisis? Try this—many of the same themes and meditations on Superman’s relationship to the reader and the medium are explored within, only with better art (by the same team throughout!) and none of the Oh God, which tie-ins do I need to read and in what order?! headaches. Also, it has Zibarro, the bizarro-Bizarro. This 160-page hardcover collecting A-SS #7-12 is yours for just $19.99.

Ashley Wood’s 96 Nudes: A $29.99, 100-page hardcover art book by Ashely Wood. What ever could the subject matter be?

Batman #686: This is the oversized, 48-page, $3.99 first part of “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” It’s being written by universally adored Neil Gaiman, who just won the Newbery award for one of his young adult novels and just had another of them turned into a big Hollywood movie. If DC doesn’t sell a zillion of these this week, higher-ups should make sure their PR and marketing people aren’t actually Marvel infiltrators. Pencil art will be provided Andy Kubert, who does a really good Batman—they should really see about maybe hiring him to handle the monthly Batman comic someday.

Batman and the Outsiders Special #1: Says the solicitation: “Spinning out of ‘Batman R.I.P.’ and DC Universe: Last Will and Testament this special features the birth of a new era for the Outsiders and is a perfect entry point for past and present readers alike.” That’s right, it’s another new era for The Outsiders! Number six or seven since 2006, I think. Peter J. Tomasi writes, Adam Kubert pencils and John Dell inks.

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