Image's top book this month, featured on the front cover, is G.I. JOE. DC's top book this month, featured on the back cover, is WAR STORY. One of Marvel's top books this month, meanwhile, is U.S. WAR MACHINE.

Is Previews trying to tell us something? Oh God, they're going to reinstate the draft, I just know it. Maybe I can flunk my induction physical...

IMAGE

Sad, doomed children of the '80s, rejoice - G.I. JOE is back.

Only question is, why? Back when it debuted in the mid-'80s, Reagan had made overseas adventurism fun again- we were standin' tall and whippin' that pesky ol' Vietnam Syndrome. But now? Wars aren't fought over global supremacy these days, they're fought over ancient ethnic grudges. Our enormously overrated secretary of state considers these wars insufficiently glamorous and has contrived a doctrine to justify avoiding them. Our so-called president is bulling ahead, as usual with the confidence of ignorance, with production of a hellishly expensive missile defense shield that won't work, to protect us from a threat that doesn't exist. Just last week, a few intercepted cell phone calls from Osama Bin Laden spurred us to retreat from three separate Mideast hotspots. America isn't standin' tall, it's stayin' home in bed and cocooning.

It's possible that they could wring some relevance out of it if they return Cobra Commander to his roots as a domestic dissident, maybe in the Tim McVeigh mode. But not likely. I say all they've got to go on is nostalgia, and I give it a year.

NOBLE CAUSES looks to be a perfectly good superhero book. The problem, though, is the ad. Plastered across the top of both pages is the tag line, which presents the book's high concept, in 36 point type: "WHAT IF THE KENNEDY'S HAD SUPER POWERS?"

To quote renowned linguist Bob the Angry Flower "YOU DON'T USE AN APOSTROPHE TO MAKE A PLURAL! DID WE ALL FAIL GRADE FOUR OR SOMETHING? WHO SAID YOU COULD PUNCTUATE LIKE THIS?"

Goddammit, I don't expect this kind of illiterate shoddiness from Image Central! From Top Cow, sure - but not Image Central! Good thing for them a new MINISTRY OF SPACE (JUL010395, pg. 109, $2.95) absolves a multitude of sins...

MARVEL

When you hear the name Max, what do you think of? Air conditioner settings? Children who get beat up a lot during recess? NO! You think comics! Because this is what Marvel has named its long-awaited mature readers imprint.

Tempted though I am to quote Evan Dorkin on "adult superhero comics" ("Holy shit! Vulpina's got space AIDS! And I'm gay!"), I must admit that these don't look like "made-for-cable-TV"-level comics. Instead, they look like blockbuster-summer-action-movie-level comics. They won't be dumb, necessarily - Bendis and Rucka don't write dumb - but they will be all about spectacle. (Case in point: "My goal is to make reading U.S. WAR MACHINE like watching your hot neighbour getting undressed through the bedroom window while drinking soda and eating Pop-Rocks while sitting in a vibro-massage chair," says Chuck Austen. Sounds like a good way of spattering glucose, vomit and sperm all over your drapes, to me, but maybe Chuck is better at multi-tasking than the rest of us. Or has a more discreet dry cleaner.) As such, they don't really hold my interest.

However: "More interesting," said Paul O'Brien in these pages last week, "are the two humour books - Gail Simone's NIGHT NURSE, and the [confirmed] return of Steve Gerber on HOWARD THE DUCK - which show the first signs of the imprint spreading into other genres."

He's right, and it's the point I'd have made if the bastard hadn't beaten me to it. And it's a heartening sign not only for the line but also for the commercial mainstream in general, where humour books have always had an inexplicably tough time of it. But there's a problem. If NIGHT NURSE and HOWARD THE DUCK succeed, well, what next? What other humour characters are there in the Marvel Universe that would be suited to a mature line? Obnoxio the Clown? The bloody She-Hulk? Patsy Walker? (Actually, Warren Ellis' Patsy Walker proposal wouldn't be humour, but it'd be a natural for Max...).

And make no mistake, they would have to be Marvel Universe characters. Stuart Moore's opening salvo claims Max will present artists' "own new visions" and "[characters] you haven't even imagined yet." But he also says this:

"Over the years, Marvel's published a lot of stories in non-superhero genres with the adult reader in mind - but admit it: Didn't you ever wonder what LUKE CAGE: HERO FOR HIRE or MASTER OF KUNG FU would be like if their writers and artists could really cut loose?"

What that highly debatable sentence signals is that the first job of Max is to rehabilitate as many of the 4,700 characters that Marvel brags about owning in their annual reports as is possible. Despite all the talk about "new visions," on the current evidence, new characters are #4,701 on Marvel's priority list. Call me a cynical Marvel-basher, but I'm not holding my breath.

ALTERNATIVE COMICS

If you've spent any time at all scanning the plethora of cable financial news shows, you know that in this, the New Gilded Age, CEOs are the new culture heroes. So why not do comics about them? R. Walker and Josh "KEYHOLE" Neufeld introduce us to the new Masters of the Universe in TITANS OF FINANCE (JUL011795, pg. 215, $3.50), and I can assure you that the takedown of ex-Marvel boss Ron Perelman is worth the price of admission alone.

ANSON JEW

Anson Jew turns out to be the improbable name of a Xeric-award winning cartoonist and his self-publishing concern, which is selling a package of all his comic book work to date, the SATURDAY NITE 2-PACK AND SKETCHBOOK (JUL011818, pg. 217, $6). SATURDAY NITE is an anthology book, with some autobiographical stories that explore, as such stories unfortunately tend to do, his preoccupation with pornography; the sketchbook, properly called SPOONFUL, contains sketches (natch), caricatures, and a couple of short strips. What makes this of interest is the art. Jew is an admirer of legendary comics minimalist Alex Toth, and it shows, though I think the end result more closely resembles Paul "KANE" Grist. The package is a good value for money, and one rarely goes wrong with a Xeric-winner. Check his stuff out at www.satnitesite.8k.com.

BUD PLANT

My god, they're selling Kyle Baker's classic, THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW (JUL011904, pg. 236) for 5 bucks! How do they do it? Volume!

DRAWN & QUARTERLY

Dylan Horrocks presents us all with a dilemma, format-wise. His new work, ATLAS (JUL012006, pg. 258, page), will be serialised in 12 pamphlets of 80 pages each, the first one of which will cost just $3.95. That's a terrific price. But when his last series was collected in the book HICKSVILLE (JUL012009, pg. 260, $19.95), also offered this month, it included "nearly 50 pages of new or revised material." What to do, buy the series now or wait for the collected, revised version? Decisions, decisions...

EDDIE CAMPBELL COMICS

Like THE BIRTH CAUL, SNAKES AND LADDERS (JUL012057, pg. 266, $5.95) is a Campbell adaptation of an Alan Moore performance piece. I must admit I thought THE BIRTH CAUL was flawed. Stream-of-consciousness writing often lapses into pretentiousness, and faux-childlike writing always does. I was most interested by the concrete parts, such as where Moore describes his Northampton adolescence, and least interested by the symbolic ones, such as where Moore says "the birth caul is..." so many times that there's hardly anything left for it not to be.

Nevertheless, it was something special - Alan Moore putting a chunk of his soul on display, naked and unafraid, without the usual gamesmanship with genre conventions or structural gimmicks. It was an unadulterated Moore we'd never seen in comics, and never would have seen if Campbell hadn't taken it upon himself to do his virtuosi adaptation. Better this incomplete success, then, than the finest pleasures of the slightly unimpassioned ABC line. If SNAKES AND LADDERS is similar, and it should be, it'll be a book not to miss.

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

Fantagraphics is making a push to bring the most acclaimed European comics to us Anglophones. Next month it should be David B.'s EPILEPSY, this month it's Jason's HEY, WAIT (JUL012062, pg. 266, $9.95). Says the blurb: it "starts off as a melancholy childhood memoir and then, with a shocking twist midway through, becomes the summary of lives lived, wasted, and lost. (Imagine a version of STAND BY ME in which not all of the kids outrace the train...)"

My Brenda Lee record skipped a beat and I choked on my Budweiser when the HATE #26-30 PACK purported to contain "The Death of Studs Kirby." Studs, dead? The man's got at least three heart attacks to go, surely? Then I realised they had the wrong Bagge character - they meant to type "The Death of Stinky." How they mistook that degenerate dope fiend for a real American hero I'll never know, but they better not do it again or I'll march up to Seattle and blow their artsy Commie brains out...

GREEN DOOR STUDIOS

Those of you who attended last year's Small Press Expo may have noticed the presence of a documentary film crew. It wasn't there to film the Expo, though - it was there to film Madison Clell, the cartoonist behind CUCKOO (JUL012106, pg. 274, $3). Why? Because Clell has Multiple Personality Disorder. This oversized twelfth issue contains a recap of what's gone before, so as to make a good jumping-on point. It's a messy book, as you might expect, but there's nothing else like it. Have a look at www.cuckoocomic.com, and read this rave review from Wired.

HOTEL FRED PRESS

There aren't that many more humour comics in the alternative scene than in the commercial mainstream, which is why Roger Langridge's new self-published FRED THE CLOWN (JUL012114, pg. 276, $2.95) comes as such a welcome surprise. Those of you who saw the Fred book published by the late, lamented Les Cartoonistes Dangereux know that Langridge is a deadly mimic and a masterful cartoonist in his own sharp-edged bigfoot style. The humor of Fred is heavily influenced by The Goon Show, which, for the benefit of my fellow ignint Yanks, was the absurdist British radio show of the '50s that unleashed Peter Sellers on the world and prefigured Monty Python. Soon you, too, will be asking: "Mummy, why is the funny man?" Check out Fred at www.hotelfred.com .

INSIGHT STUDIO GROUP

I don't mean to make a career out of bashing Liberty Meadows, but this month they're begging for it. The first of their solicitations, for LIBERTY MEADOWS #25, brags about pandering as it touts "Cho's latest challenge to the conservative nature of today's newspaper comic sections," namely a catfight-with-light-bondage storyline; and the second, for UNIVERSITY2: THE ANGRY YEARS!, exhorts us to order copies for "every bathroom in your home," because "your old copy has too many stains on it by now!" Ew.

As Matt Groening, who despite being a lousy illustrator, is 100 times the cartoonist Cho will ever be, once wisely said, "Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of. It's nothing to be particularly proud of, either." But since the culture is now being run by and for frat boys, I suppose we have to get used to this kind of thing. Pedantic note: "mano a mano" is Spanish for "hand to hand," not "man to man," so "womano a womano" is nonsense, you illiterate oafs.

LIGHTSPEED PRESS

I could spend a thousand or so words trying, and failing, to explain to you FINDER, the wonderful, wandering, insightful SF series with an anthropological edge by Carla Speed McNeil. Or you could go to her web site, at www.lightspeedpress.com, and read the first chapter of FINDER VOL. 3: THE KING OF THE CATS (JUL012139, pg. 281, $13.95). Yes, the first hit's free. What the hell are you waiting for?

MEANWHILE STUDIOS

It is not the policy of this column to go gunning for the littlest fish, but I think the least one can ask of any comic book is that it spell its own name correctly. CHAIROSCURO is a new self-published book by one Troy Little. The word he wants is chiaroscuro, the Italian term for shaping figures out of darkness ('scuro') by hitting them with light ('chiaro'). Hitting them with chairs is tiring and expensive and makes a mess, especially if you're using live models.

NEW SUIT

NEW THING: IDENTITY (JUL012170, pg. 288, $9.95) is a new international anthology pitched "in the tradition of DRAWN & QUARTERLY and RAW." Ambition like that commands attention, and so does the design - by my lights it's the most handsome book in the catalogue. Looks to be creepy in something like the deadpan manner of Renee French. I want to know more.

BOOKS

Online Resources
Previews is available online at Diamond Comics. To learn about the advantages of pre-ordering, visit Warren Ellis' OrderingComics.com. Is it a conflict of interest to plug a book by Ninth Art founder Antony Johnston? Well, if it's good enough for WIZARD, it's good enough for me. FRIGHTENING CURVES (JUL012446, pg. 329, $12.95) looks to be a hard-boiled urban magician story, in prose, with copious and striking painted illustrations by Aman Chaudhary. Samples can be found at www.frighteningcurves.com, and damned impressive they are, too. I'd recommend this even if I weren't trying to suck up to my editors.

It's easy to overlook the Books section, so therefore I would like to give the blurb for DRAWING BLOOD: CARTOONS FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL (JUL012436, pg. 327, $9.99) in full:

"Seven years ago, many of the best names in U.K. cartooning donated their work to appear in this book for the benefit of Amnesty International's efforts against tyranny and oppression around the world. Its 94 telling cartoons will leave you wondering whether to laugh or cry at the work of Larry, Jim Unger, Posy Simmonds, Tony Husband, Kate Charlesworth, and lots more. For every book sold, 50 cents will be donated."

Frankly, I'd buy it just for Posy Simmonds, whose GEMMA BOVERY was one of the best in a tough field in 2000. Plus, it's an opportunity to donate to one of the worthiest of worthy causes - and it makes a nice antidote to militaristic comics like G.I. JOE.

Chris Ekman is a political cartoonist.

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