The Shipping Forecast for September 6th

Travel the world on the back of a trawler with the Ninth Art fishing crew, as they journey to distant worlds, dark realms, and mysterious times. All at your local comic shop.
03 September 2001

Don't just go into the store, pick up your comics and leave! Take a look around. Stretch your boundaries. Give yourself a treat. Whatever your tastes, the Ninth Art Shipping Forecast has something for you that you've probably never looked at before. Join us every week as our barnacled aquanauts give you their picks of the most noteworthy new releases on the comic book shelves, with a little help from the Diamond shipping list.

The shipping list means well, but it often gets stuff wrong. Visit the Diamond website for the latest updates. Note also that comics will reach US stores a day later this week due to the Labor Day holiday.

GERMAN BIGHT PICKS:

TRUE SWAMP: STONEGROUND & HILLBOUND (Alternative Comics)
I thought this had disappeared. It's been ages since I've seen a TRUE SWAMP comic, and finding this collection on the list is a real nostalgia buzz. It's difficult to say exactly what it's about. The best I can come up with is to ask you to imagine what it would be like if swamp creatures lived lives a little more like ours, and worried about them. Or maybe - POGO POSSUM meets SOCK MONKEY and HATE in a really odd collision designed to appeal to James Kochalka fans. Or - oh, go and make your own minds up. It's good, it's back, it's good that it's back. That's it.

A DISTANT SOIL #33 (Image)
A comic for all those odd little girls who read AMETHYST, but wished that the Gemword was a little more debauched. Never before in Western comics have such appealingly cute visuals been wedded to a plot that's so gothic. I mean Walpole and LeFanu, not Anne Rice, although there's more than enough sex, both sweet and creepy, happening here. With plotting that's not so much dense as it is glue-like, I'm always in awe of how much Colleen Doran can pack into every issue of this and still keep it comprehensible. In this issue, the revolution that this series has built up to from the very first issue continues to go very wrong for our heroes. Romance, suspense, a race of physically beautiful and morally hideous near-immortals in saucy clothes, everything's here on a plate just waiting for you. Just buy the trades first, or find someone who'll lend the story so far to you, or you'll be lost.

BONE #44 (Cartoon Books)
For a book that traded so much on laughs in its early days, Jeff Smith's baby has gone very serious on us. Is this a bad thing? Not at all. Even with the quintessentially cartoon-like Bone cousins central to the book readers still buy into the present storyline, in which an entire country has been devastated. For the last few issues the main characters have been travelling through a barren landscape and encountering things which, quite frankly, unnerved the heck out of me. There's still comedy, and it's a testament to Smith's ever-growing talents as a writer that the comedy doesn't jar at all, but provides balance to the tone of the story. The art is still beautiful, the suspense is still killing me, I'm still despairing over anyone who hasn't read this yet.

FISHER PICKS:

ALIAS #1 (Marvel)
Not to be confused with ATLAS #1, ARIA #4 or ASTRA #2, all of which also come out this week. That's assuming this does come out this week, after a bunch of hick printers in Kentucky decided it was too obscene to publish. ALIAS is the much-hyped first title from Marvel's mature readers Max line, inevitably scribed by Brian Michael Bendis, with art from an old Bendis collaborator, Michael Gaydos. It's the story of Jessica Jones, a retired superhero turned private investigator. It's gritty! It's "character-driven"! The very first word (and the next few after that) is a swearword! And you just know we're all going to lap it up anyway - unless ELEKTRA truly marked the start of the Bendis backlash, but so far the sun still seems to shine on his gleaming dome. Another small step forward for Marvel, which, to the irritation of many, usually means a significant leap for the comics industry. ARIA, by the way, is a rather nice fantasy book, while ASTRA is a sci-fi manga series. And ATLAS? Well...

ATLAS #1 (Drawn & Quarterly)
ATLAS is a sort of sequel (but we'll call it a companion piece) to Dylan Horrocks' HICKSVILLE, telling the life story of fictional cartoonist Emil Kopen, from his impoverished youth in Cornucopia to his retirement in Hicksville. The solicitiations call it a story of comics, cartography and magic. Similar territory to HICKSVILLE, then, and with any luck it will feature the same elegant combination of bitterness and wonder that brought so many fans to Horrocks' strange New Zealand community, without being a simple re-tread. Each of the twelve issues is eighty pages for just under four bucks, which ain't too shabby. You can check Chris Conroy's excellent review of Hicksville here.

ORIGIN #1 (Marvel)
Paul Jenkins and Andy Kubert aren't quite marquee names. Jenkins' HELLBLAZER run pales next to those of Garth Ennis and Jamie Delano, and Jae Lee was the real draw on INHUMANS and SENTRY. Andy Kubert, meanwhile, has always tended to lag behind brother Adam in terms of his artistic development. So the star on this book, unsurprisingly, is Wolverine. Jenkins and Kubert should provide steady hands for this lifting of the veil on Wolverine's true origin, and the book will find an enthusiastic audience, even if it is going to rob Marvel's most popular mutant of his mystique. It's the sort of story you can't imagine being any kind of hit without a mutant name attached, though. Preview pages from issue one make it look like Huckleberry Finn, and chances are Mark Twain and Norman Rockwell did it better.

CROMARTY PICKS:

LUCIFER #18 (DC Vertigo)
I pretty much ignored LUCIFER when it came out. Much as I loved SANDMAN, I've disliked most of the multiple spin-offs that have appeared since, and I had no experience of Carey as a writer. But after hearing very good things about it, I recently borrowed the first collection off a friend, and what should I find? Easily one of the best comics being published right now. LUCIFER is smart, witty and enthralling - Carey handles both earthly and mythic elements very well, sucking you in further with excellent storytelling and cutting dialogue. I couldn't put the collection down, and this has now become a must-read for me.

DIRTY BOXES (Alternative Comics)
This was only solicited in last month's PREVIEWS, so you may not have expected it to turn up in shops just yet, but I remember it catching my eye in the catalogue. DIRTY BOXES is a 96-page graphic novel containing three stories, all by cartoonist Jacob Weinstein. Snakes and ladders, Huckleberry Finn, Russian legend, "vaudeville comic strip mayhem and grimy Berlin realism," apparently. Sounds like an eclectic and interesting mix to me, and I'm banking on it being of the same ilk as something like Leland Purvis' VOX.

DOGGER PICKS:

OBERGEIST #5 (Top Cow)
All I really demand of my comics is a good story. But if they can be insane and weird, then that's an added bonus. Enter OBERGEIST. A repentant Nazi with telekinetic powers, in the future, fighting to stop a new breed of racist scum, in a strange and twisted America. Oh, and he's dead, too. And he may have been tricked by demons posing as angels, anyway. The whole thing looks bloody gorgeous as well.

ADVENTURES OF BARRY WEEN 3 MONKEY TALES #4 (Oni Press)
Look, this is just bloody funny. You've heard everyone else tell you how funny it is, haven't you? Well, they'd be right. Judd Winick, in addition to being the author of the rightly-acclaimed, touching and sensitive PEDRO AND ME, is also a very, very funny man. Laugh-out-loud funny. Don't-read-this-in-public-for-fear-of-getting-strange-looks funny. This is the sort of thing you could give to any of your non-comics-reading friends, and they would thank you for it. Just buy the damn thing already.

Comics shipping in the US on September 6th:

DARK HORSE

JUL010209V GUNSMITH CATS THE RETURN OF GRAY TP (STAR07630) $17.95
APR010052 OH MY GODDESS PART X #5 HAND IN HAND (PART 2 OF 2) $3.50
JUL010018 PLANET OF THE APES #1 $2.99
JUN010039 SUPER MANGA BLAST #15 (MR) (Note Price) $5.99
JUN010379 SUPERMAN VS THE TERMINATOR DEATH TO THE FUTURE TP $10.95

DC COMICS

JUL010316 BATGIRL #20 $2.50
JUL010320 BATMAN GOTHAM ADVENTURES #42 $1.99
JUL010311 BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #147 $2.25
JUL010365 CRIMSON REDEMPTION TP $14.95
JUL010385 CRUSADES #7 (MR) $2.50
JUL010378 DESPERADOES QUIET OF THE GRAVE #5 (Of 5) $2.95
JUL010344 GREEN LANTERN #142 $2.25
JUL010361 LOONEY TUNES #82 $1.99
JUL010391 LUCIFER #18 (MR) $2.50
JUN010502 MAD BATHROOM COMPANION #2 TP $9.95
JUL010352 MARTIAN MANHUNTER #36 $2.50
JUL010397 REMARKABLE WORLDS OF PHINEAS B FUDDLE TP $19.95
JUL010355 SPECTRE #9 $2.50
JUL010356 SUICIDE SQUAD #1 $2.50
JUL010329 SUPERMAN #174 $2.25
JUL010377 WILDCATS VOL 2 #27 $2.50
JUL010358 YOUNG JUSTICE #37 $2.50

IMAGE

MAY011347 ARIA THE SOUL MARKET #4 $2.95
MAY011344 DISTANT SOIL #33 $3.95
MAY011354 ELECTROPOLIS #2 $2.95
APR011366 FATHOM KILLIANS TIDE #3 $2.95
MAY011355 KABUKI AGENTS SCARAB #8 $2.95
JUL011253 OBERGEIST #5 $2.95
JUL011240 WARLANDS AGE OF ICE ALVIN LEE CVR C #2 $2.95
JUL011238 WARLANDS AGE OF ICE PAT LEE CVR A ELENA #2 $2.95
JUL011239 WARLANDS AGE OF ICE PAT LEE CVR B ZEPH #2 $2.95

MARVEL

JUL011490 ALIAS #1 (MR) $2.99
JUL011528 AVENGERS CELESTIAL QUEST #1 (Of 8) $2.50
JUN011593 BROTHERHOOD #4 (Note Price) $2.25
JUN011585 CABLE #96 $2.25
JUN011610 DAREDEVIL #23 (MR) $2.99
JUL011518 DAREDEVIL YELLOW #4 $3.50
JUL011496 EXILES #4 $2.25
JUL011525 FANTASTIC FOUR #47 $2.25
JUL011526 INCREDIBLE HULK 2001 $2.99
JUL011495 ORIGIN #1 $3.50
JUL011527 THOR #41 $2.25
JUL011511 ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #13 $2.25
JUN011594 WOLVERINE #167 $2.25

OTHER PUBLISHERS

JUN012272 ADVS OF BARRY WEEN 3 MONKEY TALES #4 (Of 6) (MR) $2.95
JUN011914 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #128 $3.29
JUN012044 ASTRA #2 $2.95
JUL012006 ATLAS #1 (MR) $3.95
JUN011917 BETTY & VERONICA #166 $1.99
MAY012037 BONE #44 $2.95
JUN012209F DAHLIA VAMPIRE #4 (Of 6) (MR) $2.95
MAY012118 DARK ANGEL #27 $2.95
AUG011712 DIRTY BOXES (MR) $6.95
JUL011983E FIRST #11 $2.95
JUN012047 GEOBREEDERS #30 $2.95
JUN012002 LEGEND OF THE SAGE #2 $2.99
JUL012120F LIBERTY MEADOWS #22 $2.95
JUN012365 MAGICAL JOURNEY POKEMON VOL 3 ABRA & KADABRA MAGIC TP $13.95
JUN012366 MAGICAL POKEMON JOURNEY PART 5 #2 (Of 4) $4.95
JUL011984E MYSTIC #16 $2.95
JUN012212F OGENKI CLINIC VOL 8 #1 (A) $2.95
JUN012052 PRINCESS PRINCE #11 $2.95
JUN011876 SCREAMING KITTY #1 $2.95
JUN011924 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #101 $1.99
MAY012094 SOULSEARCHERS #49 $2.50
JUN011858 STRANGERS IN PARADISE VOL III #43 $2.95
MAY012273 THIEVES & KINGS #36 (RES) $2.50
JUL011795F TITANS OF FINANCE $3.50
JUN011872F TRUE SWAMP STONEGROUND & HILLBOUND (MR) $4.95
JUN012211F VAMPIRE PRINCESS YUI VOL 3 #1 $2.95

MAGAZINES

JUN012407J COMIC SHOP NEWS #742 PI
APR012419 COMICOLOGY #4 $5.95

The 9A Lighthouse Crew are Trafalgar, Shannon, Fastnet, Plymouth, Viking, German Bight, Finisterre, Forties, Dogger, Cromarty and Fisher.

Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. The author permits distribution of this article by private individuals, on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.