The Shipping Forecast for August 1st

PLANETARY is late, but it's finally here. NEW X-MEN is late, and we're still waiting. Read about these books and more besides in Ninth Art's pick of the titles hitting the shelves this week - or not, as the case may be.
30 July 2001

It's Monday morning and your stomach is rumbling. You fancy getting something a bit special for lunch, to set you up for the week ahead - but can you afford it? Fear not, landlubber. Ninth Art's crew of fisherfolk is here to give you the details on just how expensive a week this is going to be at your local comic shop (with a little help from the Diamond shipping list.). And the good news is, you can probably afford dessert.

The shipping list is subject to change. Do not trust its lies.

CROMARTY PICKS:

OBERGEIST #4 (Top Cow/Minotaur)
I can honestly say I never thought I'd see the day I was enjoying a Top Cow book, but it's happening. With the Minotaur imprint, Top Cow seem to have taken the commendable route of buying a comic and getting the hell out of the way so the creators can do their thing. Jolley and Harris' OBERGEIST, a dark (sometimes darkly humorous) and surreal tale of redemption and angst, is fast heading for its climax. Though I haven't a clue where it'll end up, I'm looking forward to finding out. Not a good jumping-on point, but all back issues should be readily available.

PLANETARY #15 (DC Wildstorm)
When issues 13 and 14 shipped within a single month, we all knew it was too good to last. But issue 15 of Ellis and Cassaday's modern pulp is finally on its way and it looks good. Combining the last few episodes' ruminations with a return to the genre pastiche of PLANETARY's beginnings, this is 'The Aboriginal Issue', with faux-native cover art to match. It's also allegedly where the series finally starts moving to a resolution, so not one to be missed if you're a regular reader. Again, not a good jumping-on point if you've never read PLANETARY - but trades of the first twelve issues are available, so you've really got no excuse...

FISHER PICKS:

NEW X-MEN #116 (Marvel)
The third part of the brilliant "E Is For Extinction" storyline by Morrison and Quitely is... is... is not on the shipping list. In fact, it's a pretty thin shipping list this week, so you could probably stay home and save yourself some money. It was no better last week, either, and the slump in new books might well be attributed to the fact that almost every editor in the industry was at the San Diego comic con. We can't allow any such excuses for this book, though, which found itself shipping a month late on just its second issue. Exactly when this third issue (or the title's annual) will hit the shelves is anyone's guess. These delays are an embarrassment for Marvel, especially on such a flagship title. Better luck next week, maybe?

TOM STRONG BOOK ONE TP (ABC)
Another ABC softcover collection, and this one's a real oddity. While TOP TEN, PROMETHEA and LOEG all have distinctive story arcs, TOM STRONG, by Alan Moore, Chris Sprouse et al, is a little more piecemeal. Unlike TOMORROW STORIES, it does have a central character - dashing science hero Tom, backed by his adventurous family - and there's even a multi-part story collected in here, involving leather-clad Nazi Ingrid Weiss. However, TOM STRONG also plays around with story styles more than the other ABC books. Unlike a lot of successful titles around at the moment, the ABC books are not being written for the trade, and it makes these trades feel a little less essential than they ought to.

DOGGER PICKS:

PLANETARY #15 (DC Wildstorm)
It's been a long wait, but it's here at last. PLANETARY is hands down the best superhero book on the market, and I'll happily wait as long as it takes Ellis and Cassaday to put out each issue. We're now less than ten issues from the end of the series, and there's a sense that pace is picking up as we move toward the final stretch. With this issue, we find ourselves in Australia, as Planetary attempts to stop one of the Fours' schemes at Ayers Rock, giving Ellis an excuse to look at the role of myth and storytelling tradition in the roots of the superhero genre - or so one would assume from the cover. Even if my guess is a bit off, it'll be worth seeing.

SWAMP THING VOL 4 A MURDER OF CROWS TP (DC Vertigo)
Without Alan Moore's run on SWAMP THING, there would be no Vertigo. In one issue, ("The Anatomy Lesson", collected in an earlier trade), he completely re-defined the character and set about building a new kind of horror title. Over the course of his run on the title, he made SWAMP THING into a book that adults could be proud to read, examining all kinds of horror and setting up what went on to become DC's "Vertigo Universe". You shouldn't be missing even one of these trades.

GERMAN BIGHT PICKS:

TOM STRONG BOOK 1 TP (ABC)
Having been ferried over to the Ninth Art lighthouse with the remit of focusing my reviews on indie comics in return for all the haddock I can eat, I fear that I may be going hungry this week, or at least fighting the cat for whitebait. No indies that excite me one little bit. Zip. There are a couple of good TP's coming out, so I'll tell you why you should be reading those instead. Tom Strong works so well as single issues, but if you've been foolhardy enough to miss the first few stories, pick this trade up now. After having done for superhero comics all those years ago with WATCHMEN, Alan Moore returns them to their more innocent days. This is pure nostalgia for the way they really should have been back in the day - wonderful, goofy, kind of romantic. Once upon a time, in a perfect world, superhero comics were almost like this.

SWAMP THING VOL 4 A MURDER OF CROWS (DC Vertigo)
Have we spotted a theme yet? Alan Moore (again) reinventing a classic comics conceit and building something near perfect. The Alan Moore run on SWAMP THING was one of the things that kept me reading comics when I was starting to become disillusioned with superheroes. As I'm an ancient old sea-hag, I appreciate that some of you will have missed out on these, and so I urge you to run out and buy any and all of these collected editions. Swamp Thing continued on a journey of self discovery which lasted about as long as Moore's run as writer. (Admittedly, the new Swamp Thing is all about journeys of self-discovery, but with added unbearable levels of teen whingeing. You know, for the kids.) Even after many years, this material still retains the power to knock your socks off.

Comics shipping in the US on August 1st:

DARK HORSE

JUN010034 DIRTY PAIR SIM HELL REMASTERED #4 (Of 4) $2.99
APR010052 OH MY GODDESS PART X #5 HAND IN HAND (PART 2 OF 2) $3.50
JUN010022 PLANET OF THE APES HUMAN WAR #3 (Of 3) $2.99

DC COMICS

JUN010415 BATGIRL #19 $2.50
JUN010410 BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #146 $2.25
JUN010490 CRUSADES #6 (MR) $2.50
JUN010398 DEADMAN DEAD AGAIN #1 (Of 5) $2.50
JUN010483 DESPERADOES QUIET OF THE GRAVE #4 (Of 5) $2.95
JUN010445 GREEN LANTERN #141 $2.25
MAY010482 JLA #56 $2.25
JUN010464 LOONEY TUNES #81 $1.99
JUN010492 LUCIFER #17 (MR) $2.50
JUN010455 MARTIAN MANHUNTER #35 $2.50
JUN010474 PLANETARY #15 $2.50
JUN010457 SPECTRE #8 $2.50
JUN010403 SUPERMAN #173 $2.25
JUN010496 SWAMP THING VOL 4 A MURDER OF CROWS TP $19.95
JUN010482 TOM STRONG BOOK ONE TP $14.95
JUN010476 WILDCATS VOL 2 #26 $2.50
JUN010461 YOUNG JUSTICE #36 $2.50

IMAGE

JUN011294 KIN VOL 1 DESCENT OF MAN TP $17.95
JUN011303 OBERGEIST #4 $2.95
MAR011302 SHIDIMA #4 $2.95
MAR011267 SPAWN THE DARK AGES #27 $2.50
APR011362 VIOLENT MESSIAHS #7 $2.95
MAY011388 WITCHBLADE #50 $4.95

MARVEL

JUN011603 DAREDEVIL YELLOW #3 $3.50
JUN011583 EXILES #3 $2.25
JUN011612 FANTASTIC FOUR #46 $2.25
JUN011613 THOR #40 $2.25
JUN011597 ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #12 (Note Price) $2.25
MAY011675 UNIVERSE X #12 (Of 12) $3.50

OTHER PUBLISHERS

JUN012057 FIRST #10 $2.95
MAY012068 INSANE CLOWN POSSE PENDULUM #10 $5.99
MAY011960 JUGHEAD WITH ARCHIE DIGEST #168 $2.19
MAY012044 LADY DEATH MEDIEVAL WITCHBLADE #1 $3.50
MAY011963 PALS N GALS DOUBLE DIGEST #60 (Note Price) $3.29
MAY011964 SABRINA VOL 2 #22 $1.99

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

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