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Things To Come: Previews February for comics shipping April 2005
The cover of Diamond Comics' Previews is specifically reserved for displaying the product of one of their "Premiere" publishers: Dark Horse, DC, Image, and Marvel. (Although now that Marvel has their own separate booklet, I suppose it's really just the first three.) Each publisher gets so many covers per year, and they decide which books should get the added push of being featured on the front of that month's order catalogue. The front cover to this month's Previews? The STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH comic book adaptation. I don't know why this infuriates me so much. I guess it's because on some level, I like to think that publishers would take a book they think might not get enough attention and push it to the forefront of the buyer's mind by featuring it in that coveted cover slot. But a movie adaptation of the new STAR WARS movie? Oh, please. The book's going to sell itself to its fans. STAR WARS fans already know exactly how much or how little in the way of tie-in merchandise they want to buy. Some of them see the movies, perhaps buy the DVDs, and call it a day. Others run out and buy so much stuff that... well, when I saw that one of the comics being published these days is titled STAR WARS: OBSESSION, all I could think is that someone at Dark Horse has a good sense of humour. Normally in "Things to Come" I try to focus on both books you might otherwise miss and books that are just genuinely good. That's not going to be the case this month. This month, it's just the former, because after seeing that stupid Previews cover, I just can't bring myself to give any more press to something that I think has already had enough of a push. So if you're thinking, "Hey, wait, why didn't Greg talk about these other books?" you can just blame Dark Horse. It's entirely their fault. AARDVARK-VANAHEIM DAVE SIM: COLLECTED LETTERS 2004 TP by Dave Sim
Way back in the day, the CEREBUS letter column "Aardvark Comment" was well-known for being really good quality reading; lots of thoughtful letters and responses talking about anything and everything. Of course, this was also at a time when CEREBUS in general was high quality, before the slow downhill slide into something less than desirable. Anyway, when "Aardvark Comment" was at its peak, I remember there being the idea that maybe at some point in time there would be an "Aardvark Comment Greatest Hits" collection of some sort, and for a split second I thought that's what DAVE SIM: COLLECTED LETTERS 2004 would be. Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not even remotely the case. No, this 580-page book is instead Dave Sim finally answering his backlog of mail for the past three years and printing the end result. You know, I could understand that for people who still read and enjoyed CEREBUS, they were ultimately paying for the actual comic every month and not the increasingly bizarre and disturbing screeds that Sim included at the end of each issue. But to buy nothing but (and I'm guessing here, but I'll bet it'll be accurate) Sim's rants? Quite frankly I'd rather walk into a glass door a couple of times and spend the money on a nice dinner, thank you very much. RAY VOL 2 by Akihito Yoshifumi
All right, this is one of the stranger premises I've read in a while. Ray was raised on a farm as an organ donor, and after her eyes were harvested (ick!) she managed to escape and was given bionic x-ray eyes, so now as a nurse she performs underground medical procedures with these new abilities. If that wasn't enough, now she's trying to get revenge on the people who originally did this to her. You've got me. I'm in. I'm definitely going to have to sit down and read this book. (The full write-up in Previews is one of the best blurbs I've read in quite a while. I'm hooked and I haven't even read the book itself.) A1 BOJEFFRIES TERROR TOMES #1
Ooh, this sounds quite promising. A horror anthology headlined with a BoJeffries Saga story by Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse, which is certainly promising. The other contributions include a reprint of Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli's 'Baby Cakes', as well as stories by Ramsey Campbell & David Lloyd, Warren Ellis & Steve Pugh, Doselle Young & Warren Pleece, Ted McKeever... yeah, this gets a big thumbs up. If McKeeever's story then gets people to pick up the first of three EDDY CURRENT reprints from Atomeka (before there was METROPOL, McKeever was best known for EDDY CURRENT) that's also shipping this month, that's an added bonus. THE DARK HORSE BOOK OF THE DEAD HC edited by Scott Allie
With so many anthologies being published these days, it's easy to overlook the good ones, and Dark Horse's recent hardcover horror books definitely qualify. In the third in this annual series (the first two being BOOK OF HAUNTINGS and BOOK OF WITCHCRAFT), editor Scott Allie looks to once again have pulled together a wide range of creators, with headliners including Mike Mignola, Jill Thompson, Evan Dorkin, Eric Powell, Kelley Jones, Gary Gianni, Guy Davis... and yet, I barely hear a peep about this great series. These are really good books, and I'd have thought that their being the only source of new HELLBOY stories for a while now would have been enough of a draw. If that's not, though, just consider some of the other talented people working on the book, and consider how well Scott Allie's been doing at setting up Dark Horse's horror line. This is definitely worth your while. THIRTEEN TP by Mike Carey and Andy Clarke
Is it just me or are the 2000AD books that DC Comics co-publishes getting no press whatsoever? I mean, sure, when the books first began, DC was pushing them, but now it's almost like they're an afterthought. All right, it might be hard to really push ROBO-HUNTER: DAY OF THE DROIDS (I'm sorry, with a title like that you're doomed) but the silence around Mike Carey and Andy Clarke's THIRTEEN surprises me. Carey's writing on books like LUCIFER, HELLBLAZER, and MY FAITH IN FRANKIE is usually good, and the cover art for THIRTEEN gives me hope that Clarke has talent. I'll admit, I know nothing about the book other than what the blurb states (a punk with telekinetic powers finds a power-amplifier that the original owners want back), but this could be a lot of fun. More importantly, with Carey writing, I've got faith that it will be. Despite DC's best efforts to bury the book, I'll give it a try. NODAME CANTIABILE VOL 1 GN by Tomoko Ninomiya
One of the best things about the huge influx of comics from Japan is that we're getting more and more "real life" comics; you know, ones about playing sports or board games, or falling in love, or even just surviving school. Tomoko Ninomiya's NODAME CAINTIBILE won the Kodansha Manga of the Year Award (and for those who don't know, Kodansha is one of the largest manga publishers in Japan) and it's about a boy who wants to study music abroad but is afraid of travel and fears he has to give up his dreams, until he meets Nodame, whose own life is a mess, but who can play the piano flawlessly. I love the fact that this is the sort of story that can win a Manga of the Year Award, and I love that Del Rey is publishing it in English. I've barely heard a peep about this book (I suspect it's going to be a hard sell to many) but I think it sounds fantastic. Sign me up. Just in case you were looking for old ComicsOne titles, they're now listed under the new company name of Dr Master, and on page 288 they're relisting solicitations for COSPLAY KOROMO CHAN TP VOL 1, HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS VOL 3, IRON WOK JAN! VOL 12, and KING OF FIGHTERS 2003 TP VOL 1. Me, I want to know if "Dr Master" is some sort of obscure Doctor Who reference or what... THE COMPLETE JON SABLE, FREELANCE VOL 1 by Mike Grell
I almost skipped over this book simply because I figured it was probably getting enough press (and this month's column is all about books that aren't); it's one of Mike Grell's most famous works, surely people are talking about it, right? Then it hit me: if you weren't reading comics in the '80s and early '90s, you might have no idea who Mike Grell even is. And now I feel really old. So, JON SABLE, FREELANCE. It's a classic adventure story, with a man whose family was killed deciding to go hunt the hunters. Along the way, though, it becomes something more; Grell was always an underrated writer who doesn't necessarily go for the obvious. This isn't a book about revenge, it's about survival, both physically and mentally, and about the hunt. It's a very different sort of book, and it's got some really nice art that will hopefully help catch people's eyes and get it the recognition it deserves. DEATH JR #1 by Gary Whitta and Ted Naifeh
I really wasn't sure about this book at first. I love Ted Naifeh's work on his own creations, like COURTNEY CRUMRIN, or HOW LOATHSOME (co-written with Tristan Crane), but a book where he's just the artist? Well, that means that DEATH JR will certainly look pretty, but how's the writing going to be? Then I read the blurb. It stars the son of the Grim Reaper, and he wants to fit in at school, and all of that, and it sounds pretty standard until you get to the description of his friends: "Pandora, a little goth girl; Smith & Weston, conjoined twins; Stigmartha, a girl who bleeds when she gets nervous; The Seep, an armless, legless, foreign exchange student in a jar". All right, based on this, I'm willing to give Gary Whitta's writing a chance. It sounds like he and Naifeh will be a pretty good match for each other. (The four preview pages included in the catalogue also helped sell me.) And hey, with 48-page issues, there's certainly a lot of Naifeh art provided. That's always a good thing. NIGHT CLUB #1 by Mike Baron and Mike Norton
What is with all of the zombies these days? All right, technically NIGHT CLUB isn't a zombie comic; it's "inhuman creatures" who roam these streets looking for prey, and they certainly seem a little more articulate than the average zombie. But looking at the four-page preview provided, all I could think was "another zombie story". They're in films, in comics, on the television... are they trying to say something about today's society? Because believe me, they can stop buying ACTION COMICS whenever they want. They just choose to suffer through bad writing to keep that perfect run, that's all. Er, anyway, NIGHT CLUB reunites Mike Baron and Mike Norton (who worked together on BADGER way back in the day) for an "end of the world, we've got to stick together" sort of story. I'm hoping there's more to it than that, and based on the blurb given, it could really go either way. OJO TP by Sam Kieth, Alex Pardee, and Chris Wisnia
I don't get it. Why isn't OJO, probably the best book by Sam Kieth since THE MAXX, getting any notice? Don't get me wrong, it was nice to see Kieth come back to comics with works like ZERO GIRL and FOUR WOMEN, but OJO in many ways has it all: family struggles and conflict, people struggling with the loss of loved ones, and a big monster living in a drainpipe. Folks, this has everything, and Kieth's art (with finishes by Alex Pardee and Chris Wisnia) has never looked so good. Trust me, this is worth it. TEMPORARY #2: THE REAL ME by Damon Hurd and Rick Smith
The first issue of TEMPORARY ("Cubes and Ladders") was nothing short of fantastic, with temp worker Envy St Claire working for a company that is a loony bin in more ways than one. With this new issue, she's sent to work for a police department, only there's nothing normal about the 31st Precinct. Damon Hurd and Rick Smith had such a strong debut issue with TEMPORARY that this is a book you'll definitely want to order. (Missed the first issue? Don't worry, it's "offered again" this month as well.) If the second issue is like the first it'll be a good combination of humour and drama, with lots of little twists just waiting to surprise you as a reader. Great, great, great stuff. MOSQUITO GN by Dan James
Dan James's first book for Top Shelf, THE OCTOPI AND THE OCEAN, was an odd story that reminded me almost of Meso-American glyphs and art in the way that it told its story. His new book, MOSQUITO, uses South American vampire myths as the basis of its story and I can't help but think that this should be a perfect pairing of story and art. MOSQUITO promises to be a wordless book about a man who gets mailed pictures of a vampire's victims along with an address, and goes to investigate. It sounds simple enough, but if James's trippy art holds it all together, this could be a real winner. And, in a nice touch, the entire book is printed using red ink. It sounds silly, but that helped seize my attention. If that helps it to get sales, bring on the red ink. TEZUKA'S BUDDHA VOL 1 KAPILAVASTU SC by Osamu Tezuka
This is definitely something that hasn't received enough press, and it's a big one: Vertical Inc is starting to publish softcover editions of Osamu Tezuka's epic story BUDDHA. This is one of my favourite series these days, telling the story of Buddha in comic book format. It's one of Tezuka's finest works, mixing the grim drama of those times with a dash of humour where appropriate. I'd read the life story of Siddhartha Guatama when I was in high school, but I must admit that I'd since forgotten most of it. That won't be the case here; Tezuka grabs your attention and doesn't let go. I'll keep buying the hardcovers because they're sturdy and something that I'm going to be re-reading again and again, but to everyone else who's been waiting for a less expensive edition, well, at $7.95 for 256 pages, you've no more excuses. (Since the hardcovers were 400 pages, I suspect that these softcover editions might print the series in its original 14-volume breakdown instead of the 8-volume hardcover formatting. Still, you can't deny that this is one hell of a bang for your buck.) 20TH CENTURY BOYS VOL 1 GN by Naoki Urasawa
I've been told by two different people whose opinions I trust that, "this is the book to watch out for." So, watch out for it! Failed rock musician working at a convenience store, death of a childhood friend, missing people, strange cults... OK, this sounds appealingly bizarre. And remember, Greg's Friends Like It! How can you go wrong with that? (I guess that's the problem with trying to spotlight books that aren't getting much press. Sometimes the books have gotten no press at all, and you're just sort of stuck in wondering if it's really any good or not. I never said this format didn't have its disadvantages.) Greg McElhatton writes reviews for iComics.com, and has also written for anthologies, magazines, web sites, and technical manuals. 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. Back. |