"As some of you may have noticed, this month's Previews is a bit leaner, a bit lighter than previous issues," says Editor Marty Grosser in his opening note. Well, no, actually, I hadn't noticed. This Previews is 470 pages, last one was 520- not what you'd call dramatic weight loss.

But I had noticed that some little things were missing. Like most of the editorial content expressly devoted to indy comics - the Certified Cool round-up, the Staff Picks, the Under the Reading Lamp feature and the Publisher's Spotlight, all of which accounted for three pages per month. And the Coming Attractions page, which admittedly was kind of useless - if publishers can't reliably tell you what they're publishing three months in advance, what hope is there for the month after that? And...

...wait for it...

...the Short Order Form!

Yes, to save one whole page in the catalogue, Diamond has cut out... the part that made it useful to consumers! Brilliant! Give the efficiency experts bonuses!

Of course, consumers can always print off the Short Order Form from Diamond's web site - after all, if they didn't have a high tolerance for inconvenience, they wouldn't be pre-ordering in the first place. Or they can use the Long Order Form. The one that retailers use, the big checklist of every single product offered. Which is 70 pages long.

Let's just move on, before I decide to toss the catalogue entirely...

PICKS OF THE MONTH

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF JULES FEIFFER, VOL. 4: PASSIONELLA, byJules Feiffer, from Fantagraphics Books
JAN03 2173, pg. 280, $12.95

In the late '50s and early '60s, a group of young humorists, unaffiliated but collectively dubbed the "sick comedians" by the uncomprehending press, broke taboos and changed the face of American comedy. On stage, there was Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Tom Lehrer, Nichols and May, etc. And in the comics, there was Jules Feiffer.

Feiffer's strip in the Village Voice - which ran continuously from 1956 until a few years ago, when a new editor decided he needed the space for a sports section - was a sensation. Feiffer's loosely scribbled (but nonetheless excellently drawn) people quivered with insecurity and buzzed with neurosis. Sometimes the strip consisted of nothing more than a talking head, and if anybody ever tries to tell you that talking heads don't work in comics, show them these, because, thanks to Feiffer's mastery of rhythm and timing, few comic strips ever 'worked' better. And to top it off, Feiffer eventually decided that the sexual politics of his characters was not unrelated to politics in Washington, and branched out into editorial cartooning, proving every bit as insightful in that arena. Jules Feiffer is one of comics' truly brilliant artists.

I had despaired of ever seeing another volume of Fantagraphics' COMPLETE FEIFFER series, but apparently the company has been doing so well with bookstore sales lately that it can afford to revive some of its postponed projects. This one leads off with 'Passionella,' a fable about a woman whose wish to become a Hollywood blonde bombshell is magically granted. Snap this up, so that the series doesn't have to be shelved again.

SUMMER OF LOVE, by Debbie Drechsler, from Drawn & Quarterly JANO3 2125, pg. 270, $18.95

Now out in softcover, so you have no excuse not to buy it. Drechsler's depiction of the treacheries and intrigue of high school is absolutely note-perfect. I love it, new minty green colouring and all, and I can't recommend it highly enough. (I notice with pleasure that it's popping up on a number of year-end best lists, such as TIME's.)

DARK HORSE

PUBO #3 (of #3), by Leland Purvis
JAN03 0071, pg. 27, $3.50

None of you are buying this, are you? I've seen the sales charts, you can't lie to me. Well, you should have bought it, because it's inventive and funny. This issue concludes the series, as our hero, the cranky and horribly misshapen escaped lab experiment, does his best to elude both the bounty hunters who are after him, and all the various forest dwellers whom he's managed to piss off.

METROPOLIS, by Osamu Tezuka
JAN03 0065, pg. 22, $13.95

The 1949 graphic novel, brought back into print due to the success of the recent animated film version. I normally don't mention manga here because I don't know anything about it, but anything by Tezuka is too big to omit. Kudos to Dark Horse for re-introducing him to American audiences.

XENOZOIC TALES, by Mark Schultz
JAN03 0081, pg. 28, $14.95

Alternately known as CADILLACS AND DINOSAURS, which is the tip-off - I understand Schultz worked up a pretty good sci-fi rationale for Cadillacs and dinosaurs coexisting, but it sounds like at heart that's just what he likes to draw. And he does draw beautifully, in the grand old EC tradition. This collects the first six issues of the series.

DC COMICS

In their infinite sagacity, the folks at DC have looked at all the products they're offering this month and decided that the most interesting of them all is... a set of dolls. No, really, they put them on the cover and everything. Unfortunately, I'm almost inclined to agree...

SMALLVILLE #1, by Mark Verheiden, Clint Carpenter, Killian Plunkett and Mark Morales
JAN03 0217, pg. 82, $3.50

DC finally gets around to putting out a series based on the hit TV show, nearly two and a half years after it premiered.

Dear DC; Since you seem to have an aversion to money, can I have some of yours? I promise I'll find a good home for it. Sincerely yours, Christopher Ekman

THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: THE ABSOLUTE EDITION VOL. 1, by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill
JAN03 0270, pg. 91, $75

The first miniseries of the breakaway hit of Moore's America's Best Comics line is collected in an oversized deluxe hardcover with slipcase. Also includes all Moore's scripts. Quite how the scripts benefit from the oversized format I'm not sure. Still, Moore's scripts, famously, are almost novelistic in their detail, and they're not only interesting to compare to the finished product but entertaining to read in their own right.

Also from the ABC line:
TOP TEN: BOOK TWO, by Alan Moore, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon
JAN03 0272, pg. 91, $14.95

New collection of the well-liked station-house-drama-with-superheroes.

RELOAD #1 (of 3), by Warren Ellis, Paul Gulacy and Jimmy Palmiotti
JAN03 0274, pg. 91, $2.95

A trained killer with lots of guns wages a one-woman war on the US government. I know how she feels. Hoping this is a little more fun than GLOBAL FREQUENCY has been.

Y - THE LAST MAN: UNMANNED, by Brian Vaughan, Pia Guerra and Jose Marzan, Jr.
JAN03 0289, pg. 94, $12.95

This is actually in stores already. DC rush-solicited it a month or so back, which means it wasn't in the regular catalogue, which means I never saw it. DC has become fond of rush-soliciting lately and I think it's doing it just to cheese me off.

I said before here that I didn't quite see why everyone was having orgasms over this series. (And I got a thoughtful reply, which I forgot to respond to - sorry, Ian...) Don't get me wrong, it's a well-crafted book, through and through. But I still say it's short on personality, and I still say that plot twist at the end of issue #4 strains credibility to the breaking point.

The series' premise is that all the males in the world except our wiseacre protagonist, Yorick, have mysteriously up and croaked. Now, in the chaotic aftermath, some radical feminists have declared that Mother Earth has eliminated the men because they were destructive and inferior, and they gain a following that becomes known as the Amazons. The existence of Yorick throws a spanner into their theory, so when they find out about him, they decide he must be killed. And who is assigned to track him down and kill him? In a country of 280 - sorry, 140 million people, who, by an astounding coincidence, gets the job? You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

I have a problem with the Amazons in general. First of all, as a rite of initiation, they've all hacked off one breast, just like their namesakes. This is silly. And more importantly, to be dead honest, it's hard to think of anything less scary than the feminist movement right now. A decade's worth of backlash, anti-backlash, reverse-neo-anti-triple-gainer-backlash and Camille Paglia seem to have left it exhausted, and no wonder. NOW doesn't seem to be up to anything these days except clinging dearly to Roe vs Wade, and all I hear from them is the occasional fund-raising mailing trying to convince me that Rush Limbaugh is still as scary as he was in 1994. I don't remember anybody asking for the feminist perspective on the war in Afghanistan, even though it was fought partly in the name of women's rights. What current public figure espouses beliefs even faintly analogous to the Amazon leader? All I could come up with was Mary Daly, but she's an academic, and you can't get much less relevant than that.

The parts of the book where Vaughan explores the ramifications of a world without men are very good indeed, and word is he's got lots of that planned. But the further on the book goes, the more the villains are going to have to figure into it, and right now they don't look promising.

Anyhow. It's a good book, worth your while to check out, with lots of potential. I'm just not convinced yet that it's the Second Coming of Vertigo.

As for the rest of Vertigo this month, there's a new collection of 100 BULLETS, which I don't read, and a comedy about vampires from Judd Winick called BLOOD AND WATER. I thought Vertigo was trying to change its image? One of my many peculiar prejudices is that vampires are inherently crap, so I'm afraid I won't be investigating this...

THE AUTHORITY: "High Stakes"

Wildstorm tries to boost sales of its embarrassingly unpopular 'mature' superhero imprint, Eye of the Storm, by inserting a three-part AUTHORITY story into some of the titles as a back up, written by Robbie Morrison. This is a tease for a new AUTHORITY series in May, also by Morrison.

Now, you've got to sympathise with anybody who has to take over THE AUTHORITY, for two reasons. The first one is that creator Warren Ellis and his successor, Mark Millar, purposefully went as far over the top as they could go. That is, until DC editorial stepped in - it was during Millar's run that DC censored the book to death. There's still a lot of ill feeling about that, and that's the second reason that Morrison's job is much less enviable than it might first appear.

So I don't mean to bash the poor bastard before he's even out of the gate. But... well, here's the plot description:

"Welcome to Alternate 66, a rogue dimension that's home to the nefarious Viceworld, a massive planet where an entire society has been founded on the principles of gambling. ... now, the Lord of Viceworld has manufactured an impossible challenge for [The Authority]: save the Earth from a massive invasion or die trying."

The Lord of Viceworld?

That is the corniest-sounding thing I've read in this entire catalogue, and this is a catalogue in which Future Comics is making their first appearance. I know, I know, it's just another superhero comic and that's really all it ever was; but still, it shocking to realise that nobody at DC has the foggiest notion why THE AUTHORITY was so popular in the first place...

BIZARRO COMICS
JAN03 0227, pg. 83, $19.95

Now in softcover and therefore priced rationally at long last, this features half the alternative cartoonists you ever heard of, set loose on the DC universe and doing... well, doing considerably less than their best work, is what I've heard. (Though that may just be the view of arts-comics purists who didn't like the idea to begin with.)

MARVEL COMICS / IMAGE COMICS

There's been so much hubbub about the RAWHIDE KID that even the sensible points have been raised. Will that stop me putting my oar in? The hell it will.

The main fear about it seems to be that it will be campy and filled with gay innuendo, and this will somehow sully the public perception of comics.

I would like to remind you all that two months ago, the number one comic in the direct market was MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE #1. Stores ordered over 100,000 copies. It's on the strength of that that Image is soliciting a second series this month. And this is a comic about a heavily-muscled blond Adonis in a loincloth named He-Man who has pals named Ram-Man and Fisto.

I think the cows might already be out of the barn on this one, gang. So you can stop griping about it. Can't you?

ACTIVE SYNAPSE

SANDWALK ADVENTURES, by Jay Hosler
JAN03 1888, pg. 211, $20

In which Charles Darwin explains the theory of natural selection to his eyebrow mites. No, really. Hosler is an honest-to-god biology professor, so he knows whereof he speaks. Yes, it's an educational comic, but in the book that first brought him to our attention, the Xeric-winning CLAN APIS, Hosler displayed a Jeff Smith-esque sense of comic timing that helped everything go down easy. So this ought to be good. You might want to get it for anybody who's just read CREATURE TECH. (Just kidding, Doug! Please don't put me on your prayer list!)

DRAWN AND QUARTERLY

In addition to the softcover SUMMER OF LOVE, there's:

WAITING FOR FOOD: R CRUMB'S PLACEMAT DRAWINGS VOL 3
Hardcover: JAN03 2125, pg. 270, $26.95

You know, I very much like Crumb's work, and I know that he eats, breathes and dreams comics, that his merest tossed-off doodle contains more art than the most meticulously-crafted illustrations by most of today's artistic superstars, etc. But, really - it wasn't anal enough that Fantagraphics is collecting every jot and tittle of Crumb's that ever saw print, and is publishing his sketchbooks? We also need a volume - a third volume! - of his restaurant placemat sketches in hardcover?

I like to picture agents of Gary Groth and Chris Oliveros stalking Crumb around France, scuffling over any piece of paper he might be careless enough to discard...

EPOXY PRESS

EPOXY #1 - NEW PRINTING, SIGNED & NUMBERED EDITION
JAN03 2161, pg. 280, $3.95

I recently got turned on to this book, and it's an utter marvel. I only wish I had time to explain it. Go investigate it at the web site, then order it - it's just $4 for 64 pages, after all, it's a great deal. Then watch for #3 to be solicited through Diamond, because I've seen it already and can tell you you're in for a treat.

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY #16, by Chris Ware
JAN03 2169, pg. 284, $9.95

This issue introduces Ware's new serial, about Rusty Brown, a pudgy, lonely, ill-socialised man-child with an active fantasy life.

Not a stunning departure for the author of JIMMY CORRIGAN, is it?

We've seen Rusty before, and so far two things distinguish him from Jimmy. First of all, he's a collector, of comics, action figures, and other pop culture ephemera. If you read Ware's editorial in the last issue - which, granted, would have required a professional-grade microscope - you know that his interest in collectors verges on the anthropological.

The second distinguishing characteristic is Rusty's cruelty. Jimmy is weak, but also fundamentally decent, and whatever his fantasies are, you can't imagine him actually harming anyone if he had power over them. Rusty, however, has no greater joy in life than cheating his fellow collector, the endlessly gullible Chalky White. The joke on Rusty is that Chalky, as seen in the Book of Jokes issue, eventually gets married, proving himself to be the (marginally) more functional human being. On some level Rusty realises this, and begins to lose his grip.

That's the destination, most likely. In this issue, to start with, Ware has gone back to the pair's childhoods, giving himself ample opportunity to catalogue the stylistic atrocities of the '70s while he's at it. Which ought to be good. And, come on, it's the opening movements of Chris Ware's second major project - how can you not be on board?

ARTBABE PRESENTS: LA PERDIDA #3 (of 4), by Jessica Abel
JAN03 2175, pg. 285, $3.95

Transplanting her urban hipster characters to Mexico has done Jessica Abel nothing but good, so far as I'm concerned. I especially like the interplay between the protagonist, Carla, well-intentioned but nevertheless a privileged tourist, and Memo, older and a strident Marxist, yet oddly charismatic. I also like Abel's freer, thicker-stroked drawing, though I'm not sure that it's suited to as much hatching as she's been doing.

LOVE & ROCKETS VOL. 2 #7, by Jaime, Gilbert, and Mario Hernandez
JAN03 2177, pg. 285, $3.95

There were a few qualms when Los Bros revived the LOVE & ROCKETS title, that they might be playing it safe - but fat chance of that. Take one of Gilbert's strips from the last issue, '30,000 Hours to Kill', an impressively demented shaggy-dog story done in tiny panels on a strict 5 by 11 grid and seemingly improvised. It's got prison riots, an eye-sucking monster, and horrible torture - like the guy who gets his head crushed like an overripe melon in a vice, for being a film, rock music and comic book criti-

For being a what?

...you know, even though it's akin to treason among comics' pseudo-intellectual circles to say a negative word about the venerated Hernandez brothers, I think even their staunchest defenders will have to admit that they're running on fumes. They've always been overrated, and people can't hide from the truth for much longer. If you ask me, it's well past time to shuffle these hollow eminences off to the Old Cartoonists' Home.

Fuck you! I'm god! I'm always right!

THE GANZFELD VOL. 3, by various
JAN03 2174, pg. 284, $24.95

THE GANZFELD, formerly a slip of a thing, blew up with last year's issue into a thick, square-bound coffee-table-worthy magazine with a little of everything; comics, art, short fiction, criticism, interviews, jokes, homoerotic odes to Robert Mitchum, and design. Lots and lots of design.

Comics-related features in the last one included colour excerpts from Chris Ware's sketchbooks, examples of Peter [LEVIATHAN] Blegvad's new strip, and the true story of a shipping clerk in Chicago who filled up dozens of composition books with a comic strip, drawn for himself and himself alone, for most of his adult life. Unfortunately, the solicitation doesn't say who's going to be in this one, but I assume it will be on their website in due time.

THE COMICS JOURNAL #251
JAN03 2171, pg. 284, $6.95

Featured interviewee: James Sturm, whose historical original graphic novel THE GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING was one of the standout books of 2001. Also, Raymond Briggs, famous in the UK for his popular children's books and his sublime graphic novels (such as the recent ETHEL & ERNEST).

HIGHWATER BOOKS

CATCH AS CATCH CAN, by Greg Cook
JAN03 2264, pg. 294, $9.95

It's the Gingerbread Man, but he's a bit more of a bastard than you might remember - in this version the chase is sparked off by his buying cigarette for children. It's supposed to be very funny. And Cook's art style is pleasing, all thick fluid lines and curlicues.

ODDS OFF, by Matt Madden
JAN03 2266, pg. 294, $14.95

Madden is Jessica Abel's husband, and if you enjoy her work you ought to give his a try, since they've clearly been influencing each other. The main plot, as the solicitation says, is "a dissolving relationship between an easy-going Franco-phile named Morgan and his world-weary pre-med girlfriend Shirin". What it doesn't mention is the sub-plot- a gay writer named Lance develops both a hopeless crush on Morgan from afar, and a bad case of writer's block thanks to a fanciful disease called "word lice". ("Now, I need to ask you a frank question," his doctor asks; "Have you been swapping disks with anyone?" "No! Well, I mean, I've been to one or two writer's groups...") It's fairly low-key, and never builds to the melodramatic crescendo you might anticipate, but it's no less involving for that. Because long-term relationships like Morgan and Shirin's don't always end in an explosion; sometimes, imperceptibly, they just coast to a stop.

PopImage has five preview pages from ODDS OFF here.

MEANWHILE STUDIOS

CHIAROSCURO #6, by Troy Little
JAN03 2314, pg. 303, $2.75

I seem to remember hearing that CHIAROSCURO may be in danger of being dropped by Diamond. I certainly hope not, because it's just been getting interesting. The protagonist, Steven Patch, a somewhat unpleasant would-be artist who never quite manages to put brush to canvas, normally wouldn't leave his apartment if he could help it. But in the past few issues, things have started happening to him. He has been picked up in a club by a beautiful actress, for no readily apparent reason, and, not twenty-four hours later, had the tar beaten out of him by a pair of mysterious possibly-governmental agents, again for no readily apparent reason.

Little was initially inspired by Dave Sim, and clearly he's rummaged a fair bit through Sim's storytelling toolbox. I don't want to belabour the comparison, because Little certainly does come across with his own voice. But, you know, if you've finally been defeated by the endless pages of biblical exegesis in tiny type that Sim has been peddling in lieu of a story lately... why not fill the gap by giving this book a try?

NBM

HOW LOATHSOME #1, by Tristan Crane and Ted Naifeh
JAN03 2326, pg. 305, $2.95

Now here's something you don't often see- a comic about S&M and gender-bending that isn't pornography. And the opening pages, far from straining to appal us yokels the way such books usually do, instead says flat out that the scene is less interesting than it looks from the outside.

What's it about? From the looks of things, our jaded lesbian protagonist gets a crush on a tranny and things spiral off from there. It's written by Crane and Naifeh, with art by Naifeh, who shot to prominence this year with his COURTNEY CRUMRIN books at Oni. His character designs are excellent as usual, and everything he draws here appears to be hard as diamond and have edges you could slice your fingers on. This book has my attention.

THE SPEED ABATER, by Christopher Blain
JAN03 2331, pg. 306, $13.95

Blain is a French cartoonist, and I think the only work of his that's been translated into English up to now have been some of his usually light and whimsical David Watts stories. THE SPEED ABATER, however, is decidedly neither light nor whimsical. It's got a killer set-up, which the solicitation barely hints at; in a time of impending war, two new navy recruits get lost in the unimaginably huge battleship to which they've been assigned, and, inadvertently, destroy the speed abater, a vital component of the engine. They know that if they are caught they will be accused of sabotage. And so they have to hide from their own mates in the great and bewildering bowels of the ship, which is no longer under control...

Bart Beaty, who covers European comics for THE COMICS JOURNAL, named this as one of the best of 1999, saying that it was "legitimately disturbing in a way that few I have ever read have been". He adds, "As I read this book, I swore that I could actually feel the walls closing in on me." I can certainly believe it looking at the preview pages, where you can see how Blain expertly uses colour to make the whole ship seem a little bit slimy and oppressive from the very first. I'm very much looking forward to this one.

HAIR HIGH, by Bill Plympton
JAN03 2329, pg. 305, $11.95

Plympton is a caricaturist and animator of some renown, and this is the comic book version of his upcoming new feature, "a goofy take-off on '50s teen horror movies, replete with bouffant hairdos and dead teens returning as avenging skeleton zombies!" I like Plympton's work, but I'm not sure about this, because 1) the world was not exactly crying out for another send-up of '50s B-movies, and 2) the preview pages are sketchier than you'd expect even from a storyboard. Can that really be the finished artwork?

ONI PRESS

DAYS LIKE THIS, by J Torres and Scott Chantler
JAN03 2348, pg. 306, $8.95

An original graphic novel about the rise of a Motown girl group in the early '60s. I don't know the creators' work, but the clean line style sampled here is appealing and the book looks like a lark. (I assume from the name-checking of THAT THING YOU DO that it's going to stay upbeat, and not end in a welter of failed comeback tours and heroin addictions.) Torres put four previews pages up on his section of the X-Fan boards; however, you have to register to see them.

SYNCOPATED COMICS

SYNCOPATED COMICS VOL. 1, by various
JAN03 2392, pg. 314, $6.95

Yet another indy anthology, with no apparent theme or organising principle, shot out into the void. Bonus: also has no web presence whatsoever. You people aren't making my job any easier, you know that?

It's got an intriguing-sounding line-up. Among the names I recognise: Nate Powell, a young 'zine cartoonist whose deeply emotional WALKIE TALKIE series of recent months was a little-seen gem; Ruben Bolling, whose alt-weekly strip TOM THE DANCING BUG contains some of the most astute political satire running, and much more; master of misanthropy Ivan Brunetti, notorious for producing some of the most fucked-up gag cartoons ever published; and, of course, the ubiquitous James Kochalka.

TOP SHELF COMICS

SNAKES & LADDERS, by Alan Moore
CD: JAN03 2424, pg. 318, $20

The latest CD of Alan Moore's occult performance art monologues, which he likes to refer to as "beat séances". His writing in PROMETHEA is really only a faint glimmer of what he's achieving in these. And SNAKES & LADDERS is his most audacious piece yet, purporting as it does to describe the origins of life and the purpose of art. The density of Moore's prose and the headiness of his cosmology is, honestly, mind-expanding. If you've enjoyed PROMETHEA, you really are going to want to take a hit of the pure stuff with this.

BEACH SAFARI, by Mawil Witzel
JAN03 2422, pg. 318, $9.95

By a cartoonist who is a) fairly new to the scene and b) German, so there's no information in English to be found about him anywhere. This is about a rabbit (who looks like he could be the nerdy younger brother of Max from SAM & MAX) who somehow gets marooned on an island with three young, nubile, and from the look of it not particularly bashful (human) girls. The solicitation calls it "a stirring examination of self-esteem and loneliness".

SKETCHBOOK DIARIES VOL. 3, by James Kochalka
JAN03 2423, pg. 318, $7.95

It's that man again. From the cartoonist who dares to be cutesy, it's yet more diary strips, in which each day gets distilled into four tiny square panels. I won't be able to get away with not having read any of his books for much longer, will I?

Chris Ekman is a political cartoonist.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution 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.