Welcome to the Shipping Forecast, Ninth Art's pick of the best and most notable new releases hitting comic stores each week.

COMIC OF THE WEEK:

PISTOLWHIP: THE YELLOW MENACE (Top Shelf)
Now here's one I've been looking forward to for ages. Matt Kindt and Jason Hall, scooped a Ninth Art Lighthouse award for PISTOLWHIP in 2001, following it up with the brief (but excellent) MEPHISTO AND THE EMPTY BOX last year. YELLOW MENACE is the full-length (in fact, slightly longer) follow-up to their first work, set in the pulp/noir world of hapless private eyes and radio detectives who might, in fact, be real. Judging from the previews at the Pistolwhip site, it's just as gorgeous a package as Kindt and Hall's other works. The art is sinuous and stylised, but seems more detailed than before, and the design is jaw dropping, even down to the aged paper stock it's printed on. I'm looking forward to an atmospheric, evocative tale where you can almost here the airwaves crackle. It's likely to be one of the highlights of the year. [Fastnet]

ALSO THIS WEEK:

CUSP (Alternative Comics)
I've been looking forward to this one since I first saw the cover in Previews, and that's what drew fellow Ninth Art-ist Chris Ekman to it as well . It's a beautiful piece of art, and if nothing inside the comic relates to it, well, it's still okay by me. In the rough previews available online, Thomas Herpich displays a wonderfully loose and descriptive line. It'll be interesting to see if the finished work is tightened up, but it needn't be. The loose collection of stories in CUSP is populated by various oddities careening towards "enlightenment or maturity or something". This book gives us the chance to see Herpich set out on much the same journey, and it's one I'll be following eagerly. [German Bight]

THE INTERMAN (Octopus)
There's a lot the comics mainstream could learn about action and adventure from writer/artist Jeff Parker's fun and fast-paced self-publishing debut. It's a story about a genetically engineered man travelling the world on the hunt for the truth about his origins, while his Cold War creators dispatch their top assassins to bring him down. Heck, it's effectively the first big action movie of the year, so stick some popcorn in the microwave and enjoy. If Parker isn't working for one of the big publishers by the end of the year, I'll eat my copy of MAUS. [Fisher]

CROSSOVERS #1 (CrossGen/Code 6)
Robert Rodi's novel WHAT THEY DID TO PRINCESS PARAGON was a hysterical parody of comics, both the actual books and the industry in general. With Rodi's new comic series THE CROSSOVERS, one hopes that we get something just as funny. The basic concept of each member of a family being part of a different genre of comic (superhero, occult hero, alien abductee, warrior of a savage land) and having their worlds slowly collide has great potential. The couple of samples the Lighthouse has seen of Belgian artist Maurice T's work for CROSSOVERS looks nice, too; all in all, this looks like just the kind of crossover the Lighthouse can get behind. [Plymouth]

SLEEPER #1 (DC Wildstorm)
Ed Brubaker appears to go from strength to strength nowadays, without ever seeming to write anything outside his preferred comics genre of crime fiction. In SLEEPER, the action takes a fairly novel and mouth-watering twist as the main character is a deep-cover 'sleeper' agent in a syndicate of super-villains, whose sole contact with his real identity is in a coma. Tension, paranoia and betrayal will almost certain to be on the cards. Brubaker is ably assisted by the excellent Sean Phillips on art duties, so it's one to watch for connoisseurs of fine comics art as well as suspense junkies. [Finisterre]

PICKS OF 2002:

In addition to our annual Lighthouse Awards, we've asked each of our Shipping Forecast critics to make their picks of the best of the rest of 2002. We're publishing their responses every week this month, continuing this week with Fastnet and Fisher.

Fastnet: My pick of the continuing serials is Paul Grist's JACK STAFF, which just hasn't put a foot wrong - clever and complex when it needs to be, straightforward storytelling when it doesn't, and wearing its idiosyncratic Englishness on its sleeve. I'm delighted that Grist is continuing the series in colour with Image Comics. I also loved Eddie Campbell's latest, AFTER THE SNOOTER, which gave us a look into his creative process (how to run a comics company from your kitchen). Comics about comics shouldn't really work, but this book was a delight. My comic of the year is Mike Mignola's AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD, a daft, surreal, nonsensical tale, with a guest appearance from Abraham Lincoln. And it had three horrible old women and a monkey. Who could ask for more?

Fisher: The unfairly talented Scott Morse provided two superb books in 2002; the kid-friendly and very funny MAGIC PICKLE from Oni Press, and the exquisite and haunting ANCIENT JOE from Dark Horse. They're both beautiful works and very re-readable; I can't choose between them. Bendis and Maleev's DAREDEVIL continues to be one of the most assured and consistently engrossing series I've ever read; it's a great creative team and, but for Frank Miller, would be the definitive run. 2002 has been a great year for Peter Milligan, and it 's been a real treat to see one of my absolute favourite series, his emotionally bleak crime saga SKREEMER, reprinted.

THE SHIPPING LIST FOR JANUARY 22nd:

Shipping details come courtesy of Diamond. Visit the Diamond website for the latest information, as the list is subject to change.

DARK HORSE

NOV020020 PUBO #2 (Of 3) $3.50
OCT020035 SUPER MANGA BLAST #28 (MR) $5.99

DC COMICS

NOV020737 ACTION COMICS #799 $2.25
NOV020739 ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #612 $2.25
NOV020720 BATMAN #611 $2.25
NOV020726 BATMAN: GOTHAM ADVENTURES #58 $2.25
NOV020728 BIRDS OF PREY #51 $2.50
NOV020731 CATWOMAN #15 $2.50
NOV020757 GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD DAWN TP NEW ED $14.95
NOV020761 JLA/THE SPECTRE: SOUL WAR #1 (Of 2) $5.95
NOV020784 ROBOTECH: THE MACROSS SAGA VOL 1 TP $14.95
NOV020787 SLEEPER #1 (MR) $2.95
NOV020743 SUPERGIRL #78 $2.50
NOV020769 TITANS #49 $2.75
NOV020789 WILDCATS VERSION 3.0 #6 (MR) $2.95
NOV020810 Y: THE LAST MAN #7 (MR) $2.95

IMAGE

NOV011503 ELECTROPOLIS #4 $5.95
SEP025148 MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE #1 2ND PTG $2.95
NOV021771 PARADIGM #5 (MR) (Note Price) $2.95

MARVEL

NOV022041 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #49 $2.25
NOV022018 CAPTAIN AMERICA #8 $2.99
NOV022014 DAREDEVIL #42 $2.99
NOV022056 FANTASTIC FOUR #65 $2.25
NOV022073 PUNISHER VOL 3: BUSINESS AS USUAL TP $14.99
NOV022044 SPIDER-MAN: LEGEND OF THE SPIDER CLAN #4 (Of 5) $2.25
NOV022027 UNCANNY X-MEN #418 $2.25
NOV022036 WEAPON X #5 $2.25

OTHER PUBLISHERS

NOV022469 ADVENTURE KID BOOK 1: USER FRIENDLY (A) $16.95
NOV022790 ALL NEW TENCHI MUYO PART 2 #4 (Of 5) $2.95
NOV022342 ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #140 $3.59
NOV022797 BATTLE ANGEL ALITA: LAST ORDER PART 1 #5 $2.95
NOV022345 BETTY & VERONICA #184 $2.19
AUG022270 CASTLE WAITING #16 $2.95
NOV022415 CROSSOVERS #1 $2.95
NOV022423 CRUX #22 KEY ISSUE PI
NOV022296 CUSP ONE SHOT (MR) $3.95
NOV022802 DRAGONBALL PART 6 #1 (Of 8) (Note Price) $3.50
NOV022655 DUNGEON #4 $2.95
NOV022446 ELVIRA #117 $2.50
DEC022584 FORGE #11 $7.95
NOV022810 GUNDAM THE ORIGIN #4 $7.95
NOV022666 INTERMAN GN VOL 1 (MR) $19.95
OCT022694 KOLCHAK, NIGHT STALKER: FEVER PITCH GN (MR) $6.95
OCT022302 LITTLE GLOOMY ADVENTURES #1 $3.95
NOV022615 MAGE KNIGHT: STOLEN DESTINY #4 (Of 5) $3.50
NOV022791 MEDABOTS VOL 4 TP FINALE $9.95
AUG022274 MUTANT, TEXAS: TALES OF SHERIFF IDA RED #4 (Of 4) $2.95
OCT022813 PISTOLWHIP: THE YELLOW MENACE GN $14.95
OCT022644 POPBOT VOL 1 COLLECTION (MR) $35.00
NOV022429 ROUTE 666 #8 $2.95
NOV022428 SCION #32 $2.95
NOV022817 SILENT MOBIUS PART 12 HELL #2 (Of 5) $2.95
NOV022352 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #119 $2.19
OCT022628I VAMPIRELLA #16 LTD CVR ED $9.95
OCT022629I VAMPIRELLA #16 LTD MODEL PHOTO ED $9.95
OCT022627 VAMPIRELLA #16 REG ED $2.99
NOV022794 ZOIDS #12 CHAOTIC CENTURY $5.95

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

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