Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.

Thief of Thieves #1

Chris Arrant

If I had $15, I’d start with Thief of Thieves #1 (Image/Skybound, $2.99). The gang at Skybound gave me an advance PDF of this issue, and I like it so much I want to hold the physical thing in my hands. Shawn Martinbrough really nails this first issue, and Nick Spencer really puts his Marvel work to shame with this story. Next up I’d get my favorite DC Book – Batwoman #6 (DC, $2.99) – and favorite Marvel book – Wolverine and The X-Men #5 ($3.99). I’d finish it all up with Northlanders #48 ($2.99). I’m not the biggest fan of Danijel Zezelj’s work, but I can’t let up now to see my long-running commitment to Northlanders falter at this point.

If I had $30, I’d dig into Richard Corben’s Murky World one-shot (Dark Horse, $3.50). Corben’s one of those “will-buy-no-matter-what” artists for me that Tom Spurgeon recently focused on, and this looks right up my alley. Next up I’d get Secret Avengers #22 (Marvel, $3.99) because Remender’s idea of robot descendents intrigues me, and then Wolverine and The X-Men: Alpha and Omega (Marvel, $3.99). I didn’t know what to expect from the first issue, and after reading it I still don’t know where this series is heading – but I like it so far. Finally, I’d get Haunt #21 (Image, $2.99). The combination of Joe Casey & Nathan Fox is like a secret code to open my wallet.

If I could splurge, I’d take the graphic novel Jinchalo (D+Q, $17.95) by Matthew Forsythe. I loved his previous book Ojingogo, and this looks to continue in that hit parade.

Berlin #18

JK Parkin

There’s a brand new issue of Jason Lutes’ Berlin ($4.95) hitting comic shops this week, which seems like a good way to spend the first third of my $15. According to Drawn & Quarterly, there are only about four issues of this excellent series left, which will give me a great reason to go back and read all the issues again in one sitting. Next on my list would be Thief of Thieves #1 ($2.99), the new Nick Spencer/Shawn Martinbrough/Robert Kirkman joint from Skybound. I’d also grab the new Conan series ($3.50), featuring the work of two of my favs, Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. How cool is it to see the Demo team reuniting on something like Conan? Their Northlanders story rocked, so I’m looking forward to this. And speaking of which, Northlanders is coming to a close soon, so this is one of the last times I’ll be able to put it on my list here … so I’d spend my last few dollars on issue #48 ($2.99).

Based on the review Brigid gave it a few weeks ago, I’d spend all of my next $15 on Dotter of her Father’s Eyes by Mary and Bryan Talbot ($14.99)

For my splurge item this week, I dunno … The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde ($14.99) looks interesting, and there’s also the Fantastic Four Season One graphic novel that looks nice, but do I really need to spend $25 to yet again see how the FF become the FF? Probably not. No, instead I’d probably go with One Model Nation, by Dandy Warhols lead singer Courtney Taylor and artist Jim Rugg. Although I’m really hesitant to spend $25 on a graphic novel by a singer–Gerard Way notwithstanding, singers trying to write comics doesn’t always end well–the fact that Jim Rugg did the art is a great selling point for me. I missed it the first time it was published by Image, but I’d be willing to check out the new edition by Titan if, indeed, I had some splurge money to spend.

Memorial #3

Graeme McMillan

If I had $15 this week, I’d start with a book I’ve been curious about since its announcement: Conan The Barbarian #1 (Dark Horse, $3.50). I’ve never really been the biggest fan of Robert E. Howard’s fantasy hero, but the idea of Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan handling the character gets me very interested indeed. I’d also grab the first issue of the Robert Kirkman/Nick Spencer collaboration Thief of Thieves #1 (Image, $2.99), about which I’ve heard a lot of good things, and Memorial #3 (IDW, $3.99), the latest of this apparently-underrated book that I am completely in love with currently.

If I had $30, I’d also grab Kevin Keller #1 (Archie, $2.99), Batman and Robin #6 (DC, $2.99 and the best of the Batbooks from my point of view; sorry, Scott Snyder and everyone else) and Wolverine and The X-Men #5 (Marvel, $3.99), easily the best X-Book that’s been around since the first Chris Claremont run. It’s all about the creature comforts, sometimes.

When it comes to splurging, though, it’s all about the new takes on old stories: I’d go for Fantastic Four: Season One Premiere HC (Marvel, $24.99), to see how Marvel’s new line pans out; I’m unconvinced by the core concept of “retelling the origins all over again,” but the creative line-ups and OGN format makes me want this to work out for the House of Ideas.

Dotter of Her Fathers Eyes

Brigid Alverson

If I had $15, I’d spend it all on floppies, and I’m skewing young this week. Kevin Keller #1 ($2.99) from Archie is a must, of course. Up till now Kevin has been a bit too good to be true, and I’m hoping Dan Parent will at least get him into some scrapes now that he has his own series. Then I’ll take Princeless #4 ($3.99); I caught up with this series on Graphicly over the weekend because it was getting good buzz, and I like it a lot. The feisty-princess thing isn’t exactly new these days, but the creators get in some clever digs. Adventure Time #1 ($3.99) is another must-have, with the creative combo of Ryan North and artists Braden Lamb and Shelli Paroline. It’s based on some Nick show–yeah, whatever. This team can do no wrong in my book. That leaves just enough for the first issue of Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan’s Conan the Barbarian ($3.50) from Dark Horse, with change left over for some penny candy to munch on while I read.

If I had $30, I would add in Mary and Bryan Talbot’s Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, from Dark Horse. The price looks like a typo: $14.99 for the hardcover? It’s a great story (I have already read it), layering Mary Talbot’s childhood as the daughter of an eminent Joyce scholar with the story of Joyce’s daughters and her own struggles against her family and the mores of the time. Mary’s voice is pitch-perfect, and Talbot’s illustrations really capture the era. I know it’s only February, but I’m already putting this on my top ten list for 2012.

Splurge: There’s no huge $50 collection of vintage comics calling out to me this week, but the regular comics are so good I want more. I would like to see IDW’s Archie Treasury: The Best of Dan DeCarlo ($9.99), and the first volume of Vertical’s GTO: 14 Days in Shonan ($10.95) (the prequel to the classic manga series GTO) are both calling to me. And for some stylish girls’ comics, I’ll take issue 4 of PC Cast’s House of Night ($2.99) just for Joelle Jones’s illustrations, and vol. 6 of The Story of Saiunkoku ($9.99) because it’s an elegantly drawn, charmingly written shoujo manga, and I’m really enjoying reading it.

Jinchalo

Chris Mautner

If I had $15, the new volume of Bakuman is calling out to me. I just finished Vol. 8 and am eager for more breathless treatises on how the manga industry operates. On top of that I’d also grab the latest issue of Berlin, Jason Lutes’ ongoing historical saga. Part of me feels a bit foolish for not trade-waiting on these — I tend to think the story reads better in solid chunks than piecemeal — but I’m such an impatient soul.

If I had $30; I’ll read just about anything Bryan Talbot does, so I’m definitely interested in picking up Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes. I might put it all back, however, and pick up Jinchalo, the latest wordless comic from Matthew Forsythe, a sequel of sorts to his rather charming Ojingogo.

Splurge: Casual Robert Crumb fans might be interested in The Life and death of Fritz the Cat. Jack Kirby fans will definitely be interested in Young Romance, a collection of heartthrob tales from Simon and Kirby (see my review). Myself, I might well go for the fourth volume of Torpedo, Jordi Bernet’s grim and gritty (and blackly humorous) gangster series.

Batwoman #6

Michael May

If I had $15, I’d start with the two, female Bat-heroes, Batgirl #6 ($2.99) and Batwoman #6 ($3.99) and the tangential Bat-heroine, Huntress #5 ($2.99). Rounding out my must-reads is Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE #6 ($2.99), but I’d also pick up Demon Knights #6 ($2.99), a comic that stays good enough to keep me interested if not overwhelmingly excited. The pin’s awfully close to the bubble on that one for me, but I’m still on board for now.

If I had $30, I’d add some more expensive comics starting with Conan the Barbarian #1 ($3.50). I switched to trade-waiting Dark Horse’s Conan comics a long time ago, but I’m as curious as everyone else about the Wood/Cloonan team on this. I’m also fascinated enough by Richard Corben’s work to want to try out his fantasy one-shot, Murky World ($3.50). I also have it on good authority (Diamond shipping list be damned) that the delayed Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X #5 ($3.50) is also coming out this week, so that’s good news. And finally, I’ve enjoyed the few episodes of Adventure Time I’ve seen, so I’d also like to pick up Adventure Time #1 ($3.99) from Boom!.

My splurge this week is another item that hasn’t been verified by Diamond, but it’s shown up on my LCS’ invoice, so I expect Jason’s Athos in America ($24.99) to be on the shelf tomorrow. Jason’s stuff is always awesome and this sort-of prequel to The Last Musketeer should be no exception.

Justice League #5

Sales | Sales of comic books and graphic novels to comic books stores through Diamond Comic Distributors increased 27.5 percent in January compared to the same month in 2011. Comics were up 32 percent while graphic novels were up 18 percent compared to 2011. DC Comics dominated all 10 spots at the top of the chart, with Justice League #5 coming in at No. 1. Batman: Through the Looking Glass was the top graphic novel for the month. [ICv2]

Passings | British comics artist Mike White, who illustrated Alan Moore’s The Twisted Man and numerous other stories for 2000AD, Lion, Valiant, Action and Score ‘n’ Roar, has passed away after a long illness. [Blimey!]

Publishing | Because the world demanded it, apparently, Random House plans to publish e-books of all the collected editions of Garfield newspaper comics. [Down the Tubes]

A Batmobile replica from Gotham Garage

Legal | Lawyer Jeff Trexler explains the ins and outs of copyright as it applies to the bits and pieces of the comics and movie world — the Batmobile, costumes, Stormtrooper helmets — and how a lawsuit over Mike Tyson’s tattoo could have put all of DC’s characters into the public domain. [The Beat]

Creators | For the past few years, the Pizza Island studio in Brooklyn has been home to seven of the brightest stars in comics these days: Kate Beaton, Domitille Collardey, Sarah Glidden, Meredith Gran, Lisa Hanawalt, Deana Sobel and Julia Wertz. Now they are turning in the keys and heading their separate ways, and Laura Hudson talks to all seven about what their plans are for the future. [Comics Alliance]

Creators | In a video of a presentation at the Fantagraphics bookstore, writers Mark Long and Jim Demonakos discuss the origins of their graphic novel The Silence of Our Friends (illustrated by Nate Powell), which is based in part on Long’s memories of his father, who was a white reporter covering the civil rights struggle in Texas in the late 1960s. [Graphic Eye]

Bucko

Creators | Jeff Parker and Erika Moen talk to Lauren Davis about the end of their webcomic Bucko, which wrapped up last week after a year. Here’s Moen on their collaborative process: “Parker asked me in the beginning what kind of story I’d like to draw, and I told him I enjoy drawing 20-somethings going on misadventures. And then, of course, Parker borrowed liberally from the flotsam and jetsam of my life, such as the name ‘Bucko.’ ‘Bucko’ is my nickname for my brother and has been ever since we were kids. I don’t even think about it, when I answer a call from him I start with ‘Hey Bucko…’ Parker liked that so here we are. The rest of the collaborative process was Parker giving me completed pages and me responding ‘Parker, I can’t draw that, people will lynch me!!’” [Comics Alliance]

Publishing | Tom Spurgeon talks to editor Michael Catron, who has just returned to Fantagraphics after several years’ absence and is already working on a variety of different projects. [The Comics Reporter]

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.

John Romita's The Amazing Spider-man: Artist's Edition

Graeme McMillan

Congratulations, Dark Horse: You pretty much own my first $15 for the week, with Dark Horse Presents #8 ($7.99) and Star Wars: Dawn of The Jedi #0 ($3.50) both being my go-to new releases for the week. DHP has the new Brian Wood/Kristian Donaldson series The Massive launching, as well as more Beasts of Burden by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson and new Skeleton Key by Andi Watson, which is a pretty spectacular line-up, and the new Star Wars book coincides with the latest flare up of my irregular longing to check up on that whole universe’s goings-on. Apparently, I’m keeping it local this week, who knew?

If I had $30, I’d add Action Comics #6 (DC Comics, $3.99) and OMAC #6 (DC Comics, $2.99) to that pile — I’m particularly treasuring the latter before it goes away, although I have to admit that the time-jumping nature of these Action fill-ins has gotten me more excited than I should ‘fess up to — as well as a couple of Ed Brubaker books, Winter Soldier #1 (Marvel, $2.99) and Fatale #2 (Image Comics, $3.50). I wasn’t bowled over by Fatale‘s debut, but it intrigued me enough to want to give it another go, while the noir + super spy sales pitch for the new Marvel series pretty much guarantees my checking the first issue out at the very least.

When it comes to splurging, there is nothing I would buy – were I rich enough — more quickly than IDW’s John Romita Sr. Amazing Spider-Man Artist Edition HC ($100), because … well, it’s classic Romita as the pages originally looked on his drawing board. How anyone can resist that (other than the price point), I don’t know.

Action! Mystery! Thrills!

Chris Mautner

There’s not much I’m interested in at the $15 level this week, so I’ll likely keep it to the issue #63 of The Boys.

If I had $30, I’d put that issue of The Boys back on the shelf and pick up Action! Mystery! Thrills!, a colorful collection of comic book covers from the Golden Age edited by Greg Sadowski. It’s not as insightful as some of Sadowski’s other books like Supermen!, but it’s still a clever pop-candy tour through comics’ yesteryear.

Almost defining the term splurge this week is the Madman 20th Anniversary Monster, a $100 tribute to Mike Allred’s creation featuring new work by folks like Kyle Baker, Peter Milligan, Peter Bagge, Dave Cooper, Dean Haspiel, Paul Pope, Craig Thompson and many more. And a new Madman story from Allred. I doubt in reality I have the cash to justify this sort of purchase, but hey, I’m splurging, right?

Cross Game, Volume 6

Brigid Alverson

If I had $15, all but a penny of it would go to one book, vol. 6 of Cross Game ($14.99). Viz is releasing this baseball/drama series in delicious, double-sized volumes and the sweet story and easy-to-digest artwork make it one of my favorites.

If I had $30, I’d mix it up a bit with a stack of floppies: Ice Age: Iced In ($3.99), a lighthearted, all-ages comic from KaBoom; Sergio Aragones Funnies #7 ($3.50), because someone was just commenting on how funny Aragones is; Terry Moore’s Rachel Rising #5 ($3.99); and with what I have left, I’ll try out Dynamite’s Lone Ranger #2 ($3.99), which looks kind of cool. That’s a little over budget, but maybe I’ll get a deal on one of these.

Usually the splurge category is where I go for thick, colorful books of classic comics, and while that fourth volume of Dark Horse’s Archie Archives is calling out to me, this looks like a Fantagraphics week, with two compilations that span opposite ends of the love spectrum: Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics ($29.99), and The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat ($19.99). That’s a whole lotta reading for $50.

Magic: The Gathering #1

Michael May

If I had $15, I’d start with a series I’m following that has a new issue this week, Fear Itself: The Fearless #8 ($2.99) and then I’d add some new things I want to try. I’ve said before that Winter Soldier #1 ($2.99) is the closest thing we’re going to get to a Black Widow series for a while, so — while that’s sad — I’ll take it. I’m also cautiously curious about Image’s nasty-sounding Alpha Girl #1 ($2.99) and Zenescope’s Jurassic Strike Force 5 #1 ($2.99). I don’t have a lot of confidence in Zenescope’s brand, but dino-soldiers from space need looking into.

If I had $30, I’d add some more expensive comics to that pile, starting with Betrayal of the Planet of the Apes #4 ($3.99). I’m also looking forward to seeing if IDW can do the same thing with Magic: The Gathering #1 ($3.99) that they did with their Dungeons & Dragons comics (ie make it really good). Then I’d circle back to the Boom rack for Ice Age: Iced In ($3.99) – because my son loves those movies and will love that comic – and check out Dynamite’s John Carter/Gullivar Jones mash-up, Warriors of Mars #1 ($3.99).

If I’m able to splurge, I’m always interested in the new Dark Horse Presents ($7.99), but especially when it has new BPRD and Beasts of Burden stories. And since that’s not a huge splurge, I’d also grab the Xombi collection ($14.99), which coincidentally comes out the same day as Static Shock #6.

The publisher does the heavy-lifting of finding, formatting and even contextualizing the work of one of comics’ undisputed (and, in some way, unrivaled) masters and putting it all together in an easy to find and read source, making Barks’ influential work available to casual readers to either easily finally find out why The Good Duck Artist has the reputation he has, or to discover his work for the first time.

Before cracking the cover, I will admit there was one aspect I was a little leery about. Because so many of Barks’ stories dealt with the Ducks visiting exotic lands, because the stories in this collection were produced between 1948 and 1949 and because Disney doesn’t exactly have the most sterling reputation when it comes to representing diverse nationalities or ethnicities, I was sort of concerned about what the lily-white ducks would be faced with when they journeyed to South America or Africa. Or, more precisely, how Barks would present what they would be faced with.

Reading Will Eisner’s Spirit comics and being confronted by his Ebony White or Osama Tezuka’s work and seeing the various racial stereotypes that pop up in it can be a bit like finding a fly in your soup—by biting down on it. It’s great stuff, but there’s that extremely unpleasant moment you could have done without, you know?  (Also, while I haven’t read it, it’s my understanding that Tintin may have had at least one less than politically correct adventure in the Congo).

Nevertheless, I was happy to see that Fantagraphics didn’t edit Barks’ work to make it less offensive—they didn’t go the route Papercutz went with Peyo’s Les Schtroumpfs Noirs, which became The Purple Smurfs—and present Barks’ work cultural warts and all.

And I was happier still that it wasn’t that bad. Certainly some of the depictions would seem hideously if drawn in 2011, but there Barks treats his subjects of color with a decent amount of respect, and, on a spectrum of either Great Old Cartoonists Drawing Racial Stereotypes or even Racial Stereotypes in Disney Media, the stories in this collection fare fairly well, more Aladdin than Song of The South or Dumbo.

The title story sends Donald and his nephews to Peru in search of square eggs, where the locals all consider the ducks a little crazy, and react to their quest by either making fun of them or trying to swindle them.

The eggs come from the lost valley of Plain Awful, a square city where everything, including the people, are more square than they are round. They are such a fantastic people, invented from whole cloth, that it’s hard to find offense in their portrayal. In design they are as cartoony as the cartoon ducks, and their culture is…peculiar. They speak exclusively in the accent they learned from their last visitor, in 1868 “Professah Rhutt Betlah, frum th’ Bummin’ham school of English.”

In “Race to the South Seas,” Donald and the nephews race lucky cousin Gladstone Gander to rescue Uncle Scrooge, whose boat reportedly sunk in the area (not necessarily out of goodwill, but to make sure they are treated good in Scrooge’s will).

Two island cultures are met in this story. The first is that of Coca Bola, a people legendary for their hospitality—to the point they allow a guest to eat every single piece of food they have, save their coconuts. Barks draws them as real people, which is actually a bit disturbing in the world of ducks and dogs (the Peruvians he drew also looked like real people, but they had dog-noses to separate them from humans). In addition to a more-or-less representational depiction, they get the better of Donald. Having learned the errors of their generous ways by Gladstone, they now great visiting white ducks with clubs instead of platters of food.

The members of the other island culture is referred to as “cannibals” by Donald, and they throw spears, have bones through their noses, worship spats and talk like this: “Ola Eela Booka Mooka Bocko Mucka!” Perhaps the main saving grace here is that Barks again draws them as real people…again, more real than the anthropomorphic animal characters that populate the Disney comics world.

The final, and most troubling, of the stories included here that deal with culture clash is “Voodoo Hoodoo,” the title of which alone is enough to clue a reader in on where it might be going.

The story opens with a scene of Donald walking around what is apparently the “black” neighborhood of Duckburg, with all of the various dog characters colored dark brown. They are all talking about a zombie being sighted in town (Remember, this is 1949, so it’s an I Walked with a Zombie zombie, not a Night of the Living Dead zombie).

After a few panels, Donald stops and asks a passerby he apparently knows what all this zombie talk is about. In the story notes at the end of the collection, Jared Gardner writes that this is the “first character in Duckburg coded explicitly as African American.”

Writes Gardner:

Bop-Bop displays the contradictions at the heart of Barks’ engagement with the zombie story. On one hand, Bop-Bop epitomizes the racist stereotypes of the day: he is drawn with exaggerated lips and speaks in an exaggerated “negro” dialect straight out of the minstrel tradition (and most immediately familiar to readers in 1949 from the popular weekly radio series Amos ‘n’ Andy). On the other hand, he is also the character Donald turns to for the inside information on zombies, suggesting his access to a body of knowledge not at the disposal of the rest of the community who are baffled by the sudden appearance of a zombie in their midst.

The zombie himself is Bombie, who is also drawn according to racist stereotypes: Big ears, big lips, and with a pierced nose. Bombie has traveled to Duckburg to present Donald with a cursed voodoo doll and then, mission accomplished, he just sort of stands around, until the nephews decide to adopt him and help return him to his African homeland.

Bombie was created by the voodoo witchdoctor Foola Zoola, who is another horrible stereotype, as is his tribe. The only positive thing that can be said about Barks portrayal of Africans in this story is that Foola Zoola and company are at least given a good reason for their vengeful actions:To avenge the loss of their land and their exploitation at the hands of the greedy American imperialist Scrooge, Foola Zoola sent Bombie after him with the voodoo doll, but Bombie gave it to Donald instead, as Donald resembled Scrooge at the time Scrooge was in Africa.

Now, “it could have been much worse” is a terrible defense of racist stereotypes, not much better than, “that was a different time.” But it is somewhat comforting to know that such choices come from ignorance instead of a well-informed choice (Barks didn’t travel to Africa to draw that story, and his ability to research would have been limited to what he saw in Hollywood movies or in other cartoons and comics).

It’s more comforting still to see Barks struggling with an issue like imperialism and exploitation in the midst of a silly little adventure story. The art in “Voodoo Hoodoo,” much more so than in the other stories involving native cultures, may have included some unequivocally racist imagery, but at least the story assigns evil behavior degrees, and different exponents.

The villain of the first page turns out to be the most innocent character in the story. His boss is the real villain. But then, that villain was simply trying to reclaim what was rightfully his from the villain that stole it from him.

That moral ambiguity doesn’t forgive the drawings, of course, but I’ll take what I can get here.

And of the above stories mentioned, that’s only three of the four long-form adventure stories in this collection, which also includes nine 10-page short stories and seven one-page gags, as well as a biographical introduction and the aforementioned story notes. They account for but a small part of a great big book full great big comics from a great big talent.

The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that we don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “Batwoman is still awesome!” every month. And we’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

One cool change this month and for the foreseeable future: I’m joined by Graeme McMillan who’ll also be pointing out his favorites.

Finally, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell us what we missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Abrams Comicarts

The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist – I admit, I tend to run hot and cold on Clowes’ output, but I’m a sucker for coffee-table career retrospectives, so the idea of taking 224 pages to look back at his career to date (with, of course, the traditional little-seen artwork and commentary) seems like a must-look at the very least. [Graeme]

Abstract Studios

Rachel Rising, Volume 1: The Shadow of Death – Terry Moore’s latest series gets its first collection and I love the premise of a woman’s waking up in a shallow grave with no memory of how she got there and needing to figure out who tried to kill to her. [Michael]

Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom

Arcana

Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom – I don’t know enough about Lovecraft, but man I love me some undersea kingdoms. [Michael]

Archaia

Cow Boy – As much as I don’t want to stick writer Nate Cosby in an all-ages box, I’m eager to read his and Chris Eliopoulos’ story of a kid bounty hunter trying to bring in his family of outlaws. [Michael]

If nothing else, Nate Cosby’s Twitter feed made me curious about checking out his western collaboration with Eliopoulos, but finding out that Roger Langridge and Colleen Coover were also contributing pushed me over the edge. [Graeme]

I’m Not A Plastic Bag – Color me skeptical but hopeful about Rachel Hope Allison’s ecological debut, even if that title makes me a little nervous. [Graeme]

Archie

Archie #631 – Picks up on that story where Archie and Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats hook up. Look, Archie’s going nowhere with either Betty or Veronica, so I’m rooting for the furry. [Michael]

Stan Lee’s Mighty 7 #1 – At first, finding out that this comic was actually by Tony Blake and Alex Saviuk without Lee was a letdown; until I found out that the comic is actually about Stan Lee, which pushes it into the “This will either be horrendous or bizarrely enjoyable” category. [Graeme]

I’m not sure that I’ve ever unreservedly enjoyed a comic that Stan Lee wrote, much less just came up with the idea for, but I love his persona and putting him in the comic with some superheroes is so crazy it just might work. [Michael]

Crossed: Badlands #1

Avatar Press

Crossed: Badlands #1 and 2 – I’m definitely not a horror fan, but the idea of Garth Ennis’ writing an ongoing biweekly series feels like it’s as good a lure to get me to pick this up as anything else. (I think the plan is to have creators alternate on arcs, with Si Spurrier and David Lapham as part of the alternate writers on the book. That’s a pretty impressive line-up.) [Graeme]

Boom!

Exile on the Planet of the Apes #1 – I’m all for another Planet of the Apes comic from Boom!. [Michael]

More Apes by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman (art by Marc Laming)? This can only be a good thing. [Graeme]

Supurbia #1 – I feel like we’ve seen a few of these “what if superheroes and reality shows were mashed together?” series, but here’s the first of four issues of another one written by former Marvel staffer Grace Randolph. [Graeme]

Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years – Remember what I said about being a sucker for coffee table retrospectives above? That goes double for this one, which has the added benefits of being both cheap (only $15!) and having contributions from Alan Moore and other creators from Denis Kitchen’s vast address book. [Graeme]

Dark Horse

BPRD: Hell on Earth – The Pickens County Horror #1 – I’m all for new BPRD comics, but it’s getting more and more difficult to keep track of everything. Still, I’ll buy a Scott Allie Mignolaverse story any day. [Michael]

Abe Sapien, Volume 2: The Devil Does Not Jest and Other Stories

Abe Sapien, Volume 2: The Devil Does Not Jest and Other Stories - Abe’s my favorite BPRD character, so I feel like this the way I do the previous item: grateful, but also a little saturated. [Michael]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Volume 1 – The first ten issues – or two trades, if that’s how your brain works – of the Joss Whedon-led series get an oversized hardcover edition. [Graeme]

Channel Zero – Brian Wood’s breakthrough book comes back into print with this collection of the original series, the Becky Cloonan-illustrated follow-up and material from the awesome Public Domain design book. Jonathan Hickman fans, you should really pick this up. [Graeme]

Manara Erotica, Vol. 1: Click! and Other Stories – Yes, it’s comic porn. But unlike Lost Girls, this is actually sexy comic porn. [Graeme]

Ragemoor #1 – If they hadn’t got me with Richard Corben, they certainly would have with “living castle nurtured on pagan blood.” [Michael]

Avatar: The Last Airbender, Volume 2 – The Promise, Part 2 – Yikes, what a title. I’m still missing Avatar: The Last Airbender though, so this is welcome. [Michael]

Empowered, Volume 7 – Why haven’t I started reading this critical darling yet? I do not know. [Michael]

DC

Batman: Death by Design - Chip Kidd’s writing a Batman book and it’s a real-live, honest-to-goodness superhero adventure. What’s more awesome is that the concept of design plays a large role in the story in the form of a massive reconstruction project in Gotham City. [Michael]

Saucer Country #1

Saucer Country #1 – Paul Cornell + Ryan Kelly + saucer aliens = SOLD. [Michael]

Fairest #1 – Bill Willingham launches a new series about the women of Fables and makes me even less interested in everyone else’s modern updates of fairy tales. [Michael]

New Deadwardians #1 – The solicit opens, “Another vampire/zombie comic? Really, Vertigo?” My sentiments exactly and yet, this one’s illustrated by INJ Culbard whose work I’ve loved on the Sherlock Holmes adaptations he’s done with Ian Edginton. [Michael]

Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child #1 – It would be redundant to mention that the cover to this is both “striking” and “by Rafael Grampá,” so I’ll just mention the concept, which is also eye-catching. It’s the story of a grad student who also happens to be heir to the Voodoo Queenship of the most haunted city in America, and someone is killing off the royal family. Vertigo was created for stuff like this. [Michael]

Dynamite

Bionic Woman #1 – I had the deepest crush on Jaime Sommers as an 11-year-old. My current crush on Paul Tobin’s writing is slightly less deep, but still significant enough to make me want to read this. [Michael]

I’ve been following Dynamite’s Bionic Man series and surprising myself by digging the hell out’ve it; seeing that this spin-off is being written by the insanely-underrated Paul Tobin was all I needed to convince me to read this. [Graeme]

George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel, Vol. 1 – For the fantasy fan (or HBO subscriber) in your life, here’s the first quarter of Dynamite’s adaptation of the not-so-cult-anymore novel. [Graeme]

Vampirella: The Red Room #1

Vampirella: The Red Room #1: On the one hand, it’s “monster vs. human cage matches.” On the other, it’s written by Dan Brereton, so it’s probably going to be good fun… [Graeme]

Fantagraphics

Angelman – I’ve not read much by Austrian cartoonist Nicolas Mahler, but I think I’m won over just by the idea of his new book, which satirizes not just superheroes, but the business behind them. [Graeme]

Interiorae – Lovely, lovely art by Gabriella Giandelli in this collection of his Ignatz series. (It’s also in full-color, unlike the original serialization, which is another win.) [Graeme]

I don’t know why it’s taken this long for Fantagraphics to collect the comics that got their cool Ignatz format a few years ago, but I’ll shut up and be grateful. I greatly enjoyed Giandelli’s creepy tale of an apartment building, its residents, the large rabbit who roams its halls, and the creature the rabbit seems to serve. What’s also exciting though is that this means Richard Sala’s Delphine will get a collection too. [Michael]

Humanoids

Monsieur Jean: The Singles Theory – So, so excited for this new book by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian, making its English language debut in this edition. [Graeme]

IDW

Berkeley Breathed’s Outland: The Complete Collection Sunday Comics, 1989-1995 – The star of this collection of Breathed’s Bloom County follow-up isn’t the title strip, but the reprints of his early, college-era work that’ll accompany them. [Graeme]

Funny Stuff

Funny Stuff By Frank Frazetta – It makes me a bad nerd to admit that I don’t think I’ve ever seen Frazetta’s legendary early comics work, so I’m pretty excited for this oversized hardcover collection, especially to see just how much he… homaged other, more famous strips. [Graeme]

Rocketeer Adventures 2 #1 – Featuring work by Stan Sakai, Bill Sienkiewicz, Marc Guggenheim, Peter David, and Sandy Plunkett. Plus covers and pin-ups by Dave Stevens, Darwyn Cooke, and Art Adams. [Michael]

The first series of anthology tributes to Dave Stevens and his retro creation worked so much more than I’d expected, so I’m definitely up for a second go-’round. [Graeme]

Smoke And Mirrors #1: Mike Costa’s been winning me over every month with his Cobra series, so I’m looking forward to this creator-owned book he’s co-writing about a stage magician who gets trapped in a world where magic has taken the place of science. [Graeme]

Star Trek, Volume 1 – Dear all fellow Trekkies/Trekkers/whatever you want to call yourselves: If you liked the original TV show and also the JJ Abrams movie reboot, you owe it to yourself to check out this monthly series, so grab this collection of the first issues and dig in. [Graeme]

Will Eisner’s The Spirit: Artist’s Edition – Of all the IDW “Artists Edition” books to date, this is the one that just feels like a must-have. Eisner’s Spirit pages as they appeared on his drafting table? I cannot wait to see these. [Graeme]

IDW probably explained the “Artist’s Edition” concept before and I just wasn’t paying attention, but I am now and I finally get why it’s cool to have COLOR scans of original-size black-and-white art so you can see blue pencils, art corrections, editorial notes, and stuff like that. Especially for someone as legendary as Will Eisner.  [Michael]

Saga

Image

Saga #1 – New Brian K. Vaughan. Does anything else need to be said? Oh, alright: FIona Staples on art. Seriously, you guys. [Graeme]

I’d buy a Fiona Staple fantasy epic anyway. That Brian K Vaughan is writing it makes me sigh like a Belieber. [Michael]

Hell Yeah #1: There’s something weirdly fitting about reading a series about the generation who’s grown up with super-heroes that’s created by someone like Joe Keatinge, who’s been around in comics for a long time, and Andre Szymanowicz’ art looks good as well… [Graeme]

The Manhattan Projects #1 – Jonathan Hickman returns to indie roots with the true story behind the atomic bomb. Turns out, Oppenheimer created this rocket ship, but forgot to shield it against cosmic rays… [Graeme]

Mad scientists! By Jonathan Hickman! [Michael]

’68, Volume 1: Better Run Through the Jungle – Mark Kidwell, Nat Jones, and Jay Fotos’ Vietnam War/zombie series is collected. [Michael]

The Walking Dead: Cutting Room Floor – I’m very, very curious about this collection of Robert Kirkman’s handwritten notes about the creation of his hit series. It sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? But it could very well be awesome… [Graeme]

Marvel

Avengers Academy #27 – Guest-starring the Runaways, ya’ll! And Bruiser’s totally punching Mettle cross-eyed on the cover. [Michael]

Savage Beauty

Moonstone

Savage Beauty Limited Edition Hardcover – I’m really curious to see how Mike Bullock’s contemporary, political jungle-girl story turns out. [Michael]

Oni

The Coldest City - If Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy taught me anything, it’s that I’m really not done with Cold War spy stories just yet. This one’s set in Berlin, which is even cooler. [Michael]

I’ve already read this one in galley format, and it is really, really good for those who like the spy stuff (Queen and Country fans, it’s written by Antony Johnston, so you know that it’s great; the art by Sam Hart follows Steve Yeowell’s lead from his early Zenith days, and for those who know my love for that series, there are few higher compliments I can offer). [Graeme]

The Secret History of DB Cooper #1 – Beyond “colorful weirdness and conspiracy-laden Americana,” I have no idea what to expect from Brian Churilla’s new series, and that just makes me look forward to it all the more. [Graeme]

I can’t wait to find out once and for all if Mr James is Doobie Keebler. [Michael]

Atomic Robo: Real Science Adventures

Red 5

Atomic Robo: Real Science Adventures #1 – Eep! An Atomic Robo anthology! Great news for a series whose back-up stories have always been just as entertaining as its lead feature. [Michael]

Atomic Robo returns with an all-new ongoing series?!? Surely this means that Christmas is either not over, or coming early or… well, you know what I mean. Good stuff. [Graeme]

Top Shelf

Blue – I’ve never heard of Pat Grant, the creator of this OGN, but Craig Thompson calls him “the Australian Mark Twain,” which is good enough for me. [Graeme]

Zenescope

The Jungle Book #1: Zenescope get around to “updating” the classic and well-loved story, which is more than likely going to mean adding more cleavage than you would’ve thought appropriate. Welcome to the year 20BOOB, everyone. [Graeme]

Action Comics #5

Welcome to another edition of What Are You Reading. Our guest today is Marc Singer, author of the very excellent book, Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, which is an excellent, excellent book that you should read if you’re at all interested in Morrison and his work.

To find out what Singer and other members of the Robot 6 crew are reading this week, simply click on the link below.

Tim O’Shea: If Amazing Spider-Man readers were not already reading Daredevil before this two-part crossover (Amazing Spider-Man 677/Daredevil 8, both written by Mark Waid), the writer sure as hell gave them several

Daredevil #8

good reasons to start reading the book. And for Waid, this must have just been fun to write. In some ways, it read like a throwback to the 1970s Marvel Team-Up issues I grew up reading. In the first part, Waid worked in a scene where Spidey is confused about DD’s secret identity status. Spidey/DD banter is always fun to read, even when it’s marketing work intended to inform a non-DD reader. In the second part, we are given:

1. A Paolo Rivera cover that has me wanting the artist to do a 52-card playing deck of Marvel characters (and a great use of a fire escape for a cover)
2. An exquisite splash page by Kano
3. Waid writes the issue addressing previous plot threads and planting seeds for future issues (a risky approach considering the number of potentially new readers drawn in with this issue) but it works
4. A great billy club meets helicopter scene
5. A smidge more DD/Spidey banter

Amazing Spider-Man 678
This week’s Spidey (Christ, I feel absurd even saying that) offers readers another part one of a two-part story. In the world of neverending event comics (is Fear Itself over yet?), the fact that I get to talk about two two-part stories in one week is a refreshing surprise. If you look back at the number of writers of Spider-Man over the years, there were some writers that seemingly did not know how to write Peter Parker outside of his longjohns. Slott, on the other hand, relishes it. The cast of characters and the scenarios Parker finds himself in, thanks to his Horizon Labs job, allows Slott to stretch his writing muscles. This issue revolves around a time portal doorway that one of his lab associates has developed (Slott, ever the comedic writer, has it be the doorway for the lab’s break rooms. I appreciate Slott and Marvel editorials restraint on this story. A glimpse into the future where New York is destroyed could have easily been stretched out into six parts, so I am appreciative of the fact that this is a fast-paced (so far) two-parter.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 3
In the third issue of this six-part miniseries, I am pleased to say that writer Nick Spencer surprised me. Admittedly he’s been revamping the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. history throughout his run with the characters, but his reveal at the end of this issue is one I never expected. I have been often on the fence with this series (a fascination with things Wally Wood-related has made me hang in there though). But there is no doubt I would have bought this issue, no matter what, given that I saw Walter Simonson pitched in to do some scenes. (And yeah, I cannot believe I forgot to pick up this week’s Legion of Superheroes 5, a standalone completely drawn by Simonson). On a Simonson-related note, if you are a fan of his like I am, go read the brief interview Josie Campbell did with him for CBR. Even in that brief exchange, Simonson unleashes some great gems of details—about his dad and other things.

Approximate Continuum Comics

Chris Mautner: You know who’s great? Lewis Trondheim, the incredibly prolific French cartoonist. Evidence comes in two recent publications, both autobiographical. The first is Approximate Continuum Comics, an English translation of a six-part series Trondheim published in the 1990s concerning his struggles in the comics industry, desire for success and acclaim and just general angst, anxiety and feelings of self-doubt. It sounds all terribly self-involved to the point of tedium, but Trondheim is simply too skilled a storyteller to allow his own ego to override the quality of his work. Approximate is filled with wonderful visual inventions, like an early daydream about dealing with obnoxious passangers on the subway. More to the point, Trondheim’s self-effacing sense of humor is so charming and revealing that the book never becomes too solipsistic or insufferable. Time has dimmed its

Trondheim continues to reveal his life to readers on a weekly basis over at his Web site (and the NBM blog), most of which has been collected in his “Little Nothings” series. The lastest book, My Shadow in the Distance, offers more of the same, and such a wonderful same it is. The material in Shadows is more one-page humor strips, similar to, say, American Elf, but Trondheim hasn’t lost any of his angst or irritation at modern life and travel. If anything he’s become a more accomplished artist, especially with watercolor, which graces the content of Shadows in lovely wash tones. Plus, it’s really funny.

Do the Gods Wear Capes?

Marc Singer: I’ve just picked up a ton of books, scholarly and otherwise. Right now I’m in the middle of Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes by Ben Saunders (which is absolutely not about how superheroes are “a modern mythology” and is all the better for it). I’ve also been leafing through Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, a collection of essays about comics, television, video games, tabletop RPGs, and other media that lend themselves to huge, open-ended narratives. For fun I’ve been reading Kim Newman’s Mysteries of the Diogenes Club, a collection of short stories published by Chris Roberson’s MonkeyBrain Books. Newman has created his own “vast narrative” about the Diogenes Club, a group of occult investigators and secret agents that stretches from Mycroft Holmes to the present day. But I need to clear some of these out of the way, because the book I’m most looking forward to reading is Charles Hatfield’s Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby.

As far as comics go, I’m pretty much a lock for anything Grant Morrison writes, so I’ve been following Action Comics since the big DC relaunch. I have mixed feelings about this one. For all of Morrison’s pre-release hype about writing a working-class “Bruce Springsteen version of Superman,” the comic never really delivered on his promise of an old-school Siegel and Shuster superhero who takes on crooked contractors and greedy mine owners. Hints of that approach were wedged into the first two issues — just barely — before they were shoved out in favor of the kind of ‘definitive’ origin retelling that attempts to cram in Brainiac, Metallo, Steel, and as many other old familiar faces as possible.

On the other hand, social realism has never really been Morrison’s strong suit and he handles the fantasy elements with more confidence. Each issue has been better than the one before it, with the possible exception of the origin story, which manages to do in twenty pages what Morrison once did in four panels and eight words. Still, he writes a suitably heroic House of El and each issue adds some new details that are collectively adding up to a bigger picture. I just can’t shake the feeling that the book’s craft and its ambitions are moving in opposite directions. (And it’s never a good sign when you find yourself looking forward to the fill-in artists.)

Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes was much more to my tastes. I’m not certain this “corporate franchise” phase of Morrison’s Batman mega-narrative is going to amount to much more than a fast-paced team-up book, but with incredibly talented artists like Cameron Stewart and Chris Burnham on board, I don’t care. And Morrison’s compact, modular storytelling lets him work in a wide range of genres without losing focus: any book that can go from St. Trinian’s to Steranko is all right by me.

The Flash

The most pleasant surprise of the DC relaunch has been Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato’s Flash. Manapul’s approach to the Flash — using the character’s speed powers and accelerated perceptions as an excuse to experiment with different ways of representing time and motion on the page — is so perfect that you can’t believe nobody’s tried it yet. At the moment, Manapul’s still deeply indebted to his influences (the most recent issue trades Frank Quitely for J. H. Williams III) but I get the sense that when he fully absorbs their styles and starts creating his own visual idiom, this book is going to look even more amazing than it already does.

Flash radiates a pure joy in being a comic book that, among mainstream superhero books, is rivaled only by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, and Marcos Martin’s work on Daredevil. This is another one of those so-obvious-it’s-genius ideas—building a comic around Daredevil’s senses, which forces Waid and company to devise new ways to represent sound and texture on the smooth, silent page. It’s a testament to their skill that they make it look easy.

If you want to talk about sheer joy in comics as comics, it doesn’t get much more ecstatic than the crescendo of creatively designed, emotionally charged pages that Jaime Hernandez builds up to in his final story for the latest volume of Love and Rockets: New Stories. But Jaime’s command of his art—every aspect of his art, from lines to layouts to inks to body language to facial expressions—is so great that a single panel of Reno slouching away into the shadows can be just as breathtaking as the double-page spread that sums up the relationship of Maggie and Ray. A couple of years ago, I was hoping that Jaime’s foray into the loopy superhero sci-fi of the Ti-Girls would lead to a renewed freshness and vitality in his more realistic stories. “The Love Bunglers” delivers, big time. At this point Love and Rockets: New Stories probably doesn’t need any more rave reviews, but Jaime’s work is still the highlight of my comics pile.

Action! Mystery! Thrills!

Action! Mystery! Thrills!: Comic Book Covers of the Golden Ages, 1933-1945
Edited by Greg Sadowski
Fantagraphics Books, 208 pages, $29.99

Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1
Edited by Blake Bell
Fantagraphics Books, 224 pages, $39.99

Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby’s Romance Comics
Edited by Michael Gagne
Fantagraphics Books, 200 pages, $29.99

Our current publishing era has been dubbed the Golden Age of Reprints by a number of online pundits, myself included, and it’s not too hard to see why. Classic comics that fans and scholars never thought would make it to the bookbinders, let alone be available in an affordable version, are now coming off the presses at a staggering rate.

One of the benefits of this plethora of reprint projects is it allows us to re-examine certain noteworthy periods of comics history, help us discover long ignored artists and fully consider cartoonists who, though their names might have been recognizable, have largely been unappreciated except by a few. The alleged Golden Age of comics in particular has benefited from this scrutiny, not only  in illuminating people like Fletcher Hanks but in showcasing work by folks like Jack Cole and Bill Everett.

One of the people leading the way in this specific endeavor is editor Greg Sadowski, who, in anthologies like Supermen! and Four Color Fear, has given average readers access to comics from well-covered eras (i.e. the early superhero and horror trends) merely by republishing stories that didn’t come from Marvel (or whatever it was called at the time), EC or DC.

Sadowski’s latest book, Action! Mystery! Thrills! has a somewhat even narrower focus, dealing entirely with comic book covers from the Golden era. It makes a certain amount of sense. While covers are still an integral part of marketing and selling a comic, they were even more essential back in those early, heady days, when you competed with hundreds of other titles and an eye-catching cover could mean the difference between profit and cancellation (or at least that’s what many editors and publishers of the time felt).

If you’ve read any of Sadowski’s collections before, you should be familiar with the format by now. A short introduction or forward, followed by the work in question, uninterrupted by commentary, which is usually saved in the back of the book in some sort of “notes” section.

That’s certainly the case here as Sadowski peels through an assortment of covers, both notable for their historical significance as well as their aesthetic traits. A number of well-known artists are featured prominently here, including Will Eisner, Walt Kelly, Jack Cole, Lou Fine, Mac Raboy and Charles Biro. He seems to have a special fondness for the work of Alex Schomburg, a Timely/Marvel artist whose work mainly consisted of heroes leaping into action just as the barely dressed damsel (and perhaps a sidekick or two) was about to some horrible violent fate, usually involving elabore machinery and/or knives, from a gang of hooded evil-doers.

Honestly, while I can see the appeal in Schomburg’s frantic, almost cartoonish designs, I found myself preferring Cole’s elegant compositions or Raboy’s stately, illustrative offerings to Schomburg’s overly busy, cluttered covers, where it seems something had to be happening in every single corner lest the eye have a moment to rest.

And while I enjoyed Thrills (I’m especially grateful for being exposed to the neon-color stylings of L.B. Cole, who seems to prefigure the era of black velvet paintings), it’s definitely the slightest — the most coffee tableish — of Sadowski’s books so far. It feels like a book designed more to flip through than to mull over. Even Sadowski’s notes seem less considered and more perfunctory than before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing — there’s certainly pleasures to be had in re-examining these covers, as garish as some of them are — but it does make it a lesser star in the reprint galaxy.

Amazing Mysteries

As one of the pioneers of the comic book format, naturally Bill Everett is featured prominently in Thrills. He takes the starring role, however, for the Blake Bell-edited Amazing Mysteries, the first in what I assume is to be a multi-volume collection of the Sub-Mariner creator’s non-Marvel work, much in the same way Bell has been collecting and packaging Steve Ditko’s early material.

Bell keeps things in mostly chronological order here, although he does organizes the “chapters” according to the different characters Everett created, like Music Master, Hydroman and the disturbingly androgynous Dirk the Demon.

What’s exciting for me about this book is watching Everett develop as an artist and storyteller and figure out the medium in relatively rapid fashion. His lettering, clunky and stylized in his initial Skyrocket Steele story, quickly more straightforward and easier to read. His composition becomes more assured and dramatic. He clearly starts thinking of the page as a unit and not a bunch of unrelated panels as they stories start to seem less cluttered and more refined.

The heroes themselves seem an odd mish-mash that belong more to the “maybe this will sell” school than anything else. Everett rarely spends more than a story or two on any particular character, jumping from the generic spaceman Steele to the generic cowboy Bullseye Bill to the oddly dressed but still generic superhero The Conqueror, with little seeming thought between the various adventures except how best to depict the action.

Everett’s interest clearly lied with some of his more eccentric creations. Hydroman, for instance, is a obvious favorite. As a precursor to the Sub-Mariner, he’s certainly a figure many historians draw attention towards (apparently Everett had a thing about water). Dressed in a bulletproof cellophane outfit, Everett clearly got a kick out of depicting Hydroman in a variety of aqua-based scenarios —  a glass of water here, an ocean liner there — and and frequently draws him in in the middle of a transformation as he rushes out to surprise and subdue the bad guys, the rough water lines literally and figuratively coalescing in the panel to form a human figure.

That fluidity also graces Music Master, a hero who can transform himself into literal sound waves, with a string of notes trailing behind where the lower half of his body should be. Perhaps the oddest creation, though, is Amazing-Man a seemingly invulnerable (and at times invisible) character who gets his powers from an unnamed Eastern cult who goes from battling whip-wielding criminals to an entire (presumably German) army. The stop and go nature of these tales, combined with the Everett’s attempt at creating a continuing story arc, give the run a dream-like, off-kilter feel.

The material in Amazing in no way represents Everett’s strongest work, though they do point to his potential — those thrilling Sub Mariner stories were just around the corner. What you see  here are the glimmers of an artist struggling to comprehend the potential of this relatively new medium how he can push it to match his own interests.

Young Romance

Two artists that certainly knew something superheroes were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. As interest in that genre faded with the end of World War II, however, the pair found themselves looking for other material to publish and quickly hit upon the idea of romance comics, with great success.

It’s a body of work that, though it took up a little over a decade, has been largely glossed over by fans in favor of focusing instead on all the musclemen in the gaudy outfits. Young Romance seeks to rectify that oversight, providing a “best of” collection from that lengthy run.

As you might expect, most of the stories in Romance rely deeply on hackneyed melodrama, clumsy coincidences and last minute changes of heart. What separates Simon and Kirby’s work from their later imitators, at least at first, is that they don’t feel the need to force a happy ending, and are even willing to delve into dark areas if need be. The opening story concerns a “boy-crazy” teen who falls madly in love with her aunt’s suitor, only to lose him at the end because of her flightiness. A young woman in post-war Germany falls in love with an American G.I. only to realize she can’t quite renounce Hitler. A woman behaves monstrously towards her mother in an effort to nab a husband from a higher social caste. And in perhaps the bleakest story in the bunch, a young woman attempts suicide when her lover is accused of a crime he didn’t commit and is given the death penalty.

The book is divided into pre-Code and post-Code and there’s no questions about which section is better. The latter stories are clearly scrubbed clean of anything that might give offense, and the gender roles more clearly defined, with all the women eager to become happy housewives. Even the art, rough and thick initially, gets cleaned up in the post-Code era, lest young readers be freaked out by, I dunno, too much cross-hatching.

Though modern readers may wince at some of the sexual stereotypes on display, not to mention the occasional forced happy ending, Young Romance underscores Simon and Kirby’s keen storytelling skills. Adhering to a mostly six-panel grid, the duo manage to produce work that is  visually arresting and dramatic, despite the fact that the violence is usually contained to the characters’ inner emotions. It’s also worth mentioning that editor Michael Gange’s reproduction work is stellar and apparently painstaking, as he demonstrates in an appendix at the end of the book.

Kirby, teaming up with Stan Lee, would eventually take the skills he learned from these making these romance comics — the over-the-top emotions, the dramatic plot reversals — and apply them with great success to the superhero genre. Young Romance helps show how that transition took place. For Kirby fans and those who just love to explore comics from generations past, it’s a rather essential read.

Megaupload

Legal | The U.S. Justice Department and the FBI on Thursday shut down the popular file-sharing site Megaupload, seized $50 million in assets and charged its founder and six others with running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy that’s cost copyright holders at least $500 million in lost revenue. The FBI has begun extradition proceedings in New Zealand to bring company founder Kim Schmitz, aka Kim DotCom, to the United States. He and three other associates are being held without bail until Monday, when they’ll receive a new hearing. Three others remain at large. They face a maximum of 20 years in prison.

News of the shutdown was met with retaliation by the hacker collective Anonymous, which attacked the websites of the Justice Department and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Founded in 2005, Megaupload allowed users to anonymously transfer files like movies and music and, certainly on a much smaller scale, comic books. The Hong Kong-based company, which reportedly employed as many as 155 people, is said to have made $175 million from ads and premium subscriptions. According to the indictment, DotCom, whose assets apparently include a fleet of cars, took in $42 million from the operation in 2010.

Before Megaupload was taken down, the company posted a statement on its website claiming that allegations it facilitated massive breaches of copyright are “vastly overblown”: “The fact is that the vast majority of Mega’s Internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay. If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch.” [USA Today, The New York Times, CNET]

J.M. DeMatteis

Piracy | In response to recent conversations about the Stop Online Piracy Act, comics writer J.M. DeMatteis shares his thoughts on comic book piracy: “The bottom line — my bottom line, anyway — is this: If you’re enthusiastic about a particular creator, buy his or her work and then let others know about it. If you spread the word via file-sharing, it’s not much different than loaning a friend one of your books or CDs. Just as I once became an obsessive fan after taping my friends’ vinyl albums, many of your friends will become fans who’ll spend their hard-earned money on actively supporting that creator’s work.” [Creation Point]

Creators | Lynda Barry will be the spring artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. [University of Wisconsin-Madison News]

Creators | Movie producer and former Marvel Studios President Avi Arad chats briefly about his new manga The Innocent: “I’ve been in the world of comics all my life, and specifically into Japanese comics in the early days, before manga attempted to penetrate this market. I wanted to do The Innocent a long time ago. It stayed with me quite a while. Once I got out of Marvel Comics, it was one of the things on my bucket list to do a manga. I had an idea and I followed it, and here we are.” [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Dancer #1

Creators | Nathan Edmondson discusses Dancer, his upcoming Image Comics miniseries with artist Nic Klein about a retired assassin and his ballerina companion on the run from a sniper in Milan. [USA Today]

Creators | Jennifer Anderson spotlights Oil & Water, the new Fantagraphics graphic novel by Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler that examines the impact of the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf. [Beaverton Valley Times]

Creators | Collaborators Kurtis J. Wiebe and Tyler Jenkins talking about their upcoming Image/Shadowline series Peter Panzerfaust, which reimagines Peter Pan and the Lost Boys as Nazi resisters during World War II. [USA Today]

Publishing | Dave Ferraro and Patrick Markfort discuss the small publisher Sparkplug in their latest podcast. [Comics-and-More]

Are You My Mother?

With 2012 still fresh and new, it seems like as good a time as any to look at various publishing companies’ plans for the year ahead and pick out what looks good, or at least interesting. Because the year looks to be filled with so many delights, I decided to double down and offer not just six but 12 comics I’m really looking forward to reading. Obviously this list is reflective of my own, indie-slanted interests, so feel free in the comments section to tell me what a dope I am for forgetting about Book X by Artist Y.

1. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel (Houghton Mifflin). With a planned initial print run of 100,000 copies, there’s little doubt that Houghton Mifflin is expecting big things from Bechdel’s follow-up to her hugely acclaimed graphic novel Fun Home. Whereas that book dealt mainly with Bechdel’s relationship with her dad, this one focuses on her mom (in case you didn’t grab that from the title). A touchy subject, to be sure, but Bechdel’s proven she can handle such difficult, personal material with considerable aplomb.

Mastering Comics

2. Mastering Comics by Jessica Abel and Matt Madden (First Second). Abel and Madden’s Drawing Words and Writing Pictures was one of the best “how-to” guides comics has ever seen. I’m anxious to see what they’ll do for an encore.

3. Sammy the Mouse Vol. 2 by Zak Sally (La Mano). Volume One of Sally’s surreal, anthropomorphic saga just came out, collecting the first three issues of the Ignatz series. As good news as this is, what I’m excited about is Sally’s plans to have Volume 2, featuring all-new material, out by the end of the year. Sammy was one of the best books in the Ignatz line, and I’m eager to see the story continue.

4. Best of Enemies: A History of the Middle East Relations, Part One by Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B (Abrams). Funny the things you find out when you start strolling through a company’s online catalog. Did you know that Abrams is kickstarting another graphic novel imprint this year? With a heavy focus on Eurocomics? I sure as hell didn’t. One of the more notable releases is an English edition of the award-winning Kiki de Montparnasse. What I’m really curious about, however, is this historical project by the always interesting David B. and friend on the history of the Middle East.

5. Ed the Happy Clown by Chester Brown (Drawn and Quarterly). How long has it been since a collected version of Ed has been available? It’s been a long time. Long enough for me to note that it’s one of the few books by Brown that I haven’t read (other than pieces here and there — it’s shameful, I know). This is definitely going to be one of the big reprint projects of the year.

6. The Strange Tale of Paranorma Island by Suehiro Maruo (Last Gasp). This was initially promised to come out last year but apparently got delayed. Let’s hope we’re able to see a release in 2012. Maruo’s work is rarely for the squeamish or easily offended, but his comics have a haunting, lush quality that makes them worth checking out.

7. Barnaby Vol. 1 by Crockett Johnson (Fantagraphics). Here’s the other big reprint project of the year. Johnson’s wonderful, vastly underrated comic strip about a little boy and his underperforming fairy godfather is finally, finally being collected. Can’t wait.

8. Rohan at the Louvre by Hirohiko Araki (NBM). OK, so NBM has been publishing these graphic novels about the Louvre museum in Paris, and for the most part they’ve all been pretty good. This one, however, looks really interesting as it’s by the creator of the manga series Jo Jo’s Bizarre Adventures and stars one of the characters from that series. Chris Butcher talks a bit about it and offers up a preview over at his site.

9. Skippy Vol. 1 by Percy Crosby (IDW). OK, this is the other other big reprint project of the year. Even more than Barnaby, Skippy has largely been forgotten by a lot of comic readers, even though it heavily influenced works like Peanuts. But it’s a thoroughly charming, thoughtful strip that I expect will find a new appreciation with the release of this book.

The Lovely, Horrible Stuff

10. The Lovely Horrible Stuff by Eddie Campbell (Top Shelf). A new book from Eddie Campbell is always cause for celebration. This one deals with money and mankind’s general relationship toward it, with lots of personal anecdotes provided by the author, no doubt.

11. Lose #4 by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press). Oh, yeah, boy, more DeForge. What’s not to like?

12. Spirit World by Jack Kirby (DC). I didn’t even know this work existed until DC announced the collection earlier this year — that’s how poor a Kirby scholar I am. Still, it’s nice to see DC make a concerted effort to get as much of the King’s work out there as possible and I’m excited to see what this collection — mainly collecting horror/supernatural-style magazine stories if I’m correct — holds.

Salvatore Vol. 2

It’s time once again for our annual look at six books that were, for whatever reason, unjustly ignored by the public and critical cognoscenti at large. With all the titles that are published lately, it’s no real surprise that some books fall through the cracks, though in certain cases it seems grossly unwarranted.

After the jump are six books that, while they may not have made my “best of 2011″ list, I think got nowhere near the amount of attention they deserved. There are lots more that I could include if I had the time. I’m sure there are books you read this year that you don’t think got enough praise either. Be sure to let me know what they are in the comments section.

1. Salvatore by Nicholas De Crecy (NBM). Although highly acclaimed on the other side of the Atlantic, De Crecy is one of those many, many European cartoonists that remains persona non grata here in the U.S. Only three of De Crecy’s books have been translated for American audiences so far: the Louvre-themed Glacial Period and two volumes of Salvatore, the second of which came out this year with barely a peep from critics or readers. That’s a shame as Salvatore is a charmingly absurd anthropomorphic tale involving a philosophizing dog mechanic who, along with his silent, minuscule, bald servent — sets off for South America in a ridiculous contraption of an automobile in search of his true love. As that description suggests, Salvatore is a rather complicated farce, with lots of side stories and supporting characters, including a near-sighted mama pig who searches in vain for a lost child while the rest of her brood becomes ecological entrepreneurs. De Crecy applies an arch, overly formal writing style here that, combined with his rough, detailed art, gives the story an off-kilter, almost grotesque feel that makes it seem both otherworldly and a sly satire of modern foibles, cultures and attitudes. Certainly there’s nothing quite like it being published right now.

King of Flies Vol. 2

2. Pure Pajamas by Marc Bell (D&Q). I have no evidence backing this up, but I suspect Bell is an artist that confounds a number of people. He adopts a big-foot, potato-nose visual style in the best comic strip tradition, and his world is a friendly, anthropomorphic fantasia where everything, from your breakfast food on down is eager to wish you well. On the other hand, his stories lean towards the distressingly surreal, cute characters can easily come to violent ends and things can go bizarrely awry for the most absurd reasons. Myself, I find that tension between the rubbery cute and off-kilter savagery to be one of Bell’s strengths. Pure Pajamas, which collects various strips and stories Bell has done for various media over the years, is about as good an example of those strengths as you’re likely to find.

3. King of the Flies Vol. 2: The Origin of the World by Mezzo and Pirus (Fantagraphics). I suspect a number of potential readers flipped through King of the Flies (either online or in stores) and dismissed it quickly as an obvious Charles Burns rip-off. That’s somewhat understandable. After all, Mezzo and Pirus do wear their influences on their sleeves. Not just Burns, but other artistic lodestones like Quentin Tarintino, David Lynch and Jim Thompson haunt this three-part saga as much as one recently deceased character does. But this dark, disjointed story about an assortment of misfit suburban characters plagued by bad luck and their own poor choices is a compelling, bitterly funny read nevertheless. Despite its obvious influences King never feels like a pale imitation, especially in the second volume, where the ante is upped considerably, both on an aesthetic and narrative level. Don’t let your initial impressions keep you from checking it out.

4. Everything Vol. 1: Blabber, Blabber, Blabber by Lynda Barry (D&Q). It seems odd that a Lynda Barry book should make this list after the deserved acclaim that greeted her last two books, Picture This and What It Is. Yet aside from a review at the AV Club and a New York Times profile (which admittedly is nothing to sneeze at) I’m not sure anyone talked about this new collection of some very early work other than to acknowledge its existence. It certainly seemed to slip off a lot of people’s radar (including my own) when it came time to make a “best of” list. Yet Blabber offers a fascinating look at Barry’s early development as a cartoonist, as she moves from the delicate, oddball Ernie Pook to the rawer, more emotionally savage material of “Boys and Girls.” There’s a lot here for Barry fans, and fans of good comics in general, to chew on.

The Man Who Grew His Beard

5. The Man Who Grew His Beard by Olivier Schrauwen (Fantagraphics). Color Engineering author Yuichi Yokoyama got all the attention this year, but to my eyes Schrauwen is just as innovative and wholly original a cartoonist as Yokoyama. The main difference between the two is that where Yokoyama is focused on expressing motion, machinery and discovery, Schrauwen prefers to explore differences in perception, especially between reality and that of the imagination. Many of the characters in Schrauwen’s collection of short stories (many of which appeared previously in Mome) are mentally disturbed or disabled in some fashion and attempt to reshape what they see in order to compensate for their liabilities. None of this is explicit however; it’s often up to the reader to determine where truth and subjectivity begin and end (though he does frequently drop hints). Incredibly inventive and at times darkly funny, Beard is the work of a master cartoonist worth more attention.

6. Tank Tankuro by Gajo Sakamoto (PressPop). Japanese comics are generally thought to have begun with the end of World War II, but of course that isn’t the case, as this impressive book, lovingly designed by Chris Ware, proves. The Tank in question is an overly exuberant robot warrior/superhero whose metal ball body not only protects him from gunfire but can help produce airplane wings, a drill or even smaller clones of himself — whatever’s needed to get him out of a particular jam. Though decidedly militaristic and nationalistic (Tank is perhaps a bit too eager for war) Sakamoto’s comics from the 1930s are irrepressibly buoyant and loopy enough to delight even the most ardent pacifist. In a golden age of reprints where tons of lesser works are getting dragged back out for a glossy-page omnibus, here’s a little known gem that really deserves a spot in the limelight.

Bandai Entertainment

Publishing | The anime and manga company Bandai Entertainment will stop distributing new products in February, although its existing catalog will continue to be available until the licenses expire. The company will shift its focus to licensing its properties for digital distribution and merchandising. President and CEO Ken Iyadomi said the decision to shut down new-product operations was made by the Japanese parent company without his input, and he strongly implied the underlying problem was that the corporate parent wanted to charge more for its anime than the current market will bear. Bandai published the Lucky Star, Kannagi and Eureka Seven manga, among others; all new manga volumes have been canceled, which means Kannagi will be left incomplete, at least for now. [Anime News Network]

Awards | The finalists for the Cybils, the blogger’s literary awards for children’s and YA books, have been posted, and they include five nominations each in the children’s and YA graphic novel categories. [Cybils Awards]

Fatale #1

Creators | Frequent collaborators Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips discuss their new horror-noir series Fatale, which debuts today. “You can scare people with a movie because you’re in control a lot more,” Brubaker says. “In a book, you’re making them imagine pictures, and it’s a different amount of control. With a comic book, it’s very hard to write something that puts people on edge. That’s an important thing: Let people know they have no idea what’s coming in this story and no idea what anything is going to be.” [USA Today]

Creators | Paul Grist digs into his new Image Comics series Mudman, whose fictional setting is inspired by his own town on the southwest coast of England. [USA Today]

Creators | King City writer and artist Brandon Graham talks about getting published, and names his favorite comics creators in an interview with David Harper. [Multiversity Comics]

Jerusalem

Creators | A Lebanese newspaper profiles cartoonist Guy Delisle, creator of Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City. [The Daily Star]

Comics | Larry Cruz takes an affectionate look at Golden Age vamp Phantom Lady, a creation of the Eisner-Iger studio. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Commentary | Alan David Doane argues that Alan Moore’s veto of a reprint of 1963 is an argument for, not against, creator-owned comics. “But Moore, as an individual and as a comics creator, has more than earned the right to associate with, both personally and professionally, only those he chooses to associate with. He should not be forced into business contracts or personal relationships he does not wish to be a part of, and we should respect that.” [Trouble With Comics]

Critique | Domingos Isabelinho discusses the decision to re-color Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, as well as some of the tropes that were left untouched. [The Hooded Utilitarian]

Courtesy of Fantagraphics, we’re pleased to present one more preview from the publishing house–Dutch comics artist and graphic designer Joost Swarte’s Is That All There Is?

The book collects virtually all of Swarte’s European alternative comics work from 1972 on, including stories published in Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly’s RAW Magazine in the 1980s. It also includes an introduction by Chris Ware. Some of the stories were done in watercolor, retro duotones and Zip-a-Tone screens, and Fantagraphics is putting a lot of care into matching the coloring.

Please note this preview contains some nudity, so it’s probably Not Safe For Work and isn’t for children. Check it out after the jump. It comes out in February.

Our friends at Fantagraphics have provided us with another party favor for today, our last before we take a few hours to sleep it off and start again tomorrow morning. We’re pleased to present an exclusive five-page preview of Glitz-2-Go, which collects nearly 40 years of comic stories by underground comix legend and editor of the women comics anthology Twisted Sisters, Diane Noomin.

Noomin’s career in underground comix began in 1972 and included appearances in Wimmen’s Comix, Young Lust, Short Order, Arcade, Real Girl, Lemme Outta Here, El Perfecto, True Glitz, Aftershock, Mind Riot, Titters and Weirdo. The book stars her best-known character, DiDi Glitz, a “frustrated middle-aged glamour-puss and anxiety-ridden suburban Sisyphus.” This is the first time all of her stories are in print in more than 30 years.

Check out the preview after the jump.

*****

Glitz-2-Go

Athos in America

Courtesy of the fine folks at Fantagraphics, we’re pleased to present an exclusive five-page preview of Athos in America, another collection of shorter stories by the incomparable Jason.

The preview is from the lead story, also called “Athos in America,” a prequel of sorts to Jason’s The Last Musketeer. The swashbuckler from that tale shows up in a New York bar in 1920s New York to relate the tale of how he went to Hollywood to play himself in the film The Three Musketeers.

This volume also includes:

• “The Smiling Horse,” in which the characters from the story “&” in Low Moon attempts to kidnap a woman.
• “The Brain That Wouldn’t Virginia Woolf,” a mash-up of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, told in reverse chronological order.
• The Bukowski pastiche “A Cat From Heaven” in which Jason works on his comic, has a reading in a comic book store, gets drunk and makes a fool of himself.
• The dialogue-free (all the text occurs in thought balloons) “Tom Waits on the Moon,” in which we follow four people (one of them a scientist working on a teleportation machine) until something goes wrong.
• “So Long Mary Ann,” a prison-escape love-triangle story.

This collection of stories comes out in February. Check out the preview below.

Thanks Jacq!

Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.

This month we finally break Comics College’s glass ceiling (what took us so long anyway?) with an in-depth look at one of the many notable female cartoonists to come out of the alt-comix scene of the 1990s, Jessica Abel.

Why she’s important

Abel was one of the leading lights of the alt-comix scene of the ’90s, a warm, observant artist whose richly detailed stories of anxious young people looking for love and success helped propel comics from towards the — if not financial success — then more mainstream acceptance they endear today. And while she may have entered the scene a bit too late to be called a pioneer, there’s little doubt that her work, along with that of peers like Megan Kelso, helped encourage other women to read and make their own comics.

What’s more, she’s been a tireless advocate of the medium, both as a creator and as an educator and editor, shepherding young cartoonists and getting noteworthy work out in the face of a larger public. She may be one of the best ambassadors comics has at the moment.

Where to start

La Perdida

It might be nostalgia on my part, but I think the best place to be introduced to Abel’s work is Mirror, Window, which collects the second volume of Abel’s seminal series, Artbabe. Befitting the author’s own age at the time, the stories here deal with freshly minted adults who struggle with friendships being tested, young love, making drastic changes in the hopes of improving your lot, trying to decide which direction you want the rest of your life to go and other things that plague modern day 20-somethings. Far from being solipsistic, or indulging in whiny navel gazing, Abel presents her stories with a good deal of grace and even poetry at times; her characters are rich in telling, nuanced details and their behavior suggests an author who has sharply observed the world around her. Really, it’s a killer collection of work.

From there you should read

Abel’s next project, and the one that’s won her the most acclaim so far, is La Perdida, a 250-plus-page story of a young woman who moves to Mexico seeking a different life but ends up involved with some seedy characters. And then things take a turn for the worse. Although it takes some time to get all the ducks lined up in the row — this is a very character-based work – Perdida is more of a straight-up thriller than any of Abel’s previous stories, and also one of her darkest works to date. She also adopts a much looser, rougher art style here, which fits the main character’s seeking, confused tone as well as the violence that occurs afterward. It’s not my favorite comic of hers — I find the main character to ultimately be too willfully naive to root for — but it definitely has its charms and has won enough acclaim to be a good next stop on your tour of Abel-land (definitely opt for the collected version, which is much tighter and better than the serialized issues).

Further reading

Soundtrack

Abel began her rise to prominence with her first, self-published run of Artbabe, which won her a Xeric grant in 1995. Most of the material from those comics are collected in Soundtrack: Short Stories 1990-1996, a swell little compedium that also compiles a number of illustrations as well as some interesting nonfiction, journalistic pieces she did for various alternative newspapers.

As it turns out, Abel is quite good at comics journalism, a notion that Radio: An Illustrated Guide confirms. This is a 32-page comic she did with public radio bon vivant Ira Glass for Glass’ weekly program This American Life. It’s an in-depth look at the acclaimed show and how it comes together. Abel does a fantastic job of breaking down the ins and outs of radio production and what makes a compelling story, and as a result it’s one of her best comics to date.

Ancillary materials

Abel has had a noteworthy second career as an educator and comics advocate, mainly at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Drawing upon her experience in the classroom she and  her husband and fellow cartoonist Matt Madden created Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, an exemplary textbook on making comics. Just about every aspect of comics, from dialogue to scenery to lettering and making mini-comics is discussed at length here, making it the most essential, thorough book on the subject so far.

Madden and Abel are also the co-series editors of the Best American Comics series that Houghton Mifflin puts out every year. These books tend to be more reflective of the instincts of the special “guest editors” that oversee these yearly volumes, but it’s worth noting if just to remark how varied and busy her current workload seems to be.

Those looking to get hear the artist talk about herself and her work can check out The Comics Journal #270. She also did a recent interview with Mike Dawson as part of his TCJ Talkies series.

Finally, Abel has a number of irons in the fire that should appear soon, including a sequel to Drawing Words and a children’s prose novel that has yet to see the light of day. Her most intriguing upcoming project is Trish Trash, Rollergirl of Mars, which Abel has started a Kickstarter project for to help get it off the ground.

Avoid

Life Sucks has a great hook, combining the world of vampires with that of young adult slackerdom. The notion that vampires have to deal with the same shitty jobs, poverty and unrequited love affairs as normal human beings is a great one. Unfortunately, the book, co-created with writer Gabe Soria and artist Warren Pleece doesn’t go much further than that. It seems mostly content to rest on the laurel of its initial premise and doesn’t really develop the cast well enough to get the reader to care too deeply about what happens to them. Honestly, the book feels like a warmed-over movie pitch, but I give Abel and company credit enough to assume that’s not the case. It’s not a horrible book, but it’s far removed from the type of stuff Abel was doing in Artbabe and La Perdida, and not the first book you should turn to when going through her bibliography.

Next month: Gabrielle Bell

Drunk Hulk

Crime | A drunken Coventry, England, man was arrested for selling drugs outside a nightclub while dressed as the Incredible Hulk. According to the article, “Police were alerted by his costume which was based on the TV and film character who becomes green and superhuman when angry.” [Coventry Telegraph]

Creators | Dinosaur Comics creator Ryan North discusses his work on BOOM!’s upcoming Adventure Time comic. [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Colleen Doran posts some character designs she worked up years ago for a never-completed animation project written by Warren Ellis; she admits to using Star Trek actor George Takei as the model for the main character. [A Distant Soil]

Creators | Chad Michael Murray chats with his hometown paper about his debut graphic novel, Everlast, which had its genesis in a visit from a missionary who said that the end times are coming, and only 144,000 people will be saved: “In that, I thought, what if our world was to end and only a number of people would be left to reign, to give mankind a second chance? How would they be chosen? Out of that just stemmed this really cool story of people who are soldiers who need to find the chosen, the people who are destined to survive the end of days.” [The Buffalo News]

Publishing | Tom Spurgeon continues his year-end interview series by talking to Fantagraphics’ Kim Thompson. [The Comics Reporter]

Green River Killer

Graphic novels | Duane Swierczynski recommends three true-crime graphic novels. [NPR]

Publishing | Publisher Dan Vado recounts “five things we survived at SLG Publishing,” including rodents and bees. [Living Well, Beyond My Means]

Commentary | In their regular “The Catch-Up” feature, Noel Murray and Oliver Sava “kick around” the Vertigo series Y: The Last Man. Murray had only read the first volume previously, while Sava bought every issue when they were released. [The A.V. Club]

In a unique partnership with Elysian Brewing Company, Burns and Fantagraphics are planning a series of 12 beers released monthly next year featuring label artwork by the artist. Titled “Twelve Beers of the Apocalypse,” in reference to the purported end times some say the Mayan calendar foretells, these beers will feature “creativity and unusual ingredients.”

Kicking off the beer series is something called Nibiru, a Belgian-style Tripel  made with yerba mate, Belgian yeast, South American herbs and a mix of German, Czech and American hops. Sounds like something Volstagg would be proud of!

New beers will be released on the 21st of each month at select bars and bottle shops, such as Elysian’s three pubs and even Fantagraphics’ headquarters.

Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.

Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes

Graeme McMillan

As we head into Christmas, I’m saving my pennies for last-minute presents. That said, if I had $15 to spend, I’d run towards Memorial #1 (IDW, $3.99), the debut of the new fantasy series by Chris Roberson and Rich Ellis. I admit to having sneaked a peak at this particular present, and I really enjoyed the tone, which is somewhere between Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who and some of Neil Gaiman’s work. I’d also grab Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes #1 (DC, $6.99), the collection of what was supposed to be the final issues of Grant Morrison’s run on the Batman, Inc. series before the relaunch; I’d enjoyed Batman Incorporated a lot, and am ready for more of the weird, retro-but-somehow-off series again, especially with lovely Cameron Stewart and Chris Burnham artwork.

If I had $30, I’d also grab Fantagraphics’ Jason Conquers America ($4.99), a collection of some of the cartoonist’s work that’s so far gone unseen in the US, along with pin-up tributes from fans like Mike Allred and Rich Tommaso. My nostalgia would then compel me to grab Defenders: Coming of the Defenders #1 (Marvel, $5.99), a reprint of the original stories that launched the fondly remembered (and just relaunched) non-team. Hulk groove on old comics.

Were I to ask Santa for something to splurge on, I might go completely left-field and ask for John Byrne’s much-maligned Spider-Man: Chapter One TP (Marvel, $34.99), which I’ve never actually read, but have a strange fascination with. Would that make me naughty or nice?

Jason Conquers America

Chris Mautner

If I had $15, I’d pick up the sixth and final issue of the Boys spin-off, Butcher Baker Candlestickmaker, and the Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes one-shot Graeme mentioned. I’m particularly interested in seeing how Morrison wraps up the Leviathan storyline, as up to the DC relaunch it was promising to be one of the better arcs in Morrision’s lengthy run with the caped crusader.

If I had $30: Following Graeme’s lead I’d pick up that Jason Conquers America book, as I’m trying to be as much of a Jason completist as possible. I’d also nab the latest issue of Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Michael Kupperman’s ongoing, frequently hilarious comic. This one features a riff on Inception and Quincy. Lots and lots of Quincy.

Splurge: I don’t know if I’d actually buy it, but I’d at least peruse Blondie Vol. 2, the second collection of Chic Young’s seminal strip. The first volume was interesting because it was so different from what the strip turned into, what with Blondie being a ditzy flapper and Dagwood being a wealthy (if slightly goofy) man about town. By the time the second volume picks up, the pair have started to settle into middle-class domesticity, with lots of jokes about bad bosses, henpecked husbands and giant sandwiches. Those elements have becomes so ubiquitous that I fear even the early strips may seem trite and cliched, but, on the other hand, I said the same thing about the early Family Circus strips and I ended up really digging those.

Nelson

JK Parkin

If I had $15, I’d start with Batman Incorporated: Leviathan Strikes #1 ($6.99), which finishes off the “first season” of the pre-New 52 Batman Incorporated. It’s sort of odd yet comforting to see the pre-relaunch Batman and gang again, and per Grant Morrison this will be the “last hurrah” of Stephanie Brown as Batgirl. I’d follow it up with something from the complete other end of the spectrum, the Jason Conquers America one-shot ($4.99), which features previously unpublished Jason strips and artwork, interviews and a tribute gallery by various artists. Finally, I’d finish off my shopping list with Daredevil #7 ($2.99). Because, you know, Daredevil.

If I had $30, I’d also get a couple of New 52 titles I’ve been enjoying — Wonder Woman #4 and DC Universe Presents #4 ($2.99 each), and two more Marvel books, New Mutants #35 and Fantastic Four #601 (also $2.99 each). Technically I only have $3 left, but ho-ho-hopefully Santa would lend me an extra 50 cents so I could grab the first issue of The Activity by Nathan Edmundson and Mitch Gerards ($3.50). Edmondson did some really nice stuff with Who Is Jake Ellis?, so I’m looking forward to checking this out.

There’s a lot of potential last-minute Christmas gifts coming out this Wednesday, which means there’s a lot to choose from for my splurge purchase. Image Comics is collecting Doug TenNapel’s Ratfist, ($19.99) which ran as a webcomic and they’re also releasing the first four issues of The Infinite as a $9.99 trade. The thing that probably intrigues me the most is the high-concept Nelson anthology ($24.99) by Blank Slate Books. Here’s the description from their site: “London, 1968. A daughter is born to Jim and Rita Baker. Her name is Nel. This is her story, told in yearly snapshots. Each chapter records the events of a single day, weaving one continuous ribbon of pictures and text that takes us on a 43- year journey from Nel Baker’s birth to 2011.” It features work by Roger Langridge, Paul Grist, Philip Bond, D’Israeli, Andi Watson and many, many more, and I really want it.

Dark Horse Presents #7

Chris Arrant

If I had $15, I’d grab up Dark Horse Presents #7 (Dark Horse, $.7.99). It’s carried on the tradition of its original series by showcasing new work by legends such as Mike Mignola, Howard Chaykin and Neal Adams, while also bringing in new blood like Andi Watson and long-lost favorites like Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles. The last issue was my favorite of the run so far, so #7 has a lot to live up to. Next up I’d get my two favorite Marvel ongoings: Daredevil #7 (Marvel, $2.99) and Uncanny X-Force #19 (Marvel, $3.99). Very different books, but using the same formula of A-List writer & A-List artist it’s easy to see why they’re succeeding.

If I had $30, I’d spent a good portion of it at Image with Invincible #86 (Image, $2.99) and Last Battle (Image, $7.99). Seeing Cory Walker reunite with Robert Kirkman is always invigorating, and I could honestly read a whole separate series chronicling the ongoing adventures of Allen the Alien. For Last Battle, it’s a book I’ve been waiting to get since it first came out in in 2005 – in Italy. Lastly, I’d next get the back-to-basics Wolverine & X-Men #3 (Marvel, $3.99), showing there’s new ways to use the old formula of school for superhumans.

If Jonah Claus were to allow me to splurge, I’d get the unique graphic novel Nelson (Blank Slate, $24.99). Robot 6 did a write-up earlier this year about the book, and like the aforementioned Dark Horse Presents it hits me right between the eyes with my love of anthologies.

Dark Shadows, Volume 3

Brigid Alverson

If I had $15, all but a nickel of it would go to vol. 2 of The Drops of God, the manga series about a wine rookie who has to prevail in a wine-tasting contest in order to gain his rightful inheritance. I love a good soap opera, and I love reading books that help me learn about a specialized subject, so this is a winner on both counts.

If I had $30, I’d add in Louis: Red Letter Day, the fantasy graphic novel by the team known as Metaphrog. I have seen some bits of their work before, and it looks gorgeous.

There’s a lot of splurge material on this week’s list. I’ll start with Nelson, which looks fantastic and brings together an impressive array of artists. Being a total pushover for old newspaper comics, I’m all in for Drawn and Quarterly’s Walt and Skeezix, even if it is volume 5, and the second volume of IDW’s Blondie collection–I loved the first book. And I am seriously lusting after vol. 3 of the Dark Shadows collection from Hermes Press. Finally, I can’t not mention Quality Companion, a look back at the Golden Age publisher that gave us Plastic Man. Big, fat, colorful books of old-time comics–that’s what I want to see this Christmas!

Strange Girl Omnibus

Michael May

If I had $15, it would all go to series that I’m already enjoying.  Supergirl #4 ($2.99) and Wonder Woman #4 ($2.99) continue two of my favorite New 52 books and I consistently like Birds of Prey ($2.99) more than I thought possible without Gail Simone’s writing it. I’m also digging Fear Itself: The Fearless, so #5 ($2.99) goes on the stack and finally, I’ve been checking out (and liking) New Mutants lately, so I’ll get #35 ($2.99) too.

If I had $30, I’d grab some more expensive comics like Planet of the Apes #9 ($3.99), the next issue in my favorite new series of the year. I’d give Justice League #4 ($3.99) a chance too, though the expense of that comic has it on the surface of a fragile bubble for me. I’d also try Memorial #1 ($3.99) if for no other reason than Graeme’s comparing it to Moffat and Gaiman. Lastly, I want to check out some of DC’s female-hero books that I’ve previously passed up. I’ll be writing more about this later for the blog, but Catwoman #4 ($2.99) comes out this week and I’d like to judge for myself whether it deserves the reputation it got with that first issue.

There’s lots to splurge on this week – and that Nelson anthology does sound awesome – but I’ll pick something that hasn’t been mentioned yet, Rick Remender and Eric Nguyen’s Strange Girl Omnibus ($59.99). I loved the early issues of that series, but decided to trade-wait it and was sadly distracted by the time the collected versions came out. This’ll be a perfect way to catch up.

Eric Stephenson

Publishing | Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson talks about the ups and downs of the past year, including getting Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn on a tighter schedule and the difficulties of selling all-ages comics: “There’s this really blinkered mentality in comics that “all-ages” means only for kids, despite the relatively easy to understand implication that all-ages books can be enjoyed by readers of all ages. Diamond even has this graphic they use for all-ages comics in Previews and it’s these two children that look like toddlers or whatever. People seem to miss the point that most the comics we love from the ‘60s or ‘70s or even the ‘80s to a large degree, were all-ages comics. Stan & Jack’s Fantastic Four was an all-ages book. And it was brilliant.” [Multiversity Comics]

Digital | Viz Media, the largest manga publisher in the United States, began releasing its graphic novels on Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet and Nook Color devices today. As on the Viz iOS app and website, the manga are priced from $4.99 to $9.99 per volume, and they read from right to left, in authentic Japanese fashion. 107 volumes from 18 series are available at launch, although the selection skews a bit older than what’s available on the iOS app, with no sign of the Shonen Jump blockbusters Naruto, Bleach, or One Piece, at least in the initial announcement. [press release]

Art Spiegelman

Creators | Tom Spurgeon kicks off his annual holiday interviews with a talk with Art Spiegelman. [The Comics Reporter]

Comics | Joey Esposito makes the case for a Lord of the Rings comic series. [IGN]

Comics | Health care economist Jonathan Gruber talks to NPR’s Radio Boston about his new graphic novel, stirringly titled Health Care Reform. What It Is. Why It’s Necessary. How It Works, which does for the Affordable Care Act what Project X: Cup Noodle did for ramen-in-a-cup—takes something boring and turns it into a stirring adventure tale. Or at least makes it less boring. [Radio Boston]

Creators | Funky Winkerbean creator Tom Batiuk reflects on the many ways in which Cleveland influences his work, including real places and real people that have popped up in his comics over the years—including fanatical band director Harry L. Dinkle, who was based on Batiuk’s junior-high band director, Harry Pfingsten: “With most real characters, I exaggerate their traits. With Harry, I had to tone him down just a little.” [Cleveland.com]

Reviews | Larry Cruz reviews Tony Cliff’s swashbuckling adventure comic Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant. [The Webcomic Overlook]

Comic strips | Seattle Times book editor Mary Ann Gwinn highlights Fantagraphics’ Pogo collection and a Pogo exhibit at Fantagraphics’ bookstore in Georgetown, Wash. [Seattle Times]

Awards | The Japanese Ministry of Cultural Affairs has given out its 15th Japan Media Arts Festival Awards, and top honors in the manga division went to Hisae Iwaoka’s Saturn Apartments, which is published in the U.S. by Viz. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home also won an Excellence Prize. [Anime News Network]

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix

It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that I don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “ Wonder Woman is still awesome!” every month. And I’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.

Also, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell me what I missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.

Archaia

Judge Bao and the Jade Phoenix - A detective story set in ancient China. Plus: cool name.

Avatar

Dicks #1 – Garth Ennis and John McCrea’s humor makes my top hat explode and my monocle fly off my face, but I remember this being pretty popular back in the day and I imagine that it’s new presentation in color and leading into a new storyline could make it popular again.

Bongo

Ralph Wiggum Comics #1 – This, on the other hand, is exactly my kind of funny. Kind of like 30 Days of Night, I’m astonished no one’s thought of it before. Too bad it’s just a one-shot, but hearing that Sergio Aragones is one of the contributors makes me want to poke myself with my Viking helmet to see if I’m dreaming.

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1

Boom!

Terror on the Planet of the Apes #1 – Boom continues its domination of the Planet of the Apes by reprinting classic stories from Marvel’s time with the concept. Between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Boom’s other PotA comics, I’ve been itching to read these stories.

Adventure Time #1 – As much a welcome no-brainer as Ralph Wiggums Comics. Oh, man. Now I want a crossover!

Dark Horse

Conan the Barbarian #1 – Not only does this have Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan; it also features one of my favorite Conan characters, Bêlit the pirate queen.

BPRD Hell on Earth: The Long Death #1 – The Mignola-verse is managing to come out with some kind of first issue or collected volume just about every month now. That’s amazing. In this mini-series, the team returns to the spooky woods from New World.

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi #1 – If this had come out fifteen years ago when I was still voraciously devouring all the Star Wars EU history I could get my hands on, I would’ve been dancing like a Twi’lek slave girl over finally getting the story of how the Jedi came to be. It’s one of the few events in Star Wars history that haven’t yet been explored.

Dark Horse Presents #9 – Featuring Tarzan, Lobster Johnson, and the world’s largest pirate ship. Not in the same story, unfortunately, but still pretty cool.

DC Universe Presents #6

DC

DC Universe Presents #6 – The Challengers of the Unknown take over the title with a beautiful, fantastic cover by Ryan Sook.

Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo - This isn’t even out yet and I’m already impatient for Volume 2.

Northlanders, Volume 6: Thor’s Daughter - I’ve been looking forward to finally trying out Northlanders with this volume. Telling the story of the Siege of Paris through the eyes of a Viking woman is a great hook.

Dynamite

Warriors of Mars #1 – Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter stories couldn’t be more different in tone from Edwin Lester Arnold’s goofy Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, but the similarities in concepts (Southern soldiers transported to Mars where they fall in love with princesses) has had fans and writers making connections between them for decades, including Alan Moore in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Now Dynamite’s taking a turn with Carter’s princess (or her people, anyway) kidnapping Gullivar’s.

First Second

Friends With Boys - I’m all for three things: First Second publications, Faith Erin Hicks comics, and stories about people learning to communicate with people unlike themselves. No, wait: four things. Ghost stories.

The Big Town

Fantagraphics

The Big Town - Charles Schulz’ son wrote this novel (the last in his jazz-age trilogy) about the end of the Roaring Twenties and “the role of business, crime, morality, and love in our lives.” It’s not comics, but it sounds ambitious and transporting.

Humanoids

Celestial Bibendum – New York is now on the Seine and there’s a lonely seal named Diego living in it. That’s weird enough that I’d like to know more.

IDW

Road Rage #1 – You might think that the short story “Trucks” was Stephen King’s ultimate homage to the Richard Matheson novella Duel. After all, “Trucks” was collected in Night Shift and King himself directed the movie adaptation of it, Maximum Overdrive featuring Emilio Estevez, AC/DC, and a giant Green Goblin mask. What you might not know is that King also collaborated with his son Joe Hill on a biker-gang novella called Throttle that’s more directly inspired by Duel (which you probably remember was also adapted to film as Stephen Spielberg’s first feature-length project). IDW is now adapting both Duel and Throttle to comics with this four-issue mini-series.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Volume 1: Change is Constant – The first issues of the new, ongoing series are collected.

Jack Avarice is the Courier - I love the way IDW released this mini-series: weekly over the course of a single month, then the entire collection the month after that. I’d love to know how it sold for them, but for me as a consumer, that’s a perfect system.

Thief of Thieves

Image

Thief of Thieves #1 – Some new guys named Robert Kirkman and Nick Spencer team up to write one of those crime comics the kids love these days.

Glory #23 – Rob Liefeld’s Extreme relaunch continues to impress me with the talent it’s choosing. In this case, Joe Keatinge (Popgun) and Ross Campbell (Shadoweyes) offer a very different take on the Wonder Woman archetype.

King City - Brandon Graham’s masterwork is finally collected.

Marvel

Winter Soldier #1 – The closest thing we’re going to get to a Black Widow comic right now.

Ka-Zar by Mark Waid and Andy Kubert, Volume 2 - Ka-Zar vs. Thanos. ‘Nuff said.

Metropolitan

Journalism - A collection of short comics by cartoonist/war-reporter Joe Sacco.

Moonstone

The Lone Ranger: Vendetta - The concealed cowpoke and Tonto investigate a serial killer with possible connections to the Ranger’s dead nemesis, Butch Cavendish.

Rohan at the Louvre (French edition)

NBM

Rohan at the Louvre - A newly famous mangaka meddles with a cursed painting deep in the bowels of the famous museum. This will not end well.

Oni

Sixth Gun, Volume 3 – Trade-waiters have reason to whoop it up now that the next installment of the awesome Weird Western is on its way.

Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1: The Night Things Special Edition – The comic that put Ted Naifeh on so many radars gets color and a hardcover.

SLG

Malleus Maleficarum: A Guide to Catching Witches - Everyone’s favorite Inquisitorial treatise on How to Hunt and Torture Pagans, the Homeless, and Other People You Don’t Like is adapted to comics.

Top Shelf

Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland – One of the last projects Pekar worked on before his death is also – according to Alan Moore’s intro – “one of [his] very greatest works.”

That’s it for me. What are you looking forward to?