DC Comics app

Digital comics | ICv2 estimates the total value of the digital comics market in 2011 as $25 million, triple the 2010 figure, and boldly predicts that digital will account for 10 percent of the entire comics market in 2012. Digital sales grew faster in the second half of the year, which ICv2 attributes to three factors: DC’s decision to release its New 52 comics digitally the same day as print, the industry-wide trend toward same-day print and digital releases, and the proliferation of different platforms on which to read digital comics. As for digital taking away from print, the publishing executives ICv2 has spoken to over the past few months don’t seem to think that is happening. [ICv2]

Retailing | Retailer and journalist Matt Price takes the temperature at the ComicsPRO Annual Members Meeting, which kicks off today in Dallas, noting that members remain interested in DC’s publishing plans, and report “very strong sales” for Image’s Fatale and Thief of Thieves. [Nerdage]

comiXology

Digital comics | ComiXology CEO David Steinberger talks about how comiXology got started (he was trying to figure out how to catalog his comic collection), his first comic book and what comic art he would most like to own. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Comics | Heritage Auctions will sell 12 “ashcan” comic books created in the 1930s and ’40s for trademark purposes, including one of three Action Funnies known to exist. [Art Daily]

Creators | Japanese creator Takehiko Inoue has resumed work on his long-running series Vagabond, after taking a lengthy break, first for health reasons and then because he lost interest in it. He told fans he wouldn’t go back to work on the series, which is serialized in Kodansha’s Morning magazine, until he regained his enthusiasm for it. That seems to have happened, and the new chapter is being colored. Vagabond is published in North America by Viz Media. [Anime News Network]

Saucer Country #1

Creators | Paul Cornell discusses his upcoming Vertigo series Saucer Country, which combines his love of UFOs with politics: “I don’t like stories about stupid politicians, I like stories about politicians who show skill and daring, and by the end of the first arc, Arcadia’s used her political instincts to get her and her team out of an immediate danger, and on the way to being able to use the powers of a candidate to start investigating what happened to her.” [USA Today]

Creators | Amy Reeder talks about her new gig as the interior artist for Batwoman: “What I like about Kate is that she’s so subtle for a lead character … like she says very little and our job is to read behind the lines, which makes it impossible not to feel invested and empathetic towards her. She’s got a little of the edgy in her. She’s a nuanced balance between feminine and masculine, which is tough to pin down.” [DC Women Kicking Ass]

Creators | Yuko Shimizu, cover artist for Vertigo’s The Unwritten, discusses her process, influences and career. [Multiversity Comics]

Creators | Noelene Clark talks with artist I.N.J. Culbard about his upcoming Vertigo series The New Deadwardians, and adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. [Hero Complex]

Friends With Boys

Creators | Eva Volin chats with Faith Erin Hicks about her upcoming graphic novel Friends With Boys, fantasy, young-adult comics, and keeping motivated while struggling with the creation process: “I started doing online comics years and years ago, and even though comics are really hard to create, I fell in love with making them. With comics you have to learn how to draw everything really well. It’s not just drawing people, comics are backgrounds and props and cars and animals and learning to draw these things from all angles and in a style that is appealing and fresh. It’s a constant struggle to update and improve my skills. But even though it’s a struggle, it’s something I really love to do. A well made comic is my favourite thing in the world, and I want to someday be the person who makes that comic and gives a reader enjoyment.  It’s like that completely annoying saying: Nothing worth doing is easy to do. Besides, someone has to make comics about flying unicorns and puppies … (Disclaimer: I have not made this graphic novel yet and probably never will. Apologies to 11 year old me.)” [Good Comics for Kids]

Creators | Writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa guests on the comiXologist podcast to talk about his work on the graphic novel Fantastic Four: Season One, and other matters. [comiXology Blog]

Creators | Ryan North answers questions from the public about his upcoming Aventure Time comic. [The BOOM!Pen]

Creators | Katie Monnin interviews Star Wars comics writer John Jackson Miller. Fun fact: He has a master’s degree in Soviet studies. [Graphic Novel Reporter]

Adam Hughes has revealed his cover for the third issue of Fairest, Vertigo’s upcoming Fables spinoff series that will spotlight such female characters as Thumbelina, Rapunzel, Snow White and Rose Red. While the six-issue initial arc, by Fables creator Bill Willingham and artists Phil Jimenez and Andy Lanning, centers on Briar Rose, Hughes puts Lumi, the Snow Queen (previously seen in the background of his cover for Fairest #1) front and center.

Check out the full image below. Fairest debuts from Vertigo in March; the third issue arrives in May.

Prince of Cats

DC Comics unveiled their plans for collections, trades and original graphic novels yesterday for late 2012, both for the DC line (which included the Amethyst news) and for Vertigo. In addition to collections of ongoing titles like The Unwritten and the upcoming Saucer Country, the Vertigo list included a few items of note:

• Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland, which was supposed to be out last fall but was delayed until September 2012, has now been pushed back to November 2012.
• Just in time for Halloween is a deluxe edition that collects the various Death miniseries that Neil Gaiman wrote during his epic run on Sandman. It includes both The High Cost of Living and The Time of Your Life, as well as the Death-centric stories from Sandman #8 and #20. It also includes a bunch of shorter stories, like the Death tale from the 9/11 book DC put out and the infamous public service announcement piece about the proper way to put on a condom, starring Death, John Constantine and a banana.
• And in September Vertigo will release an new original graphic novel by Ronald Wimberly, who drew Sentences: The Life of M.F. Grimm and some other books for Vertigo. I’m not sure exactly what the book is about, but Wimberly has a Tumblr set up where he is posting art, like the piece up top.

"You're not going out in *that*?!?"

Although they won’t be solicited for a few more weeks, DC has already been talking up the six new(ish) titles coming in May. G.I. Combat, Dial H, Ravagers, and Worlds’ Finest join the returning Batman Incorporated and the long-rumored Justice So– I mean, Earth 2 — as the replacements for most of the New-52′s lowest-selling books.

As with the original New-52 group, every new title except one is familiar to longtime DC fans; and as with the original New-52, that book spins out of an existing feature. (Then it was Batman Incorporated begetting Batwing; here it’s the Teen Titans/Superboy nexus spawning Ravagers.) However, where the New-52 tried noticeably to make many of its books accessible — or at least uprooted them from established DC lore — most of the new titles seem to require some prerequisite reading.

For me, this is not a problem, because I’ve been reading Batman Incorporated (and the rest of Grant Morrison’s Bat-work) since the beginning; and I grew up on the annual JLA/JSA multiple-Earth team-ups. However, I am not exactly the target audience for the New-52, and it’s curious to me why DC would head back towards the deep end of the continuity pool with at least half of its new offerings. In fairness, it is possible to boil hairsplitting topics like parallel Earths into easily-digestible packets of information. It’s not so much that there’s an alternate Earth, it’s that there’s an Earth which doesn’t tie into forty-odd other monthly comic books. Likewise, the new/old Huntress and Power Girl need not be throwbacks to comics from the ‘70s and ‘80s, just plausible takes on their extremely-familiar superheroic heritage. After all, “Batman and Catwoman’s daughter” was good enough to get that “Birds Of Prey” TV show on the air (even if what the “BOP” show did with it was something else….)

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s look at the newcomers in detail.

The New-52 books have already “reclaimed” a number of Vertigo characters, but with Dial H the line between the two imprints gets blurrier as uber-editor Karen Berger helps relaunch one of the Silver Age’s quirkier concepts. Let me repeat that: Dial “H” For HERO was quirky for the Silver Age because it invited readers to design their own superheroes, who would then be worked into the stories. These days, that kind of thing practically dares a publisher to craft some social-media reader-participation component, but it sounds like writer China Miéville has enough of his own ideas about where to take the series. Specifically, its protagonist looks to have a hard time adjusting to the endless cycle of random powers and/or identities which once were governed only by the whims of DC’s readership. To tell you the truth, that makes it sound like Daffy’s descent into madness in the classic “Duck Amuck” — where another capricious omnipotence kept changing the rules of Daffy’s reality — but I’m sure that is just a facile comparison.

A better one may be to the New-52′s Animal Man which, ‘way back when, made the transition from DCU to Vertigo and has come back working a good bit of that smart-and-cool Vertigo mojo. Dial H sounds like a good-enough-for-Vertigo superhero comic, and it certainly has the pedigree (the original Dial H even debuted in the old House Of Mystery, looong before that book was annexed by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman). Thus, my expectations are high, but with good reason.

G.I. Combat replaces Men Of War perhaps in name only, since on the face of it I’m not sure that much distinguishes the two military/paranormal mashups. MOW stars a new Sgt. Rock and had an anthological backup feature, while GIC will pair The War That Time Forgot with rotating backups like The Unknown Soldier and The Haunted Tank (the latter a staple of the original G.I. Combat). In fact, this version could easily have been called Weird War Tales (which eventually featured the original “War That Time Forgot”) for its more direct melding of the battlefield and the strange. Oh, heck; titles are irrelevant: the Unknown Soldier was the last regular feature of Star Spangled War Stories, “WTTF’s” original home.

All three of these features have been revived fairly recently — WTTF as a 12-issue DCU miniseries, Haunted Tank as a 5-issue Vertigo miniseries, and Unknown Soldier as a Vertigo ongoing series. As you might expect, the Vertigo versions made some changes, placing the Tank in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the “Soldier” in 2002 Uganda. Regardless, these features arguably have some residual name recognition (besides being perennial favorites and entertaining concepts), which may have contributed to their inclusion in the new G.I. Combat. In the end, I’m glad DC is sticking with a military-oriented book set in its main comics line, because it makes the line more diverse.

Not helping diversity as much is The Ravagers, which spins out of Teen Titans and Superboy. From what I can tell, DC is doing “edgy Teen Titans” in Teen Titans itself, so if Ravagers is “even edgier,” I don’t know if there’s much of an audience for that. Actually, the premise sounds more like Gen13, it includes at least one Gen13 alum, and “on the run from shadowy organization” is a decent starting point. Still, I have a bad feeling it will try too hard to be edgy and/or extreme, in keeping with its ‘90s roots. Much of this goes back to artist Ian Churchill, whose work on 2008′s Titans relaunch couldn’t quite overcome his tendencies to exaggerate and/or objectify. I do like Superboy’s Rose Wilson and Caitlin Fairchild — well, I don’t dislike them, and artist R.B. Silva draws ‘em in a nice, non-exploitative manner — so I will give this a chance. I’d like to think it will be better than Red Hood and the Outlaws, but that’s not exactly grounds for a commitment.

I have already committed to Batman Incorporated, so I’m glad it’s back on the schedule. There might not have been more to say, except for editor Mike Marts proclaiming that BatCorp Volume 2 is “the final, unbelievable act of a saga six years in the making.”  If you’ve been reading Morrison’s Batman for the past six years, that’s one thing. Otherwise, I’m sure DC would love to sell you a few collections (or at least the hefty Leviathan special) to bring you up to speed. That’s a lot of material, even digitized. It’s good stuff, don’t get me wrong; but again, there’s six years of it. In that context, the Earth-Two Huntress may be an easier sell, even having been out of circulation for most of the past twenty-five years; because that kind of break surely means that Worlds’ Finest will go out of its way to be accessible. Six years of Batman comics? You can get through that over a long weekend.

And that brings us back to the two parallel-world — excuse me, next-generation superhero — titles, Earth 2 from James Robinson and Nicola Scott and Worlds’ Finest from Paul Levitz, George Pérez, and Kevin Maguire. I will be getting both of these eagerly, mostly because of my stated affection for the old Multiverse. Again, though, I wonder how many of the New-52′s newer readers will be interested in a pair of books which (re)introduce another Earth’s worth of continuity? The old Earth-Two was basically the home of Golden Age DC stories, which had apparently occurred in real time (or in whatever faithful-to-the-originals order Roy Thomas arranged them) so that, starting in the early 1960s, DC’s writers and editors could distinguish Then from Now.

Soon enough, though, Earth-Two became its own ongoing concern — got its own Now, as it were — and Power Girl and the Huntress were very much a part of its unique identity. Like Supergirl, Power Girl was Superman’s first cousin; but she landed on Earth almost forty years after he did and was more like Clark and Lois’ adopted daughter. The Huntress was Helena Wayne, Batman and Catwoman’s actual daughter, who became the new Darknight Detective after her mom’s death drove her dad into retirement. These are not difficult concepts to grasp. Regardless, Earth-Two was full of just-different-enough characters, even if (from the Golden Age fan’s perspective) the new folks were the different ones. Green Lantern wasn’t a space-cop. The Atom didn’t shrink. The Flash wore a helmet. Hawkman … ugh, let’s not get started with Hawkman. Then there was Doctor Mid-Nite, Doctor Fate, Mister Terrific, Starman, and various others who hadn’t gotten Earth-One counterparts. When I first learned about the Justice Society and Earth-Two — when I was six, so it’s been a while — I wanted to know more. I recognize now that I could have also dropped that issue of Justice League like a hot rock and run for something less complicated.

With that in mind, I understand why DC didn’t advertise the current Huntress miniseries as a prelude to the Earth-2 series, since (SPOILER ALERT, maybe?) it features Helena Wayne posing as her not-related-to-Batman counterpart. That wouldn’t have been a bad hook for an old-school Huntress fan, but I wouldn’t have wanted to market a New-52 book to an old-school fan. Still, I didn’t pick up Huntress originally, because my interest couldn’t quite overcome budgetary concerns, and now I’m wishing I had. (Haven’t had time to download the issues yet, either.)

As discussed above, you’d think Earth 2 and Worlds’ Finest would make a special effort to be new-reader-friendly. I’m also interested in how old-reader-friendly they’ll be. If this is the Earth-2 glimpsed briefly during Geoff Johns’ run on JSA, it’s had a while (since the end of Crisis On Infinite Earths, in fact) to develop into something even more distinct. It shouldn’t be a replacement for the pre-Flashpoint DC-Earth, because it wouldn’t have had any Silver Age characters or their legacies — so no Green Lantern Corps, no Barry Allen, Wally West, or Bart Allen, no Jason Todd, Tim Drake, or Damien Wayne, etc. I wonder if there’ll even be the full complement of Starmen. Of course, the hypothetical new New-52 reader might not know what s/he’s missing, but I suspect us oldsters will make even more assumptions about what Earth-2 “should” be, well in advance of May’s first issues. It’s kind of like J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, creating a new setting with enough of the old to seem familiar, but not enough to be a duplicate.

At the very least the two books should look great. Nicola Scott is an asset to any team book — she handled crowds pretty well when Birds Of Prey guest-starred the Secret Six — and I can’t wait to see Pérez and Maguire trade off on Worlds’ Finest.

Not surprisingly, I hope these books find a decent audience beyond the core of JSA/Power Girl readers. It’s not that the New 52 needs the stylistic alternative of an Earth-2 as a safe harbor from all those high collars and ‘90s callbacks. For a long time, being a DC fan meant buying into the Multiverse and/or the legacies, so it’s nice that some of that is coming back. How much of it, and for how long, are questions for another day.

San Diego Convention Center

Conventions | San Diego City Council on Tuesday approved the basic funding plan for the proposed $500 million expansion of the San Diego Convention Center, home to Comic-Con International. At the center of the financing scheme is an assessment district that adds between between 1 cents and 3 cents per dollar to room taxes of 224 hotels with more than 30 rooms. Those hotels closest to the convention center would be assessed an extra 3 cents per dollar, and those farthest away could be charged an extra penny per dollar.

The expansion plan has a ticking clock, as Comic-Con has signed a deal to remain in San Diego through 2015, but larger venues in Las Vegas and Anaheim have been lobbying organizers to look elsewhere. [NBC San Diego]

The Last of the Greats #1

Piracy | I Vampire and The Last of the Greats writer Joshua Hale Fialkov wades into the ongoing digital piracy discussion, declaring, “You can’t be an asshole anymore”: “Up until a few years ago, there was still enough of an audience to make up for the percentage of you who are stealing. But, not anymore. Now, everybody steals, or, at least a higher percentage of the total audience than those that pay. The comic market consists of about 200,000 people, on the high end. Now, certainly, you’ll have your Justice Leagues and Batmans and Flash’s that do amazing sales and are generating profits. But almost every other book that isn’t up there in the top 25 or so titles is almost certainly losing money. So, if I’m Warner Bros or Disney, or, in the case of Last of the Greats, ME, and I see that we’re busting our asses monthly on something that’s not only not profitable but is actually losing money, what other choice do I have but to shut it down?”

David Brothers takes issue with virtually all of Fialkov’s comments, particularly his assertion that pirates are “singly responsible for ruining the comic book industry”: “To put forth the idea that piracy on the part of consumers is ‘singly responsible’ for anything, especially when piracy by its very nature is impossible to nail down in terms of concrete numbers and cause & effect is dishonest. Bootlegs have always existed, whether in barbershops or art galleries. They’ve been here, and they aren’t going away. Do they cause harm? Any idiot knows the answer to that question is ‘yes.’ But for my money, the thing that killed comic books is ‘everything else.’ We’re living in an all-new status quo, and I keep seeing people, especially comics people, acting like piracy is the sole cause of all their ills. When no, that isn’t true, and a half glance at the world will tell you so.” [Joshua Hale Fialkov, 4thLetter!]

Stan Lee

Creators | Stan Lee reflects on his 70-year career and discusses the way comics have changed in his lifetime, breaking with the Comics Code, and how to create strong characters: “One of the keys is, and it may sound funny, talking about characters with super powers, but one of the keys is to make your characters as realistic and believable as possible. Even if they have super powers, you say to yourself, ‘Well, if somebody had a super power like this, what would his life be like? Wouldn’t he still maybe have to go to the dentist or wouldn’t he have to worry about making a living? What about his love life?’ You’ve got to make characters that your reader can believe exists or might exist.” [IGN]

Creators | Brian Wood continues to make the rounds about his newest projects, The Massive and Conan, as well as the two ending at Vertigo, Northlanders and DMZ. [The Weekly Crisis]

Comics | Stumptown Trade Review lists seven things “independent comics did first,” including the graphic novel, the omnibus and Web-direct distribution to consumers. [Stumptown Trade Review]

Comics | Cyriaque Lamar looks back at the half-man, half-woman villain He-She, “the most cunning, the most vicious, the most fiendish killer of all time.” [io9]

Digital comics | Johanna Draper Carlson looks at Marvel’s digital offerings (via its app and comiXology) and isn’t impressed with the price or the presentation. [Comics Worth Reading]

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]

Sci-fi fan and space shuttle astronaut Janice Voss

Vertigo artist Philip Bond started drawing portraits of women astronauts and cosmonauts a few years ago. “Working for months at a time just penciling a comic book I started these portraits to get a bit of inking and colouring out of my system,” he writes. Although his original plan was to do one a week, his output has ended up being more irregular. No matter. He just added a few more, which is as good an excuse as any to take a look at the whole series of 25 drawings.

Via the Forbidden Planet blog.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Lee Bermejo

A month after crime novelist Denise Mina revealed she’s adapting Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium trilogy for Vertigo, DC Entertainment confirmed this morning she’ll be joined on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Leonardo Manco, Andrea Mutti and Lee Bermejo. The graphic novel is set for release in November.

Announced in October, each book in the acclaimed mystery series — The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest — will be presented as two graphic novel volumes that will be available in print and digital formats.

The Millennium trilogy, which has sold more than 60 million copies worldwide since the release of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 2005 in Sweden, centers on Lisbeth Salander, and eccentric computer hacker, and Mikael Blomkvist, and investigative journalist and magazine editor. They’re brought together in the first novel to solve a 40-year-old missing person’s case. Larsson, a Swedish journalist and author, passed away in 2004 at age 50, leaving the completed manuscripts for the first three novels in what was intended as a 10-book series.

“We’re thrilled to be adapting this incredible story into a series of graphic novels,” Vertigo Executive Editor Karen Berger said in a statement. “Denise, Lee, Leonardo and Andrea have such great passion for the material and stylistically they’re a perfect match to bring it to comics life. Their beautifully dark and visceral work will certainly blow us all away.”

The above illustration is one artist Phillip Bond created an office party at DC for the floor that houses the Mad and Vertigo imprints. Encouraged to do it by his wife (and Vertigo editor) Shelly, this great piece of illustration is a mash-up of Rankin & Bass’ Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer with Mad’s Alfred E. Numan an a number of DC and Vertigo stalwarts. Shared with the world on Bond’s Flickr photostream, it’d make a great wallpaper for your computer. See if you can name all of the characters Bond drew.

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

DMZ #72

Chris Arrant

If I had $15, I’d reverently pick up the big release of the week: the final issue of DMZ, #72 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99). Wood and Burchielli have done something special here, and I easily see the series taking its place next to Preacher and Transmet as Vertigo (and mature comic) staples. Next up I’d get a dose of a new Vertigo series, Spaceman #3 (DC/Vertigo, $2.99); Azzarello and Risso definitely zigged when most thought they would zag, and in this shaking off of the long shadow of 100 Bullets they’ve created something decidedly unique and spellbinding. Next up I’d get another DC book, this time All Star Western #4 (DC, $3.99); I’ve really enjoyed Palmiotti and Gray taking Jonah Hex into the big city here and opening up the world and heroes of these tumbleweed times, and I’m excited for the new back-up featuring a literal firebrand of a female. Finally, my last book on a $15 budget would be Avengers: Children’s Crusade #8 (Marvel, $3.99); I could write a whole article on how the schedule’s affected this book, but despite all that what we’ve got is a great story. Despite all the delays, I’m apprehensive about the final issue because it’ll probably be the last we’ll see of Allan Heinberg in the Marvel U for a long time.

If I had $30, I’d thank the yuletime gods and pick up the vibrant new issue of Haunt, #20 (Image, $2.99). I don’t know what’s in the water at Image, but they’ve orchestrated a series of recent inspired and left-field revamps of their books: Casey/Fox on Haunt, the upcoming Keatinge/Campbell on Glory, Graham/Roy on Prophet. Next up I’d get Top Cow’s Artifacts #12 (Image/Top Cow, $3.99); I admit coming onto this series late, but thanks to a plush assignment I was able to tear through the past two years of Top Cow comics and found I really enjoyed their current event book. After I read and re-read that book, I’d get a double-shot of Marvel with Captain America & Bucky #625 (Marvel, $2.99) and FF #13 (Marvel, $2.99); love what the writers are doing here, but the recent choices by editors for their new artists have made both these books even more enticing for me. Juan Bobillo drawing Hickman’s scripts on FF especially gives it a creepy vibe I’d love to see more of. Speaking of art, my final pick for this final week of the year would be the artistic tour de force of Flash #4 (DC, $2.99); Manapul and Buccellato are really showing their stuff, providing story to enable Manapul to do some of the most dynamic and heart-wrenching work of his career. In the back of my mind I’m worried what happens when Manapul needs a break from drawing: much like finding an appropriate artist for J.H. Williams 3 to rotate with on Batwoman, a suitable second for The Flash will be hard to come by.

My splurge this week is the under-the-radar collection Broadcast TV: Doodles of Henry Flint (Markosia, $19.99). I’d buy an art book by Henry Flint on face value alone, but from the limited previews I’ve seen of the book online it’s something far, far more unique. These are off-hand doodles Flint’s done in his spare time over the past five years, but I’m not talking about quick sketches: “doodles” as in ornate mind-benders where Flint literally doodled his heart out. Once I get this in my merry hands, I’ll be going over it with a fine tooth comb, magnifying glass and anything else I can find.

Chase

Graeme McMillan

‘Tis the season to be somewhat confuddled between the holidays, which means that I’m playing it safe with my $15 this week, grabbing regular picks Justice League Dark #4, Flash #4 (both DC, $2.99), Dungeons and Dragons #14 and Star Trek #4 (both IDW, $3.99) to round the year out with some familiar faces.

If I had $30, though, I’d add something a little more unusual: Shaky Kane’s Monster Truck (Image, $14.99), in which the comic great – probably best known in the US for The Bulletproof Coffin with David Hine – gets his solo “graphic road movie” back into print with a recolored, “remastered” second edition that’s sure to tread Kane’s familiar ground of being at once nostalgic and somewhat disturbing.

When it comes to splurging, I’d definitely go for D. Curtis Johnson and JH Williams III’s Chase TP (DC, $34.99), collecting all of their original run on the way-ahead-of-its-time series, including all of the Secret Files and Origins back-ups and additional material outside of the main series. I haven’t read nearly enough of this stuff, so I’m considering it a late Christmas present to myself.

Keep Our Secrets

Chris Mautner

If I had $15, I’m very excited to see a new issue of Godland out this week, so that would likely be my first pick off the shelves. If I can scrape up a few extra cents I might also pick up the latest volume of Gantz, but I’m so far behind that series at this point I’ll likely put it back in favor of getting a previous volume instead.

If I had $30, the book I’m most curious about this week is Keep Our Secrets, a children’s board book by Jordan Crane (of Non and Uptight fame) where the central gimmick is that certain parts of the book are coated in heat-sensitive, color changing ink, that reveal hidden surprises when you put your hand on them. Even though I’m over 40 and my kids are long past the age for this sort of material, I’m a complete sucker for a book like that.

Splurge: That Chase collection does seem nice, but I can’t think of a more splurge-worthy book this week than the latest volume of Frank King’s Gasoline Alley, redubbed as Walt and Skeezix by Drawn and Quarterly for legal reasons. This volume is particularly noteworthy as it contains a DVD of home movies King made during the 1920s.

Atomic Comics

Retailing | In the wake of the August closing of the Atomic Comics chain, Mesa, Arizona-area retailers are searching for ways to diversify in an attempt to keep their own stores afloat. Mike Banks, owner of Samurai Comics, has even opened a new location next to Atomic’s former flagship store to serve customers who suddenly found themselves without a comics shop. [East Valley Tribune]

Creators | Mike Mignola talks about his plans for next year’s Hellboy in Hell: “It’s a personal story about him, but with huge ramifications for the structure of Hell. I’m trying to get Hellboy free of the giant, Beast-of-the-Apocalypse storyline. That story has to get bigger before it can be put away. This first arc is the culmination of all the prophecy crap I’ve been trotting out throughout the years. We put a lot of things to bed.” Mignola also discusses his plans for B.P.R.D. and why he can’t watch the pilot of The Amazing Screw-On Head. [io9]

Creators | Tom Spurgeon continues his holiday interview series with a lengthy chat with Jeff Parker that spans his early comics-reading experiences, the influence of his artistic background on his writing, and his career at Marvel. [The Comics Reporter]

Creators | Geoff Johns reveals the thinking behind his transformation of Aquaman in the newly launched DC Comics series: “You have the fans, like myself, who always root for the character, and you’re always on the defensive immediately. And I wanted to take that approach in the book, that he’s the ultimate underdog of superheroes. He becomes much more human and relatable by being underestimated.” [TV Guide]

From American Vampire #22

Creators | Scott Snyder talks about the upcoming arc of American Vampire. [USA Today]

Creators | Writer Joshua Hale Fialkov discusses his work on I, Vampire. [FearNet]

Publishing | Torsten Adair offers comics publishers some advice for presenting their products online. [The Beat]

Comics | Yueh-lin Ma has a thorough overview of the Taiwanese comics scene, some of which may seem familiar: Japanese manga and American superhero comics are huge over there, but times are hard for local artists, and they are having a tough time getting a foothold in mainland China. [The China Post]

Comics | Paul Gravett mines the latest Previews for a handful of the most promising graphic novels due out in February. [Paul Gravett]

Arriving July 3, the 160-page Vertigo graphic novel marks the comics debut of the acerbic chef turned author turned television host, who collaborated with friend and novelist Joel Rose and Heavy Metal artist Foss.

Bourdain first teased the book in September 2010, characterizing Get Jiro! as “sort of like Fistful of Dollars meets Eat Drink Man Woman” or, alternately, “Yojimbo meets Big Night and Babette’s Feast, an ultra-violent slaughter-fest over culinary arcana.” If you’re hoping for something a little more specific, you’re in luck, as the Amazon listing includes an official synopsis:

In a not-too-distant future L.A. where master chefs rule the town like crime lords and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants, a bloody culinary war is raging.

On one side, the Internationalists, who blend foods from all over the world into exotic delights. On the other, the “Vertical Farm,” who prepare nothing but organic, vegetarian, macrobiotic dishes. Into this maelstrom steps Jiro, a renegade and ruthless sushi chef, known to decapitate patrons who dare request a California Roll, or who stir wasabi into their soy sauce. Both sides want Jiro to join their factions. Jiro, however has bigger ideas, and in the end, no chef may be left alive!

If there had been any doubts before, that sure make it clear: Food nerds, this book’s for you.

(via Anthony Bourdain)

Wizard

Conventions | Wizard’s executive chairman Mike Mathews tells Heidi MacDonald that after the resignation of former CEO Gareb Shamus, the company wants to be “a Switzerland of entertainment” and mend fences with members of the industry: “Gareb is one of these types of personalities who has taken strong positions over the years with various people in the industry and brands. And that kind of hurt us because of where we are trying to go — we’re trying to be a Switzerland of entertainment and we want to try to try to reach out to brands.” MacDonald notes the company is offering a $100 credit toward Wizard conventions to former Wizard subscribers whose subscriptions abruptly ended when the magazine was shut down. A new CEO is expected to be named early next month. [The Beat]

Conventions | Image Comics announced several more guests for the Image Expo, scheduled for Feb. 24-26 in Oakland, California. The lineup now includes Blair Butler, John Layman, Rob Guillory, Nick Spencer, Joshua Fialkov, Joe Keatinge, Jim McCann and Jim Zubkavich, among many others. [press release]

Organizations | The Associação da Luta Contra o Cancer is running an awareness campaign in Mozambique featuring images drawn by artist Maisa Chaves of Wonder Woman, Catwoman, She-Hulk and Storm checking their breasts for lumps. [Daily Mail]

Retailing | The Sacramento Press surveys local comic shops. [Part 1, Part 2]

Comics | Greg Elias talks to Dr. Peter A. Hancock about the use of augmented cognition in The Flash. [Speed Force]

The Massive

Creators | Brian Wood reflects on Channel Zero, one of his earliest works, and discusses digital comics, the financial hit he took when his exclusive contract with DC expired, and his upcoming work at Dark Horse on Conan and The Massive: “The Massive is at once both a stylistic and tonal followup to DMZ, and representative of a radical new approach in how I’m writing my comics. It was designed, originally, to be a Vertigo book and follow right after DMZ’s end and capture that same audience, to give those diehard readers something they would enjoy just as much. That obviously didn’t come to pass (conflicts with the new contracts Vertigo was offering, mostly) but the intent is the same. Existing readers of my Vertigo work, The Massive is for you.” [ComicsAlliance]

Creators | Chew artist Rob Guillory is briefly profiled by his local newspaper. [The Advertiser]

Commentary | K. Thor Jensen lists 11 comic characters “that should have stayed dead.” [UGO]

Awards | Houston Chronicle editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson is the recipient of the National Press Foundation’s 2011 Clifford K. & James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning. [The Daily Cartoonist]

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

20th Century Boys, Volume 18

Chris Arrant

If I only had $15, I would only be buying one title this week: 20th Century Boys, Vol. 18 (Viz, $12.99). Sorry Americanos, but Naoki Urasawa is delivering a gripping, sprawling drama that most other books can’t live up to. Wait, I’m wrong – I’d buy two comics with a $15 budget this week; I’d snag the $1 The Strain #1 (Dark Horse, $1) for the price point and Mike Huddleston. I’ve read the novels, but for $1 I can’t miss sampling at least the first issue.

If I had $30, I’d be thankful to double-back and first get Uncanny X-Force #18 (Marvel, $3.99). This issue, the finale of the “Dark Angel Saga,” has been a long time coming and I’m excited for the writing, the art and the story itself; and I can’t forget colorist Dean White, sheesh he’s good. After that I’d pick up my usual Walking Dead #92 (Image, $2.99) and then try Ed McGuinness’ new work in Avengers: X-Sanction #1 (Marvel, $3.99). I’m a big fan of McG’s work, but also realize just how different he is than the standard Marvel (or mainstream super-hero) artist in general. I’ve loved his storytelling sense since Mr. Majestic, and will pick up most any of his work without knowing much about the book itself. Next up would be James Robinson & Cully Hamner’s The Shade #3 (DC, $2.99). I’m surprised DC hasn’t done more marketing for this book, especially considering it’s a character who’s never held a series before; they’ve done little-to-any marketing to define just who the character is, relying on his ties to a lesser-selling series that ended ten years ago (no matter how good it was). Getting off my soapbox: those that have been reading The Shade know it’s good. After that I’d round it off with the best looking comic on shelves, Batwoman #4 (DC, $2.99).

If I was to splurge, I’d double-up my J.H Williams 3 fix with the final volume of Absolute Promethea (DC/ABC, $99.99). Although I already own these issues in singles, getting it over-sized and in hardcover is a treat. I’m hoping it also includes some production art or process sketches – I’m a nut for that.

Jim Henson's The Storyteller

Graeme McMillan

If I just had $15 for comics this week, it’d be gone in one fell swoop, with Fables, Vol. 16: Super Team (DC/Vertigo, $14.99) filling that empty void in my heart I’ve had for the last few months as I’ve awaited the latest collection of Bill Willingham’s long-running series.

If I had $30, however, I’d be picking up The Shade #3, Batwoman #4 and Demon Knights #4 (All DC, $2.99) to continue some of my favorite reads from the New 52 set-up, and sampling the much-hyped Avengers: X-Sanction #1 (Marvel, $3.99) to see if the future of Marvel Comics looks significantly different from its recent past (I suspect that it won’t. Spoilers, as River Song would chide).

In the world of splurging, it really has to be Archaia’s Jim Henson’s The Storyteller hardcover for me ($19.95); with a creative line-up including Jeff Parker, Colleen Coover, Paul Tobin, Ton Fowler and more, this is pretty much an all-star must-read for me, and one I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.

A Tale of Sand

Brigid Alverson

If I had $15, I’d stick to singles. Let’s start with Doctor Who #12 ($3.99), from IDW; it’s a Christmas story by Tony Lee. Sold! Next, issue #2 of P.C. Cast’s House of Night ($2.99), from Dark Horse. Yes, it’s vampires — oh, excuse me, “vampyres” — but Joelle Jones’s art kicks it up a notch, bringing in a sense of energy that pushes the story beyond the usual teen-vampire melodrama. Then just for fun I’ll take Atomic Robo and the Ghost of Station X #4 ($3.50) and Roger Langridge’s Snarked #3 ($3.99). Now that’s a nice stack of comics.

If I had $30, though…the floppies would have to wait, because I’ll be buying A Tale of Sand from Archaia ($29.95). Based on an unproduced film script by Jim Henson, illustrated by Ramon Perez, this book has a lot going for it — the art alone looks fantastic — and I can’t wait to see it.

Splurge: I think I would find it hard to resist the first volume of the Hermes Press collection of My Favorite Martian ($49.99). I loved the show as a kid (although come to think of it, I don’t remember the comics), and I’m hearing good things about Hermes’s production values. And there has to be room in my splurge for vol. 18 of Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys, still one of the best manga being published in English.

The Sigh

Chris Mautner

If I had $15: In what must be one of the most notable “gets” in a long while, Archaia picked up the rights to Marjane Satrapi’s latest graphic novel, The Sigh, a seeming Persian-styled fairy tale about love and longing. I really don’t know much about this book other than it’s out, but I’m extremely curious to see what the author of Persepolis is up to now.

If I had $30: I still haven’t gotten the first volume, but new Tezuka is always cause for celebration, so let’s herald the arrival of the second volume of Princess Knight. This brick-sized book collects the remainder of the maestro’s gender-swapping tale of a girl who must pretend to be a boy in order to inherit the throne. I’d also pick up the latest issue of Tales Designed to Thrizzle, because, hey, Michael Kupperman.

Splurge: 500 Portraits is a collection of drawings by the mighty Tony Millionaire of various people, some famous, some not so famous. I’m sure it all will be exquisitely rendered. If I was indeed splurging, this is what I’d go for.

Demon Knights #4

Michael May

If I had $15, I’d grab the latest issues to some series I’ve been enjoying. Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE #4 ($2.99) is my easiest pick. I love that series and I’m even more eager to continue reading it having heard about what Jeff Lemire has planned for the future.  Avengers 1959 #4 ($2.99) puts us into the home stretch on that exciting series and like Chris A and Graeme, I’m very much enjoying The Shade, so #3 ($2.99) is another must-get. Demon Knights #4 ($2.99) also goes on the pile, because I’m growing fond of the characters. It also has a fun, high-concept battle going on; I just wish the story moved faster than it is. Since I’ve got $3 left in my pocket, I’ll give Batwoman #4 ($2.99) a shot to see why everyone loves it.

If I had $30, I’d add Moonstone’s Airboy Presents: Air Vixens #1 ($3.50), because I like Valkyrie (no, not that one; the other one) and Black Angel. The rest of my money would go to Marjane Satrapi’s The Sigh ($10.95), because she’s only ever surprised and delighted me.

There are a ton of items I’d love to splurge on, but I managed to narrow the list to three. I’m reading a lot of old Wonder Woman comics lately, so Showcase Presents Wonder Woman, Volume 4 ($19.99) is a welcome release. But I’d gladly wait on that to get either one of Archaia’s Jim Henson books coming out this week: Jim Henson’s The Storyteller ($19.95) or A Tale of Sand ($29.95). Both sound fantastic, but if forced to choose, I’d grab Storyteller first for its impressive line-up of its own storytellers. In addition to the ones Graeme mentioned above, I’m especially looking forward to stories by Roger Langridge, Marjorie Liu, Ron Marz, Francesco Francavilla, Chris Eliopoulos, Colleen Coover, and Janet Lee.

The New Deadwardians

Vertigo Comics announced today that writer Dan Abnett and artist I.N.J. Culbard will team up on an eight-issue miniseries titled The New Deadwardians, a comic set in post-Victorian England where the upper class voluntarily becomes vampires in order to escape the lower class, who have all become zombies.

“May I just confess that this is a story that involves both zombies and vampires, two things I swore I would never write about because they had both long since jumped the shark,” Abnett said in his pitch. “Then this idea came to me and wouldn’t leave me alone. Please be tolerant of the zombie-and-vampire-ness of this until you’ve heard me out. It’s essentially a detective story set in an alternate history England, circa 1900.”

Here’s how they described the book on the Vertigo blog:

Set in post-Victorian England, nearly everyone in the upper class has voluntarily become a vampire to escape the lower classes who are all zombies.

Thrust into this mayhem is Chief Inspector George Suttle, a lonely detective who’s got the slowest beat in London: investigating murders in a world where everyone is already dead!

But when the body of a young aristocrat washes up on the banks of the Thames, Suttle’s quest for the truth will take him from the darkest sewers to the gleaming halls of power, and reveal the rotten heart at the center of this strange world.

Abnett, of course, is one half of the DnA writing team with Andy Lanning, who together write Resurrection Man and New Mutants. Culbard has done work for Dark Horse and SelfMadeHero, a British publisher, including the adaptation of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness that won a British Fantasy Award earlier this year.

The first issue comes out in March.

Variant cover for DMZ #72, by Brian Wood

Brian Wood has debuted his variant cover for DMZ #72, the conclusion of the six-year-old Vertigo series by Wood and Riccardo Burchielli (along with such artists as Vikto Kalvachev, Nathan Fox, Kristian Donaldson, Nikki Cook, Ryan Kelly, John Paul Leon, Danijel Zezelj, David Lapham and Shawn Martinbrough).

The image is a callback, of sorts, to the first panel of Issue 1, showing key locations and events on a map of Manhattan, the demilitarized zone of the comic’s title.

DMZ #72, by Wood and Burchielli (with covers by Leon and Wood), arrives in stores Dec. 28.

Absolute All-Star Superman

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.

Strap yourself in, kids, because this is going to be a big one, as we run through the lengthy and considerable career of one of mainstream comics’ biggest stars, Grant Morrison.

Why he’s important

If nothing else, Grant Morrison is a writer with a definitive vision. A big believer in the power of the superhero genre to inspire hope and change, his stories often — despite his considerable ability to frighten and disturb – are optimistic affairs, suggesting that even in one’s darkest moments, things are never as bad as they seem. That he can frequently pull this type of sincere optimism without seeming saccharine or winsome is a testament to his skill as a writer.

Morrison is not always an easy writer to read. He’ll frequently break the fourth wall, indulge in non-linear storytelling or throw out obscure references. He expects his readers to meet him halfway and often a bit of work is required to suss out exactly how everyone moved from plot point A to B. Usually this type of effort is rewarded, however, as at his best his writing blends surreal, dense and sometimes elliptical storytelling with a fondness for humanity and a yen for crafting likable, fully rounded characters.

Note: In culling this list together I decided to skip over some of Morrison’s single-issue stories, anthology contributions and unfinished projects (like those two issues of The Authority). Otherwise we’d be here all day. Feel free to yell at me about it in the comments section.

Where to start

Doom Patrol Vol. 1: Crawling From the Wreckage

Morrison’s most well-known and beloved work is easily All-Star Superman, and thus makes as likely and new-reader-friendly a place to begin as any. Working with his best and frequent collaborator Frank Quitely, Morrison penned a loving mash note to the Silver Age, Weisenger-era Superman that didn’t ever once come off as nostalgic sentimentality. In many ways, All-Star Superman is a thoughtful treatise on the fragility and splendor of life, with Morrison asking readers what sort of legacy they’d like to leave behind for friends and family after they’ve gone. The series is available in two softcover volumes, or you can buy the whole shebang in one expensive Absolute edition.

Personally though, I feel that Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol features not only some of his best writing ever, but it’s also one of the best, if not the best, superhero comic of all time. Teaming up with artist Richard Case, Morrison created a comic that reveled in playful sense of surrealism and absurdity. New, bizarre ideas and characters seemed to spring off every page — Paintings that eat cities! A villain that has every super power you can’t think of! — only to be tossed aside to make room for the next big notion. But it’s all grounded by the main cast of characters who, despite their odd appearances and complex problems, remain very sympathetic figures. The series has been collected in five six easy-to-find trade paperbacks: Crawling From the Wreckage, The Painting that Ate Paris, Down Paradise Way, Musclebound, Magic Bus and Planet Love.

From there you should read

Flex Mentallo Man of Muscle Mystery Deluxe Edition

After his run on Doom Patrol concluded, Morrison spun-off one of his creations from the series, Flex Mentallo, into a self-titled four-issue mini-series. The comic followed the “Muscle Man of Mystery” as he tried to find his former friend and fellow crimefighter, The Fact, while also focusing on a burned out rock star calling a suicide prevention line who may or may not be imagining the whole Mentallo storyline. Working again with Quitely (who does some of his best work to date here) Morrison lays out his entire feelings about the superhero genre and why he’s so sweet on it. As manifestos go, it’s a pretty sterling one. Though it’s long been out of print, it’s scheduled to come out in a deluxe hardcover collection early next year.

Morrison’s other great superhero project is the wildly ambitious Seven Soldiers of Victory. The idea was to create a loosely interconnected series of comics, each starring a semi-obscure character from the DC Universe: Klarion, the Guardian, Mister Miracle, the Shining Knight, etc. It all builds up towards an epic battle against a nefarious enemy from the future, the catch being none of the characters ever meet (at least not for more than a few seconds). Really, it all comes together a lot better my meager description would suggest and features some great art from folks like Doug Mahnke, J.H. Williams III, Frazier Irving and Ryan Sook. The whole blessed extravaganza has been collected in two hardcover volumes.

At the same time Morrison was pushing the dada envelope in Doom Patrol, he was cheerfully breaking the fourth wall in Animal Man.The series started off as a familiar second banana character revamp, with art by Chas Truog, but quickly became something deeper and stranger as main character Buddy Baker started fighting for animal rights and inadvertently found his world literally coming apart at the seams, with the end result being a meeting between the character and his creator. The entire storyline is collected in three volumes: Animal Man, Origin of the Species and Deus Ex Machina.

While I disagree somewhat, many consider The Invisibles to be Morrison’s definitive work. Certainly it’s one of his most fondly remembered works and the one that won him a decidedly devoted audience. A superhero/spy story that draws on countless conspiracy theories, the Invisibles follows a clandestine group of operatives who work at overthrowing a shadowy Illuminati-type group that manipulates humanity and history behind the scenes. The first half is excellent, but it begins to falter somewhat in the second half before gaining steam again, perhaps in part due to the fact that Morrison fell gravely ill while writing the series. You can read the whole thing via seven volumes: Say You Want A Revolution, Apocalipstick, Entropy in the U.K., Bloody Hell in America, Counting to None, Kissing Mister Quimper and The Invisible Kingdom.

Rounding out Morrison’s collaborations with Frank Quitely is We3, a surprisingly effective sci-fi revamp of The Incredible Journey with a cybernetically outfitted (and incredibly dangerous) rabbit, cat and dog on the run from the military that wants to “decommission” them and trying to find their original owners. In a rather neat feat, Morrison manages to give all the animals speaking parts without ever having them lose their animal nature or resorting to easy sentimentalism. As violent as this book can be, it’s hard to reach the end with a dry eye.

And then you should read

Seaguy

The Filth was Morrison’s follow-up to The Invisibles and something of a flip side to the latter’s more positive, rebelling against the status quo attitude. I think it’s a more successful book though it certainly has its detractors. It’s about an average schlub of a man who (re)discovers he’s actually the member of a super-secret organization devoted to maintaining the “status q” known as The Hand. Or maybe he’s a pedophile who’s starting to hallucinate because he can’t handle the fact that his beloved cat is dying. Morrison keeps readers guessing the true nature of the story’s “true” reality all the way up to the end and beyond. It’s one of the writer’s densest, most challenging books to date largely, but a hell of a ride, largely due to the considerable artistic abilities of Chris Weston.

Seaguy and its sequel, the yet-to-be-collected Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, is an energetic, dystopian superhero fable dealing with a scuba-outfitted hero who slowly comes to realize the seemingly perfect, amusement-park world he’s living in is a facade hiding lots of nefarious goings-on. It’s a fun, affecting ride, largely abetted by the cheerfully clean styling of Cameron Stewart. Morrison has promised a third and final Seaguy series but as of yet nothing has been announced.

Morrison must have a deep fondness for Oscar Wilde. How else to explain Sebastian O, which re-imagines the author of The Importance of Being Earnest as a witty assassin, wrecking havoc on the establishment that sent him to prison decades ago? It all wraps up a little too quickly, but longtime collaborator Steve Yeowell and Morrison manage to spin a clever and occasionally disquieting steampunk ode to Wilde and his contemporaries as well as giving a fat raspberry to the voices of censorship and repression.

One of Morrison’s most recent Vertigo books is the just-collected Joe the Barbarian, a charming fantasy story about a boy who, in the midst of a diabetic seizure, imagines himself transported to a fantasy kingdom where he is “the chosen one” who can save their world (Notice a pattern here? Morrison’s big on the ability of imagination and fantasy to transform everyday life.) Despite the Vertigo label and seemingly convoluted storyline, this is one of Morrison’s most direct, straightforward works ever and his first and only all-ages styled book to date. He and artist Sean Murphy do such a fine job here that you wonder why he doesn’t try his hand at this type of thing more often.

Though the bulk of his work has been done for DC/Vertigo, Morrison spent some time a decade or so ago at Marvel. The most notable fruit of his labors there was his run on the New X-Men, where he shook up and in some cases completely altered the status quo on the long-standing, convoluted superhero soap opera series, laying lots of established back story to literal waste and giving a hipper sci-fi edge to the proceedings, all while re-emphasizing the adolescent angst that gave the series’ its heart. It all suffers quite a bit from the revolving door of artists that came in to handle various arcs or fill-in issues (Igor Kordey’s best work is certainly not represented here). But still, there are some great ideas at work here and some really stunning sequences, usually involving Frank Quitely (there he is again). The best way to experience the series is probably through the latest three-volume set of omnibuses (omnibi?).

Further reading

Final Crisis

Morrison teamed up with Duncan Fegredo for Kid Eternity, a three-issue prestige-styled mini series that was yet another dark revamping of a long-forgotten superhero character, in this case a boy who could summon classic (and dead) characters from history just by saying the word “Eternity.” Teamed up here with a hapless stand-up comedian, the series is basically Morrison’s take on Dante’s Inferno, as the pair wend their way to hell and back in order to save the Kid’s mentor and possibly the human race. It’s a bit muddled at times, but still entertaining.

Having attempted a convoluted mega-crossover series with Seven Soldiers, Morrison got the chance to try something similar with DC’s A-listers in Final Crisis, one of those super-duper “event” stories that plague superhero comics these days. Morrison basically dares to ask the question “What if Darkseid really won?” and then goes on to explore how the Superman and friends manage to pick up the pieces and restore order and justice to the universe. It’s kind of a mess — the divergent elements don’t cohere very well, part of which may be due to the fact that artist J.G. Jones was replaced early on in the series by a variety of artists, including Doug Mahnke. And I recall being very irritated at figuring out at the end that I needed to read some of the tie-in series in order to figure out what was going on. Still, all that tie-in stuff has been included in the collected edition, so maybe it all reads better in book form.

Morrison first made his name in 1989 with Arkham Asylum, a heavily-hyped standalone graphic novel that teamed him up with a pre-Cages Dave McKean. The book had Batman wending his way through the titular mental institution, combating various villains and Jungian archetypes along the way. At the time (and despite the strong sales) it was derided by some fans as being needlessly convoluted and self-important, but I think it’s held up rather well over time, though it does perhaps take itself a bit too seriously.

Those looking for a more straightforward Batman story should check out Gothic, which was originally serialized in Legends of the Dark Knight. The story, featuring some nice art by Klaus Janson, pits the caped crusader against a seemingly immortal killer named Mr. Whisper who’s secret origins may tie into Wayne’s own personal history. It’s one of Morrison’s most simplest and straightforward stories ever and perfect for those who are just looking for a nice Batman story without all the surreal frou-frou.

If you haven’t guessed yet, Batman is clearly Morrison’s favorite superhero. Or, at any rate, he’s the superhero he’s spent the most time with, having not only done the previous two books but also having written the eponymous Batman series from 2007 to 2010. Here he attempted to incorporate every single aspect of the character’s mythos from the past 70-odd years, from the silly to the profound. Again, it’s hard to fault his ambition, but it’s clear certain artists weren’t on the same page as Morrison or weren’t capable of matching his vision and thus the quality and tone vary wildly. Morrison’s run is collected in Batman and Son, The Black Glove (the best of the bunch, with some great art by J.H. Williams III), The Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul (another multi-series crossover Morrison took part in), Batman R.I.P. (where everything comes to a head), and the coda, Time and the Batman, which also re-explains some events from Final Crisis.

Morrison hit the ground running from his Batman run with Batman and Robin, which imagines first Robin Dick Grayson taking over the Batman role in Bruce Wayne’s absence, joined by Wayne’s cocky illegitimate son Damian. This was a deliberate attempt to harken back to the goofy TV show and carefree era of the 60s, while maintaining a bit of menace and gravitas. Overall it’s a more successful run than Batman, though, once again, there are some really awful stumbles depending on who’s handling the artistic chores. You can read the whole thing in  Batman Reborn, Batman vs. Robin and Batman and Robin Must Die!

The whole saga came to a head in Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, which found Bruce Wayne traveling through time — here a caveman, there a puritan — but still solving crimes and righting wrongs. Honestly, the whole thing feels a bit perfunctory and is not one of Morrison’s better works.  Much better is the series it led into, Batman Inc., which finds Wayne expanding his superhero empire around the globe. So far that series has been pretty solid and though it’s currently on hiatus, there’s no reason to suspect the quality will dip down once it returns.

Even further reading

Vinanarama

Morrison went Bollywood with Vimanarama, a three-issue mini-series he did with Philip Bond about a nebbishy British Asian man who finds himself battling ancient giant monsters bent on destroying the world as well as juggling various personal crises, most notably his impending arranged marriage. On the whole this is slight and more than a bit silly (deliberately so), but it has a devoted fan base among Morrison devotees.

Along with New X-Men, Morrison worked on the series Marvel Boy with artist J.G. Jones. The short-lived comic featured a surly Kree warrior as its anti-hero, who, after having his ship destroyed and friends killed, felt little love for humanity and was more than happy to carve a giant “F.U.” into the New York landscape, in between battles with a villainous armored millionaire who craves his technology. After X-Men, it’s probably Morrison’s best work at the House of Ideas.

Apart from the X-Men, Morrison didn’t get to handle to many of Marvel’s iconic characters, though he did get to offer his take on the FF with Fantastic Four: 1234. This short, slight story features some nice, moody art by Jae Lee as the Richards family find themselves beset with doubt, with Doctor Doom moves in for the kill. The best part in the whole thing is Sue Storm’s verbal takedown of Doom.

Finally, there’s Skull Kill Krew, which Morrison worked on with Mark Millar and Steve Yeowell. The comic, about a group of misfit anti-heroes hell-bent on destroying the Skrulls hiding in society (and presumably plotting world domination) adopts a cheerfully amoral and anarchistic tone as the group merrily goes about slaughtering aliens left and right (and in the end decimates an entire town). The defiant, tongue-in-cheek attitude isn’t for everyone certainly, but there’s something to be said for a superhero comic that comes off as having an attitude without seeming like a cynical marketing ploy.

Millar and Morrison also collaborated on Aztek the Ultimate Man, an original superhero character blessed with a magic suit of armor and given a quest to save the world from … well, you know the drill. N. Steven Harris’ angular art gives the whole thing an off-kilter, claustrophobic edge, which works to the story’s advantage, considering it takes place in an allegedly “sick city.” Beyond the simple “hero saves world” plot is a nice running commentary on the uber-violent, “dark” superheroes that were all the rage in the 1990s that gives the series a little kick.

Aztec’s final fate is revealed toward the end of Morrison’s run on JLA, better known as Justice League of America to simple souls like myself. Morrison took over the then moribund-title in 1997, attempting both a back to basics approach by bringing in heavy hitters like Superman and Batman and giving the series an epic scale by having them face off against some seemingly staggeringly tough opponents. It was an enormous success and garnered a new group of fans for Morrison that had previously found his work alienating or confusing. In retrospect, however, the series suffers a bit from repetition: each plot involves the JLA facing being painted in a corner, either by a super villain or a universe-shattering event, only to come through at the last possible second. The series was also a slave to the vagaries of various plot threads going on in other books, which can be irritating (Superman’s blue and electric! Now he’s normal again! Wonder Woman’s dead! Now she’s not!). And then there’s Howard Porter’s art, which is serviceable at best. The entire run is collected in four oversize volumes, the fourth of which collects also collects JLA: Earth-2, a stand-alone story where the heroes face evil versions of themselves. It’s far, far better than the bulk of the rest of the JLA material, perhaps due in large part to the fact that — you guessed it — it was drawn by Frank Quitely.

Ancillary materials

Morrison teamed up with Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka for 52, a year-long, weekly series that juggled various plot threads to reveal what was going on in the DC universe after the events of Infinite Crisis. It’s a bit all over the place, but still entertaining. One of the most fun parts is trying to figure out what sections were written by Morrison.

Remember Virgin Comics? At one point they planned a multi-part animated Internet-0nly series based on the classic Indian text the Mahabharata, to be written by Morrison. It all fell apart when Virgin collapsed, but you can read Morrison’s lengthy story pitch and some of his initial scripts in 18 Days, published by Dynamite. The book also features some lavish illustrations by Mukesh Singh that, combined with Morrison’s conceptual ideas, make you wish the project had come to fruition.

An enormous amount of Morrison’s early work, especially his work for 2000AD and other British comic magazines, has yet to be collected in the states, including Big Dave, Bible John and the New Adventures of Hitler. Some of these are available online in various illegal fashions. Probably his most notable early work is Zenith, another epic superhero saga starring a snotty youth who would rather be a pop star than fight crime. It’s a bit too jam-packed, though it settles itself out a bit as it goes on, and you can see a lot of his initial ideas on the superhero genre being laid out here. Eclipse published two volumes of Zenith but those have sadly long since fallen out of print. Supposedly a collected edition will be coming out from 2000AD sometime in the near future but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting, as Morrison and the publisher have supposedly been at loggerheads about who truly owns the rights to the character.

One early Morrison comic that did get reprinted here in the states was St. Swithin’s Day, which Oni released only to let fall back out of print again. The comic, featuring some lovely art by Paul Grist, follows a sullen teenager who may or may not be plotting to kill Margaret Thatcher (Morrison has gone on record as saying the comic is at least partly autobiographical). The whole thing’s terribly earnest, but sweet in its own way and worth tracking down.

Fans of the classic British TV show The Avengers will want to check out Steed and Mrs. Peel, in which Morrison and Ian Gibson dream up new adventures for the classic spy duo. It’s pretty amusing, but really only if you’re a fan of the source material. BOOM! plans to re-release these comics in January.

Finally there’s Dare, a modern politicalized rethinking of the classic British Dan Dare sci-fi comic done with artist Rian Hughes. As with The Avengers, it helps to be familiar with the source material. Dark but still entertaining, the comic is more of a showcase for Hughes’ considerable talents work than for Morrison’s writing. The story can be found in the Hughes collection Yesterday’s Tomorrows, which is well worth tracking done because Hughes is such a masterful artist.

Avoid

The Mystery Play

Don’t let the subtitle to Supergods fool you. The book is not really about “What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human.” Instead what you get is a rambling, warmed-over, rather problematic (to put it mildly) look at comics history, along with some rather self-aggrandizing reminiscences by Morrison. On the other hand, it is a good place to find out more about a number of events the author has hinted at in various interviews, particularly a transcendental experience he had in Katmandu. More than anything, though, this book was in really bad need of a good editor.

The news that Morrison was going to return to Superman in Action Comics as part of the new DC revamp was heralded by many, but so far the series has proven to be something of a disappointment, feeling tired and rote where it should be vibrant and fun. Perhaps it will improve as it progresses …

Morrison can be a little too “on the nose” sometimes, and that’s absolutely the case with The Mystery Play, a graphic novel team-up with Jon J. Muth that reeks of symbolism and allegory to the point where you want to scream “Enough already.” The story takes place during the modern re-enactment of a medieval mystery play, see, only God gets murdered in the first act. The rest of the book is more of the same painfully obvious allusions that cause the reader (or me at any rate) to wince inwardly when reading them.

That “on the nose” thing also plagues  Kill Your Boyfriend a “youth on the run” comic with Philip Bond that despite its apparent desire to shock and awe seems a bit too overly familiar and annoyingly cute. You don’t necessarily have to “avoid” it but I’d recommend saving it for last.

Next month: Jessica Abel

Art from "Get Jiro!" by Langdon Foss

Vertigo at last has set a June 2012 release date for Get Jiro!, the eagerly anticipated graphic novel from acerbic chef, author and television host Anthony Bourdain.

Teased in September 2010 by Bourdain, and officially announced a few weeks later by the DC Comics imprint, the futuristic action thriller set in a world where food and the secrets of its preparation are the source of all power, leading master chefs to fight over a mysterious sushi chef named Jiro. Bourdain has described the graphic novel as “a gourmet slaughterfest, sort of like Fistful of Dollars meets Eat Drink Man Woman” and “Yojimbo meets Big Night and Babette’s Feast, an ultra-violent slaughter-fest over culinary arcana.”

Originally pegged for a 2011 debut, the 160-page hardcover is written by Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw) and friend and novelist Joel Rose (The Blackest Bird, Kill Kill Faster Faster), and illustrated by artist Langdon Foss (Heavy Metal).

Fox has released images and an official synopsis for this week’s episode of The Simpsons, which features a guest appearance by Neil Gaiman. In addition, Gaiman posted a clip from the show which, as you can see from the above screenshot, includes a glimpse of a bookstore display showcasing the author’s work, including The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1, and The Absolute Death. Clearly they’re not in the Springfield Barnes & Noble.

Here’s how Fox describes the episode, called “The Book Job”: “Lisa becomes disheartened when she learns the shocking truth behind the ‘tween lit’ industry and her beloved fantasy novel characters. But Homer decides to cash in on the craze and forms a team to group-write the next ‘tween lit’ hit, with the king of fantasy, Neil Gaiman (guest-voicing as himself), lending his expertise to the effort. After catching the eye of a slick industry publisher (guest-voice Andy Garcia) at the Springfield Book Fair, the team gets an advanced copy of their work and discovers that the corporate lit business is a bigger operation than they imagined.”

Gaiman previously appeared in animated for in a 2010 episode of Arthur. Check out the clip and images from “The Book Job” below. The Simpsons airs Sunday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.

Action Comics #1

Comics | ICv2′s latest report on the comics market shows a mixed picture for monthly comics and graphic novels. While DC’s New 52 reboot has helped push comics sales, the graphic-novel versions of those comics won’t be out for months — and Amazon is gobbling up a larger and larger share of graphic novel sales, especially at the high end. And this is interesting: “Digital sales are growing as a percentage of the market, but apparently not at the expense of print sales. Retailers interviewed by ICv2 do not feel they’re losing sales to digital competition on DC’s day and date titles.” That seems to be more anecdote than data, but you would think retailers would be the first to notice a drop in sales. The report also includes lists of the top 10 properties in various categories. [ICv2]

Creators | Writer Kieron Gillen reflects on his year’s worth of stories in Marvel’s Generation Hope: “I always suspected I’d leave Generation Hope at the end of the first year, and so planned it as a coherent statement that would establish the book. I saw it as my job to properly delineate the lights and define Hope’s post-Cable existence as a somewhat desperate Messiah. Like all work, I’ve got some things I regret and some things I’m enormously pleased with. I think to start with I was a note too overconfident and obtuse, and immediately following that went too far the other way into being a little nervous and crass before swiftly (and thankfully) finding its balance. Taken as a whole, I can only view it as a success. I’d taken six kids, shown how each one ticks, and took them from meeting, to bonding, to an initial success, to heartbreak and then near destruction, and both showed who they were and how the experience changed them, while setting the stage for whatever comes next. Obviously being deep in the X-Office, with Hope on my team, means that I’ve got more than a few fingers in the assorted mutant-pie (which is a disturbing, Disir-esque quasi-cannibalistic metaphor I’m going to abandon immediately), but it’s still more than a little sad saying goodbye to the kids.” [Kieron Gillen's Workblog]

The Activity #1

Creators | Nathan Edmondson and artist Mitch Gerads discuss their new Image title The Activity. [MTV Geek]

Creators | Writer Tim Daniel walks through the process he used to pitch his new Image series Enormous: “While there are scores of excellent columns, creator blogs, and publisher’s submission guidelines to help steer a creative team, there is only one truth to this entire crazy process – there is no definitive manner for successfully presenting your book. Follow the submission guidelines for a publisher, knowing full well that just because you dutifully adhere to the rules does not in any way guarantee success. When pitching Enormous, we were lucky, fortunate and foolish; lucky to have discovered artist Mehdi Cheggour on Facebook, fortunate to have built a relationship with Shadowline publisher Jim Valentino through dedication and hard work, and foolish enough to assume our story would stun him with its creative genius – guaranteeing the immediate green-light.” [Multiversity Comics]

Creators | Art Asylum, the company creating Minimates based on the mid-1980s Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man storyline “The Death of Jean DeWolff,” interviews the story’s writer Peter David. [Art Asylum]

A Flight of Angels

Creators | Rebecca Guay discusses her work on the new graphic novel A Flight of Angels, due out next week from Vertigo. Guay handles the art and a number of writers, including Bill Willingham, contribute loosely related stories that are all knit together by a single framing tale. [USA Today]

Process | In his regular “Wacky Reference Wednesdays” post, artist Paolo Rivera shares how he used photos from the Tenement Museum as reference for his Mythos: Captain America work. [Self-Absorbing Man]

Process | In two posts, comics writer/editor Jim Shooter gives a “how to” lesson on continued stories and next-issue “teases.” [Part 1, Part 2]

Comics | David Brothers makes several spot-on points about Marvel’s now-canceled Iron Man 2.0 series, not the least of which is that it never really felt like James Rhodey, aka War Machine, was the star of the book: “I was actually sort of annoyed when Rhodey slipped further and further into the background. I hit one issue where Rhodey wasn’t in it at all, or on one page or something ridiculous like that. And then Fear Itself hit and the book turned into Cast-Off Iron Fist Characters Monthly (sometimes featuring War Machine).” He also talks in general about the current slate of black characters starring in Marvel’s comics. [4thletter]

From Daredevil #5

Comics | Christine at the Other Murdock Papers shares something I’d never noticed, that Daredevil has rarely featured a computer in its pages. She notes that issue #5 of the current series brings Matt Murdock into this century, giving him both an iMac and an iPhone. [The Other Murdock Papers]

Commentary | Tim Callahan shares plans to reread and talk about the major works of Alan Moore over the next year. [Tor.com]

Commentary | Chad Nevett and Alec Berry have started a series, “Direct Messages,” in which they discuss DC’s New 52 releases. [GraphiContent, Alec Reads Comics]

Cosplay | Frederico Garza of Cleburne, Texas, owns a hot dog shop that’s underneath a plaza infested with bats. Instead of having them exterminated, Garza has taken to wearing a Batman costume and has added a “Cleburne Bat Dog” to his menu. He’s also taking donations so students at the local high school can build bat boxes for the animals to move into. [KVUE]

Conventions | LaToya Peterson takes us inside the speed-dating event at New York Comic Con; while her writing is intelligent, she leans a bit hard on the device of setting up stereotypes so she can debunk them. But she’s right to describe the lower level of the Javits Center as “a deeply unsexy underground bunker” — and the speed dating was in one of the nicer rooms. [Slate]