11.17.10 Releases

It’s freaking me out a little that this could be another week in which I actually purchase only one book. There’s probably little surprise that it’ll be Northlanders #34 (DC/Vertigo), which is the last issue in the “Metal” arc, featuring Erik and Ingrid. It’s $2.99. I brought up the price point because wasn’t there just some big brouhaha over pricing with some sort of commitment by DC that the $3.99+ price point for regular ongoing books would be abandoned? I’m not making that up, right? Marvel even did some cock-up copycat announcement that they’d maybe be doing it too, oh wait, what did we say, never mind then? Well, here’s Batman Incorporated #1 (DC), a new ongoing from Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette, for $3.99. I can’t honestly say that I’m uninterested in the premise, but combine feeling like I’m OD’ing on Morrisonian story convolution, this never-ending morass of overlapping event-style self-referential mini-series and series that don’t tell a cohesive story unless you read 50 other books… *thing* happening, along with the strange $3.99 price point, and I’m feeling pretty out on this. This wears consumers out doesn’t it? Is anyone really enjoying this deluge? Right there with it on the stands will be Batman: The Return (DC) #1, which is somehow different than (only the same as) the just wrapped (late, out of sequence vis-à-vis other books) Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, which is like another mini-series or something from Morrison at the (wait for it…) $4.99 price point! Archaia also puts out The Killer: Modus Vivendi #5 (Archaia) this week, which is the penultimate issue in this second series. I have to admit that although I really enjoyed the moral complication and beautiful artistic stylings of the first series, the second one hasn’t really grabbed me and I don’t even recall if I picked up the fourth issue or not. On the graphic novel front, we have What I Did (Fantagraphics) from Jason, which is a 272 page hardcover collection of some of his early out of print work, including Hey, Wait…, Sshhhh!, and The Iron Wagon. I already have these stories, but if you missed them, you could do a lot worse this week than check out Jason’s anthropomorphic style, which belies a hidden gravitas and emotional complexity to the work. His books are *always* recommended around these parts. If superhero flair is more your thing, then I’d go with the Ex Machina Deluxe Edition: Volume 4 (DC/WildStorm), which is the penultimate hardcover collecting the entire series, which also recently just wrapped a 50 issue run (plus a couple of special issues) courtesy of Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris. I actually pre-ordered this on Amazon with some store credit I had built up for a mere $19 or something crazy, but it’s still well worth the $29.99 price tag at your LCS. These look nifty lined up on the bookshelf too. Or you might try going with an oldie but a goodie, in the form of Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen’s contemporary sci-fi adventure classic, Shockrockets (IDW), reprinted here in hardcover for $24.99.