2.04.15 [#PicksOfTheWeek]

#PicksOfTheWeek is brought to you with generous support from my retail sponsor Yesteryear Comics. Make Yesteryear Comics your choice in San Diego for great customer service and the best discounts possible on a wide selection of mainstream and independent titles. Customers receive an attractive 20% discount on new titles during their first week of release. Yesteryear Comics is located at 9353 Clairemont Mesa Boulevard.

The book drawing the most attention from me this week is the penultimate issue of Ed Brisson and Johnnie Christmas’ pre-apocalyptic drama in Sheltered #14, published by Image Comics. Things have finally reached a boiling point at Safe Haven, and I can’t wait to see how the guys wrap the series up. Image Comics also has East of West #17 and C.O.W.L. #8 out this week, both books with impressive world-building, the former a post-apocalyptic alt-future centering on the sci-fi end of days within a post-Civil War era fracturing of the United States, and the latter a haunting vision of unionized superheroes in 1960’s era Chicago.

There’s perennial favorite Saga #25 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, easily described as a sci-fi Romeo & Juliet enjoyed to the tune of an old Steve Miller Band song (you know the one), along with The Humans #4 by Tom Neely (one of my indie comics favorites) and Keenan Marshall Keller, featuring world-weary biker gang apes surprisingly steeped in 70’s film style social commentary, as well as Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s Nameless #1, which throngs of fans will surely be checking out. I’ve been enjoying Morrison’s gleeful take on the DCU in the various Multiversity books of late, but no doubt he’s at his best with original creations.

Dark Horse Comics has Lady Killer #2 out from Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones, sort of a Mr. & Mrs. Smith meets Mad Men affair, with a pinch of The Milkman Murders thrown in for good measure, suburban subversion at its finest, and Jones has seriously stepped up her artistic game on the title. I know a couple customers at the LCS who have doubled-down on multiple copies of the already-gone-to-second-print #1, thinking this’ll be the next hot book. I’ll check out Marvel’s Star Wars #2 for harmless nostalgia, but I’m more excited for The Bunker #9 by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Joe Infurnari over at Oni Press, as well as the debut of Ed Brisson and Damian Couceiro’s sharp looking new sci-fi series Cluster #1 at Boom! Studios. Though, I admit there may be some market saturation nearing with all of these strong sci-fi titles like Drifter, Bitch Planet, Concrete Park, that seem to be operating in the post-Pitch Black zeitgeist, where the words “prisoner,” “stranded,” and “rugged environs” exist in the overlapping circles of some storytelling Venn Diagram.