3.04.15 [#PicksOfTheWeek]

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I’m most interested in Blackcross #1 this week, a book which seems to be flying under the radar. It’s Warren Ellis and Colton Worley’s first foray into Dynamite Entertainment’s Project Superpowers line. Ellis is one of the rare buy-on-sight creators, regardless of company or collaborator, as there’s always kernels of brilliance, even among his occasional “misses.” Blackcross promises to juxtapose Golden Age Superheroes with small town supernatural mystery, something quirky enough that it could be a sleeper hit.

Image Comics continues their mindshare dominance with Saga #26 from BKV and Fiona Staples, Nameless #2 by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham, Black Science #12 by Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera, the brand new Descender #1 from the team of Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen, and the finale (of this run) of the series in Supreme: Blue Rose #7, by Warren Ellis and Tula Lotay. Of the lot, it’s sorta a three way tie between the ever-adventurous Black Science (part of the ridiculously good writer’s trifecta with Low and Deadly Class, it’s a helluva a time to be a Rick Remender fan!), Nameless (I’m quite curious to see where the guys take this series), and Supreme: Blue Rose (since it’ll be interesting to see how they stick the landing).

If you held a gun to my head and made me buy a corporate comic this week, I’d certainly choose the Disney/LucasFilm/Marvel premiere of Princess Leia #1 by Mark Waid and Terry Dodson. I’ve never been a huge Dodson fan (though that cover image admittedly looks terrific), but Waid is a writer with longevity who I respect, and I’m quite interested to see what fan reaction will be to this book. It sounds like it’ll cover some of the same emotional ground as Brian Wood’s Star Wars run, and I’m wondering if fans will similarly push back on Waid’s treatment of her as a blaster-wielding, X-Wing piloting leader of an insurgent cell.

IDW is offering Winterworld #0 by Chuck Dixon and guest artist Tommy Lee Edwards, so I’m definitely checking out this prequel story to the post-apocalyptic affair. Lastly, I’ll be picking up Lady Killer #3 by Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones, published by Dark Horse Comics, which wryly merges suburban ennui with period wetwork, something which seems to be a rising sub-genre in the collective consciousness of the last few years.

2.25.15 [#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.

There’s a few sure buys this week, with quite a few maybes thrown in. I’m most excited for Danger Club #7 from Landry Q. Walker and Eric Jones, followed closely by They’re Not Like Us #3 by Eric Stephenson and Simon Gane. Image Comics also has Low #6 by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini out (growing to be a stalwart buy because it focuses on Remender’s go-to theme of the parent-child dynamic), ODY-C #3 by Matt Fraction and Christian Ward (maybe too ambitious for its own good, this issue will likely either make or break my continued support), Sex #20 by Joe Casey and Piotr Kowalski (this will probably be my last issue, there’s just too much narrative foreplay and not enough of the actual storytelling act itself), and The Wicked + The Divine #8 (I’m more interested in Jamie McKelvie’s confectionary visuals than Kieron Gillen’s pop mythology).

I’ve been picking up copies of all the new Star Wars comics for my cousin who is overseas in Abu Dhabi, so I’ll read his copy of Darth Vader #2 in the new Marvel Comics venture, and chalk it up in the maybe column. For some reason, I could never quite get into Jason Aaron and Ron Garney’s series despite liking both Scalped and Southern Bastards a great deal, so Men of Wrath #5 is a maybe as well. Over at Oni Press, I’ve enjoyed the series, but have been feeling a little ambivalent toward it lately, so ditto the maybe sentiment for The Life After #7 by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Gabo.

I’m even less interested in Sandman: Overture #4, a series that saw the first issue released on October 30th of 2013. Like many in my age group I assume, I credit Neil Gaiman and Sandman with getting me back into comics in my college years, and I’ve loved JH Williams III since I first saw his work at a local con in our hometown around 1992, way before Chase or any of his early work, on a weird little horror title called Demonic Toys, but for some reason this title just leaves me totally cold, and I have a hard time supporting a publishing model that’s managed to only get out an average of two issues per year. I’ll give it a flip, but can’t in good conscience plunk down the money.

Suiciders #1 is another Vertigo offering this week that I’ll give a flip. Honestly, the premise is thin, sounding like a rehash of about three other things mashed together, but with Lee Bermejo art, it’s still a little intriguing. I’m curious about Curb Stomp #1 by Ryan Ferrier and Devaki Neogi (especially with covers by Tula Lotay), so I’ll check out this Boom! Studios debut swirling around the heart of punk. Lastly, I’ll give The Black Hood #1 a flip, this being the Archie Comics debut of their in-house superhero property at the hands of Duane Swierczynski and Michael Gaydos. This artist is always worth a look, and if the recent Afterlife With Archie is any indication of future performance, it could be grand.

On the collected edition front, I’ll recommend G.I. Joe Volume 1:  The Fall of G.I. Joe, IDW’s latest offering of the property, this time featuring an off-type political thriller by Karen Traviss, Steve Kurth, and killer design work on the covers by Jeffrey Veregge, which stays true to the general spirit of the original premise, yet also manages to feel more sophisticated and socially relevant in the post-9/11 age of asymmetrical warfare. 

2.18.15 [#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.

This week is very representative of the kind of material I want to be consuming, cramming so many of my current favorite books and creators into one place. Nearly every week at the LCS, I’ll get the question as a prompt and make the case for this book being the single best series Image Comics is currently publishing, and it’s Lazarus #15 by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark. This issue promises the conclusion of the Conclave arc, which has been a great look at the other families, and like Tyrion Lannister at The Eyrie, it appears we’ll be getting trial by combat in the denouement.

Image Comics also has Manifest Destiny #13 out, by the team of Chris Dingess, Matthew Roberts, and Owen Gieni, another great series which easily made my Best of 2014 list for its blending of speculative historical fiction (Lewis & Clark’s fabled expedition to chart a waterway to the Pacific Ocean) and good ol’ fashioned monster mayhem (imagine the real reason we got such a deal from the French is because the Louisiana Purchase was inhabited by supernatural creatures!). In an age when colorist recognition is on the rise with stars like Dave Stewart, Dean White, and Jordie Bellaire, I’d love to see Owen Gieni getting some of that well-deserved praise.

Don’t stop there with your support of The House of Creator Owned! Image Comics will also bring you Rick Remender and Wes Craig’s Deadly Class #11, Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein’s Drifter #4, along with The Fuse #10, and The Autumnlands: Tooth & Claw #4. There really is something for every taste, a foray into every genre, and so many diverse creators you should support. I’m most excited for this installment of The Fuse (with Antony Johnston’s well thought out sci-fi world-building and Justin Greenwood’s storytelling ability growing in every issue) and Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey’s gorgeous and poignant work in The Autumnlands. I usually call it “Kamandi meets Game of Thrones.”

Dark Horse Comics is featuring EI8HT #1, a new mini-series by Rafael Albuquerque and Mike Johnson, a time-displaced sci-fi adventure that has me very curious about Albuquerque’s writing ability. Over at Oni Press, we have Charles Soule’s Letter 44 #14, this time with art by Drew Moss in a special flashback issue. There’s also the final issue of Brian Wood and Greg Smallwood’s Marc Spector arc in Moon Knight #12. I’ll be very sad to see this go, as Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey, Brian Wood, Greg Smallwood, and Jordie Bellaire all did very special things with this series that renewed interest in the character while telling visceral tales with instantly distinct approaches to the art.

On the collected edition front, we have Umbral Volume 2: The Dark Path, collecting issues 7 through 12 of this superb fantasy piece by Antony Johnston and Christopher Mitten. DC/Vertigo is also putting out the first hardcover installment of one of their greatest series ever with Scalped Book One: The Deluxe Edition. For me, this is still the best thing Jason Aaron has written, rich with social secrets and seedy crime and larger notes around the crumbling subculture of the Native American diaspora, and it’s an absolute crime that his chief collaborator R.M. Guera hasn’t since been picked up for plying that rich inky style on an ongoing series. 

2.11.15 [#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.

Transformers vs. G.I. Joe #5 is my primary book of interest this week, it’s IDW’s delightfully batshit insane pairing of 1980’s properties at the hands of Tom Scioli and John Barber, which manages to simultaneously play like an earnest nostalgia piece and a tongue-in-cheek send-up that subverts everything it purports to love all at once. It’s a joy to read, one of those books you’re amazed actually got made in the first place, chock full of obsessive knowledge porn, with plenty of backmatter commentary by the creators.

If you’re looking for another licensed property, Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larocca are helming Darth Vader #1, the second offering in the new Marvel Star Wars era, and the first-ever ongoing series featuring this character. I’ve found Marvel’s iterations of the Star Wars mythos to sort of stretch continuity plausibility right to the point of breaking, but it’s nevertheless interesting to see what the property can withstand. Given the resurgence in this cultural phenomenon, we’ll be likely talking about “the new Star Wars” – book, film, game, whatever – for the next 100 years.

But, if you’re on this site, reading this column, then you’re probably smart enough to know that Creator Owned Comics are where it’s at! May I then recommend Southern Bastards #7 from The Jasons, Aaaron and Latour, following up an incredible cliffhanger/twist/prologue realization at the end of the first arc. For my money, Jason Aaron is at his best when he’s exploring misunderstood corners of the American Tapestry, so if you were a fan of the impressive Scalped, then this exploration of culture in the American South is where you should be spending your time.

There’s also perennial favorite Astro City #20 by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson, published by DC/Vertigo. Astro City has an interesting publishing history, surviving Image, Homage, WildStorm, and now Vertigo incarnations, perhaps a testament to the core premise of exploring the humanized peripheral elements of the shared universe concept. The older I get, the more I appreciate someone like Busiek, a writer with consistency of quality, longevity of career, and the ability to still play emotionally relevant, even when tinkering with the industry’s most prevalent genre.

I’ll also recommend The Sculptor, this is the long-anticipated 496-page hardcover tome by Scott McCloud, published by First Second. It looks to examine the very nature of creativity, and literal ruminations on life and death, all from the Godfather of the formal analysis of how the medium functions. It’s absolutely terrific to see an original creation from McCloud, one which will likely be poured over panel by panel in the wake of his seminal work Understanding Comics, and I expect to see it on many Best of 2015 lists come December.

If you wanted to check out a throwback gem, you could do much worse than DC: The New Frontier Deluxe Edition Hardcover. That’s a mouthful of a title, and if you’re anything like me, you already snagged the gorgeous Absolute Edition before it went out of print. But, if you didn’t feel like spending $75 on that, this new printing is a deal at $49.99, featuring Darwyn Cooke’s sweeping treatise on DC lore, depicting the liminal state between The Golden Age and The Silver Age, a generational transition that basically established the company’s outlook for the modern era.