So, Page 218, and we have Aardvark-Vanaheim’s triumphant(?) return to Previews after going POD a few months back… With “The CEREBUS GUIDE TO SELf PUBLISHING EXPANDED EDITION”, at 120 pages for $18.00. Frankly, that price point sort of implies digital POD, so caveat emptor.

I found the original guide to be hugely informative and helpful back when I was doing minis 15 years ago, so I have a genuine curiosity about just what might be lurking between these pages… Though my.. tolerance… for Dave Sim text-pages has definitely lessened since I first pick this up. “Updated with new material assessing the pros and cons of the computer revolution that continues to rock the comics publishing world from top to bottom”, according to the solicit. Honestly, I’m going to order the minimum on this, and then reorder if it turns out that what Dave Sim has to say about publishing in 2010 is in any way still relevant.

11:20pm: SLG Publishing (amaze ink) has a really interesting new series, and the first issue is only a buck! It’s called THE ROYAL HISTORIAN OF OZ, and the first issue is on page 218. Here’s what SLG has to say about the book:

I’m gonna read that… As it is I dig Tommy Kovac’s work (though I’m not familiar with Andy Hirsch), and that’s a great high concept.

Also of note on page 218 (and shown in the image to the right there) is SHADOWEYES, a new original graphic novel from the increasingly prolific Ross (WET MOON) Campbell. It sounds like Campbell is branching out a bit into a sort of superhero/sci-fi realm, but with plenty of his trademark contemporary gothic horror. Sounds good. Ross Campbell has a fledgling website for the book here: http://www.shadoweyes.net/.

11:28pm: Ah,page 220 brings us to the Antarctic Press section, which is normally a mess. But honestly? Antarctic turns in their nicest catalogue spread yet. It’s still marred by a few basic design things (learn how to use columns consistently) but really, it’s totally readable with almost no eye-strain. It even has negative space for the eye to rest…! Good stuff. Oh, and a book! David Hutchison returns with another TIME LINCOLN one shot, this time called Fists of Fuhrer. The cover has Lincoln fighting Hitler ON the statue of Lincoln at Mt. Rushmore, which is kind of hilarious. #1 is $3.99 for 32 pages.

11:36pm: You know what’s picking up steam for us? Sonic The Hedgehog Comics. And it’s like a 60/40 split between hardcore nerds and actual children. That’s AWESOME. Archie continues to produce two series featuring the character, Sonic The Hedgehog #214 and Sonic Universe #17, both of which are on page 228, and they’ll set you back $2.99 a piece (30 cents more than a regular Archie book!). If I had to hazard a guess why this is happening? I really think it’s the Sonic Archives trade paperbacks, the much-demanded collections that finally give kids a ‘way in’ to the long, long running series. Glad that they finally published those…!

11:39pm: Speaking of continuing to do well, Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield’s FREAKANGELS gets a fourth collection in June (or later, probably) in softcover, hardcover, and signed hardcover editions. For a series serialized for free, online, it continues to do well for us in sales. It’s slowed a little bit, but honestly? Good stuff, and I’m glad to see the web-serialization to print-sales model actually works. All three versions of volume 4 are available on page 235 from Avatar, and they’ll run you $19.99, $27.99, and $39.99 respectively.

Also from Avatar, a collection of their NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD prequel (p236, 192 pages, colour, $24.99) that took absolutely forever to be released. They put about 200 variant covers of those 8 issues into the market, but a trade paperback collection couldn’t happen for 5+ years. No idea how that works.

12:18am: Here’s something funny; in the Dynamite Entertainment section (p.267), they’re doing the upcoming “Prince of Persia” movie prologue graphic novel as a four issue limited series. We’ve already ordered the graphic novel version of this, and so far as we’re aware it’s going to be out at least a month or two before this four issue mini-series.

Are people really going to pick up a comic book serialization of an already-existing graphic novel? That seems odd.

12:26am: It looks like Del Rey is going to start off their Penny Arcade collections picking up where Dark Horse left off… I was half-convinced they’d do an omnibus or something. Penny Arcade Volume 6: The Halls Below is another 208 pages of material for $15, on page 279.

Also on that page from Del Rey’s manga division comes Avatar: The Last Airbender Film Comic #1 (96 pages, $7.99) which is, funnily enough, a new edition of Tokyopop’s cinemanga from back in the day, hopefully with MUCH better binding. There’s also Dave Roman, Alison Wigus, and Joon Choi on The Last Airbender Movie Adaptation Graphic Novel (176 pages, 10.99), which looks alright from the cover art, and should be getting a preview at FCBD this year. That said, I’m pretty conflicted about the film as a whole, but I’m not sure how far that extends…?

Finally on p.279, Tyler Page takes another run at self-publishing with NOTHING BETTER VOLUME 2: INTO THE WILD, the next 162 pages in the lives of a pair of mismatched college roommates. If you’re curious, you can check out the series at http://www.webcomicsnation.com/tylerpage/nb/series.php.

12:42pm: So I don’t normally mention the porn very much (sorry!) but I did want to note that Eros Comix has a brand new mangarotica title for the first time in a good long while! TOO HOT TO HANDLE is absolutely filthy-sounding, and comes from mangaka Tsukino Jyogi (don’t google that at work), 184 pages for $18.99.  You can find a slug that says “more info in the adult previews” if you turn to page 283, but of course they don’t publish that anymore, so if you wanna find out more I recommend you head to Icarus Publishing’s website. Specifically, every month Simon at Icarus goes through the Previews Adult catalogue, highlighting hentai and yaoi releases for you. Unfortunately he’s not including cover images (which are censored in the catalogue anyway), but he’ll give you links to the mangaka’s websites and more.

Speaking of Icarus, flip ahead to page 294 and you’ll see the fine folks at Icarus soliciting the AREA graphic novel by Tetsu Hagane, 208 pages for $19.99. It sounds similarly filthy, and if you want to sneak a peak the first chapter is available LEGALLY to read in “Comic Ag Digital #5″, available at http://www.icaruscomics.com/wp_web/?page_id=1034.

12:52pm: So the cover to Anders Nilsen’s BIG QUESTIONS #14 is lovely (48 pages, $7.95, Drawn & Quarterly), and I just want to run it here.

Yeah. Awesome. May or may not be the final issue…? Hmm.

Also from D&Q this month is Brecht Evens’ Wrong Place (184 pages, $24.95) about which I know nothing but it seems lovely, and the fifth Moomin book ($19.95, 100 pages), which is guaranteed to be lovely.

1:11am: Wow, the Fantagraphics section is lovely this month, very easy to read and clear as to what’s new, and what isn’t. Bigger font size this month too, cheers all around.

It’s also CHOCK FULL of amazing graphic novels…! So cool! Page 284 has LUCKY IN LOVE: A POOR MAN’S HISTORY, a graphic novel by George Chieffet and the extremely talented illustrator Stephen DeStefano. I really like DeStafano’s work; Fanta compares his cartooning to Milt Gross and classic Disney Animation and comics, and I’d say that’s probably bang on. Destefano’s got an infrequently updated blog at http://stephendestefano.blogspot.com/ which has some examples of his cartooning, but folks with a wide-variety of material in their collections may remember his work from ‘Mazing Man or Instant Piano, from the last several years of CARTOON NETWORK books at DC, or from his animation work on The Venture Bros. (!) (!!!). LUCKY IN LOVE is 120 pages, hardcover, for $19.99 and will be gorgeous.

Similarly gorgeous is Drew Weing’s SET TO SEA, a graphic novel he’s been serializing a panel-at-a-time over at his blog, http://www.drewweing.com/. It’s a beautifully drawn story though I have to admit that I’m going to hold off reading it until the book is in my hands–Drew’s work really seems to LOVE being in print, and all of his minis and comics I’ve bought to date have been better for having been in physical form… Maybe I’m just a paper fetishist? Anyway, SET TO SEA is a 144 page graphic novel, HC, for $16.99.

Moving to page 285, NEW JASON GRAPHIC NOVEL!  Woo hoo! Werewolves of Montpellier is the next ‘monster’ book from Jason, where he uses classic monsters to illuminate the human condition in ways that always surprise. His Zombie epic “The Living and the Dead” is probably my favourite so far, but his “You Can’t Get There From Here” about Frankenstein’s Monster and Bride is also lovely. Both of those were recently collected, btw, in the book ALMOST SILENT and that’s worth tracking down. Anyhow, WEREWOLVES OF MONTPELLIER is a full cover graphic novella, 48 pages for $12.99, and worth every penny I assure you… if every other book he’s released has been any indication.

Wrapping up Fantagraphics’ best month ever (maybe)? 2 new IGNATZ books, SAMMY THE MOUSE #3 from Zak Sally ($7.95, 32 pages) and HOOLIGANS ($7.95, 32 pages), the third in the Wish You Were Here series by Gipi. Ah, new Gipi comics, we’re truly blessed aren’t we?

They have a new Drew Friedman collection, and a new strip collection of very strange stuff too, but I gotta leave something to the imagination, don’t I?

1:18am: Well here’s something you don’t see everyday. “Feral House” publishing presents SIEGEL AND SHUSTER’S FUNNYMAN TP, 240 pages, $24.95, page 286. The solicit describes the project thusly:

SIEGEL AND SHUSTER’S FUNNYMAN TP

(E) Thomas Andrae, Mel Gordon (W) Jerry Siegel (A) Joe Shuster

Here is a kaleidoscopic analysis of Jewish humor as seen through Funnyman, a  little-known super-heroic invention by the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Following the completion of their 10-year-long contract with DC writing and drawing their first creation, Superman, Siegel and Shuster were determined to create a new superhero; one that would prove that justice, fair-play, and zany craftsmanship were the true “American way”, and would lead to their ultimate victory. This book tells the back-story of the unsuccessful strip and Siegel and Shuster’s ambition to have their funny Jewish superhero trump the Man of Steel. Included are complete comic-book stories and daily and Sunday newspaper panels from this lost classic. (C: 0-1-2)

SC, 7×10, 240pgs, FC SRP: $24.95

Does anyone know if the Siegel/Shuster estates are getting any money out of this? Or is it one of those projects that falls between copyrights? At any rate, it sounds fascinating.

1:33am: So! Last year maybe, webcomics creator Tracy J. Butler dropped by a nice little package with her work LACKADAISY, a beautifully illustrated furry comic about the prohibition era, and she did absolutely everything right in promoting her work to us. But sometimes shops… fall down a little, heh, and despite that first burst we haven’t been very good about keeping that work in stock. But with the solicitation for LACKADAISY VOLUME 1 (p.288, 98 pages, colour, $19.95) we’ll have the book back in stock again soon.

Tracy, thanks for all of your hard work getting the word out! And if you reading here have never checked out Lackadaisy, you can find it online at http://www.lackadaisycats.com/.

1:42am: On page 290 now, imagine my surprise to find that Scholastic/Graphix is doing a Doug Tenapel graphic novel? It’s called GHOSTOPOLIS, 272 pages, full colour, for $12.99 (or $24.99 in hardcover).

Also on that page we get a new Keither Knight collection, THE KNIGHT LIFE: CHIVALRY AIN’T DEAD (208 pages, $17.99).

Oh, here we go, page 291? HUMANOIDS IS BACK! After a series of… fairly disastrous publishing partnerships… Humanoids returns to self-publishing and self-distributing in North America. Their first month on the job is a great, surprising range of comics and graphic novels… The comic book thing is a little shocking to me actually, though I guess Archaia and Devil’s Due must have had a measure of success with the individual issues collecting French graphic albums that they’ve been soliciting.

Anyway, the books that they’re debuting with include:

- The Bouncer: One Armed Gunslinger #1 (32 pages, $3.50), alongside an offered again of The Bouncer VOlume 1 HC ($15.95)
- Jodorowski and Gimenez’s Metabarons Volume 4: Ahgora & The Last Metabaron ($17.95, 136 pages) alongside offered agains of the first three volumes of the series
- Unfabulous Five: The Greasers From The Black Lagoon #1, a new edition of the Lucha Libre comics previously released by Image Comics I believe, by Jerry Frissen and Bill… I hadn’t heard about this moving pubs or changing names, I’d hope some journalist out there would get the scoop
- and finally Whispers in the Walls #1 from David Munoz and Tirso, a spooky-sounding Czech horror story.

Good month for those dudes.

1:53am: Thieves & Kings creator Mark Oakley’s been pretty quiet as of late, and I’d guess the brand new 194 page STAR DROP original graphic novel on page 294 would explain why ($9.99, iBox Publishing). The description, about a gentle alien princess escaping intergalactic conflict to try and fit in as a normal girl on earth… It reminds me a little of Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, but then Oakley’s work has always echoed Miyazaki’s, and that girl-out-of-context-riding-a-train-car on the cover doesn’t do much to dissuade comparison. Still, there are faaaaar worse things to be reminded of when looking at someone’s work, you know?

Always nice to see new graphic novels from Oakley, and hopefully this means more Thieves & Kings soon too!

2:04am: My, I do go on don’t I? Man I gotta wrap this up. Okay, only mentioning the most awesome things from now on…

So of course there’s one one page later.

PAGE 295 has Not Quite Dead: Last Gig in SHNAGRLIG, the 48 page graphic album collecting Gilbert Shelton’s recent story serialized in the pages of MOME magazine! This stand-alone edition comes to us from Knockabout Comics, and is now in full colour for just $9.99. I’m a bit behind on Mome, but I liked the first few chapters of this satire piece, and Shelton’s a consistently interesting creator, and has been for the better part of 40 years! Interesting format for this release, as the offered again section reminds us that Knockabout’s two most-recent Gilbert Shelton releases were massive 200+ page omnibus editions.

Page 298 brings us to NBM’s solicitations, and a brand new volume of Rick Geary’s MURDER books. This time it’s A Treasury Of 20th Century Murder Volume 3: The Terrible Axe-Man of New Orleans HC, at $15.99 for 80 pages.

Page 299 huh, Netcomics is publishing again.

2:13am: ONI PRESS on page 300 with one of the funnest looking original graphic novels in a long, long time. I’m not even a big wrestling guy, but I gotta admit that Super Pro K.O.! Volume 1 by Jarrett Williams ($11.99, 256 pages) looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Here’s PREVIEWS:

So I don’t normally do that, but man, doesn’t this look totally fun, and utterly unlike everything else on the stands? Make sure not to miss that one.

2:23am: Page 312 has a new graphic novel from Roaring Brook Press that sounds like it’s going to be a very big hit. Tracy White’s How I Made it To Eighteen is memoir about a young girl’s mental breakdown and transformation, and this is a book that I’m very happy to see is coming. How rare was it to get a book from the perspective of a teenaged girl even 10 years ago? Let alone one actually for teenaged girls, and that dealt with real issues? I can count the creators on one hand. Anyway, good to see more interesting work, more unique voices, and more work for young women coming out.

2:29am: Page 313 has a new Sunday Press Book, worth buying almost regardless of content and just for their superb presentation. This one happens to be KRAZY KAT: A CELEBRATION OF SUNDAYS, a best-of collection of George herriman’s Krazy Kat Sunday pages produced in colour, and at their original size. Includes a bunch of material not reprinted in other Krazy Kat books. 16.5 inches by 14 inches, 160 pages, full colour, for $100.

Oh my God… the staff pics on page 314 really are something… Let’s just say that of the 5 books picked on this staff picks page, not one of them is one I’ve mentioned in my write-up. Previews: Written by and For people who like PREVIEWS. Iccccccccccccck.

2:35pm: Okay, that last one broke my spirit. Sorry, I’m done. Maybe I’ll pick up tomorrow morning. Sad. Still a hundred pages to go.

Okay, it’s now Thursday, April 15th! I am in a better mood. Let’s finish off the Previews catalogue together.

1:06pm: Top Shelf productions on 318 looks to be having a good month! Their big release is Eddie Campbell and Darren White’s The Playwright, a brand new 160 page, full colour graphic novel for the princely sum of $14.95. It is, and I quote the solicitation here, “a dark comedy about the sex life of a celibate middle-aged man,” and doesn’t that sound like something you don’t read every day? I like both of these fine creators, and I’m looking forward to this release.

The solicit also mentions that the book is co-published between Top Shelf and Knockabout, the same UK publisher that acted as co-publisher of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s A Disease of Language HC, and I wonder if co-publishing would make sense for more independent publishers? Just an idle thought though.

Also from Top Shelf on the same page is the fourth of James Kochalka’s new kids books, JOHNNY BOO AND THE MEAN LITTLE BOY. These are profoundly strange books for kids, and kids seem to love that. The pacing and production and everything, it’s so idiosyncratic and so Kochalka, it’s kind of amazing. The fourth book is another HC, 40 pages, for $10.

Finally, Top Shelf are soliciting a new edition of Nate Powell’s SWALLOW ME WHOLE, a fantastic graphic novel, truly excellent, and I’m chuffed to see that it’s needed a second (or third?) printing. Powell’s an underrated gem of a cartoonist, and this book really shows off his chops. $19.95 in hardcover.

1:24pm: I know I’m not supposed to ‘give away secrets’ here on the blog, about work and things like that… but I honestly can’t believe how successful UDON’s Manga for Kids line has been for us. Finding manga for the under-10 set is difficult at the best of times, and finding series that appeal to girls (rather than ‘for-boys, but equally-for-boys-and-girls’), and UDON’s stuff is great. They’re friends of mine so this is all horribly biased, feel free to disregard, but the numbers don’t lie. Kids _love_ these manga. UDON has the next round of books this month with The Big Adventures of Majoko Volume 5 and Fairy Idol Kanon volume 4 for $7.99 a piece, and the full-colour Swans in Space Volume 3 for $8.99 on page 323.

1:30pm: Do you like adorable pictures of kittens on the internet? If you said yes, you are likely “a person” because if you don’t like pictures of adorable kittens I worry that maybe you’re not real, but also if you said yes then you are the audience for Vertical Inc.’s newest manga CHI’S SWEET HOME VOLUME 1 (Page 324, 176 pages, $12.95). The latest release from Vertical is the second that moved away from their initial publishing plan of ‘classic’ manga into releasing more contemporary manga works, alongside their releases of contemporary fiction. This book is about a kitten that is adopted by a family that isn’t allowed to have pets in their apartment building, it all sounds gentle and funny and worth reading.

Incidentally, the first book in Vertical’s ‘new direction’ is Twin Spica, the second volume of which is solicited this month (page 324, 200 pages, $10.95), and the first volume of which is due in stores any day now, I believe.

1:35pm: Still on page 324 we’ve got Villard Books (imprint of Random House) and the first official collection of Meredith Gran’s Octopus Pie Volume 1: There Are No Stars In Brooklyn (240 pages, partial colour, $16.00)! This is one of my favourite webcomics, a funny slice-of-life story about mismatched roommates living together in Brooklyn. It’s really, really well-observed and Gran’s background in animation really gives the art a polish and sheen; the characters feel real, which is about the nicest compliment you can pay a funny slice-of-life comic. I’m buying it… ARE YOU!?

P.S.: Meredith Gran will be appearing at the 2010 TORONTO COMIC ARTS FESTIVAL, May 8th to 9th in Toronto, Canada. More info at http://torontocomics.com.

P.P.S.: You can check out Octopus Pie online at http://www.octopuspie.com/.

1:41pm: Still on page 324, and it looks like ONI isn’t the only pub doing wrestling comics this month. Viper Comics is releasing Battle Smash vs. Saucer Men From Venus ($3.25, 32 pages), a group of non-superpowered luchadores that defend their neighborhood from threats. This fullcolour one shot comes your way from Dale Mettam and artist ‘Zanker’. So.

Meanwhile, finally flipping the page to 325(!) we get to Viz’s section. The first release is Gente Volume 1 (176 pages, $12.99) by Natsume Ono. This is the ongoing series follow-up to Ono’s recently released one-shot Ristorante Paradiso, which I greatly enjoyed. It’s about a young woman coming to confront her mother about years of abandonment, and finding herself coming to understand her mother and the choices she made. It’s all set in a restaurant run by attractive older men…! It’s like, a whole thing. Anyway, it was a lovely way to spend an hour or two, and I imagine Gente will be similarly enjoyable. :)

Actually in getting to the Viz section, I noticed I accidentally skipped over Tokyopop. I’m too lazy to go back and write about that, but I will say that it’s great to see new volumes of Sgt. Frog and Suppli in there.

Moving forward, not much else in the Viz section was worth noting for me. Following that, apparently Zenescope is producing a CHARMED comic, based on the long-finished TV Show. And hey, it’s about the original three characters, and not the crappy fill-ins that they secured when Alyssa Milano and Shannon Doherty wanted off the show. Heh.

Geezus, I just admitted to knowing something about Charmed, didn’t I? Does that mean that people are going to by this? Or does it mean that, like me, they’re going to feel a deep sense of shame when they realize they know about Charmed? Developing.

Moving on, not a whole heck of a lot jumping out at me in the books & magazines section… and that’s it. Just the wasteland of products beyond.

Well, while it took… 5 days this month, I want to thank everyone who read. I hope you found something cool in the Previews, and I hope you’ll tell your local comic book store to make sure to bring it in for you and other folks at the shop, and I hope the industry doesn’t collapse between now and when it’s supposed to ship…! :)

- Christopher

April 2010 Previews - Front Cover

So usually I liveblog my initial reactions to The PREVIEWS catalogue — the main ordering catalogue through which most retailers order most of their comics and graphic novels product from Diamond Comics Distributors — on the day before or day that the order that has to be placed from that catalogue is due. It’s just the way it goes at the store, a thousand other things going on.

But not this time. You see this time, The Previews is due during the week of The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, a big comics event in Toronto that I happen to be in charge of putting together. And you know what I’m not gonna have time for? 18 hours of going through Previews. So I figured that since I’m supposed to be working anyway today, I’d just do that whole order now. It does take a considerable ammount of the… urgency… out of my responses to do it with basically an open deadline, but I wanna be done this whole thing by midnight, tonight, and that should be incentive enough to tear through… And hey, since I’m actually doing this weeks before the Previews is due, it might actually be of use to someone trying to figure out what to buy…! It’s nice to be helpful.

Alright, ready? Let’s go through the Previews catalogue.

April 2010 Previews Back Cover

2:20pm: The front cover image this month is that Green Arrow piece, a character subject to some of the worst writing over the past few months. Awful, implausibly bad stuff. And now the series is getting it’s third relaunch in 3 or 4 years…? Terrible. The back cover is for another novel-to-comics adaptation, this time from Dark Horse. Didn’t we have one of those last month…? Or is this the same thing…? Either way, it’s nice to see something a)not superheroes and b) intended for a female audience on the cover of The Previews… That’s a VERY rare thing.

2:24pm: Page 1 has a WHAT MAKES A HERO ad featuring the BPRD… Dark Horse has been running these all-purpose BPRD ads for a few months now, I suppose trying to push the (large) superhero audience to read a slightly different sort of Superhero book. By all accounts this is very good stuff, it’s one of our best-selling monthly comics at The Beguiling, so I feel like it has a wide crossover…

2:27pm: Who is Previews for? Previews is for people who read Previews. Check this out from page 4′s “Previews Art Gallery” section:

Bad Girls Forever, my friends.

2:38pm: Uh… Adrian Brody and Samuel L. Jackson are in a new PREDATOR movie? And that movie is called PREDATORS? I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous, particularly because now all I can think of is To Catch A Predator which turns this whole exercise into a Robot Chicken sketch. Meanwhile, if’n you’re looking for a 4 issue prequel mini-series (that will be collected in trade imminently) to all of this, Dark Horse has got you covered on page 27, for $2.99 a pop.

2:42pm: Okay, I’m losing my mind because I swear I ordered Troublemaker Book One (Dark Horse, $17.99, Page 32) last month… Lemmie check this.

Hah! Yeah, I knew I did:

DARK HORSE
GEM	MAR10 0015	JANET EVANOVICH TROUBLEMAKER HC BOOK 01 (C: 0-1-2)	$17.99	07/20/10 06/10/10

So why is this in here again? Especially with nothing telling folks it’s solicited a second time?

It’s clearer in the order-form, that we can order it under last month’s code if we want to, but… I dunno, I just feel like there should be a slug or burst or something in the actual previews catalog that spells it out, “Hey, this has a final order date of June 10th, order by then!”. Common courtesy.

2:48pm: So on page 37 we’ve got GROO: THE HOGS OF HORDER trade paperback, collecting the recent mini-series rather pricely at 120 pages for $17.99. That’s almost IDW pricing. Meanwhile, pages 38-39 have a plethora of Usagi Yojimbo, with new “remastered artwork and new story notes” in brand new editions of Usagi Yojimbo Volume 8, 9, and 10. These are great books… It never occurs to me to really get out there and mention it because Usagi and Stan Sakai are such an industry institution, but these really are fantastic books. If you’ve never read Usagi pick up a book, you won’t be disappointed.

2:53pm: I almost feel like I shouldn’t bother mentioning it because it’ll probably get cancelled and resolicited again, but Dark Horse has CAGES by Dave McKean in a brand new softcover edition for $29.99, incredibly affordable for a long out-of-print book. It’s another classic, and a must read for both its visual and narrative ingenuity. That’s on page 40.

Meanwhile, on page 41 comes “MOGWORLD”, a novel from Yahtzee, the fella who does those fantastic ZERO PUNCTUATION video game reviews. Normally we stay away from novels at the store, but I’d say that this one has all the makings of a genuine hit, and I’m looking forward to having a copy for myself… $7.99 for 350 pages.

I should point out here that though both of these books are being solicited in The April 2010 Previews Catalog for items beginning to ship in June 2010, they both have August in-store dates. And CAGES has already missed it’s first in-store and needed to be resolicited. So… Grain of salt, folks. Grain of salt.

3:14pm: Sinful admission time: I am glad they are being produced, but I generally don’t care about classic comic strip reprints. Like… at all. I’ve even been told (repeatedly) that I would really like a couple of them, but I have no enthusiasm for them at all. I promise one day to at least commit to reading a whole tome of unfunny 70 year old ‘gags’ just out of spite. But that day is not today.

3:15pm: Check out this cover on from ABE SAPIEN: THE ABYSSAL PLAIN #1 (page 44):

Dave Johnson did that one, it’s quite nice. It’s also the exact opposite of a BPRD cover, which tend to have very rigid cover treatments, and have for more than 11 volumes of material now. Interesting to see how this one goes over, or if they just cram it into the existing cover style.

3:20pm: Okay, I’m too much of a nerd to let this one go, but: NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: CAMPUS APOCALYPSE VOLUME 1 is a shoujo manga (girls’ comic) reimagining of the giant robot anime as a boarding school secrets sort of thing, and it all sounds ludicrous and kind of fun, too. Like, way too serious and angsty, but that’s the point? Anyway I’m going to have to at least try to read it.

3:55pm: Back! So now we’re at page 64 and DC Comics. A tale of two properties here, with Superman #700 weighing in at 56 pages and $4.99 on the left page, and Batman #700 weighing in at 56 pages and $4.99 on the right page. Honestly? Our sales on Batman are roughly FIVE TIMES AS HIGH as they are on Superman, and ordering responsibly (and that means ignoring rounding-up the numbers to get extra variant covers–a 1:25 and 1:75 on each book) means that I wouldn’t qualify for any variants at all on the Superman book. I know there are a hundred and one excuses as to why Superman is in the toilet, but the buck stops at Dan DiDio and I kinda wish he’d just step up and say “hey, i totally fucked up. Sorry.” because the last 2 years of superman comics have been DOA, sales-wise.

4:03pm: I didn’t really talk about the books, there, just bitched, but I’m relatively happy to see Morrison back on the main BATMAN book, and Straczynski taking over Superman will be interesting. I mention that because page 66 has the news that JMS is also taking over Wonder Woman with the anniversary issue #600. I remember the hype and fanfare around the series when Gail Simone took over as writer–”For the first time ever, a woman writing the ongoing Wonder Woman book!” Though that announcement had its caveats, I do think it was a noteworthy event, and Simone is doing some good stuff on the series. Kinda sucks to get bumped off the book like that.

4:15pm: I’m still here, I just don’t have a lot to say about the DC stuff so far. “Brightest Day” Flash #3 has a blood-splattered hero on the cover, with a chalk-outline being drawn around him… Like… I wonder if these people even read their own press releases any more? That doesn’t seem very Brightest Day to me, you know? Seems like Exactly The Same As The Last 10 Years.

4:21pm: Now that’s a pretty nice cover:

That’s the cover to Batman Beyond #1, by Dustin Nguyen. Interior art is by Ryan Benjamin, whom I also dig. See, that looks like a sharp, stylish, contemporary comic book. That looks like something I can sell… I have no idea if it will sell.

4:24pm: Page 80. So I know I kind of ‘knew’ this, but I was surprised flipping the page here to see BATMAN & ROBIN #13, with art by the awesome Frazier Irving and still written by Grant Morrison. That makes 3 Morrison Batman books coming out this month, which… you’d think that’s overkill, but really, it’s all been selling great. Actually, issues 4-6 of B&R aside, it’s been selling great too. But yeah, I had thought that with Morrison’s return to the main series, and the Bruce Wayne book, that this was the end of B&R. I’m very glad indeed that it is not. :)

Just below that on page 80 is a Dennis O’Neil done-in-one story with art by Dustin Nguyen in Detective Comics #866, which should help soften the blow of a Rucka-less Detective… at least for a month or so.

4:36pm: So the Legion can’t seem to support itself for more than 12 issues at a go before needing a team reboot or a creative team reboot, but now there are two ongoing Legion books? Adventures Comics and The Legion of Superheroes? Both written by Paul Levitz? That seems… well not “Overkill” exactly, as both Marvel and DC have gone way past overkill into a whole new territory of making-the-Lorax-weep-at-the-waste-of-trees, but it seems like throwing money away doesn’t it? Why have one Legion book that not-enough people want to read when we can have two?

Bizarre.

4:41pm: Hah! Here’s how to do a bloody and bruised hero without it seeming grim and stupid:

Left: Booster Gold #32, solicited last month. Right: Booster Gold #33, solicited this month (page 90, $2.99). Art by Kevin Maguire. Click for larger.

So, yeah, there you go, that’s kind of amazing actually.

4:49pm: Huh, last issues for the two Archie books… Sorry “The Red Circle” books, the shield and the web. I am… unsurprised. I didn’t really see DC needing yet another bunch of superheroes. I only hope they don’t waste our time and shelf-space producing trade paperbacks of these awful, pointless, failed series. Page 95 though if you’re curious.

4:56pm: Since I did not do this last month, I missed the chance to express shock and amazement that Paul Dini had been allowed to write an ongoing ZATANNA mini-series! That’s pretty exciting, actually, as Morrison’s Seven Soldiers mini was really great reading (with gorgeous Ryan Sook art…) and Dini has an affection for the character that comes through in the writing, it makes for a fun time. I’m expecting good things out of this one. Zatanna #2 is on page 96, features lovely art by Stephane Roux, and is $2.99.

5:01pm: I know that it’s a clever writers’ trick to say, ask DC not to publish an unsellable piece of trash and then see that piece of trash 5 pages later in the catalogue, but I swear I did not employ that here. I am _genuinely mystified_ as to why DC would publish THE SHIELD: KICKING DOWN THE DOOR containing the relaunch of the character, on page 99. $14.99 for 160 pages that could have been better served by just donating money to the homeless. Seriously, the series isn’t that bad, it’s not a crime against humanity or anything, but it’s an abject and undeniable sales and creative failure. Why is DC committing that material to a ‘permanent’ edition, when it’s pretty clear that there’s NO audience for it? Why are they wasting my time as a retailer asking me to order this, when 5 pages earlier they cancelled the series and told me ‘no one wants this’. Is tricking JMS’ fanbase into buying bad comics in the book-trade their new sales tactic?

Mind-boggling. Seriously.

Oh and that Red Tornado trade paperback on the same page ain’t no prize either.

Gaaah... How did ANYONE think that was a good idea?

5:11pm: Superman: Secret Origin Deluxe Edition HC. Well, this is just-about the last time I’m going to have to see the creepy-child-with-Christopher-Reeve-Death-Mask drawn by Gary Frank and Jonathan Sibal, so that’s good. This is a pretty enjoyable series (plagued with delays… I think the last issue is still-to-come) but man, drawing a young Clark Kent like an adult Christopher Reeve? I cannot stress how bad an idea that is, that should have occurred to everyone early on. Page 101 for the $30, 240 page HC.

5:31pm: A highly-demanded reprint volume, though the cover price of $40 for the 80-page “facsimile edition” is out to lunch… DC’s last round of Treasury-sized books were the Dini/Ross collaborations and they were 10 bucks a pop! The smaller “Deluxe” edition is a slightly more reasonable $20, and 96 pages with a bunch of extra material and a new cover by Neal Adams.

I’m not trying to talk anyone in-to or out-of a purchasing decision here, if you want this in the big size then that’s how you want it, no problems. I just wish DC could’ve been a bit more reasonable with the pricing.

5:40pm: Tom Strong and the Robots of Doom #1, featuring the return of Alan Moore’s pulp-novel pastiche character in a story by Peter Hogan, whose writing I’ve been pretty ambivalent about, and Chris Sprouse and Karl Story, who I’m very excited to see return to the character…! Honestly I’m pretty surprised to see any new ABC comics at all… Though they could hardly fare worse than the red circle stuff. Page 107, six issue mini-series at $3.99 a pop, from Wildstorm.

6:11pm: Sorry, got a little distracted there.

So! Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader, two out gay comics creators who’ve done work for DC in the past, are the newest creative team to tackle one of the Vertigo Crime graphic novels. According to our official reader of these books, Jason Azzopardi, “Milligan’s is the first one that was readable,” referring to Peter Milligan’s Bronx Kill released a month-or-so back, and the fifth or sixth in the line…! This is not a line that has been getting good reviews. So when I hear that two out gay comics creators are going to tell a story about a deeply-closted private investigator in 1950s San Francisco, my feelings switch back and forth between anticipation and apprehension so fast it’d make other, weaker men a little dizzy. I want this one to be good, but I don’t have high hopes given its contemporaries. Still, come August 4th I will be checking out Fogtown, 176 pages, $19.99, Page 114. I’ve got my fingers crossed…

Actually, here’s something. In the Previews, Fogtown is listed as a hard cover. But at the DC/Vertigo site it’s listed as a softcover. Here’s hoping that it’s the ‘official’ site that’s in error, because dropping this down to a sc (the only one in the line) with no reduction in price would be pretty lame.

6:22pm: And speaking of original Vertigo hard covers, the facing page (115) has DARK RAIN: A NEW ORLEANS STORY. Seems like a straight-ahead crime/caper story set in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, by the creative team of Incognegro. Except this one is full-size, and $24.99 instead of being smaller and $19.99. Doesn’t make much sense to me…

6:25pm: Huh, well I lost that bet.

Fables: Covers by James Jean – New Printing HC
Written by JAMES JEAN • Afterword by BILL WILLINGHAM • Art and cover by JAMES JEAN

Due to popular demand, this collection of James Jean’s FABLES covers is back in print! The deluxe, oversized hardcover includes 10 vellum sleeve inserts, an embossed case and commentary from Jean, making it as elegantly unique as the FABLES covers themselves.

Vertigo 208pg. Color Oversized Hardcover $49.99 US Mature Readers
On Sale October 6, 2010

So, I know it’s only their job to make this clear and easy to understand in the solicitations, but it would have been nice if they could have actually done that. As far as I can piece together, the “new printing” of this book actually isn’t just a new printing. It’s now going to come with a slipcase (which the first one did not have), and 10 vellum inserts (which the first one did not have), and it’s going to cost $10 more. Considering the market for this book is collectors, it would have been nice if the solicits in Previews, the catalog for collectors, were presented in such a way as to imply DC gives a shit about this book, because currently, it is not presented in that way. The new information is just sort of lain there on the page with no extra info.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the new ‘vellum inserts’ will contain the FABLES cover images that were not collected in the book, thereby wrapping up all of Jean’s work on the series. I would also hazard a guess that the slipcase & images will be made available separately at some point in the future, for the thousands of people who bought the book the first time it came out and didn’t get the bonus material.

All in all though, an EXCEPTIONALLY poorly written solicitation. Shameful, really.

I don’t generally mention series that are still ongoing, but I did want to give a nod to Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy’s Joe The Barbarian, which I am really enjoying. The 6th issue hits in June, and I liked this cover. I think the final colours will be nice too. That’s all :) Page 121, $2.99.

6:53pm: And that takes us to Im… no, it takes us to IDW! That’s right, April 2010 is the first month that IDW books gets to sit at the grown-up table at the front of the catalogue. Congrats to everyone there for their hard work.

Unfortunately for retailers, literally nothing changes for us. Same discount (lower than the rest of the premier publishers), same reorder penalty, same everything. Kinda disappointing, as I think whatever benefits that IDW would have gained by the move will be somewhat tempered by the similar terms… Here’s hoping I’m wrong though.

Meanwhile, IDW starts their move off with… a licensed book based on a movie. Not personally thrilling, but the writer is Bob Schreck in his first post-DC outing, and it comes witha variant cover by Frank Miller? That’s kind of a big deal. The interior art shown on the page honestly doesn’t thrill me, but with Jurassic Park being one of the best-selling books and movies of all time, and this being a direct sequel to the first film, Jurassic Park: Redemption #1 (it’s official title) will definitely have its fans. Page 140, $3.99.

7:02pm: James Patterson continues to sell very well in the states while remaining virtually unknown in Canada, it’s kind of amazing. This month debuts another of his many comics projects, The Murder of King Tut #1, $3.99, page 148. Nice Darwyn Cooke cover there, working in a style similar to his Shuster Awards poster from a couple years back.

7:13pm: Going through the catalogue here, it ocurrs to me that a) there are a _lot_ of second issues in here, for series’ whose launches would’ve been better served in this catalogue than in the last, and b) there are no relists/offered agains for a lot of this product, where something like Love & Capes Volume 2: Going to the Chapel (p.159, 192 pages, $19.99) is probably being seen by a LOT of retailers for the very first time (yes, despite FCBD and everything else), and being able to conveniently order v1 at the same time would’ve been a boon… Seems like a bit of a missed opportunity.

Meanwhile,  TRIBES: THE DOG YEARS ($24.99, 200 pages, page 159) looks like the sort of weird/neat sci fi graphic novel we’d get if we lived in France or something, about a world where adults have been wiped out and only tribes of kids remain in a sort of bloody series of battles. It also sounds exactly like the late-90s tv series THE TRIBE, about exactly the same thing, though the solicit info doesn’t mention anything to do with any of that. I certainly hope this is a licensed product, or there’ll be one hell of a lawsuit coming down the pipe…

7:22pm: it’s been quite a while since there’ve been Felix The Cat comics in print, and it looks like IDW will be bringing bat the classic Otto Messmer Dell/Harvey stories in Felix The Cat: The Great Comic Book Tails (p164, $34.99, 224 pages, hardcover). Edited by Craig Yoe.

–

5:35am: Well hello there! So right around 7:30 I went for dinner, came home, had a nap, and woke up about 20 minutes ago. So, hopefully you weren’t waiting up all night for me. Or if you were: I’m starting to update again, you can head to bed now if you want. :)

So we’re on page 167, which is the announcement of creator-owned book HACK/SLASH debuting at Image. To announce this, the lead character has a baseball bat pointing directly at her vajayjay, and one of her combat boots improbably pointed inwards and upwards to do the same.  Also “Kiss It” is written ON the bat, which is hovering over her vajayjay. Don’t believe me?

HACK SLASH COMES TO IMAGE: HEY, DID YOU NOTICE MY VAJAYJAY?

Now the question becomes: Did the artist do that on purpose, or is it all subconscious?

5:45am: That’s the thing about Image, the first page is… well, the above… and then you flip the page and it’s like you’re in a whole ‘nother publisher’s section. The Bulletproof Coffin #1 has a sort of a lovely Geoff Darrow, late-80s/early 90s alternative comics thing going on, courtesy of David Hine and Shaky Kane. I’m not familiar with Mr. Kane’s ouevre of alt-brit comics, but he certainly seems to be well regarded on the net and the whole thing owes a debt to utterly bizarre… well, Wikipedia says Silver Age but the whole thing has a sort of an anything-goes Golden Age quality to it, at least from the description. Here’s the solicit:

ALL NEW SIX-ISSUE SERIES! Relive the Golden Age of comics! The Legendary Kane and Hine return to their greatest creations! SEE! Coffin Fly Vs. Zombie Nam Vets! The Shield of Justice walks the Dead Beat! The Unforgiving Eye sees all, forgives nothing! Red Wraith: He’s red! He’s dead! Ramona: Buxom, Beautiful and Bound! Big 2 Publishing, eat your heart out!

See, sounds like fun, right? And it looks like Geof Darrow! Win-win. And it comes on page 168, for $3.99, just after HackSlash. America, what a country!

5:59am: I don’t want to make this the month where Chris Talks About Sexism In The Previews Catalogue, and I know mags like Heavy Metal have a long and proud history of doing exactly, this, but… The bad-ass chick with a gun that is otherwise heavily clothed for a cold, outdoor mission, has her flight suit unzipped to her ribcage to show off her tits, and a come-hither look.

I get it, I get it, sex sells, etc., but does stupidity also sell? This book takes place on the equivalent of the ice planet of Hoth, according to the preview pages… All of the dudes are covered head-to-toes, and it is freezing and snowy with steam rising out of their wounds… And this chick is like “Hey boys, look at this!”

It’s just fucking dumb.

That’s Dust Wars #1 (Seriously, I think it was supposed to be like Dust: Wars but yeah, even the title is dumb) on page 176. $2.99, 1 of 3.

6:05am: And again, washing the unplesant taste out of my mouth, page 178 has META 4, a brand new 5 issue series from Ted McKeever for $3.50 an issue.  It sounds really, really Ted McKeevery. But the preview art looks lovely, I gotta say. There’s a page with a Ferris Wheel on fire. Nifty.

Oh, and then on page 181 is SEA BEAR AND GRIZZLY SHARK by Ryan Ottley and Jason Howard, which I feel is some sort of in-joke that I heard about and cannot remember, but it’s about a shark who stalks his prey on land and a bear who roams the seas, what else do you really need to know? $4.99 for 48 b&w pages.

6:12am: It looks like Image is comitted to keeping Garth Ennis, Amanda Conner, and Jimmy Palmiotti’s THE PRO in print, as that book gets another edition on page 182, 72 pages for $7.99. Speaking of new editions, Doug Tenapel’s CREATURE TECH gets its first Image edition (produced many moons ago by Top Shelf) for $17.99 on page 183.

6:17am: The Walking Dead Volume 12 is solicited on page 185, due out on June 2nd. That’s good news. :)

6:33am: Ah, the Marvel section of the catalogue. I have to say that I’m actually getting a little sleepy here, I’m not normally up at 6:34am and my post-dinner sleep could best be described as ‘restless’. I think maybe I’ll finish off this section and then go back for a nap before it’s time to go to work… in 4 hours. :-/

So whaddawegot? p4 Marvelman Primer, a stop-gap nothing of a release, 26 pages of text, 6 illustrations, almost no creative costs and they’re charging 4 bucks for it. ARE people so desperate to get Marvelman/Miracleman anything that they’re willing to pay $4 for advertising material? Or no. I’m betting on no, orders-wise.

p13. At least when that pale vampire dude in Anita Blake unbuttons his shirt to show off his tits, he’s safely indoors where they won’t get frostbitten. Also, he’s a vampire so he probably doesn’t feel cold.

p.16. X-Campus is… a reimagining of the X-Men mythos as if they were all in highschool at the same time. It’s a neat idea, one I’ve had myself, a bit like the movies too actually. It’s Marvel’s version of the European graphic album, but for some reason they stuck a Todd Nauck cover on it… Anyway, looks interesting. 2 issues, 28 pages and $4.99 each.

… sorry, was reading. Kinda lost interest in the Marvel section. It’s all a bit rote, isn’t it? Anyway, thanks for reading! I’ll be back with part two –the back of the catalogue — at some point soon.

- Chris

Sorry i got a late start, I was actually finishing my Marvel numbers. Did you know that, not counting posters, Marvel has 215 line items of product this month? Lots of variant covers in there, but it all takes time to count, and rack. I checked the previews order from 3 years ago and there were only 113 line items. They’ve doubled their output in 3 years, which is… well, it explains why there’s so little space on our shelves. But, and here’s the kicker, we’re only ordering about 15% more Marvel books total. A 90% increase in line items for a 15% increase in sales. That’s fucked-up.

3:02pm: Actually, speaking of continuing on from yesterday, I was pretty gung-ho about the Adam Hughes artbook COVER RUN from DC yesterday, but a commenter pointed out the ‘fine print’ of the solicit, that the book isn’t complete but is instead a ‘best of’, AND it’s printed at regular comic book size. At 208 pages for $40 for an incomplete book, my estimation of the project has dropped considerably… as have my sales. So, sorry I got that one wrong, I’ll go back and ammend after I get this done.

3:05pm: Okay, so here we are on page 186! It’s good to see GROWING UP ENCHANTED in print again, as it was an early for-kids series that maybe was ahead of the graphic novel curve. Luckily AAM Markosia is bringing the work back as a graphic novel, $9.95, 112 pages. Hopefully we can get it locally as well (I think the creators are in Ottawa) because Diamond’s discount on Markosia is pretty awful. :-/

Meanwhile, same page, TERRY MOORE’S ECHO continues with a fourth collection, COLLIDER, for $16. Moore’s quick, non-arc oriented 5 issue collections are really handy at keeping the series in print for both audiences, I kind of wish more serial comics guys were following his model. I guess Jeff Smith is with his collections every 3 issues, but those aren’t coming out at quite the same pace as Moore’s new series.

And a couple of reprints (same page)! SLG has a new printing of perennial favourite JONNY THE HOMICIDAL MANIAC: DIRECTOR’S CUT for $21.95, and Phil Foglio’s Airship Entertainment has a long-awaited new printing of GIRL GENIUS VOLUME 2 for $22.95. Oh, and I mis-read. GIRL GENIUS VOLUME 9: AGATHA HETERODYNE AND THE HEIRS OF THE STORM is in fact all new, and comes in a $22.95 softcover or a $48.95 hardcover.

3:23pm: And here we are, page 192 and Avatar seems to have just-about their cleanest layout ever. It’s still not… good. Like I still don’t think their guys have any design training (inconsistent margins are the obvious giveaway), but, yeah, at least I can tell which solicit refers to which book. On that note, book of the month from them is THE LITTLEST ZOMBIE #1, because zombies still sell and it’s written and drawn by Fred perry (Gold Digger), and his fans will buy anything he does (as long as he does the whole thing).  Ben Dunn’s… tightly… photo ref’d Robin Hood is just weird.

3:27pm: So, I don’t know how to say this because… well, I have a lot of friends doing licensed books. But seriously? Archaia’s FRAGGLE ROCK #1 may be one of the nicest-looking licensed books of ALL TIME. The image in the previews catalogue is pretty shitty, it doesn’t look even half as good as the preview art I saw, so i went and grabbed the cover from the website. Check this out:

Like, where do you even start with that? They’re photo-reference digital painting fraggles. That’s fucking gorgeous. Those are some pretty, pretty Fraggles. Oh, and you can click for larger.

Fraggles.

Anyway, FRAGGLE ROCK #1 is $3.95, 32 pages, and follows on the free comic book day preview story.

3:46pm: The “Tasty” cover of Crossed #7 features baby-eating.  But more fucked up than that.

3:57pm: Just realized I haven’t really had a lot to say about the last few pages. I do think that it’s neat that Page 230 has STAN DRAKE’S THE HEART OF JULIET JONES VOL 1 from Classic Comics Press. That should make a few of our customers very happy indeed… And who would’ve thought that Mary Perkins On Stage would’ve gone for 7 volumes now?

4:37pm: Jeez, sorry folks. I do this while working at the store, and sometimes I gotta stop typing and stop ordering comics and help some customers out. It makes my job a little harder, but at least I am helping the customers out… Oh, and we’re also putting in tons of new shelving at the moment, so it’s noisy as fuck in here. Ah well.

So where were we?

Page 235 has KEVIN SMITH’S GREEN HORNET #2, though the first issue actually drops tomorrow and I’m really anxious about how it’s going to sell. I kinda wish I could set my numbers after seeing the actual in-shop reaction. What makes me doubly anxious is that this month D.E. launch two more Green Hornet Ongoing Series, YEAR ONE and KATO. I hear next month they launch two more.

Remember what I said up top about Marvel Comics releasing twice as many series for an extremely marginal increase in sales? These are the lessons that the industry is learning, and it’s a fucking nightmare… particularly if you’re trying to figure out how to order this shit.

5:08pm: Fuck, it is busy today.

So we’re on page 258, Gestalt publishing has “Changing Ways” by a fella named Justin Randall. It looks alright, but I almost 0′d out my order for it. Why? Because the solicit information is a plot synopsis. It doesn’t tell me anything about why I should order a 120 page book for $18. I’d never heard of it before page 258 of the previews catalogue. I googled the author, and his homepage is the first search result for his name (good for him). It’s a photo-ref’d work, looks a little Ben Templesmithy in a good way. It turns out this creator has pro credits on: “30 Days of Night, Silent Hill, The Executioner, Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, 24Seven, Popgun, and Flinch” amongst other stuff, and he’s a University lecturer and commercial illustrator. All of that would’ve been a lot more helpful to me, when it came to ordering this book, than a sort-of interesting plot synopsis. That “volume 1″ on the cover is a piss-off too, because it implies that this 120 pages for $18 isn’t even a complete story.

So, yeah. I am an open-minded retailer, but even I’m not ordering everything in the catalogue. Pubs, creators, SELL ME on your work, on your book as a project. Don’t just pitch me on the story, because that’s just not enough. I need to know if your stuff is gonna sell.

More on Changing Ways at http://www.changingwaysbook.com/.

5:17pm: Meanwhile:

SQUEEEEEE. LAST UNICORN COMICS. IDW, page 259, 4 issue mini-series for $3.99 each. I’m likely going to wait for the trade on this one, but man, does this thing look pretty. That’s the Variant cover by Frank Stockton, the regular cover is lovely too.

EDIT: 8:39pm: The writer of KILL SHAKESPEARE #1 (page 263, IDW, 32 pages for 3.99) showed up to remind me that his book exists. Seriously, I am very sorry for having forgotten it. We’re ordering like a hundred copies. We’re doing a special signing with the entire creative team, including writers mcCreery and Del Col, Artist Andy Belanger, and Cover Artist Kagan McLeod, to celebrate the release of the first issue. It’s basically Shakespeare’s characters meets Marvel’s SECRET WARS, where they all end up on an island together and fight. It sounds great, we’re totally excited about it, and my excuse for having missed it on the first pass is that it was my 400th consecutive page of solicits (counting Marvel’s book) without a break.

Anyway! Seriously, check it out, it should be really neat. Website at http://killshakespeare.com/

5:23pm: Page 264? Sorry IDW, you heard mommy. No more Wire Hangers.

5:24pm: “I am shocked by the world’s appetite for Ashley Wood,” says my co-worker, and I may agree with him but I’m still looking forward to ASHLEY WOOD’S FUCK IT! #1, a 12×12 inch magazine assembled by Wood and co. I am expecting to sell quite a few of this one, as it’s about all kinds of artists (including Wood), and we haven’t really hit the ceiling yet for cool art magazines. I’m sure it’s coming though. 48 pages, $9.99, page 264.

5:35pm: Holy shit a Danger Girl HC. Coming in between Absolute Danger Girl ($75 360 pages, 8.5×13), and the softcover Danger Girl Ultimate Collection ($20, 256 pages, 7×10) is IDW’s new edition, DANGER GIRL: THE DELUXE EDITION HC ($50, 262 pages, 8×12). With a cheap softcover still in print from DC and 10,000 copies of the Absolute out there with another 100 pages of bonus material… I have no idea who the audience for this is supposed to be. And I’m actually a Danger Girl fan (secret shame, I know I know).

5:46pm: And IDW closes out their section with one of my picks for book-of-the-month with SWORD OF MY MOUTH, the new graphic novel from Jim Munroe and Shanon Gerard. Set in the same world as Munroe’s hit graphic novel THEREFORE, REPENT! the book follows survivors of what some people believe to be “The Rapture” to the burned out hollow of Detroit. Munroe’s first graphic novel (with Salgood Sam on art duties) is a great read, and I’m expecting similarly great things from this new sci-fi/fantasy entry. Don’t let the religious tagline of the series, A POST-RAPTURE GRAPHIC NOVEL, fool you. This isn’t about religion so much as it’s about humanity and belief, and it’s great.

Full disclosure: Jim has become a friend over the years of working here at The Beguiling, and SWORD OF MY MOUTH is likely to debut at or around TCAF this year. I’d buy it anyway though :)

6:11pm: Actually, I forgot to type anything this time, and got ahead of myself. Speaking of TCAF dudes, Dash Shaw’s BODYWORLD HC is on page 283, and it’s gonna run $27.95 for 384 pages. It’s going to collect Shaw’s outstanding webcomic, and by all accounts the package is going to be as fascinating as the contents. Good stuff.

Same page, RAW Jr has the third Benny & Penny kids book, THE TOY BREAKER, which sounds kind of hilarious and amazing. $12.95 in HC.

6:16pm: Top Shelf has got a whole bunch of Swedish cartoonists with new work this month, which is really exciting! A bunch of pro-level guys with interesting artistic styles. I’m pretty excited about these books. For more on all of them, head over to Top Shelf’s recently re-designed website at http://www.topshelfcomix.com/news/521.

6:19pm: Because of the way I order manga (months and months in advance), my immense enthuiasm for the new SigIkki solicitations in this issue of Previews has dulled somewhat. But that said, I’ve greatly enjoyed all I’ve read of I’LL GIVE IT MY ALL TOMORROW by Shunju Aono and SATURN APARTMENTS VOLUME 1 by Hisae Iwaoka ($12.99 each, about 200 pages, page 301) and I strongly recommend you check them both out. Actually, rather than wait for the books in a few months, here’s yet another reminder to head over to http://sigikki.com and read a bunch of chapters of these, and other series, for free.

6:28pm: As we reach the end of the Comics section, we happen upon the nice folks at Vertical who are bringing Osaum Tezuka’s ODE TO KIRIHITO back into print in two volumes ($14.95, about 400 pages each), which is lovely.

But for hardcore fans, the real news this month is the release of TWIN SPICA VOLUME 1, at 192 pages for just $10.95.  So far as I can tell, TWIN SPICA is the spiritual successor, at least for more mature manga fans, to PLANETES the critically accclaimed (though low-selling) sci-fi series from Tokyopop. TWIN SPICA follows a group of teenagers in Japan’s Astronaut vocational school, and sets their everyday lives against the larger concerns of manned interplanetary spaceflight, politics, and social commentary. It’s supposed to be very good, and I have to admit I’m pretty stoked about it now myself… and I really had no interest initially when I saw the cover. I have a feeling this is going to fly under the radars of some sci-fi and manga fans who might otherwise write it off as yet another ‘cute girl’ series, and that would be a shame. Looking forward to the first volume.

Edit: The previews lists this first volume as being 480 pages. That is incorrect.

6:40pm: What the hell, I’m making good time. Let’s go through the books section.

Page 313 & 314 have the first two books in the NATE BANKS novel/comics hybrid series from Scholastic, with art by mini-Marvels creator Chris Giarusso (who apparently doesn’t get cover credit at Scholastic: Lame.)

Page 314 sees the soliciation of ART IN TIME: UNKNOWN COMIC ADVENTURES 1940-1980 HC by Dan Nadel, a sequel to the groundbreaking ART OUT OF TIME collection, which explores a bevvy of pre- and post-code comics that will blow your mind! That’s $40 in hardcover for 300 pages or so, from Abrams. Dan’s going to be at TCAF hyping this one too, which is pretty exciting for me. :)

Page 314 also has the new COMIC HEROES MAGAZINE #1, a movie-oriented magazine from the SFXmagazine people out of the UK. Apparently it comes with free Watchmen 1″ pins, which, if you know about Alan Moore and Watchmen, is kind of hilarious and ironic. 132 page magazine for… whoa! $19.99! Holy shit. How much is that on newstands I wonder?

Page 322 has INSTRUCTIONS, the new children’s book from Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, following up on the spectacular success of their BLUEBERRY GIRL collaboration last year. Instructions will set you back fifteen bucks for 40 pages of beautiful art and what is sure to be a charming story. Oh, and Previews has f’d this one up too, claiming it to be 160 pages. Oh, Previews.

6:59pm: And we’re done.

Well, we’re not done. I still have to go through and add in the customer special orders, then do the data entry and upload. I’ll be here late! But the hard work is over.

Thanks to everyone for reading. Peace out!

- Chris

6:55pm: The Covers this month are… well the Iron Man one is nice, the Brightest Day one is meh, but at least they’re both tied to salable product. And have no doubt, both of those products will sell well.

It is nice when the ordering catalogue I order my comics from is interested in helping me sell comics…

7:01pm: Man, I’m not even going to pretend to read those front pages of the previews catalogue this month. I can’t deal. I will just jump right into Page 25: Dark Horse!

Page 26 actually. We got an original series from DH called “HELLCYON” which is… a dude in an orange Kaneda-from-Akira jumpsuit on a bitchin motorcycle that ALSO turns into a robot. Looks like a sort of “sum of its parts” thing for people that are livid that there isn’t a volume 7 of Akira. I am not against this, but it doesn’t look like it’s bringing a lot to the party.

Meanwhile, Page 33 sees a resolicit for THE END LEAGUE VOLUME 2, which now collects the entire last half of the series. I have no idea if this series ended well, or if it even ends rather than just… stops… due to lack of sales? Ihope it’s a good conclusion, I really liked the first half.

7:09pm: Still on DH, page 35: 600 page omnibus featuring ALL of Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons’ MARTHA WASHINGTON? For $30? Sounds like a plan. THE LIFE TIMES OF MARTHA WASHINGTON IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY drops June 30th.

Hahaha… oh shit, I totally just laughed out loud. Apparently on page 36 they are, in fact, re-soliciting Jim Steranko’s RED TIDE, which may have been solicited during the very first month I worked as a comics retailer…. in like 1997 or something? Hey, I hope it comes out, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

7:19pm: Page 44 has a brand new HELLBOY collection! VOL 10: THE CROOKEDMAN AND OTHERS collects the Mignola/Corben mini-series, and a couple of short stories and one shots not previously collected. All for $18, June 23rd.

7:21pm: Flipping the page reveals one of my favourite books of the month…! BEASTS OF BURDEN HC collects the recent 4-issue mini-series from Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson, one of my favourite minis of 2009 and a gripping, funny, beautiful adventure story on the whole. It also includes all of the “Dark Horse Book Of…” prequel short stories and maybe some extras. 168 pages for 20 bucks in hardcover, coming June 16th.

Seriously, one of the best books in the catalogue this month! Pick this one up, or at check out the single issues still available from better comic book stores everywhere…

7:27pm: In the category of delightful extravagances comes THE ART OF BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL on page 50, a 160 page hardcover for $29.99. BotI creator Hiroaki Samura is an amazing illustrator as well as being a great comics guy, should be a lovely book…

7:30pm: And now we’re onto the DC COMICS section, page 63. I don’t really have a lot to add about the Brightest Day stuff. It’s gonna sell to fans of the material, we’ve got really good tracking on it thanks to 9 or 10 months of BLACKEST NIGHT. I will say that I appreciate DC offering full-returnability (with a small penalty) on the first 6 issues to build up interest, that’s definitely the right way to launch a series like this… and That recentlyannounced white ring dealy isn’t going to hurt either. Ultimately, it looks like a successfully-positioned launch. Good for them. (Likewise, I have little to add about Flash or JLA, though at least they managed to get some cover art for JLA this month…)

7:37pm: Meanwhile, I do think it’s very interesting that they’re putting out BLACKEST NIGHT DIRECTOR’S CUT (page 68), which seems to be a bunch of the trade paperback bonus material in its own book. I actually can’t figure out how much to order, because it seems like all the secret-reveals it promises are gonna end up on the internet within hours of being printed… Still, there are a lot of completists out there. I’ll order low and bump it up if we’ve got a lot of pullfile customers who want it.

On page 69 comes the original Joker graphic novel ARKHAM ASYLUM: MADNESS by Sam Kieth. Given how well Arkham Asylum-anything stuff is selling thanks to the game, and with the JOKER ogn firmly in mind, we’ll be doing a solid initial order on this one.

7:46pm: So the FIRST WAVE stuff. I dug that Batman/Doc Savage crossover from a while back, I thought Phil Noto’s art was a nice fit for Azzarello’s script. It updated the characters but didn’t pull things too far away from what people like about them… But the cover for DOC SAVAGE #1 by JG Jones just looks… Stiff? Old? I dunno. I think about how John Cassaday updated the character in Planetary, and that really worked. This… I’m not feeling it.

That said though, THE SPIRIT #1 with a cover by Ladronn? That looks great, really contemporary but still gritty and energetic, and I absolutely love what Tony Harris did for the variant cover on FIRST WAVE #2. I think paying homage to the pulp past but updating the books is the way to go… I’m just not convinced that Jones’ look suits the new direction. Got my fingers crossed though.

8:02pm: I haven’t forgotten about you guys, there was just a whole-lotta nothing in the middle section there. Well, nothing worth pulling out and noting, I guess.

All of that changes on page 87, with the long, long-awaited COVER RUN: THE DC COMICS ART OF ADAM HUGHES. In work for a very long time I believe, this will collect all of Hughes covers in one place, alongside prep-work, commentary, and more. Should basically sell-itself, so long as the presentation and printing are up to snuff. $40 for 208 pages, page 87, HC.

Also on Page 87 is the Deluxe HC collection BATWOMAN: ELEGY, collecting the first 8 issues of Rucka and Williams’ Detective Comics run. The oversized HC will show off Williams’ art very nicely, and at onl $24.95 for 192 pages it’s actually pretty reasonably priced. I’m not usually one for HCs, but given the size and price-point (and Williams being awesome) I might just pick this one up.

8:10pm: Huh, page 90, it looks like starting with the Willingham run onJustice Society, they’re going to skip the ridiculous premiere HCs and go straight to the trade paperback. Our sagging shelves thank you, DC. JUSTICE SOCIETY: BAD SEED is the first out of the gate.

Meanwhile, on the opposite page [91] comes the oversized HC collection of Grant Morrison & Co’s SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY VOLUME 1, weighing in at $40 and 400 pages. Collecting the first half of the series. I’ll be picking that one up.

Ooo, and on page 94 it looks like DC are doing a whole new round of WHAT’S NEXT samplers to introduce people to their trade paperback lines. Anything with a media-tie in it looks like. Check out $1 introductory issues of BATMAN & ROBIN, HUMAN TARGET, GREEN LANTERN, THE LOSERS, and EX MACHINA.

8:19pm: Well that certainly took long enough. Now on issue #15, BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM finally gets a trade paperback collection of the first six issues. 144 pages for $12.99. DC, guys, step it up a little if you can eh?

And while I am speaking to DC’s kids collected editions dept (heh), where are the rest of the themed collections from CARTOON NETWORK ACTION PACK? You guys must’ve done 2 or 3 hundred pages of BEN10 by now. Do you think you could manage a trade paperback collection? Or a new Looney Tunes maybe? It’s a little depressing, given your wealth of material and your vast resources how few kid-oriented collections are coming out. I know the digests didn’t pan out the way that you wanted, but… still…

8:29pm: Apparently it’s THE month for long, long delayed projects! NEIL YOUNG’S GREENDALE HC has been in the works since at least 2007, although the rumours extended back even further. While originally Joe The Barbarian artist Sean Murphy was on board for the book, in between concept and execution the art chores were handed to Cliff Chiang, one of my favourite mainstream comics illustrators. As for the book itself, there’s no previews up online anywhere I could see, but I trust Chiang to deliver a pretty-looking book. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed Dysart’s work, but I’m willing to give it a shot. Either way, it’s going to make a hell of a media splash, particularly here in Canada. We’ll be invested in it. 160 pages of original graphic novel for 20 bucks, drops June 9th.

8:43pm: Page 112, does anyone else think it’s wierd that CODENAME KNOCKOUT VOLUME 1 is getting collected? Did it get optioned somewhere and I missed it? Still, big ups to Robert Rodi for the royalties that’ll get sent his way. :) 160 pages, $19.99, ships May 19th.

Stuck Rubber Baby - New HC edition art by Howard Cruise

8:47pm: Wow, very good month for Vertigo…! On page 118 they’ve got SWEET TOOTH v1: OUT OF THE WOODS, collecting the first 5 issues of Jeff Lemire’s new ongoing series for just $10. Same page has Lemire’s original graphic novel THE NOBODY in softcover for $15. I’m just going to insert a little plug here, and mention that Jeff Lemire will be one of our featured guests at The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, may 8-9 in Toronto Canada. For more visit http://torontocomics.com.

Ahem, that out of the way, let’s look at the opposite page (119) and see a brand new edition of Howard Cruise’s STUCK RUBBER BABY, an incredibly, visceral semi-autobio account of the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, and women’s librartion in 1960s America. It’s a great, great graphic novel and deserves considerably more acclaim than it’s ever gotten. I certainly hope that this new edition (with an introduction by Alison Bechdel!) will draw it some deserved acclaim.

8:53pm: Well how about that! It’s the long-awaited sixth volume of Fred Gallagher’s hit webcomic MEGATOKYO! This one collects chapters 9 and 10 of the online series 240 pages for 11 bucks. Not that I’m DC or Fred Gallagher, but if I WERE DC or Fred Gallagher I’d maybe do more frequent, thinner collections of this series so it isn’t 3 years between new collections. Just a friendly bit of free advice… (Page 122)

9:09pm: Okay! We’re back and on page 138, THE IMAGE COMICS SECTION! What wonderful stuff as Image got for us this month? Why, it’s TURF #1, the first issue of the mini-series by UK television presenter, documentarian, and comics-uberfan Jonathan Ross. Showing excellent taste, Mr. Ross has brough Tomy Lee Edwards along for the ride, in this cross between 1920s gangsters, vampires, and a crashed spaceship. I came across a preview of this one in last week’s THE WALKING DEAD #70 and I dug it, and it turns out the same preview is duplicated here in the Previews starting on page 140. It’s really solid, and then a spaceship lands (which is a little jarring) but, all-in-all, it’s a pretty compelling first few pages (a little dense though…). Definitely going to be a neat first issue.

9:14pm: Wow, it looks like everyone’s getting on the dollar-comic bandwagon, and Image Comics is releasing 10 different first issues for just a buck a pop (p144-145). I… I don’t think I’m down with most of’em, to be honest. I’d say we’re going to do really big orders on The Walking Dead, Chew, and Invincible, solid orders on Age of Bronze, Girls, and Proof, and… well, it’s nice that the Image-founder superhero books are there, I just don’t see their usefullness to me and my store. Of course, maybe those are the four that are going to net the highest sales. Diff’rent strokes.

9:39pm:THE LIGHT #1 is… it reminds me a lot of the current apocalyptic road trip fiction that’s going down right now, with The Road and Book of Eli and Blindness and all that. I can’t tell if it’s too close, and it’s not going to appeal, or if it’s just into that niche of contemporary fiction and will, instead, do awesome. Then again, maybe it’s more of a trade paperback book anyway? Hmm. Conservative order, hope for reorders.

9:42pm: So, let’s play a little game where we look at the last few issues of in-store dates for Spawn, in honour of the Due-April-2010 solicitation for SPAWN #202.

Spawn #191 – Due April 09, Shipped April 29th (so far, so good)
Spawn #192 – Due May 09, Shipped June 3rd (oops, slipped a week or two)
Spawn #193 – Due June 09, Shipped July 1st (almost picked up the slack!)
Spawn #194 – Due July 09, Shipped July 29th (way to go, back on schedule!)
Spawn #195 – Due August 09, Shipped October 21st (Uh oh).
Spawn #196 – Due September 09, Shipping March 3rd, 2010 (oh noes…)

There’s just a tiny peek into my world.

Now, ask me how many times I’ve been asked for WALKING DEAD VOLUME 5 HC in the last week, due out before Christmas (seven).

9:53pm: Meanwhile, in happier news, Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber have hit every on-sale date for their new mini-series UNDERGROUND, a spelunking adventure comic with great characterization and art. If you somehow passed on the mini-series (the final issue ships this week), definitely don’t miss out on the UNDERGROUND TP, coming this April. 126 pages, $15, fine fine adventure comics. (page 158)

10:00pm: Okay, and we’ve just finished out the Image section and we’re on to MARVEL! Kids, switch over to your Marvel Previews.

Page 1 and… Dude, I’d really like to be on-board for “Leonardo Da Vinci, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” but I do not think I am. I’m sorry. Though kudos to Dustin Weaver for doing a bang-up Traves Charest impression with that cover. Really, bravo, that’s some very good Charesting.

10:04pm: Page… 4. “Iron Man by Design Variants”. Every issue this month will have a variant cover with artists doing their take on the Iron Man armour. I’m not really blown away by any of the art on display, sad-to-say.

Flipping the page and we get to the actual comics. SIEGE #4 wraps up the mini-series with the return of Iron Man. The following pages seem like epilogue after epilogue, which makes me wonder if they’re going to make any attempt to collect this in a way that makes sense to the story, or if they’re going to go the normal route of a half-dozen inter-related collections that add up to “what happened”. Because, it would be nice if they could just put out “stories” every once in a while.

10:08pm: Ultron looks fun to draw. (page 10)

10:09pm: I can’t be the first person to say this, but here goes:

“Bryan Hitch is drawing NEW AVENGERS FINALE? Here’s hoping that that the first issue of that new Avengers series doesn’t give away what happens in it. Or the second issue. Or the third issue.”

Ba-dum-bum.

10:14pm: Huh, Marvel’s adapting Philip K. Dick’s ELECTRIC ANT with a five issue mini-series. That’s pretty cool.  I think I’d seen reference to that, but didn’t realize it was coming so soon. Written by David Mack, cover by Mr. Paul Pope, though I’m not familiar with interior artist Pascal Alixe.

10:18pm: So… Marvel is solciting the second printing of “Deadpool Corps #1″ alongside the first printing of that issue. That’s… well, whatever.

10:20pm: Oooo! Page 34 has the first issue of Brendan McCarthy’s three-issue Dr. Strange story, cleverly called SPIDER-MAN: FEVER #1 so that people that think they don’t like Dr. Strange will pick it up. McCarthy’s a great artist and has a truly unique voice in comics, it’s frig’n bizarre to see him doing a mainstream marvel book but shit, why not right? Awesome days. Another one of my picks of the month.

Oh, 32 pages, $3.99.

10:26pm: So FALL OF THE HULKS leads into WORLD WAR HULKS? But FALL OF THE HULKS: SHE HULKS is still going on when the WWH book starts. Poor planning, or just a mini-series redundant to the main ‘through’ of the series?

10:30pm: Page 56 and 57 have Marvel relaunching their young-readers line, with SPIDER-MAN #1 and SUPER HEROES #1, both with a “Marvel Adventures” tag on the cover, but seemingly not in the solicit description. Still, that cover by Karl Kerschl is lovely on Spidey #1, and the books sell consistentlyhere at the store. Here’s hoping that the relaunch will see a boost in sales.

10:37pm: I know it’s for a good cause and all, but the fact that NEMESIS #2 by Mark Millar, solicited for April, wasn’t so far along in the production schedule that Millar could auction off the name of the character? It does not fill me with confidence that this series will come out on a schedule any different than Kick-Ass, which is to say a sort-of pathetic schedule.

10:47pm: Okay, that’s it folks! Thanks for reading! We’ll pick it up tomorrow morning with the back-half of the catalogue, and all of the wonderous new books sure to be contained within!

- Chris

1:43pm: Actually, scratch “everything” cuz I skipped Wizard. Less said the better.

P184 greets us with some interesting stuff, including new printings of Phil and Kaja Foglio’s GIRL GENIUS volume 1 and volume 3, with volume 1 now in full colour! This will certainly appeal to completists looking to get the whole series, but really I’d just been looking forward to having the series back in stock for a while now. Good news.

Actually, I was just writing my numbers in, and I was ordering like 2 or 3 copies of each, to get them back on the shelf, and I realized that given Diamond’s order minimums and low, low, low stocking levels, this is probably my only kick-at-the-can on these titles without ordering direct. I bumped my order up some.

1:51pm: Amaze Ink / SLG has an interesting new graphic novel, Birdhouse by Vernon White. The premise, a classic fairy-tale evoking modern themes of loneliness and isolation, is effective right in the solicit text. SLG has done up a promo trailer for it as well, which shows off a bunch of the rather nice art:

Original graphic novel, 136 pages for $#10.95. I’d read that.

Also on p186 SLG has the second HAUNTED MANSION collection, which has tons of material that has not seen print yet (or didn’t see print in the Disney version). 128 pages for $10.95.

1:55pm: I rip on Antarctic a lot, like every single month, and their design is only marginally better this time around. But seriously? They are publishing a comic this month called TIME LINCOLN #1, by Gold Digger creator Fred Perry, about the time-travelling adventures of Abraham Lincoln in the hour before his death. Having him meet Obama is vaguely cash-grabby, which puts me off, but the idea is fun and good. The cover’s pretty slick too.

Oo, was just googling for Time Lincoln and apparently the lincoln character on Aqua Teen Hunger Force refered to himself that way… Here’s hoping no one gets sued, eh?

2:01pm: so they’re really milking this Archie-gets-married thing eh? Epilogue issue? What’s really historic here is this is the first time any Archie story has had an epilogue, usually they just end on bad jokes or Christian moralizing.

Wait, it’s the epilogue and 2 other stories… meaning, what? Like 4 pages of epilogue? “How will Archie deal with the events of the last six issues?” We’ll wrap that fucker up just in time to cram 18 pages of status quo back in there.

I can’t wait for the trade!

2:07pm: Meanwhile in the Avatar section, IGNITION CITY, possibly the earliest-announced, longest-gestating of any Warren Ellis series (I seriously remember him talking about it in the early days of the WEF… 10 years ago? More?) gets a collection on p198, with simultaneous SC, HC, and Signed HC released. Thanks Avatar, that is exactly what I want as a retailer, the ability to choose my formats and order accordingly.

Then on p200, we launch into Ellis’ new comic, the Steampunkily named CAPTAIN SWING AND THE ELECTRICAL PIRATES OF CINDERY ISLAND! I’m not one for variants normally, but this one comes with a “Penny Dreadfuls” style variant cover, which is kinda cool, I gotta say. 4 issues, $3.99 each.

2:14pm: Somehow I had missed/forgotten that Bluewater Comics picked up the “Rock & Roll Comics” license. Huh.

2:22pm: Did not get a Christmas Card from Boom this year, so I can only assume I was annoying when I called them out last month for doing $25 hardcovers of 112 pages of Uncle scrooge comics (seriously.). This month they go back to the well on that a couple of times with a Valentine’s Day book and another Uncle Scrooge Book, but on the Uncle Scrooge at least (The Hunt for Old Number One, by Erik Hedman and Wanda Gattino, p210) they’re also offering a simultaneously released $9.99 SC edition, which is really excellent. A big part of the criticism of the Gladstone books is that they were unattractive as children’s entertainment because of the price, at $8 for a slim volume. $25 for a volume double-the-size isn’t any better, and I’m glad to see them doing something about it. We’ll be supporting the soft cover in a big way, to show our preference as a retailer (and put our money where our mouths are).

2:30pm: Sometimes if I don’t have anything nice OR constructive to say I just won’t say anything. Not all the time, but sometimes.

2:32pm: Still love that costume design on DE’s Buck Rogers. Speaking of, I completely forgot to get my dad the first omnibus collection of Garth Ennis’ BATTLEFIELDS stuff. We both really enjoyed Ennis’ WAR STORIES at Vertigo back in the day, and this seems to be a pretty direct continuation of those. I can’t remember if I’ve read any of them or not, or if I’ve just read reviews of them. Weird. Does that happen to anybody else?

2:37pm: Speaking of, on p222 D.E. has an Army Of Darkness Omnibus, collecting 488 pages of comics (including the original adaptation and first 18 issues of the ongoing) for just $30. That’s a steal of a price, and the story still has plenty of fans…

2:41pm: On p224 from Del Rey, we’ve got CLAMP IN AMERICA, featuring the popular manga quartet in a career-history by Shaenon Garrity. Looks like it’s going to be bursting-at-the-seems with illustrations, and Garrity is a great writer so this should be a really solid read for fans of CLAMP but also, really, for anyone looking at getting an inside look at the world of manga. 368 pages, Partial Colour, $24.99.

Also from Del Rey, apparently Peter David and Dan Hipp (Amazing Joy Buzzards) are doing original Ben 10: Alien Force comics? Or are these adaptations of the episodes? Huh. Either way, 176 pages of full colour comics for $7.99 on a can’t-miss, hugely successful kids property? Sign me up!

2:49pm: Monthly Fantagraphics Designwatch: I’m having drouble reading the orange book titles on the blue background on p235, cuz the font is too small.

Monthly Fantagraphics Bookwatch: Wow, some good stuff this month. A sequel to Ho Che Anderson’s SCREAM QUEEN, and Gilbert Hernandez collects a bunch of Fritz strips into one graphic novel: High Soft Lisp. Nice. Oh, and “The Best American Comics Criticism of the 21st Century” which is… well, I can’t wait to see it, anyway.

2:54pm: I realized just after finishing it a few months ago that I neglected to include Graphix’s COPPER by Kazu Kibuishi and MISSILE MOUSE by Jake Parker in this little Previews wrap-up. Let me correct that, if I can, by taking time out to mention that they’re both great books, available now some places (and out soon from Diamond).

Which brings us to p236 and Scholastic Graphix’ SMILE, by Raina Telegemeier. Raina’s a fixture of the small press and indy con circuit, and everyone probably has one of her SMILE mini-comics in their mini-comics box (I assume people keep their minis in boxes…). SMILE is about more than dentistry mishaps (although it’s about that too), it’s also about being young and new schools and earthquakes and growing up and making mistakes. It’s a great coming-of-age story about middle school and dental drama, and y’all should give it a look. 224 pages, Full Colour, $10.99 in softcover, $21.99 in hardcover.

Cute cover too.

3:04pm: So it looks like IDW has picked up the license to Patrica Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series, and they’re doing the follow-up to the first collection. I don’t remember that being reported in the BIG NEWS that D.E. had picked up The Dabel Brothers. In fact I specifically remember reading that everything was going to D.E. I guess press releases don’t dwell on the negative, but wouldn’t this Previews have been OUT at the time? Shouldn’t someone have made a note somewhere in their reportage? Sloppy.

Anyway, Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson: Moon Called #1, $3.99, probably 4 issue miniseries, full colour, p241.

3:11pm: And now courtesy of IDW, here’s the Ghostbusters proton-streaming Cupid:

Heh. From: Ghostbusters Holiday Special: Tainted Love, $3.99, 32 pages, p245.

Hey, look, drawn by Canada’s own Salgood Sam too, how about that. Actually, that cover isn’t, but the book itself is.

3:19pm: NBM is releasing the third in the series of graphic novels produced to celebrate the birthday of the louvre. The next is ON THE ODD HOURS by Eric liberge ($14.95, 72 pags, Full Colour, p256). I thought the first 2 were great stuff, and am looking forward to this one (though I’m not familiar with Liberge’s work, I have to say).

3:21pm: Oh, Canada!

If you somehow missed out on reading Scott Chantler’s epic fable about burly, hairy frontiersmen living in little wood houses together, fuck, GET IT NOW.

Heh, seriously, THE ANNOTATED NORTHWEST PASSAGE great stuff, and the collection features tons of annotations and a bibliography, making it both fun AND educational, but mostly fun. Now in softcover for $15.99, 272 pages, black and white, p257.

3:26pm: Speaking of Oni Press, they have an AWESOME double-page “Valentine’s Day” backlist spread, with a key to which books you should read. A little pink heart “for lovers”. A cracked red heart “for the broken hearted”. A heart behind jail-cell bars “For the truly jilted…”. They recommend Queen & Country for the truly jilted. Brilliant. :)

3:34pm: Um… so I skipped to the end. The end of the catalogue is really easy for me to do, because we get Yen and Viz and TOkyopop from other sources with better lead times and comperable/better discounts. So, uh, skip skip skip! But I talk enough about manga anyway, right? You don’t need me telling you to get RESTAURANTE PARADISO by Natsume Ono. Besides I’ll probably tell you that again, later. :)

Anyway, that’s it for this month! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on the blogosphere soon enough…!

- Chris

4:21: Cover: Well, the covers for the Decemember Previews are both centered around ‘toys’, which is to say a high-end Iron Man 2 action figure, and some True Blood “BUSTS” that cut the characters off mid-thigh.

Fun-fact: Statues and busts often have a very strict approvals process, with the showrunners and actors wanting to ensure that anything that is supposed to be that character actually looks like that character. But because the manufacturing lead time on a statue is so long, and the approvals process is so long, and the solicitation has to come so early, often things will wind up in the Previews with “not final version” or “approval pending” warnings, with photos of the mock-up toys (or sometimes no photo at all). But what do you do when you want to put something like that on the cover of a catalog, but you can’t (or aren’t legally allowed to) show unapproved likenesses? Why, you take approved likenesses, say photos of the cast members, and you photoshop them onto the bodies of the statues, which don’t need likeness approvals.

What I’m perhaps… perturbed… about, is the ethical question of putting this product on the cover of a catalogue and saying BUY IT and then not mentioning that the product isn’t going to look like this, that these are Photographs Photoshopped onto Statues, and that’s just a wee bit dishonest, isn’t it? I mean, inside the catalogue they’ve got a little slug of text that says “Images are not final. Watch the website for updates.” But you’d think you’d run that disclaimer every time you ran that image, wouldn’t you?

4:38pm: So moving through the catalogue, the inside cover is an advertisement for FATHOM: BLUE DESCENT which is another mini-series from Aspen that won’t come out on time from an artist that may or may not finish the series. Also: Holy shit what is wrong with her arms? I thought the whole reason this book existed was to give Witchblade fans something else to spank to…? Who wants to jerk off to THAT? Actually, scratch that, I’m sure it’s someone and I probably don’t wanna know them.

Meanwhile, Page 1 is a toy ad, pages 2-3 are toy ads. Pages 4-5 are the contents…which seem fairly laid out, if boring. The note from Our Pal @ Previews, Marty, is pretty short this month. He wishes us well but it’s empty and perfunctory, and 2 short sentences at that. The rest of the space for his “Editor’s Note” is taken up by a picture of Santa Claus in a motor-car, badly cropped, with YOU’D BETTER WATCH OUT as the accompanying text. Santa will mow you down, with his half-cropped carload of presents.

What exactly is the message here, Marty?

4:47pm: So on page 10, there’s a full page article describing Jeph Loeb and Art Adams’ new ongoing series, ULTIMATE COMICS X, where a pouty kid with wolverine claws is… emo. This is the ‘series’ (and really, who’s got money that says the second issue will be late?) that follows up on the Ultimatum stuff that Loeb did, that everyone would be better-served ignoring. Who writes this? It reads like it’s written by and for fanboys. Like it’s literally 4 paragraphs of plot-recap, and a sentence about who might enjoy reading this specific comic book. Nothing about how rare it is that Art Adams is doing a regular series (or irregular as the case may be), nothing not in the actual solicit for the book, nothing even about the variant covers. Nothing of use to me as a retailer. Trees died for that.

4:56pm: OKAY, DARK HORSE! First up on page 22 is… holy shit, Madhouse is doing a comic? I have no idea how I missed the memo on this. It’s called DEVIL. The dude who does the fun and porny colour manga series MAKA MAKA and animation studio Madhouse (Trigun, Paprika, Ninja Scroll) have teamed up to do a full colour 4-issue miniseries exclusive to America. That’s… pretty awesome. Apparently it involves a new take on vampires, wicked looking guns, and disaffected badasses. For people who like this sort of thing, this is the single best thing of the year.

My big questions as a retailer:

1) Are most manga fans going to buy this as a 4-issue mini-series, or wait until a collection comes out?
2) Are manga fans going to buy this, or is it going to appeal to the sort of older, non-hardcore audience that loves stuff like NINJA SCROLL or whatever?
3) Are manga fans going to buy this at all, or will piracy kill it?

I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments, because I’m kind of at a loss. I’ll put down a temporary number for now.

5:10pm: Incidentally, it looks like Dark Horse is doing original graphic novels featuring the ALIENS license, which is very different for them. John Arcudi, Zach Howard, 96 pages in full colour for $16. Aliens: More Than Human on page 25.

5:16pm: Another surprising entry from Dark Horse is a reprint of the Tale of One Bad Rat in hardcover, from Bryan Talbot. $19.99, HC, 136 pages, page 31. A quick check at Diamond confirms my suspicions that this was allowed to fall out of print for a while. I’ve done my fair share of criticizing Dark Horse for how they maintain their backlist, and I realize it is both incredibly costly and not terribly effective to keep everything you’ve ever printed in print, indefinitely, but TTOOBR is the kind of book that, because of both its subject matter and skillful execution, becomes recommended far and wide by any number of booklists and organizations. It’s one of the earliest graphic novels to receive a YALSA recommendation, for example. Allowing a book like this to go out of print, even for a short while, is truly unfortunate. I’d love it if Dark Horse could re-prioritize their backlist policy, to ensure that titles that can easily be called “Modern Classics” are available without interruption, particularly in the single-largest boom time for works of this type in the history of the medium in North America.

5:24pm: Hoo-rah! ACHEWOOD VOLUME 3: A Home For Scared People, and WONDERMARK VOLUME 3: Dapper Caps & Pedal Copters, both debut this April. Both will contain wonderful extras not available elsewhere, both of them are excellent comics which have seen print online, both of them are worth your attention.

5:26pm: And we flip the page to page 36, and see that the lovely and talented Graham Annable has a collection of his GRICKLE comics and shorts collected with an introduction by Jeff Smith! Annable is the fabulously talented fellow behind Youtube video sensations like:

Which slays me every time. Click on that to see the rest of his videos btw, they’re all awesome.

Anyway, Dark Horse is doing a 200 page collection of his hilarious short comics, and it is worth every penny at $17.99 for 200 pages. Get it April 7th!

5:37pm: Man the cover for that Jerry Robinson comic strip book is awful. Anyway, new Hellboy-universe collection, WITCHFINDER, collecting the recent mini-series (page 39). I’ve only read about 100 pages, total, of anything to do with Hellboy, ever. I just have no desire to read more.

Meanwhile, Buffy seems to be flying on the cover of the new issue of Buffy, written by… Brad Metzler! Is this his first arc on Buffy Season 8? Also, it just occurs to me now that the villain, the Big Bad, of Buffy Season 8 is called “Twilight”, which… heh, which works so incredibly well on a metaphorical level that I can’t believe it. Buffy vs. Twilight. Bravo.

5:42pm: Holy shit, 10th volume of HELLSING. I totally thought that had ended. According to the solicit text (page 42) this is The Final Volume of Hellsing. I don’t really follow this series, honestly, but seeing how volume 9 came out… October 22nd 2008, this is shocking.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is ending with issue #50 (p47), and while it tied into the very popular video game, it still sold the same few copies that almost all the Star Wars stuff does. Still, big-ups for 50 issues of a video-game tie-in series, that’s almost unheard of.

5:49pm: Speaking of trees dying for no reason, the first 3 pages of the DC section are just big black boxes that say “TOP SECRET” in reference to Blackest Night tie-in comics. So… yeah. Thanks, that’s… awesome.

5:53pm: Batman & Robin gets TWO issues in February, courtesy of Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart. Looks like they’re trying to make up for that skip-month a little while back. Good on Cameron for being able to get the work out that quickly, and the previews he’s shown so far have been quite nice looking too. (p71).

6:06pm: Sorry, bit of an interuption there with a customer. :) So anyway, we’re just paging through the DC section here and it all looks… exactly like contemporary DC comics. You know what stands out for me? Phil Noto’s cover on Batgirl, which this month features Batgirl and Roxy Rocket from Batman:TAS. There, I just posted it in. It’s actually kinda nicely drawn, well-designed, the colours are attractive, it doesn’t have that vaguely-washed-out look that Noto’s stuff can sometimes have. good job Noto.

Oh, and just going through the numbers here, our Azrael sales have dipped to… zero. Yikes.

6:17pm: Holy shit, new Human Target mini-series? Apparently the character is returning to television from Fox at some point, and so we got a new Human Target tpb last month, and this new mini-series (by Len Wein…!) this month. Nice cover by Lee Bermejo as well, whose work I’ve liked since the very beginning. I’ll order heavy on the first issue of this one, it has a lot of potential. (p76)

And on the facing page, MILESTONE FOREVER, a 2 issue wrap-up of the original Milestone universe. Art by John Paul Leon, MD Bright, and Chris Cross too, which is cool. Tying into the recent Justice League appearance I’d think that the sales potential for this 2-issue crossover is definitely there, but I guess it’ll depend on how closely it ties into the JLA book because as a wrap-up of a 16-year-old superhero universe, I’m not sure how many I’d order. That’s an impressive creative roster though, I’ll give it a shot.

6:25pm: It looks like on the non-feature pages DC has dropped their font size a couple points. p78-79 have tiny little fonts. The layout of the creative info has also been tweaked a little. I guess everything got smaller because adding ‘co-features’ to each comic also doubled the number of creative staff per issue? Hm. Nice Ladronn cover on Green Arrow & Black Canary #29, btw. Oh, and big-ups to DC for finally doing this double-page splash in alphabetical order… The first time I can remember this happening in the last couple of years.

6:29pm: The solicit image for Justice Society of America #36 has a big swastika in it… Does that make this issue of Previews banned in Germany? Meanwhile in the JSA spinoffs, I’ve actually read the solicitations for this stuff, and… this is pretty tightly plotted isn’t it, all of these JSA books? Three of the solicits reference each other, and Power Girl and Magog are the centers of attention for 3 of the book covers. Is it just doubling up content or do they tie together or what? Also, I kind of thought everyone hated Magog… we’re certainly selling almost no issues of his comic. Why is he the star of these stories? I don’t really get it.

6:38pm: Things that contribute to internet pundits like myself saying things like “I really don’t think DC has any idea what the hell they’re doing, at this point. They are literally just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks”:

Last month DC relaunched Justice League of America with issue #41, with the new creative team of James Robins and Mark Bagley, with an advertisement in the front of the section, a half-page advertisement in full colour, interlocking variant covers, and a promise that this would tie right into the DCU. This month, we get a 1/4 page, 25 words of solicit, and a black and white image shot from pencils that has NOT FINAL COVER written on it. So DC has basically stopped supporting this big relaunch with the second issue solicitation, a month before the first issue comes out. This book used to be the flagship of their WHOLE LINE, and it gets 25 words of solicit and they couldn’t even pull the cover together for the catalogue. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez.

6:50pm: On p85, the first deluxe hardcover of Grant Morrison’s BATMAN & ROBIN series arrives, and as assumed it pairs the 3 gorgeous issues of Frank Quitely art with 3 issues of nigh-unreadable Philip Tan art. Ah, well. We’ll probably still do just fine with it.

Perhaps more interesting is that there’s another Frank Quitely collection slipped into the DC Solicits this month… BATMAN INTERNATIONAL collects the recent one-shot by Mark Waid, but also the hard-to-find Batman: The Scottish Connection by Alan Grant and Quitely! Very nice indeed. $17.99 for 168 pages of comics.

7:00pm: So, earlier on, you may remember that I took DC to task for wasting 3 pages of paper with big black boxes that said CLASSIFIED. Those 3 pages promoted 3 different $4 comics, each given a full page, for no real reason (even less cuz they didn’t put anything on them). Flipping ahead to page 91, we see that the collection of Wednesday Comics, their second-most talked about project of the year and weighing in at a 200 page hardcover with a $50 price tag? Well that merits a big fat half-a-page.

Let me repeat: $4 comic with no art and vague solicitation text? Full page! $50 comic with tons of info and art and critical acclaim? Half page, shrunken text.

So, yeah. I have no idea what to say about that.

Meanwhile, the Wednesday Comics collection is going to measure 11 inches by 17.5 inches, smaller than the newspaper broadsheets but bigger than Absolute editions. And unlike an absolute, it’s only going to clock in at $50 (seriously, how they can sleep at night having charged $100 for Absolute Death or Absolute LOEG3 is beyond me). Oh, and in addition to all of the content from the series, they’re going to include the two fill-in pages that never saw print!: The Creeper by Keith Giffen and Eric Canete, and Plastic Man by Evan Dorkin and Stephen DeStefano, which is very good news!

7:25pm: Speaking of Absolute Editions, DC is eaking out Absolute Planetary Book Two with as little fanfare as humanly possible, on p97. Collects #13-27, apparently no bonus material at all, and that cover design (right) looks… well let’s just hope they forgot to stamp “Not Final Cover” on it? Still, at least it’s only $75 for the 384 page collection. Also available, they’re doing a new printing of Absolute Planetary Book One, which is nice as I was incredibly poor the first time it came around.

It’d have been nice if Warren Ellis and DC could’ve worked things out a little on this one to spruce up the final collection. I’m not privy to that much inside info, but it’s pretty clear that things are awfully sour between the two, and it does highlight the very real differences between a “Creator Participation” deal and a real creator ownership deal… and the difference between working with Wildstorm before and after they were acquired by DC…! I still remember when the first Planetary Tpb came out, and it was printed on what was basically toilet paper; an awful muddy stock of paper that ruined Laura Dupuy (Martin)’s colours and made the whole thing look awful. Warren Ellis seemed fairly surprised himself. It took a whole print-run to get it fixed, but even now the trades are printed on worse paper than the single issues, which must be maddening considering the high degree of craft that all parties invested in this series… It didn’t surprise me at all that all of Ellis’ colour Avatar work has shown up on the shiniest, thickest paper they could find. :)

Anyhow, Planetary is a great series, and the Absolute format is far-and-away the best format in which to enjoy it. If you’ve got the scratch, pick it up.

7:42pm: I can only assume people are kinda done with zombies for a while, because we just cannot sell Victorian Undead, and we do great business with other zombie comics. It’s essentially ZOMBIE SHERLOCK HOLMES, and what isn’t awesome about that? And yet, sales are poor. I’ll have to give it another push or something. (p98)

Also on page 98 is the collected edition of Mysterius The Unfathomable, a really fun take on a ‘sorcerer supreme’ type character from Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler. It’s a great looking series, and a hell of a lot of fun. I’m biased, we had Mr. Fowler in for a signing to launch the first issue, but seriously? Make sure to give the collection a go…! You’ll probably love it.

7:49pm: Vertigo’s publishing an original graphic novel by Peter Bagge! I had heard about it, but didn’t know it was finally on its way. It’s called OTHER LIVES and it’s about people creating different identities for themselves online and how those identities begin to get confused and conflated. That sounds really, really good actually. 136 pages, $25, B&W, p107. Coming out April 14th, apparently.

Northlanders Vol 3 Cover by Massimo Carnivale. Click for much larger version.

7:54pm: I’ve been informed by Mr. Brian Wood that February is, in fact, Brian Wood Month (of sorts) at Vertigo. The front page of the DC section mentions the big project of the month, DEMO 2 #1, by Wood and Becky Cloonan.  The two return to the series which should be released in exactly the same format as the first series, on lush shiny paper, with no interior advertisements! Six issues of monthly done-in-one stories about ordinary people forced to confornt the extraordinary in their lives. Also from Brian Wood this month is the oversized anniversary issue DMZ #50 with a ton of great artists, in a short-illustrated-stories format perfect for new readers. Meanwhile, Wood’s other Vertigo series gets a trade and an anniversary issue with Northlanders #25 and Northlanders Volume 3: Blood in the Snow. Congrats to Wood on launching projects and surviving in a pretty hostile direct market, here’s the 25 more issues of everything you’re working on.

Allright! It’s 8:11pm and we have finally finished the DC section. Man, that felt like it took forever, and according to my little timestamps it took over 2 hours. Bruuuutal. Apologies to everyone reading along with this. It’s slow-going this month, lots of one-shots and numbers to check and lots to write about. Ah well. We are at Image now.

Image: Their big book this month is a six issue mini-series by Ben Templesmith and Ben McCool, called CHOKER. They kick off the promotion for this one with a six-page preview of the first issue, which is pretty-much unprecidented for Image; I think HAUNT only got 5 pages and that was from 2 Image partners. So, right off the bat, kudos to the Bens. Speaking of Mr. Templesmith, he is the artist for the currently-in-limbo series FELL, which was a great idea and a solid seller that just sort of petered out and nothing has been heard of it since, and neither creator has really said WHY. I sincerely hope the same thing does not happen to this series, which I think is a pretty fair hope (particularly as this is being billed as a six-issue series, rather than a series of oneshots). At the very least, this issue will make a very easy recommendation to fans of FELL.

The preview looks good, and reads very modern-age pulp. A bit Ellisy. Should be a popular one on the stands.

8:21pm: SPAWN 200! It’s got I think 10 different covers? SPAWN 200!

8:25pm: Skipped out on mentioning the Invicible one-shot where het gets his original cover back to point out that the dude who does Hack Slash has a webcomic where he’s just ripping off He-Man but “has put a modern sense of humour” into it. He calls it Colt Noble and the Megalords. And apparently Image is going to publish it as a one-shot. Really? Sexy He-Man? Alright, I’m gonna check this out online.

…and we’re back. I got 3 pages in. It’s fucking He-Man fan-fiction with the costumes drawn a little differently. What an incredible paucity of creativity. I’m a worse person for knowing this exists. And Image? You should be embarrassed for publishing Tim Seely’s He-Man fanfic. Seriously. Embarrassed.

8:42pm: Hey, Brandon Graham’s KING CITY hits #7… which is Coincidentally the first issue that contains the stuff that would’ve made up the second trade paperback. If you’ve been holding off buying the series in the new format, first off, shame on you cuz it’s great and it’s got new stuff in it as backups and new comics and stuff and it’s only 3 bucks anyway, but secondly, now you should start picking up these issues! Exciting!

(Gotta take a little computer-reboot-break. Back in 10.)

9:01pm: Possibly the most disturbing Walking Dead cover image yet:

9:09pm: MARVEL! Let’s see what Marvel has to offer this month:

p4 has the solicit for SIEGE #2, which promises AN AVENGER WILL DIE! I’ve lost track, is this the crossover where we kill a racial minority, or the crossover where we kill a woman?

p7 I was just about to compliment the cover design for the SIEGE books, when I realized why I liked it: It’s just a modified version of the FINAL CRISIS cover design. For all the crowing that Marvel does about DC stealing their ideas for big ‘event’ comics, they’re branding their entire crossover with a rework of a DC / Chip Kidd design from over a year ago. Just sayin’.

p14 Just a shout out to the consistent quality of the DARK TOWER series. It’s everything a Stephen King fan could want in a comic.

p21 Man I hope someone buys all these Deadpool comics.

p27 Hey neat. I totally love David Lafuente’s turn on Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, but I’m happy to see my pal Takeshi Miyazawa doing the art chores on a 2-part story. Nifty. Nice cover on that too.

p28 Damn Marcos Martin is just so, so good. Check out this cover for Amazing Spider-Man #620:

Amazing Spider-Man #620 - Art by Marcos Martin, click for much larger version

That dude can draw. I would honestly buy a collection of just his work, regardless of the context of whether it appears in the middle of story-arcs or whatever. Niced.

p40 Apparently Doom conquered Wakanda and is killing people? Totally missed that. I guess this is why Marvel publishes reading chronologies eh?

p42 I was pretty disappointed that Marvel put a no-way-to-opt-out 50/50 variant on Matt Fractions INVINCIBLE IRON MAN with the sharp new cover designs by Rian Hughes. Instead of getting a full order of gorgeous designy and attractive covers, we get this mediocre “conventional” thing not even drawn by the interior artist. Who the hell is Patrick Zircher? It would’ve been nice if they’d had the courage of their convictions and just put out a nice looking product.

p46 Marvel Heartbreakers is a one shot featuring “the fabulous femmes of Marvel” which… There’s an easy joke there I shant be making. Anyway, it seems like a weird one-off book for Valentine’s Day, and the less continuity-heavy Marvel shorts are generally pretty decent. Worth a look.

p54 Looks like Ms. Marvel is ending. 50 issues, respectable, though I’m mystified it lasted that long, our sales had entirely bottomed out for over a year.

p57 I still can’t believe they killed The Punisher and replaced him with Frankenstein. But hey, sales are up. Not quite as high as when they killed The Punisher and turned him into an angel with holy weaponry, drawn by Pat Lee, but, you know. Up.

p69 Though they’re a total pain in the ass to order, because who knows how many people reading the main book are going to read the spin-off, I will say that these little spin-off mini-series will occasionally have some really neat stories in them. Nation X #3 features a Cannonball story by Corey Lewis, for example. That’s pretty neat.

p77: Apparently in this issue of Uncanny X-Men: First Class, Banshee must save a leprechaun from imps or gnomes or something. I am not making this up.

p80/81 CRIMINAL #5 and POWERS #4. Good, good stuff. Oh and on p82 it looks like they’re taking another stab at releasing that KICK-ASS collection, so maybe the 8th issue will eventually come out…?

p86-89 Here’s something, Marvel kicks off their trades/graphic novels section with 4 pages of IRON MAN backlist relists, just in time for the new movie, which is really rather smart. Then we get 2 pages of new Iron Man collected edition solicits, including an oversized Fraction/Iron Man collection of #1-19. Oh, then 2 more pages of new Iron Man movie tie-in stuff. I’ve never seen Marvel capitalize on a movie tie-in better in their solicits. Good on them.

p96-97 There’s a second Brubaker/Lark DAREDEVIL OMNIBUS collection, finishing up their run on the title. But most exciting? The HC collection of Marvel’s recent STRANGE TALES mini-series. Oversized, 200 pages for $30, and with tons of content that hit way, way more often than it missed. Apparently this one is going to have a cover design by Chip Kidd…! interesting. Oh, shit, I should read the solicits closer. This will include Strange Tales #1-3, the Peter Bagge Megalomaniacal Spider-Man one-shot, and “material” from All Select Comics 70th Anniversary Special. Nice.

p111 All 12 issues of NEXTWAVE are collected in one big omnibus, the NEXTWAVE ULTIMATE COLLECTION. Easily in the top 10 things Marvel has published this decade.

p116 It looks like they’re going to start collecting the Ann Nocenti / John Romita JR Daredevil stuff! Neat. I’ve always wanted to read this stuff… It’s what was coming out when I first started reading superhero comics, and it was always around, it just seemed utterly insane.

Oh, and they’re making a poster out of LADY DEADPOOL. That’s fucked up.

Okay, that wraps-up the front half of the previews. Stay tuned for part 2, coming later tonight (probably)!

- Chris …

4:58pm: I missed this in the front half of the catalogue, hope you’ll forgive the indulgence, but: Let me point out that Marvel’s $25, 128 page “premiere hardcover” collection of Geoff Johns’ Avengers run AVENGERS: WORLD TRUST is ridiculous (Marvel Previews page 100). It is nearly 20 cents per page for that collection, which makes it the most expensive collected edition that Marvel is publishing in the month of November on a price-per-page basis, for work from the most popular writer in superhero comics right now. I wouldn’t have even noticed it either, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s on a facing page with the IRON MAN: DEADLY SOLUTIONS HC by Kurt Busiek from the same time period, with 70 more pages, for the same price. So if I might offer a piece of advice? If you want the early Geoff Johns AVENGERS issues…? Wait for the trade.

5:06pm: The back half of the catalogue brings out more extreme emotions in me. There’s a more consistent level of mediocrity in the front-half of the catalogue that just forces my eyes half-closed, and fills me with sighs. But the back half inspires joy! And Terror! And Bewilderment! It’s pretty neat. It started on the first page of the section (178) with MEANWHILE: PICK ANY PATH. 3856 STORY POSSIBILITIES, the new graphic novel from Jason Shiga! Known for his awesome mini-comics and his first “major” release BOOKHUNTER from Sparkplug, this new graphic novel is a tabbed-story, a mathematically complex Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type book in full colour from ABRAMS/Amulet! I had no idea at all this was coming, or coming so soon! I kinda feel like it’s flown under a lot of radars, actually. We’ll be ordering a bunch, good stuff!

5:13pm: Staying on page 178 for a moment, we’ve got Accent UK’s WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE WORLD’S FASTEST MAN? ONE-SHOT, which I got a preview copy of and didn’t grab me at all. It wasn’t bad exactly, but it was kind of unremarkable.

What I did like much more, particularly for being as weird as they are, are Gene Yang’s two graphic novels Gordon Yamamoto and The King of the Geeks and Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order. Two short graphic novels about Asian-American teenagers that interact with one another, and paint a larger picture of strange happenings in their young lives. If you liked American Born Chinese or Eternal Smile, then I recommend the new omnibus collection that contains both of these graphic novels under a brand new cover from Yang. ANIMAL CRACKERS: A GENE LUEN YANG COLLECTION drops this January, 216 pages for $14.95, from SLG Publishing/Amaze Ink. Oh, and according to the SLG website it includes a new 12 page story and an introduction by Derek Kirk Kim as well. Neat!

5:35pm: Forgot to mention, one more from this page: CHIMICHANGA #2, Eric Powell’s new comic for fans of Eric Powell and “All Ages”. But mostly fans of Eric Powell. Looks weird as hell.

5:39pm: I kinda like APE Entertainment above and beyond their product line, but why are they doing novels (page 180)? Novels by people I’ve never heard of, and with no particular sales features for a direct market comics store to latch into. Hm. I don’t get it.

5:43pm: Oh Antarctic Press. I do love ripping on your Previews section (p182), but it seems like this might be the cleanest design you’ve offered up in months. It’s still bad though, I wonder if any of your designers are actually formally trained? You seem to have no idea how to design on a grid. This month you even screwed the margins, so that your solicit text is bleeding off the bottom of the page. It’s all a little embarassing, and that’s before we get to the OBAMA/MCCAIN ELECTION 2008 TPB, which weighs in at a massive 48 pages for $10 of black and white… something. Hrm.

5:54pm: Canadian publishers Arcana are putting out a brand new quarterly comics magazine, ARCANA MAGAZINE, 96 pages, full colour, $3.50 (p184). Seems like a hell of a deal if the writing is any good. I haven’t seen it yet, but with lots of big bright colour art we’ll give the first issue a go. I just did a quick Google search and it looks like they’ve got a blog for the magazine at http://arcanaquarterly.com/. I’m gonna spend 15 minutes eating dinner and reading the blog, see what the skinny is. See you at quarter-after-six.

6:15pm: Update! So apparently this is the print-version of an online ‘zine that I’d never heard of, and whose aesthetic could charitably described as ‘underdeveloped’. I can only hope there is a heretofore unseen heavily editorial and artistic hand reigning in the excesses of these guys… cuz… well, yeah. After seeing the previous product I will be adjusting my orders down considerably.

6:20pm: Big-ups to friend-of-The-Beguiling Noel Tuazon, returning to work with his ELK’S RUN partner Josha Hale Fialkov on the new original graphic novel TUMOR, $14.95, 224pages, Full Colour, p184. $15 for an original colour hardcover…  I don’t know how Archaia is doing it (taking ownership?) but they’re doing it. ELK’S RUN did well for us, and Noel is a good guy who will hopefully agree to a signing, so I’ll give this one a solid initial order.

6:26pm: So Archie ends the What If marriage storyline with Betty giving birth to twins as well! Apparently Archie is pretty virile, must come from having blue-balls for the last 70 years.

6:36pm: meanwhile, pn page 187, we have THE KIDS OF WIDNEY HIGH one-shot, a feel-good comic with art by folks like Jim Mahfood and Chuck BB. According to the solicit it’s about the titular group, a rock-act comprised of graduates of a special-ed high school in LA. The stories are written by the band members. Sounds like an utterly weird thing to show up as a comic book, but pretty cool nonetheless. $4.99, 36 pages.

6:41pm: So it looks like Warren Ellis’s recent take on superheroes NO HERO gets collected editions, with a simultaneous release of the softcover, hardcover, and signed-hardcover editions. According to Diamond they all ship the same day too. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thanks to Avatar for having a sane and sensible collected editions program. Much appreciated. As for NO HERO, I enjoyed the first 4 issues quite a bit, but the shipping schedule went wildly off track and I never caught up with the series as it finished. I suppose that’s what trade paperbacks are for though, aren’t they? Good stuff.

7:08pm: So it looks like I found something that tops the Geoff Johns Avengers book for awful mark-up. BOOM! is charging $24.99 for a 112 page, 6×9 hardcover of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories issues, DISNEY’S HERO SQUAD VOLUME 1. The thing that kills me about this is that the issues are so reasonable priced at $3 a pop, and the softcover collections they’ve been doing of the kids material have only run $9.99 each. Why are they charging an extra $15 for two pieces of cardboard? Why is this collection more than twice the price of the issues it contains? On kids material?

Really, I don’t want to go through the catalog yelling about books being too expensive, but unless this is a glued-and-sewn, library-quality hardcover collection that is gonna last forever, $25 for this book is… unreasonable. I know the BOOM guys read the blog: you’re welcome to respond in the comments.

7:20pm: Whoa, this Stephen Segovia guy seems to have learned to draw from tracing Lenil Francis Yu drawings with the sort of devotion that only monks can usually muster. Granted, that doesn’t mean that the cover to Dynamite Entertainment’s ROBOCOP #1 (p214) isn’t good, it’s actually a striking image. It just looks like a composite of 3 or 4 different Yu drawings. Anyway, I have no strong feelings about Robocop returning to comics. I liked Robocop a lot as a kid, seeing the movie when I was FAR too young to have done so, and then participating whole-heartedly in the toy/cartoon/comics for kids that followed. But… yeah. Unless this in some way rises far above Dynamite’s littany of other licensed properties, it’s not for me. But if you want to see a cyborg shoot a lot of people, bu all means, I am excited for you.

7:35pm: Page 222 gives us THE SPLENDID MAGIC OF PENNY ARCADE, a 208-page “best of” and celebration of the comic strip from the team’s new publishers, Del Rey/Random House. A career retrospective from their 11 1/2 year careers as webcomics creators, and a savvy move to introduce the creators to the wider world rather than starting with the oldest (and weakest) material like they did with their first few collections at Dark Horse. Should be good.

7:38pm: Oh lovely, Drawn & Quarterly is bringing Dylan Horrocks’ HICKSVILLE back into print in a “New Definitive Edition” (260 pages, $19.95, p223). This one has a new cover and a new 16-page drawn introduction by Horrocks, which will be a lovely edition to an already phenomenal book. HICKSVILLE is a classic as far as I’m concerned, and it belongs on every serious comics reader’s shelves, regardless of the sorts of comics that they like.

7:43pm: Ah.. ahahaha. Page 230-231. If you’ve been reading these little Liveblogging rants for any length of time you’ll know that I haven’t been particularly kind to Fantagraphics’ eye-catching-but-also-eye-searing Previews spreads. Well this month, they have put together a lovely, readable, straight-forward solicit page, so ordered and organized I almost feel like they’re poking fun at me for my complaints. Sure, it’s enormous hubris to assume that Fanta is altering their Previews ads to suit my tastes, but I can tell you that’s exactly how it feels. Hah. Here’s a picture:

I mean, wow.

So as a reward, here’s me talking about all of their new books:

KING OF THE FLIES VOL 1: HALLORAVE is an English translation of a European album by two fairly popular prolific creators, Mezzo & Pirus. I’m not familiar with these guys but the 5 page preview at TFAW looks good, and the art is genuinely unsettling. Go check it out.

MOME VOLUME 17 continues the quarterly anthology with the last installment of Paul Hornschemeier’s Life With Mr. Dangerous, and new work from Dash Shaw and Tom K, Oliver Schrauwen, Derek Van Gieson, Renee French, Ted Stearn, T. Edward Bak, Kurt Wolfgang, Laura Park, and Rick Froberg. MOME’s generally a good investment and great exposure to talented young creators, worth checking out.

Oh and hey, yeah! It’s a new omnibus collection of the out of print Jason graphic novels You Can’t Get There From Here, Meow Baby, The living and the Dead, and Tell Me Something in one omnibus hardcover. ALMOST SILENT weighs in at 292 pages for $25, and his a hell of a deal and full of great stuff. Jason’s stuff is an amazing read and a particularly solid recommendation for folks who’ve never read comics before at all. Highly recommended.

Finally, there’s the third HOTWIRE COMICS anthology of weirdo short comics without a thematic link that recalls alternative anthologies of yesteryear, and the second UNLOVABLE collection from Esther Pearl Watson.

So, good, readable month for Fantagraphics. Nice!

8:19pm: I am running out of caffeine here, that’s not good. Maybe there’s a short break in my future. Anyhow, we’ve got a bunch of neat comics here. First up, the fantastic and underrated manga TOWN OF EVENING CALM, COUNTRY OF CHERRY BLOSSOMS by Fumiyo Kouno and published by Last Gasp gets an all-new hardcover edition (p248). It’s got a great binding and is actually available from Last Gasp now, for retailers that wanna jump on it. This is a wonderful graphic novel, I highly recommend it.

On the facing page (p249) is LITTLE NOTHINGS VOLUME 3: UNEASY HAPPINESS by Lewis Trondheim, published by NBM. I’ve previously blogged about this new release so go read that for a full description of why I love it, but if you’re too lazy to click over let me just tell you that these collections of Trondheim’s diary comics are wonderful reading, and lovely, and you should be reading them.

Also on page 249, I had no idea that the incredibly talented Les McClaine (Jonny Crossbones, tons of other stuff) was drawing THE TICK NEW SERIES. McClaine’s great, and the first issue is available now with issue #2 in Previews. I’m totally going to go pull that first issue off of the racks and read it tonight. Awesome. Check out Les’ stuff at http://www.evilspacerobot.com/ if you’re not familiar with him.

Okay, I’m running to the convenience store for energy drinks. Back in a bit.

8:43pm: And we’re back. I got a Guru and a V8 Fusion and some bananas. Should provide me with the energy to get through the rest of the catalogue. And hey, POTASSIUM!

So we’re at page 251 and the Oni Press section. This month Oni’s leading off with RESURRECTION VOLUME 1, the collection of Marc (Amazing Spider-Man, Hollywood) Guggenheim’s monthly genre fiction series. Oni’s really been throwing a ton of promotional weight behind this series, like offering the first b&w mini-series as a tpb for just $6 to promote the launch of the colour ongoing series. Well it seems like they’re upping the ante, with this collection containing the complete “volume 0″ trade AS WELL AS the first 7 issues of the colour series, 368 pages in total, for just $25. Granted, there’s no hardcover on it, but that’s still a hell of a deal. RESURRECTION is an enjoyable, straight-forward genre action series about the aftermath of a worldwide apocalypse. It guest-stars Bill Clinton, apparently. It’s been a hoot so far, if you were thinking of giving it a shot this would be a hell of a way to do so.

Also from Oni, Stumptown #4 from Rucka and Southworth, and a new printing of that gorgeous oversized HC edition of Local. We’ve sold over 50 copies of that, btw. Did you know that? Over 50. That’s an evergreen product, just saying.

8:55pm: HAUNTED is the graphic novel collection of the YA webcomic series about a group of junior high kids who sneak into a Halloween party at a haunted house. It’s a full colour graphic novel with really great art, 104 pages, for $12.95. It’s also self-published with assistance from the Xeric Grant. So not only is it a great-looking book that’s more-or-less exclusive to the direct market, it’s also one of the most commercial projects The Xeric has ever supported. It looks GREAT. You can read either a preview or an earlier incarnation of the story (I can’t tell which) online at http://www.joshuasmeaton.com/Haunted/HauntedHomePage.htm.

Congrats to author Joshua Smeaton, we’re really looking forward to your book

9:03pm: Because of Diamond’s ADULT PREVIEWS ghetto (which is now virtual, with no print-version of Adult Previews being produced), you’d be forgiven for missing Radio Comix’s GENUS #92, the first version in the new 48 page squarebound format. It’s a bit steep at $9.99, but with higher quality paper, top-notch contributors, and it being the longest-running adult publication out there, fans will be very happy to see it return.

9:09pm: One day I’m gonna go through here and count just how many pages of Diamond house-ads are in Previews, because it’s just short of ridiculous. I’m in the “S” comics section and there are full-page ads for Ghostbusters mini-mates and Star Trek replica toys. I have a feeling there are 20-30 pages of house ads in this thing, and I dunno about you but I would _love_ another 30 pages taken out of this catalogue.

Also, big-ups to TANK GIRL: SKIDMARKS #3 from Titan on page 260. The new series looks great, Tank Girl fans should be thrilled with it…!

9:13pm: You know I’m getting tired when I just start quoting whole swaths of solicit text, but read this, it sounds great:

Ten years have passed since the Great Tokyo Earthquake, and the people’s memories of the disaster have faded. Ganta Igarashi, a middle school evacuee, has finally begun to live a normal life…That is, until the day “Red Man” appears at his school and Ganta’s fate is changed forever. His entire class is brutally murdered, and although innocent of the crime, Ganta is sentenced to death and sent to the bizarre prison known as “Deadman Wonderland.” An insane and brutal game of prison survival begins!

That’s for DEADMAN WONDERLAND VOLUME 1, a new manga series from Tokyopop (p263) by writer Jinsei Katoaka and artist Kazuma Kondou. That sounds surprisingly excellent for a random Tokyopop series. I hope the first volume lives up to the hype, I’m gonna check it out.

9:16pm: Also from Tokyopop on p265 is REMEMBER, an original graphic novel by the digital painter “Benjamin”, and the first colour graphic novel from Tokyopop’s much-touted colour line I’ve seen in quite some time. Unfortunately Benjamin’s first book for the line, ORANGE, has been unavailable since shortly after it was released, with no reprint announced by Tokyopop (and none solicited this month alongside the new book). If you want this one, pre-order it, as it seems TP has no intention of keeping this material in print, sadly.

9:21pm: I don’t remember UDON ever officially announcing it, but they’ve scored the license to a bunch of Mega Man manga, based on the popular video game character. Viz was releasing one of the more recent, cartoon-based series called MEGA MAN NT, but this series will appeal to older readers and non-manga fans alike, I think. MEGA MAN MEAGMIX VOL. 1 is $12.95 for 220pages, on page 270.

9:24pm: Hey, Vertical’s got BLACK JACK VOL 9 by Osamu Tezuka. Nice.

9:27pm: Hey we’re at VIZ (p273)! Oo and look, they’ve got the first trade paperback collection from the SIGIKKI website, BOKURANO: OURS VOLUME 1 by Mohiro Kitoh! 15 kids pilot a giant mecha, but the whole thing is hyper-intense and creepy. I’m not caught up on the series at SIGIKKI (I am so behind on comics reading I need a week off just to read…) but I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read so far. I was also really digging Kitoh’s series SHADOW STAR, which was published by Dark Horse who just… stopped… knowing what to do with it. Like, entirely. Until they stopped publishing it in the middle, leaving tons of people hanging. Lame. Still: BOKURANO OURS!

It’s a good month for “new works by creators previously published by other companies”, as BLAME! and NOISE! creator Tsutomi Nahei (ex-Tokyopop) comes to Viz with BIOMEGA VOLUME 1. It’s like an even tighter, more-intense version of his art on BLAME! by all accounts, and definitely for mature readers. Nihei should have some traction with North American comics fans, as he illustrated a 5-part Wolverine mini-series called WOLVERINE: SNKIT! that had his signature art-style and setting, and went out of print pretty-darned-quickly as far as I can remember.

Oh, also: NAOKI URASAWA’S 20TH CENTURY BOYS VOLUME 7, one of the best serialized comics being released.

9:36pm: None of the books at Yen look particularly inspiring, and as always I’ll be visiting their website at http://yenpress.com to find out what they’re actually releasing in January. I generally don’t comment on the Zenescope pages either, as I find the layout to be really unplesant to read, but I will say that they seem to understand how columns and grids work, which is more than I can say for Antarctic… but these pages are usually the most colour-saturated in the entire catalogue. There’s nowhere to rest your eyes, and as such I want to flip past these pages as quickly as possible.

…and that completes the comics section. Le’s see if there’s anything good in the rest of the catalogue.

Page 284 has two dinosaur books by acclaimed illustrator William Stout, which seem to be new/newish. WILLIAM STOUT DINOSAUR DISCOVERIES (144 pages, 8×11, $24.95 SC /$39.95 HC) is a collection of all new drawings of ‘specimens discovered in the last 20 years’, and WILLIAM STOUT NEW DINOSAUR DISCOVERIES A-Z (64 pages, 6×9, $14.95) seems to be a kid-friendly edition using the same batch of images. Fans will eat that up.

Page 286 has a Previews-Exclusive edition of the forthcoming WONDER WOMAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, in hardcover with a different Adam Hughes cover. Huh, it’s co-written by Phil Jimenez, which is kind of neat, and at $35.95 this hardcover is only 6 bucks more than the softcover. Sounds like a pretty good deal for Wonder Woman fans, though be warned, the book isn’t actually coming out until May 11th, despite being in the January catalogue. Also on this page is the new DK guide to Iron Man, IRON MAN: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE ARMORED HERO ($24.99), and a comics academia book on Russian comic books called KOMIKS: COMIC ART IN RUSSIA ($38.00).

Page 288 features RAMAYANA: DIVINE LOOPHOLE ($29.99, 100 pages, HC), an illustrated artbook by Pixar animator Sanjay Patel. He’s the fella behind the awesome “Little Book of Hindu Deities” from a few years back. RAMAYANA is a gorgeous looking vector-illustrated version of the story of Vishnu and other Hindu Gods, and it looks pretty cool. That price tag is a little steep though, particularly for a book that’s going to measure 4″ x 6″. I’m going to want to see this one first before picking it up. The fine folks at Chronicle can feel free to send me a copy, of course…

Actually, I just checked the Chronicle Books site, and it looks like it’s actually going to measure 8 3/4″ wide by 8″ tall, much bigger than the “4×6″ that Previews lists. That’s still pricey, but it’s back down into the range of “extravagant” rather than “ridiculous”.

Okay, I think that does it. I’m knee-deep in the Toy Section here, so I think it’s time to call it a night. Thanks to everyone who read-along or linked the first part of this. Hope you enjoyed it, and we’ll be back again next time… Here’s hoping, anyway!

Jeez that’s long, like 3600 words.

- Chris

3:37pm: Cover. This month our cover options are “Sexy Blue Chick” from the comic book adaptation of the video game “Mass Effect”, or heavily shadowed and poorly drawn Superman characters in, and I’m not fucking with you here, “a new era of excitement!” from Dan DiDio and Philip Tan. Poor month for PREVIEWS covers when sexy blue lesbian alien based on a video game is the less embarrassing comic book cover, artistically.

3:42pm: Dark Horse: Congratulations to the fine folks at DH for putting back into print BLACKSAD, the only furry comic most “normal” comic fans aren’t embarrassed to have on their bookshelves. Sexy jungle-cat Blacksad P.I. is tracking down murders and kidnappers and the like, getting into trouble, and having sex with sexy cat ladies. It’s 1930s and 40s pulp noir streaming through the hand of an extraordinarily talented Disney animator. It’s beautiful, it’s sexy, it is hard-boiled kitty cats. DH’s edition collects all three Blacksad stories released to date in one hardcover. Previously the first two stories were available from iBooks and those out-of-print volumes were fetching 60 and 70 bucks a pop on the aftermarket, so this will probably do quite well upon release.

3:49pm: The new BPRD series starts up with KING OF FEAR #1 and the return of Guy Davis. Meanwhile, the most recent Hellboy Arc gets a collection in HELLBOY VOLUME 9: THE WILD HUNT . Artist Duncan Fegredo is an amazing match for this series, the pages are just gorgeous and it’s selling more-or-less as well as anything Mignola drew.

3:55pm: On page 41 we’ve got Rafael Grampa’s MESMO DELIVERY, in a brand new edition from Dark Horse, and at a reduced price of just $10. Here’s the problem: We sold a BUTLOAD of the AdHouse edition of this. So I’m not quite sure how many to order of this new edition… I mean it’s gorgeous, has a terrifying little story, and I do think moving from Adhouse to DH will raise its profile. Do I just order a lot, or another BUTLOAD? It’s so tough doing the Previews some months.

3:58pm: Pages 42 and 43 bring us two interesting new books. SHINJUKU is an original project by Yoshitaka Amano and someone named “Mink” join forces to release an original prose project in the vein of Amano and Gaiaman’s SANDMAN: DREAM HUNTERS, with a story and over 100 original paintings to go along with it. It’ll be interesting to see Amano tackle more contemporary images, as his primary art style seems ideally suited to historical works. Speaking of, Dark Horse releases OKIMONO KIMONO, an art book collecting the intricate kimono designs and art of CLAMP member Mokona. It’s coming in a little small for an artbook at the Tokyopop trim size, but that also means we get it for just $12.99.

4:16pm: DC Comics: We get a skip-month for Blackest Night as the creative team catches up, but hey, we get the oversized anniversary issue GREEN LANTERN #50 (page 57). But the biggest and weirdest news of the month are the Blackest Night “Rebirth” books, featuring additional issues of cancelled (dead) series like Catwoman, Phantom Stranger, and James Robinson’s Starman. That’s actually one of the most clever tie-ins I’ve ever heard of, good on you DC.

4:30pm: Grant Morrison’s BATMAN AND ROBIN returns after a skip-month with #7, and Morrison’s SEAGUY collaborator Cameron Stewart in tow. I think more-or-less everyone is happy to see anyone other than Phillip Tan on the book (we seriously had returns), and the promo art I’ve seen from Stewart  looks really sharp. Here’s hoping for a return to form!

4:50pm: Gary Frank draws a kind of a terrifying Superman, even without the Christopher Reeve Death Mask:

I wouldn’t want to be locked in a room with his Adam Strange either.

5:02pm: Man, whole lotta nothing in the mainstream DCU section. Nice cover on Wonder Woman #40, murder of crows, that whole thing. But… yeah. Anyway. Quick dinner break and then I’ll be back.

5:16pm: The collected editions section is looking pretty good this month, with the too-long-awaited All Star Superman Volume 2 finally getting a softcover. A new printing of the second HITMAN book, and a trade paperback collecting all of the ‘origins’ backups from 52 and COUNTDOWN, the best part of either of those series (though 52 has its fans).

Actually, let me expand on the first part of this: I’m kind of sick of DC’s and Marvel’s hardcover programs. While I appreciate the short-term $$$ that comes from charging an extra $10 for a hardcover on a book, I think they’re really hurting long-term sales. I know that the whole superhero section of the industry seems to be predicated on short-term thinking, but I think that if it was about giving consumers choice simultaneous releases would be the way to go. This is a bit of a bigger problem than I have time to give it right now, but DC and Marvel mandating hardcover exclusives for 4-6 months means that their biggest, newest, ‘hottest’ storylines remain considerably more inaccessible until well after the heat has entirely dissipated on the series. The Justice Society relaunch is the hardest-hit series I can think of, but Green Lantern and Spider-Man and Runaways from Marvel are also suffering, from my POV, for having long gaps between HC and SC collections.  Maybe if I’ve got time I’ll follow it up with a longer post.

5:31pm: Speaking of, the 4th and final PLANETARY collection is solicited this issue. HC only. For MARCH. Talk about striking while the iron is cooled, the cord is wrapped up, and the whole thing’s been put back in the closet. Soooo unfortunate.

5:34pm: What If Alan Moore WAS Swamp Thing? Check out Astro City: The Dark Age Book 4 #1.

Meanwhile, over on page 105 we have the next book in DC’s little hardcover crime line, THE BRONX HILL by Peter Milligan and old-timey Vertigo artist (can we say that? are they old enough?) James Romberger, whose last work I can remember is the excellent Seven Miles a Second. Actually, heh, DC has this thing where when they’re mentioning artist credits they include other DC credits in allcaps, and work for other publishers as italics. So author Peter Milligan is Peter Milligan (GREEK STREET, HUMAN TARGET), and James Romberger is James Romberger (Seven miles a Second). Funny thing is, DC Vertigo were the publishers of Seven Miles a Second, at least initially. It’s the graphic biography of gay artist David Wojnarowicz, and Vertigo pub’d it in 1996. I know a new edition was planned but so far as I can tell it never came out. So there’s a history lesson for whomever writes the Previews solicitations at DC: Look, it’s a book you published!

Edit: Mystery solved! See the 8:15pm entry.

5:55pm: There we go, it’s a new creator-owned series from Grant Morrison. JOE THE BARBARIAN #1 sees Morrison team with relative newcomer Sean Murphy to do a pretty-looking mini-series about a boy who falls into his childhood fantasy world.  The preview looks good, and the price is hard to beat: It’s just a dollar! I think we’re going to give the first issue away for free, too… really build up a readership for this one, and give people a reason to come to the comic shop every month. It’s somewhat tough, particularly when Morrison’s fans have largely converted to collected editions, to get them in regularly to see all the great new stuff that’s come out. I think we can make a pretty-good go of it with a new #1. Fingers crossed!

6:14pm: Speaking of Vertigo, Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon continues to have lovely understated painted covers, it kind of makes everything else on the solicit pages look obscene by comparison. But that’s art for you.

6:21pm: We’ve got a very rare thing from DC, a bind-up. That’s a publishing industry term for taking 2 or more books and putting them under one cover… Most comic book trade paperbacks are essentially bind-ups, but with THE LOSERS VOL 1 & 2 TP ($19.99, January 27) we’ve got the first two collections in one book. Usually when this happens, one retail outlet has agreed to order a lot of copies of a book if they can get it in a more shelf-friendly format. With THE LOSERS film dropping in April, this inexpensive new collection will hopefully lead new people to the series.

Quite honestly, I kind of wish most of DC’s backlist would get bind-ups like this, and that they’d stop re-releasing things like HITMAN or whatever by story-arc… One trade on the shelf, one book to keep in stock instead of two. Make my job a lot easier.

6:30pm: Just gonna pretend DC Direct doesn’t exist. Moving on…

6:36pm: Image Comics! And on page 132 we’ve got ORC STAIN #1, the new ongoing series from WONTON SOUP (Oni) creator James Stokoe. It’s a full-colour Orc-straveganza, a fantasy epic for the console video game generation with a one-eyed orc character who’s kinda like Karnak from The Inhumans. Really nice art on this one, and apparently it’s an ongoing series! I am very-much inclined to support this one with strong orders, and with Brandon Graham’s KING CITY also appearing monthly it should be an easy book to cross-promote. Check out an article and promo art from the series at http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23260.

6:44pm: Okay, 3 things:

1. I’m actually pretty cool about comics that have their heroes covered in cum. You know, live and let live. Granted, those comics tend to come from CLASS COMICS and not Image, but different strokes and all that. It’s just that they don’t usually get a full-page in previews. Surely one of those retailers in the bible belt that’s bemoaning the state of comics, surely one of them has been wounded by this? Has anyone called the CBLDF yet?

2. Look at those legs. Ugggh. At least the character’s left leg has the excuse of ‘foreshortening”. But the right leg? The section from the knee to the foor is 2/3s the length of his massive thighs… He’d look ridiculous standing up. I thought they had a talented artist doing the layouts for McFarlane?Actually while I’m at it that right hand seems to have three or four joints on the thumb. Though I’ve only read the first issue, so perhaps that is one of Haunt’s powers.

3. HELP. Seriously, if you saw a dude in this outfit and covered in cum in this alley, would you help him? I don’t think I would, and I’m the open-minded sort. I’d definitely call the cops though.

7:39pm: Just had to take a short work-break there, sorry. In the interim, I realize that I needed to give props to Image Comics for having the single-best section in the catalogue. Clean design, nice colours, a layout of info that makes sense (for a change). Important projects in front, graphic novels (alphabetical!) in the middle, single-issue comics in the back (alphabetical!). Easy as hell to find stuff month-to-month. Bravo, Image Comics! Your Previews section is magnificent.

8:15pm: And Calvin Reid, former editor of the Reed Publishing graphic novel line, popped up on Twitter to say that yes, it was his imprint that was going to put David Wojnarowicz’s Seven Miles a Second back into print:

@calreid: I think I Can answer. Reid & Reed planned a new revised edition of Seven Miles A Second, which was completed but has never been published. Reed pulled the plug on the imprint before we could pub. The new edition has about 20 new pages. I hope someone publishes it.
I think Seven Miles a Second is one of the great comics memoirs and an important record of David W. & of a seminal time in NY.

I hope so too, Calvin. The magic of instant communication!

8:20pm: Marvel. Jelena Kevic-Djurdjevic’s “Marvel Women Variant” is a nice piece of art. Or at least, it makes an impression.

Whoa, looks like the folks at PETA got their hands on Siege Embedded #1:

Look, I’m all for the ethical treatment of animals, but I think throwing fake blood at our nation’s heroes is a step too far.

8:36pm: Let I Get This Straight: Captain America Reborn is now six issues, AND it’s finishing AFTER the books in which Cap actually returns to the Marvel Universe? Man, it’s a good thing no one who works for Marvel is ever accountable for their actions. Cuz, haha, I mean, this makes the Civil War problems look quaint in comparison. I kinda wanna work for Marvel now. Seems like a pretty good gig.

8:42pm: I notice the solicit text for Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #6 contains the following: “Join rockstars Brian Michael Bendis and David Lafuente as we swing into the final chapter of this thrilling arc!” I just wanna say that if I started calling Bendis “rockstar” to his face, he’d take a swing at me before the end of the first day. In fact I invite everyone who knows him to only address him as “rockstar” from now on.

8:46pm: No, wait, this solicit text is better: Spider-Man The Clone Saga #5: “MAXIMUM CLONAGE! It’s Hoo-Ha Time as MJ goes into labor…” Well holy shit. Whoda thunk it would ever be vagina-time in a Marvel comic? Just goes to show.

8:50pm: Huh, apparently Marvel’s launching a movie-continuity Iron man comic. 2 issues only. Weird. I kind of assume this is just to fill out a trade paperback somewhere?

8:54pm: Including the back-up story in Incredible Hercules this month, there are going to be THREE Agents Of Atlas books on the stands in November. Agents of Atlas vs. Avengers, Marvel Boy: The Uranian, and the back-up story. Not bad for a book that was more-or-less cancelled a few months back. Oh shit, AND they’re in Thunderbolts #140. 4 Atlas books.

9:02pm: Nothing really jumped out at me from Marvel’s collected editions. So let’s stop this here for now, and we’ll pick up with the back-half of the catalog some time this weekend… Monday at the latest.

- Chris

Honestly. Fucking amateur hour.

4:06pm: Oh, good. Toyfare’s gay-baiting on the next page.

4:07pm: Page 185 features an advertisement by The Xeric Foundation (ad space donated by Diamond Comics) promoting their May 2009 grant recipients, including Canadian auto-bio author Adam Bourret. This is a very good thing that they do, thanks Xeric Foundation… and sorry to Peter Laird whom I  gravely (but accidentally) insulted last week.

4:13pm: On page 188 we have “Dread & Superficiality: Woody Allen As Comic Strip” I shit you not. Apparently there was a Woody Allen comic strip tht ran for EIGHT YEARS in newspapers. That… that is shocking to me. Written and illustrated by Stuart Hample, this Abrams Comicarts collection collects 220 best-of strips, and retails for $35.00 in HC.

4:21pm: Oh, also on page 188, Terry Moore’s got a third trade paperback collection of ECHO, which has continued to pick up readers in both formats.  $15.95, 104 page, from Abstract Studios.

4:21pm: SLG Publishing (still listed as “Slave Labor Graphics” in the catalogue) has a trio of interesting releases in October. The second issue of CAPTAIN BLOOD drops, and I actually really dug the first one. Nice art, pirate story (a plus), based on a real story. I know “action adventure comic book” isn’t the first thing that comes to mind from SLG, but I dug it. WINCHESTER #1 is a spooky story set in the Winchester House, which I’d never heard of before they started promoing this book but is pretty fascinating. And Jamaica Dyer’s WEIRD FISHES is about weird kids and growing up, and collects her webcomic (available here).

4:36pm: The always entertaining Antarctic Press section on pages 194-195. So, it looks like it’s sliiiiightly better than usual, with some actual effort put into making these pages less hideous. For example, they’re putting the the cover of the book and the text describing the book on the same colour background, for readability! That’s pretty bold considering their last few months of solicitations. Granted, they still don’t seem to know how gutters or margins work, and the page still has a slap-dash feeling that would make a real designer vomit in his mouth a little, but: Definite improvement, Antarctic Press! Keep up the… work!

5:14pm: I had no idea a second collection of HATTER M: LOOKING GLASS WARS was on its way. Adapted from the popular novel series and now with art from a fella named Sami Makkonen. That’ll sell well I think, the first one certainly did and it wasn’t all just Templesmith fans (the artist on the first volume).  Page 208 from Automatic Pictures Publishing, $14.95 for the 200 page SC and $24.99 for the HC.

Also on page 208, the Xeric winning anthology GHOST COMICS from Bare Bones Studios, featuring stories by Jeffrey Brown, Zack Sally, and Lucy Knisely. $10, 176 pages. Oh, and the interesting-looking ODUSSEUS THE REBEL by Steven Grant and Scott Bieser. An adaptation of the Odysseus myth, it certainly looks more interesting than Marvel’s recent attempt, and hey, the whole thing actually ran online at the Big Head Press website. Who doesn’t like Greek myth? Let’s give it a go. 184 pages, $12.95.

2:57PM: This month’s covers offer us… THE FINAL ISSUE OF PLANETARY, and Cowboy Ninja Viking. I know where my money’s going.

Actually, I do kind of wonder if the demand for this single issue has maintained since the last issue 2 or 3 years ago. Actually, exactly 3 years ago by the time this appears. I was really hoping for quick collections on this to capitalize on the renewed interest… but that ain’t happening. I don’t know how much has been made public, but seriously? March for the regular hardcover, the rest some time after that.

You’d think they would get those out a bit quicker, eh?

3:06pm: Huh, in the front half of the Previews stuff that I don’t normally read, there’s a feature on Dave McKean. Apparently Dave McKean is reading Shaun Tan’s THE ARRIVAL, BLUE PILLS by Frederik Peeters, and THE SECRET by Andrzej Klimowski (not the creepy self-help book). That actually got me to pause while flipping through this, which is rare indeed.

DARK HORSE

3:08: This is a big month at DH for one-shots. They’re calling them “One-shot Wonders” in the catalogue, which has connotations I myself wouldn’t want to be associated with, but who reads Previews anyway? First up is SUGARSHOCK, by Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon. This reprints the stories from MySpace Dark Horse Presents, which were recently published in those MSDHP trade collections. Actually, despite appearing in trade and online for free, I still think we’re going to do AMAZING with this one-shot, to hit all those people still coming into the shop, month after month, buying tons of Buffy comics. Thanks DH! Please keep this one in print indefinitely! And bring back Mignola’s AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD while you’re at it.

3:15pm: So I flipped forward a few pages, and this one-shot-wonders program is going to have an incentive signed print by Travis Charest attached.  Ah, here are the details: “retailers ordering 10 each of all one shots from Aug, Sep & Oct Previews get Charest litho signed by creators.” OO, that’s gonna be pretty hard to hit on a couple of those… But to be fair, Travis Charest drawing Dr. Horrible, Conan, Darth Vader, and Hellboy on the same signed print? Probably will pay for the rest.

3:21pm: I was just wondering the other day why the most recent Grendel series, GRENDEL: BEHOLD THE DEVIL written and drawn by Matt Wagner, hadn’t been collected yet. And here we are on page 30. 184 page hc for $19.95 is a steal, and a great place to jump on board for folks who’ve never read the series before. Oh and on page 31, we’ve got a reprise of the naked John & Yoko album cover on RAPTURE #5, complete with naked man-ass. I think this might be a first for Previews? Actually, this momentous occasion deserves a full-size image:

He’s a bit skinny but I’d still tap that.

3:27pm: Speaking of things that have been out of print for too long, uber-hot mainstream writer Brian K. Vaughan’s THE ESCAPISTS has been out of print for over a year. I thought it was a pretty decent graphic novel, and it’s not like Vaughan doesn’t sell well. It’s not a major work, but then DC isn’t letting PRIDE OF BAGDHAD go out of print for a year either, because we all like making money… Anyway, the softcover edition finally puts in an appearance on page 33.

3:31pm: I saw a post entitled 365 SAMURAI AND A FEW BOWLS OF RICE the other day, I thought it was someone talking about samurai manga and not the title of an actual book. But apparently this is an original graphic novel that describes itself as a cross between BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL and BONE. Huh. 400 pages for $16.95 on page 34, I’ll give that one a go.

Oh and Dean Motter’s ELECTROPOLIS gets a collection page 35. Huh.

3:34pm: Good month for DH! Jeez. Charles Vess art book (the first?) on page 36, 200 pages for 40 bucks, and a brand new GROO mini-series, THE HOGS OF HORDER #1, on page 37.  Page 38 has a HC, upscale reprinting of 2 Casper The Friendly Ghost comics, one from 1949 and one from 1952. I have no idea whatsoever if this sort of reprint project will catch on, 80 pages in HC for $10, but it’s at least interesting. Here’s hoping the repro is up-to-snuff.

3:38pm: Title of the month so far is: DR. GRORDBORT PRESENTS: VICTORY–SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURE VIOLENCE FOR YOUNG MEN AND LITERATE WOMEN. It’s basically porn for steampunkers, in that there are no naked bits but lots of rayguns. It seems like there may even be some comics in this… who knew?

3:51pm: Hah, it really is “lost” DH projects this month, as Eric Powell’s GOON: CHINATOWN (which is actually volume 6) finally gets a softcover release, 112 pages for $15.95 (bit pricey there eh) on page 46.

DC COMICS

3:56pm: I just can’t help it, I see a rainbow and I think “pride flag”. re: Blackest Night #4.

3:58pm: Man, those FINAL CRISIS AFTERMATH one-shots were utterly dead on arrival. Same goes for the RED CIRCLE stuff. Absolutely no interest.

4:00pm: I will say that our minimum-Grant-Morrison-on-a-superhero-number is about 60% of our minimum-Grant-Morrison-and-Frank-Quitely-on-anything number, but I’m still anticipating a bit of a shock-drop on the post-Quitely issues of Batman & Robin. The art shown here by Philip Tan is much stronger (in every way) than Tony Daniel’s run on the last Morrison Batman stuff, but… it’s still no Quitely. I’m hoping to be proven wrong though.

4:03pm: Are you fucking kidding? Azrael? REALLY?

4:04pm: See, shit like this is why I could never take GOTHAM CENTRAL seriously, despite the best efforts of Brubaker and Rucka. According to ARKHAM REBORN #1, “Following the Black Mask’s destruction of Arkham Asylum in Battle For The Cowl, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham has rebuilt the Asylum following the design of his mad Uncle Amadeus.” It “soon mutates into a Torture House.”

Seriously? There are so many things that stretch credability to breaking in that description that when respected writers come in and try actually mature stories that it’s just a fucking joke. There’s some great, great work done on the bat-books every once in a while that’s utterly undermined by adolescent torture porn featuring Batman, just for the sake of filling the racks with as many crossovers and minis as possible… Gross, just gross.

4:35pm: Okay, we’re back! And not a moment too soon, because it looks like Gary Frank has drawn another utterly creepy Christopher Reeve face on SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN #2.

It’s just… wrong. Uncanny Valley wrong. I will restate my caveat from last month though that despite these Christopher Reeve caricatures being drawn in, badly, that the Johns/Frank Superman and the Legion stuff has been pretty good reading.

4:42pm: Huh, going through our tracking numbers, it looks like the new DOOM PATROL series by Giffen and Matthew Clark did really well on its first issue. Shocking. I will actually need to bump my orders up on #2 & #3. Unless, of course, everyone abandons the series with the second issue.

4:54pm: Sorry for the slow-down between updates, but a lot of the DC section is pretty perfunctory stuff without much to comment on…

So on page 96 we’ve got DC COMICS CLASSICS LIBRARY: SHAZAM! – THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL. This is the original Binder/Beck story, considered to be one of the first serialized stories with a beginning, middle, and end, right out of 1943. My customers have been waiting for this story arc for a very long time, since about half-way through Jeff Smith’s recent re-do of the story from a few years back. In fact, DC started up a whole new line, the classics library, to accommodate the re-printing of this one. I know I’m sounding like a bit of a broken record here, but the release of Smith’s MONSTER SOCIETY was a really big deal, that generated a lot of interest in Shazam as a character and in the original story-arc, and DC has frittered almost all of that away. Following the completion of Smith’s four-issue series, it took a Full Year for them to get another kid-friendly Shazam series on the stands, all the while the Shazam family was dragged through all kinds of mud in the mainsteam DCU… Now, 2 and a half years past the end of Smith’s series we’re going to get a prestige-format, $40, fanboy-targeted release of these original comics. The whole thing is just a series of truly awful business decisions on DC’s part, and it means less money for all involved.

I wish they’d hire some editors from non-comics publishers every once in a while to just sit in on meetings and say things like “Say, what are you going to do to capitalize on the momentum, sales, and good-will generated by publishing new work from million-selling author Jeff Smith’s book the month after it’s over?” I wonder if that question would get a blank look, or a self-satisfied “Nothing.”

Anyway, it’s 272 pages in the mystifyingly-priced $40 hard cover format.

5:17pm: Hey look, it’s THE WINTER MEN TP (page 107, $19.99, 176pages). The beloved, beautifully drawn mini-series by Lewis and John Paul Leon. We did okay with this mini–it never set any sales records or anything–but really it’s the kind of thing we’re going to do well with in trade paperback, and hopfully for years to come. Let’s order it like a VERTIGO trade and see what happens.

5:20pm: The Wildstorm video game adaptation comics have been pretty hit-or-miss, both sales-wise and quality wise. I think producing comics for people used to downloading shit for free is maybe not the smartest business plan, but they keep making them so somebody must be buying them. GOD OF WAR #1 is particularly notable because none other than Marv Wolfman is adapting the game into comics form, and GOW is a video game that actually has a story (or at least a really good plot), so there’ll be plenty to work with.

5:51pm: Huh, Vertigo is reprinting SHADE: THE CHANGING MAN and releasing a long-awaited volume 2. That’s… kind of surprising. I’ve only read Shade in drips-and-drabs, it’d be nice if they actually followed-through and reprinted the whole series… Looks like that’s the plan anyway. They seem pretty committed with their similarly surprising SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE collections, which have seen 7(!) trade paperbacks released in the last few years.  Here’s hoping, eh?

(P.S.: Anyone who’s enjoying the crime/noir resurgence of the past few years with titles like CRIMINAL and HUNTER, I’d definitely recommend SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE, it’s an amazing series of short noir stories, with only very small touches of the fantastic rooted in surprisingly gritty realism)

IMAGE COMICS

5:59pm: HAUNT #1. The new IP from Todd McFarlane.  Story by Robert Kirkman. Why is Robert Kirkman doing work-for-hire for Todd McFarlane? I guess Kirkman is excited about this, but I’ve never read any Work For Hire from him that was even half as good as his creator owned stuff.

Also, Capullo on layouts, Ottley on pencils, and McFarlane on inks? I suppose that’s pretty badass? I dunno. I feel like this might be a big deal but I missed the hype. I hope people are excited about it. I’m not order-100-copies-and-get-a-1in100-variant excited though, but we’ll at least give the first few issues a shot, see if we can turn Kirkman’s enthusiasm into sales.

6:26pm: Well, that’s a disturbing looking solicitation image.

ONE MODEL NATION is a new original graphic novel featuring art by Jim Rugg, a buddy of mine and the amazing artist behind STREET ANGEL. It’s written by Dandy Warhols singer Courtney Taylor, and apparently that’s not the the final cover, but I can’t imagine why they’d use it if it wasn’t… Nazi imagery tends to be pretty divisive. At any rate, I’ve got a lot of faith in the project, and the plot sounds right up my alley. It’s very Rock N Roll.  Check out a preview here.

6:34pm: I even like Steaven T. Seagle, but $30 for the SOUL KISS hard cover seems a bit pricey for the material.

MARVEL COMICS

6:47pm: It’s kind of lovely to open up the Marvel section of the Previews, and be greeted by lovely-looking adaptations of classic literature, rather than grit-teeth gun-toating badasses and boobsocks. THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ HC is $30 and 200 pages, still pricier than I’d like to see for an all ages book, and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE PREMIERE HC is $20 for 120 pages, and they were good enough to keep that faux-teen-magazine style cover. Just lovely.

6:56pm: Wow, they’re relaunching WEB OF SPIDER-MAN? That’s entirely awful. They’re launching it to tie into the clone nonsense too…. and as an anthologY! Heh. Wow. That is a phenomenally shitty waste of time and paper. No one is going to want this. Well, I mean, people have bought far, far shittier books. But? Web of Spider-Man? No way.

7:03pm: Well, it had to happen. Brother Voodoo is getting his own limited series. DOCTOR VOODOO: AVENGER OF THE SUPERNATURAL #1 spins out of Bendis’ awful depiction of the charcter in New Avengers, and is a true rarity in that it’s an ongoing book being launched by Marvel or DC that features a person of colour in the lead. Fuck, it’s notable for being only the third superhero book currently published with a lead that’s a person-of-colour. And they’re all published by Marvel. Shit, three cheers for Marvel on that one.

7:16pm: I kind of can’t believe that Peter Bagge did a red Hulk variant for STRANGE TALES #2. And hey, it looks like Jim Rugg is listed in the credits for this one. Last I’d heard his Brother Voodoo story wasn’t going to be published. Hopefully the folks in charge changed their minds.

7:18pm: It looks like consumate professional Phil Jimenez is the new artist on Warren Ellis’ ASTONISHING X-MEN run starting with #31, which I had given up for dead. Our numbers have been dropping like a stone on the series since the heights of the Joss Whedon run thanks to the frequent delays. Despite the relaunch I have to wonder how many people are still interested… well, we’ll order the series at the sell-through of issue #30 and I’m sure Marvel will be ready with a second printing, if anyone still cares.

7:30pm: You’re not going to believe this, but in the Marvel Previews catalogue Marvel seems to have flipped the Dave Johnson cover for PUNISHER: FRANK CASTLE MAX #75, including his backwards signature. Check it:

They’ve got it right on the website, as in not-flipped, but, yeah. I hope the error was somehow on Johnson’s side, because if it was Marvel that’s pretty not-cool.

7:37pm: Uh, Richard Corben is drawing a STARR THE SLAYER mini-series? How the hell did I miss that?

7:45pm: Alright, that’s all I’ve got for the Marvel part of the catalogue. Unfortunately I’m completely out of time for work stuff today. So Part two: The Rest Of The Catalogue, will have to wait until tomorrow morning. Thanks for reading, for now!

- Christopher

Page 182: Abrams Comicarts has moved up quite a bit in the catalogue, hasn’t it? I remember at one point there were so many publishers trying to jame their way into the front of the section that Terry Moore’s Abstract Studios was on the third or fourth page. But I digress: JOHNNY CASH: I SEE A DARKNESS is the English language edition of a European release by creator Reinhard Kleist. The likeness on the cover is both accurate and… disturbing at the same time. Not “giving superboy dead Christopher Reeves’ face” disturbing, but it’s not quite ‘on’ either. Check and see what I mean on the right there. Odd choice for a cover?

Also on page 182 is the STRANGERS IN PARADISE OMNIBUS LIMITED EDITION, which is a box set of every fucking page of strangers in paradise. Three hardcovers, 2 of them over a thousand pages each and the third with all of the colour art from the series. Signed, numbered, limited to 1250 copies, and $160. I wonder… are people stil so passionate about the series that they need to rebuy it in this format? Besides that though, $160 for 2200+ pages of comics is actually a pretty good deal, all things considered. Huh, not sure where I weigh in on this one.

Hah, with the constant downsizing (of the back half of previews) the density of projects worth talking about has gone up considerably. Also on Page 182 is DRIVEN BY LEMONS, a sketchbook collection by Skyscrapers of the Midwest author Joshua Cotter from Adhouse, and PINOCCHIO: VAMPIRE SLAYER by Van Jensen and Dustin Higgins from SLG. I think that the idea of a boy made of wood going around and staking vampires is surprisingly apt; how has no one thought of this before? In the popular digest format for $10.95.

Wow the Antarctic Press section is still just a total clusterfuck.

On page 206, Avatar is soliciting the next mini-series of Garth Ennis’ Chronicles of Wormwood series, featuring art by Oscar Jimenez of all people. Looks good. We’ve actually been trying to reorder the one-shot that takes place between the first mini-series and this one for a few months now, LAST ENEMY, but either it’s out of print or Diamond’s just not shipping them. Luckily it’s being offered again this month (alongside a bunch of other Avatar trades of note, so hopefully that means it’ll actually get around to showing up at our store. Sometimes it’s incredibly frustrating to be a comics retailer.

Page 210:

Logicomix
By Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie De Donna
7×9, 336 pages, $22.95
Published by Bloomsbury

This exceptional graphic novel recounts the spiritual odyssey of philosopher Bertrand Russell. In his agonized search for absolute truth, Russell crosses paths with legendary thinkers while his most ambitious goal, to establish unshakable logical foundations of mathematics, continues to loom before him. Russell persits in the quest that threatens to claim both his career and his personal happiness, finally driving him to the bring of insanity. Logicomix is a story about the conflict between an ideal rationality and the unchanging, flawed fabric of reality.

Sometimes you really can’t say anything that the solicitation doesn’t already say… other than “I hope this is good.”

Page 212: The annual Halloween issues of The Simpsons comics are always pretty neat, as we get to see our favourite characters go off-model and out-of-continuity, but this year takes the cake. Bart Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror #15 is guest-edited by Sammy Harkham, editor of the Kramers Ergot anthologies. And much like Kramers this issue will feature a cavalcade of top indy/alt/art comix talent, inclding Harkham, Kevin Huizenga, Matthew Thurber, Jeffrey Brown, Ted May, Ben Jones, CF, Jordan Crane, Tim Hensley, John Kershbaum, Will Sweeney, Jon Vermilyea, and Dan Zettwoch. If that ain’t amazing I don’t know what is.

Also on page 212, Boom Studios relaunches the venerable Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories with #699, and Mickey Mouse and Friends with #296. Both of the series feature a pretty dramatic overhaul, with much, much more contemporary stories filling the pages of the books. Disney Publishing is still a worldwide concern, and the Don Rosa classic duck/character stories that defined the Gemstone reprints (not to mention that were originally solicited for these issues under the Gemstone banner) have been replaced with contemporary stories by all new international creative teams. That and they’re now only 24 pages and three bucks a pop. I’m really curious to see if this contemporary take on Disney’s classic characters is any more successful than the classic comics previously being published. Only the sales charts will know for sure…!

Hmm. Donald Duck with a blue mask on (and without the tuft of… feathers… on the back of his head) looks an awful lot like Daffy.

Page 226: Buried in the fold on page 226 is a quaint-looking graphic novel from Montreal’s Conundrum Press called Hipless Boy, about a guy who isn’t a hipster living in a hipster neighborhood. He’s ‘hipless’ but perhaps a better term would be ‘in denial’? Hah, anyway. It’s a semi-fictional story about encountering new people in a cool Montreal neighborhood, and the whole thing apparently ran weekly for a number of years in McGill University’s newspaper. It’s by a dude named “Sully” (which isn’t hipsterish at all… :-/ ) but seriously, it sounds really interesting and better than the demon chick flashin her tits at me on the facing page, so I’m in. Give it a shot.

Page 241: DMP is publishing a book called “La Satanica”. One dude is licking another dude on the cover. Here’s to publishers knowing what their fans want, eh?

Page 242: Selfish Mr. Mermaid 2: “I swear your honour, I thought he was 18! I mean, just look at h… oh, wait. Uh, nevermind.”

Page 244: I’ve been hearing great things about MOYASIMON, an agricultural manga about tiny adorable creatures? Or something? The original Japanese title is Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture which sounds as exciting as watching wheat grow, but the buzz on this series is loud. It won the Tezuka prize last year (Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life won this year) and it’s already got a strong fanbase due to relentless pirating. Here’s hoping all those mouthy kids who swear that by stealing manga they’re ACTUALLY HELPING pony up the dough and pick this one up.

Page 247: Drawn and Quarterly offers up the third volume of Abouet and Ouberie’s charming AYA series, AYA: THE SECRETS COME OUT. This is an absolutely wonderful series of books, gorgeous and humanistic with lead characters of colour and a female writer to boot. This is everything people who complain about mainstream comics want in a comic book; you guys owe it to yourselves to check this out.

Also from D&Q this month is MASTERPIECE COMICS by R. Sikoryak, featuring the artistic chameleon retelling classic works of literature using the art styles of classic comics, and a brand new gekiga manga called RED SNOW by Susumu Karasumata. I don’t know much about the latter, but I did pick up a copy of it in Japanese while I was in Japan completely by accident, just because it looked good. D&Q hasn’t disappointed with a manga pick yet, I can’t imagine they’ll start now.

Page 252: Just a quick heads-up to note that Jiro Tanguchi and Yumemakura Baku’s The Summit of the Gods Volume 2 is solicited this month by Fanfare/Ponent Mon. I think the first volume just made an advance appearance at Comic-Con this past weekend, haven’t seen any reviews yet but I can only assume it’s as strong as the rest of his catalogue.

Page 254: Despite being more-or-less spattered in blood, the Fantagraphics section is actually much less ugly than it has been for the past few months. 8 point courier on a splattery background is not the easiest thing to read though…. I also would have thought that the long, long awaited release of Jacques Tardi in North America would merit a little more attention, but no. Hm. Guys, I love you but maybe you need to rethink your approach to Previews…?

Anyway, this month we’ve got an archive of Steve Ditko work from the 50s and 60s, two different Jaques Tardi collections (WEST COAST BLUES and YOU ARE THERE) which have a lovely trade dress. A collection of previously-uncollected shorts by Paul Hornschemeier (ALL AND SUNDRY) looks good, as does the 300th issue spectacular of THE COMICS JOURNAL, which seems to be entirely comprised of comics creators whose work I admire (Huizenga, Shaw, Ho Che Anderson) interviewing other comics creators whose work I admire (Spiegelman, Mazzucchelli, Chaykin), so that’ll be a great issue. Solid month for Fanta, tiny little solicitations, 1/4 of a page blury image of someone having their head exploded.

Page 256: First Second has a new collection of Tiny Tyrant stories called THE LUCKY WINNER and a bizarre-sounding sci-fi story called BALL PEEN HAMMER, but it’s the graphic novel REFRESH, REFRESH that I’m most interested in. It’s about three kids waiting for their dads to come home from war, afraid to enter adulthood, and finding their options slowly disappearing. Admittedly First Second’s Gina Gagliano sold me on it a few months back, but despite not really seeming like my thing at all, she made it sound incredibly compelling, I’m really looking forward to reading it.

Page 259: IDW’s got some notable releases this month with the second collection of the popular LOCKE & KEY series by Joe Hill and company, HEAD GAMES. The first one was really strong and I haven’t read the second yet, but I’m expecting good things. Mike Oeming and Mark Wheatley’s HAMMER OF THE GODS graphic novel finds a new home, making IDW either the third or fourth publisher to take on the project in some form.

Page 268: Still on IDW here, and it’s kind of… shocking… how diverse their offerings are. It looks like they’re doing Alex Raymond’s RIP KIRBY in big omnibus editions like the rest of their classic-strips line, and another surprising reprint series is Abuli, Bernet, and Toth’s TORPEDO VOLUME 1, collecting some very long out-of-print material. Apparently Darwyn Cooke is going to provide a cover and design the series as well.

Speaking of “Blasts from the past” (though not quite so far back), Sean McKeever’s THE WAITING PLACE is getting a giant omnibus collection with a new story by McKeever and Mike Norton. 300 pages for $30. I have a sentimental spot for The Waiting Place, it was one of the first ‘indy’ comics I really got behind, and McKeever one of the first comics professionals I ever chatted with online. I kind of lost track of the series during it’s occasional publishing hiatus’, I think maybe I’ll pick this up and see how the story ended after all.

page 269: Oh yeah and ZOMNIBUS, a collection of IDW-publsihed zombie stories including the complete Zombies vs. Robots.

Page 274: Hey, no Previews-love for Larry Gonick’s THE CARTOON HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD PART 2: FROM THE BASTILLE TO BAGHDAD? No Diamond, Feature Item, Spotlight, nothing? That’s some great cartooning right there! Ah well, as long as YOU don’t miss it dear reader…!

I was just gonna rip on a book that I don’t like, but I realized that there’s almost no point whatsoever, it probably isn’t going to sell a thousand copies anyway and the last thing the creator(s) need(s) to read is me talking shit about it on the internet. I do have a heart you know.

Page 278: J. Torres has a very long-awaited new graphic novel in the catalogue this month. LOLA: A GHOST STORY is a stand-alone teen-oriented fable, based on (I believe) Filipino ghost stories. It sounds neat and the art looks really nice, but the cover looks really young (and POWDER YELLOW?) for a book aimed at teenagers. Actually I can’t think of many powder-yellow books that even tweens read. Guys, you might want to change the colours on the cover? Butch it up a little bit?

(Which is hilarious coming from me, I know).

Page 296: Top Shelf have the long-awaited ALEC: THE YEARS HAVE PANTS by Eddie Campbell. As autobiography is a fluid and personal thing, Campbell expressed his ongoing life story under the guise of alter-ego Alex MacGarry through many short stories, numerous trade paperback collections, and anthology pieces. This one collects everything that Campbell created featuring “Alec”, including a new 35 page story. As I have only borrowed these books from friends over the years (and quite enjoyed them), it’ll be a treat to own them all in one lovely omnibus, at a still-managable size of 640 pages or so.

Ah, from The Top Shelf website, a little more info:

“…collects the previous Alec books THE KING CANUTE CROWD, GRAFFITI KITCHEN, HOW TO BE AN ARTIST, LITTLE ITALY, THE DEAD MUSE, THE DANCE OF LIFEY DEATH, AFTER THE SNOOTER, as well as an all-new 35 page book, THE YEARS HAVE PANTS, and some other short stories rarely or never before seen.”

Interestingly, I believe AFTER THE SNOOTER, the story of the adaptation of FROM HELL into a film, was where Campbell made the transition from alter-ego to… ego? Heh. It’s a fascinating insight into the man, warts and all. Don’t overlook this one (in a catalogue stuffed to the gills with sold work…).

Page 299: I can’t help it, I just fucking love video game artbooks. UDON has got MEGAMAN: OFFICIAL COMPLETE WORKS and SF20: THE ART OF STREET FIGHTER and fuck, yeah. Must own.

Disclaimer: UDON buys me dinner sometimes.

Page 300: I knew if I waited long enough Vanguard would eventually put out something I cared about…! THE LEGENDARY ART OF N.C. WYETH is a 128 page book weighing in at $24.95, and should be a total treat. I’m not as big into classic illustration as a lot of our customers, I’ve got my favourites though and I’ve always loved Wyeth’s work. Seems like a solid, inexpensive buy. If it comes out on time…

Page 305: VIZ MEDIA! What have you got for me this month? Why, it’s a short story collection by SOLANIN creator Inio Asano! Holy shit that’s great! Viz describes the two-volume WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD (both shipping on the same day, btw!) as a “series of intersecting vignettes,” “[exploring] the ways in which modern life can be ridiculous and sublime, terrible precious, waste and celebrated. And GIANT ROBOTS!”

Actually I made that last part up. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Even without the Giant Robots?

Page 311: Geez, you get to the end of the Viz section and you think you’re done and two of the biggest books of the month are there. Alright, WW Norton, let’s do this shit.

FIRST UP is the long, long-awaited hardcover collection THE BOOK OF GENESIS: ILLUSTRATED BY ROBERT CRUMB in which Crumb illustrates the text of the first book of the Bible, word for word. I can’t see anyone getting upset about this in any way, it should be great. Also available in $500 slipcased signed edition. :-P

NEXT we’ve got what some folks are already calling the graphic novel of the year, STITCHES by David Small. I’ve gotten about 1/3 of the way through the galley and it has all of the hallmarks of being the sort of graphic memoir that makes it on to critics lists and best-of-year lists alike. The art is really something too, I was turned off by the scribbliness of the cover but in the context of the story the emotional line is very evocative, particularly once you add in the grey washes. I don’t know about book of the year ( I mean, ASTERIOS POLYP?!) but I do feel like people will be talking about this one this fall.

SAME PAGE: Watson Guptil is doing three collections of Antonio Profias SPY vs SPY cartoons. Twelve bucks a pop too, which is a total steal! How’s anyone gonna pass these up, I ask you?

SAME PAGE: It’s the only other thing on the page so I may as well mention it: MAGIC THE GATHERING: PATH OF THE PLANESWALKER features a bunch of dudes who write the text on magic cards telling stories set in the gameworld. That’s pretty meh, honestly, but the reason I mentioned it is that Wizards of the Coast employs some of the finest fantasy illustrators working today, and many of them are supposed to be in this book. It should be very pretty. 200 pages for 20 bucks.

Page 312: YOTSUBA&! I totally forgot that this was the month with the new Yotsuba. Yen Press is reoffering new printings of YOTSUBA Volume 1-5 in all-new editions, now for their standard price of $10.99 a volume. Better still, this month marks the debut of the first new English-language volume in years, YOTSUBA VOLUME 6. Cool beans, I hope these sell gangbusters.

Page 331: Normally I stop after the end of the comics section, but there are a couple of great, important books that I wanted to make sure got some attention here at the blog.

First up is THE ART OF OSAMU TEZUKA, GOD OF MANGA HC by Helen McCarthy (HC, 9×12, 272 pages, $40.00) which is touted as the first authorized biography of Tezuka in English, and featuring over 300 images. Tezuka’s colour-work doesn’t really get the play it deserves, and his art in general is often as breathtaking as his storytelling. I’m really hoping this book delivers the goods because with Tezuka there really is a ton of ground to cover.

Next is MANGA KAMISHIBAI: THE ART OF JAPANESE PAPER THEATRE by Eric P. Nash and Frederik L. Schodt (HC, 8×9, 304 pages, $35.00). This is the first book on the precursor to manga, the Kamishibai storyteller’s art of acting out stories using illustrated accompaniment on the streets of post-war Japan. Many of the first manga books were adaptations of these stories, and this material has never really been explored in any North American writings on manga. I got to experience a little of it on my last trip to Japan and it’s really neat, I’d love to learn more. This should be a very cool book.

–

AND FINALLY, that’s it for this month. Remember that I like a lot of great, esoteric books, and unless you’re shopping at the store I do all of the ordering for chances are you aren’t going to find all of these on the shelves of your favourite comic book store. That’s why it’s important to tell your comic book retailer what YOU want to read (and buy from them), so that they can order it in and we can all benefit from higher orders on good comic books.

Until next month, thanks for reading…!

- Christopher

Ready… Go!

Cover: I have to say that these are the most visually interesting covers in recent memory. The front cover features a comic by one of the members of the band fall-out boy. I feel like I should be making fun of this fact, but I actually don’t think I know even one Fall-Out Boy song. Let’s go to this generation’s MTV (Youtube) and cue up a song. Oh, I Don’t Care, I actually have heard this song. It’s inoffensive radio-rock where the members of the band are assholes in the music video. Right.  The cover features a hot robot chick… are hot robot chicks the innoffensive radio-rock of the comic book industry? Probably. Oh man, that means corporate superhero comics are all “Jero”, the hip young dude who sings songs from two or three generations ago. Hahahaha…

Still, nice-enough illustration.

Back Cover: There we go. Jill Thompson and Evan Dorkin doing a beautifully painted creator owned series for Dark Horse. Beasts of Burden, formerly of the “Dark Horse Book of…” series. This is great, I’m so happy to see this coming out. Cool stuff, everyone make sure to give this one a look, maybe drop some money on it.

Page 17: I don’t know how many people know this, but every year Diamond puts together bundles of comics samplers that folks can buy and give away for halloween. Unlike the heavily monitored Free Comic Book Day program, this one seems to be pretty loosey-goosey affair–as long as you’ve got a recognizable/marketable character, you’re in. I was disappointed beacause last year’s comics (with the exception of the PEANUTS book) all seemed to be excerpts of longer works. I get that you want to send kids into the stores to get the conclusion, but it’s still a bit like getting a mini-chocolate bar with a bite taken out of it. Hopefully this year particpants give kids something with a beginning, middle, and end.

Dark Horse

Page 22: Here’s the actual solicit for Beasts of Burden, which previews tells me is a 4 issue mini-series for just $3 an issue. I will say that writer Evan Dorkin really knows how to use the single-issue format well, so I doubt this one will read like a graphic novel arbitrarily split into four parts. Really looking forward to this.

Page 23: Buffy continues to be our best-selling floppy comic, month-in and month-out, with only the barest hint of a slow-down. Even the one-shot from a few months back by the awesome-but-not-regular-creative-team of Becky Cloonan and Vasilis Lolos didn’t experience too much drop-off, which is cool.  And hey, Oz and Giles return for this story-arc. It’s got everything!

Page 25: I kinda feel like all of the pages with Hellboy solicitations should have a black background, instead of the standard white for DH’s section.  The covers are daaaaaaaaaaarrrk.

Page 28: It looks like Dark Horse will be releasing a full-colour original graphic novel featuring Usagi Yojimbo. Neat! It’s called Usagi Yojimbo: Yokai and it seems to be entirely watercolour painted by Sakai. I wonder if this is a trial-balloon to see about moving the series entirely to original trade paperbacks/graphic novels? It’s nice, as a retailer, to see a creator-owned series hit the shelves 10 out of 12 months of the year (Usagi Yojimbo #123 is also solicited this month) but I can’t imagine it’s setting any sales records. We actually order more of the trades than of the single issues here at the store, but we do have a regular clientelle for the singles, with our numbers staying fairly consistant (plus or minus a copy) for the last 4 or 5 years…! Can’t say that about literally any other book we carry. Either way, this should be an excellent introduction for anyone who’s ever wondered about the series.

Page 32: Looks like Dark Horse has got a new edition of Eric Drooker’s Blood Song wordless graphic novel out. Oh they’re also doing a new book of Carol Swain comics, Crossing The Empty Quarter and Other Stories. Looks like a dude with a giraffe head on the cover. That either seems a very strange choice for Dark Horse, or following up on Usagi Yojimbo, perfectly suited. Feel free to tell me which in the comment section.

Page 44: New Blade of the Immortal trade paperback entitled “Legend of the Sword Demon”, which sounds fairly badass, doesn’t it?

DC COMICS

Page 45: “Superstar Writer J. Michael Straczynski takes over The Brave and the Bold”. Well, I hope that none of you Brave and the Bold fans actually liked that comic coming out.

No, seriously, what the fuck is this? This bullshit blame game? Marvel’s “The Twelve”. Chris Weston is too busy to draw the script so Strazcynski just doesn’t bother writing it? You know what, JMS fucks up his schedule and Weston’s gotta pay the rent so he takes on another gig, fine, but that doesn’t excuse JMS–who caused the problem in the first place(!)–from actually delivering the scripts. You know, so that when Weston finishes up his rent paying gig, he can go back to the work he was hoping to all along. I’m kind of sick of this attitude amongst contemporary writers that if the artist isn’t immediately available to draw the script pages they have ready, they’re off the hook, they can take as long as they want. I try really hard not to get up and tell creators how to do their jobs, but why haven’t any of the editors at Marvel in particular figured out that this strategy doesn’t work? That every book JMS or Millar work on is chronically, painfully late because of this?

Or do they not care?

Maybe people really don’t care, maybe it’s all about the eventual collected edition. But it seems absolutely ass-backwards, a poor way of doing business and incredibly unprofessional to boot.

Hah, there is a customer in the store who just asked for the Kick-Ass trade paperback. I tried not to smile when I told him that Millar hadn’t gotten the single issues finished yet. There’s your lost sales right there.

That couldn’t have worked better if I’d planned it.

Paage 64-65: I really wasn’t that into the first few pages of the DC section, it all looks a bit samey although I guess if you’re really into Blackest Night and all that, Donna troy’s undead demon baby is probably at least amusing. It took the one-two punch of Morrison’s Batman & Robin #4 and JH Williams on Detective Comics #857 to get me to stop. I have to say that following up Frank Quitely on Batman and Robin with ex-Top Cow penciler Philip Tan is… a pretty brutal choice. I dunno, maybe he’ll raise his game, or maybe he’ll be another Tony Daniel, utterly obliterating Morrison’s script with awful, awful pencils. OH THE FUN OF ORDERING COMICS TWO MONTHS IN ADVANCE. I shall be cutting my orders, somewhat, on this one.  Meanwhile, JH Williams always delivers, bless him.

Page 67: I’m actually going through our sales history and checking sell-through, orders, etc., as I do this, which is why some of the updates take longer than others. I was surprised to see that the sell-through on the Paul Dini Batman: Streets of Gotham has dropped through the floor, less than half of what the first issue sold and way lower than Detective before the big shake-up. Is it not good or something? It looks strong, and Dini’s got a lot of fans… maybe it’s just bat-fatigue?

… whoa, same drop on Gotham City Sirens #2. That’s strange, I thought the first issue of that was pretty good, considering. Maybe it’s just the summertime thing, not every customer is coming in every week due to holidays/poor weather/good weather/etc. Hopefully they’ll all catch back up the last week of August…!?

Page 69: I know nerds are really angry at Geoff Johns remaking the Superman Universe into his own personal playground, but enh. It’s actually the best superhero-comics he’s written, the Action Comics and Legion stuff, and DC’s gonna reboot this stuff every 10 years from now on anyway, why not let Johns have a turn? So, just to clarify everything, DC is launching Superman: Secret Origin #1 with the Action Comics team of Johns and Gary Frank. The definitive 6 issue mini-series retelling Superman’s origin, now with creepy Christopher-Reeve looking kid-Superman.

Seriously, the likeness stuff they’re doing there really weirds me out.

Page 70-71: Meanwhile sales continue to slide on “a year of Superman comics without Superman in them…” ugh. Talk about pissing away the momentum you gained with the New Krypton arc.

Page 82: Ah, the doldrums have set in. Red Tornado gets an ongoing series and suddenly I have no interest in liveblogging the Previews anymore. Ah well, let’s all just soldier on past the shelf-fillers.

Page 85: I know I shouldn’t think it’s a big deal, but I was surprised to see that the new writer of Teen Titans is a woman. Because that sort of thing is surprising in superhero comics.

page 90: MEANWHILE! Sorry for the delay on that one, it got busy here at the store. SO! It looks like Gail Simone’s newest Wonder Woman Arc Wonder Woman: Rise of the Olympian will be getting a simultaneous hardcover and trade paperback release on November 4th. That’s surprising, I guess that if I were more up on comics news I would know that (or the reasons why). I’m personally ‘done’ with the standard-format hardcover releases of stuff, I hope that the tp sales blow the hardcovers out of the water. That’s selfish, admittedly, but the space required to double-rack the majority of the DC Universe in softcover and hardcover is getting ridiculous.

Page 93: This image is a little unsettling. I don’t like that Shaggy has nipples but that Scooby doesn’t… And they’re both sumo-wrestling in bluejeans. Yeah. I don’t get it…

Page 94: It looks like the second(?) Zuda comic to get a collection, High Moon by David Gallaher and Steve Ellis gets a collection this month. I hope it’s got better production than Bayou, despite the acclain that trade has received I thought the production values were really shoddy, and didn’t really serve the story at all. I hope future editions are treated a little more respectfully by DC… and that High Moon doesn’t suffer a similar fate.

Page 97: The solicitation for ExMachina #45 mentions that the series is due to finish at #50. I knew the end was coming, but I didn’t think that it was so near. Although at the current rate of production those six issues could take us well into 2010… (rimshot..!). Seriously though, love this series, wish it could get back on a stable schedule. Here’s hoping that we’re monthly right through to the end eh?

Page 99: Although I didn’t do a Previews Liveblog last month, I did actually do all of the ordering and one of the new series I was most interested in was Red Herring, by David Tischman and Philip Bond (and David Hahn too, I think). A new Philip Bond-drawn series is always cause for celebration, but the premise sounded neat too. The second issue is solicited without much fanfare this month, but I do think it might be one worth reading.

Page 107: Even if we weren’t doing a launch/book signing for Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth #1, we’d probably still order really heavily on it. Post-apocalyptic stories tend to do very well here at the store anyway, and Lemire’s work is a proven seller for us (being a hometown store doesn’t hurt…). The last few Vertigo #1 issues that debuted at a buck did really well for us too, so this is all leading to a confluence of massive sales on this one. Fingers crossed…

Page 112: Whoa! There’s a blast from the past. Judd Winick and Tomm Coker’s Blood and Water miniseries is finally being collected into a trade paperback. Slightly goofy vampire stories, very pre-superhero Winnicky stuff. I was really surprised at the time that this never got collected, and 3 or 4 years later I’m even more surprised that it is. Did someone option this for a movie or something? Or is it just that anything remotely “Twilighty” might have a chance?

Anyway, it’s been a long time since I read it, but I really love Tomm Coker’s artwork in general and I remember this looking pretty good indeed. I’ll keep an eye out for this, see if it holds up.

Page 114: You know, I always really liked the covers that Geof Darrow did for Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson’s Transmetropolitan. No disrespect to Robertson, but I always felt that Darrow’s vision of Ellis’ future was the most fully realized. Spider’s costume is entirely negative space, black on black with solid black tattoos and a little bit of tech for visual interest on the face (glasses). He should always be set against absolute cacophony. Of course, absolute cacophony is fucking nuts to try and draw on a monthly book, and I think Robertson did a great job considering. But look at this, tell me this isn’t just amazing:

That’s the cover for the new edition of Transmetropolitan Volume 4: The New Scum. Lovely isn’t it?

–

Image Comics

Page 132: Hey, look! Jeff Parker and Steve Leiber are doing a new creator owned book! About spelunking and intrigue! Now, I don’t want to throw this back in your faces or anything, but I was TOTALLY right about John Layman’s CHEW #1 and how you should have given that a read, and now here’s another new series from Image that might be underordered and will almost certainly get amazing reviews, tons of hype, and then you might not be able to find it and you’ll have to pay EBAY prices. So get to your retailer this week and tell them you want one, so that they can bump their order or put in an increase or something.

Or just shop at The Beguiling, we’re ordering tons. :-D

Page 134: Shitting on a new Image #1 is a little bit like kicking a baby, but a manga-looking series from a creator with a big manga-following based on a video game and it’s coming out as a five-issue miniseries? It just seems like it’s missing the point a little, you know? Like maybe this should be a nice 6×9″ book for $20? Serialize a preview issue on IGN to get the fans interested and then have the whole thing done-in-one? No? I dunno. The art is pretty, here’s hoping it doesn’t crash and burn. :-/

Page 136: Speaking of, Beast OGN by Marian Churchland is an interesting looking project, a horror/mystery graphic novel with a surprising art style, half way between contemporary illustration and comics realism. The cover looks lovely too, I hope Image doesn’t… do… anything to the trade dress.

Page 152: I’m happy to hear that Invincible co-creator Cory Walker is returning to Invincible #66, I always thought his work looked best on the series. Hopefully that doesn’t leave previous penciller Ryan Ottley out in the cold, his art is really strong as well, and I feel like he draws “ugly” better than Walker does…which is important when someone is getting their face literally caved in. What is Ottley up to anyway? I almost wish I followed the daily comics news more closely, now. Almost.

Page 153: I was away last month so I didn’t get to really recommend Brandon Graham’s King City series now on its way from Image. #2 is offered this month, and I hope that stores ordered lots of shelf copies on this one, I think it’s really gonna surprise people. Oh and I’m not totally crazy, this one IS being solicited as Full Colour in the catalogue, even though it’s B&W.

Marvel Comics

Marvel P4: So the big “Reborn” hubub came and went, it was what everyone was expecting, and while it was a fairly strong comic I just don’t think it waranted all of the nonsense. I guess it’s the difference between being in the entertainment business and being in the business of telling good stories? I’m not trying to take anything away from Ed Brubaker, Bryan Hitch, Butch Guice, or any of the creative team here, but…? Really? A solid black page in the catalogue with REBORN on it? You look at the other great works in the comics industry, the stuff that really catches media or critical attention, and it’s based on quality or noteworthiness, not… big empty solicitations.

I just thought of another “Chris uses Achewood to describe the comics industry” post. Let’s do that later.

Anyway, just saying. I kinda dug Reborn #1, particularly as it’s a total extension of Brubaker’s run on Captain America with literally no breaks whatsoever… But the hype is more offputting than anything.

Mp6: Ditto Marvels Project.

Mp23: “You’ve been asking for it… and now it’s here: THE CLONE SAGA!!!” Really? Who has been asking for this? I had no idea. $4 an issue for Todd Nauck art and a story reviled by Marvel fans? No thank you.

Mp25: I’m actually not convinced that any of our readers are following the Dark Reign stuff. There are a lot of random, frequently awful books with DARK REIGN! on top. I’m paid to keep on top of this sort of stuff and I’m just barely following it, I can’t imagine most of our regulars are going out of their way to collect go-nowhere mini-series and one shots that “CAN’T BE MISSED”. I think Spurgeon is probably right, that these big crossovers are the equivilent of the company screaming at you all the time, and if they never turn down the volume eventually everyone just goes deaf to what they’re saying…

Mp28: …and it doesn’t help that the company doesn’t seem to have a handle on this stuff either. Page 28 here. The conclusion to the Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men Crossover, which until this point has been called UTOPIA and all of the books have the word UTOPIA on the cover larger than the regular logos? The conclusion is called something completely different. And it’s got another epilgoue issue written by two other writers totally uninvolved with the main story, with the artist “To Be Determined”. Like… come on, at what point do you just sit down and admit this has all gotten away from you? You need 2 mis-titled bookends, 6 issues, a 3-issue mini-series, 4 tie-in issues, and an epilgoue, involving 6+ writers and a dozen artists to tell this story? Oh and another one-shot in October?

Who exactly are you expecting to read all this?

Mp42: So let I get this straight. Incredible Hercules, Incredible Hulk (featuring Skarr, son of hulk), Son Of Hulk (also… featuring… Skarr son of hulk? ), and Hulk, are all ongoing series now all spinning out of, what was two years ago, Incredible Hulk. Oh, and because there’s not enough stuff this month there’s a Hulk Team-Up one-shot as well.

Wow. That’s almost as ballsy as two Deadpool ongoing series AND a mini-series. Oh, wait.

Mp49: Ah, Pat Lee covering Spider-Man Magazine #8. It’s good to know that no matter how bad you fuck people over, how unethically you behave as an artist OR a businessman, someone at Marvel or DC will give you some work. See, Wheeler? There’s no moral compass at all, it’s not just about staying at the Hyatt to support a known homophobe.

Actually, I just realized seeing Marvel run Pat Lee art has put me in such a foul mood that anything else I say about them is going to be fairly negative, deserving or otherwise. So, fuck it. I’ll be back in an hour with Part 2 and the rest of the Previews.

- Chris (Edited for some spelling)

12:44pm: Page 178 features this month’s WIZARD solicit, which, again, looks like it’s being designed by the Previews staff rather than at Wizard. I really do think they’ve finally fired everyone at that magazine that they could…? Anyway. This page is notable because one of the features of this issue of WIZARD is: HOW TO GET YOUR GIRL TO READ COMICS, which is delightful in a late-90s internet article sort of way. The best, BEST part? The afformentioned “girl” in the little photo accompanying the article is carrying copies of: 6 Superhero books, Sin City, Y The Last Man, and… can’t quite make out the top one. Against a wall of high-priced back issues. So, yeah, this photo is not doing the article any favours. I’ve long-since grown past the need to read Wizard just to be offended or upset at bad content, but I’m really kind of anxious to read this one, just to see if it “lives up” to the photo.

Of course, I’m actually cutting orders on this issue as sales are sliding badly on the magazine…

12:52pm: We are continuing to sell out of Dave Sim’s Glamourpuss, which is kind of surprising… We’re also continuing to do the same with Terry Moore’s ECHO, which is less surprising, but I’m going to be honest, I really thought the first trade paperback would’ve killed the issue sales. Nope! It seems people want to read Terry Moore as soon as they can get him. Good for him.

12:59pm: PROCESS RECESS 3. The 3rd in AdHouse’s release of James Jean art-books. The first two have sold right-the-fuck-out and are going for ludicrous prices online. This third one apparently collects sketchbook work, new paintings and illustrations, all kinds of cool stuff by M. Jean. We’ll be ordering a bunch.

Cover Image to the right, click for (much) larger.

EDIT: Oh yeah, check out James Jean’s blog for more info on this, it’s nifty: http://www.processrecess.com/?uid=FA8BCD 

1:20pm: So, Page 188 shows us that Antarctic is now designing their own section of the Previews catalogue… With, I think, utterly disastrous results. I appreciate that it’s good to be able to control the size and presentation of your books–good for you, seriously. But? This is a jumbled mess. No center-of-interest, doesn’t lead the eye, and the blue hackground makes it basically-impossible for me to write my little numbers for what I want to order next to the solicit. :-/

As you can see, the only thing that really stands-out is the PRESIDENT EVIL title treatment, and even then, it’s a little difficult to make-out as Barack Obama (although really what else could it be…).

Yeah, guys, seriously this is not doing you any favours whatsoever. Look at like… catalogue layout sometime or something. Or figure out some way to layout your info better, because this is terrible.

1:36pm: I’m kind of having guilt pangs about not ordering this terrible fucking Obama/Resident Evil ‘parody’, because I know it will sell off the rack, but it’s just conceptually awful, like the terrible Barbarian comics probably will too. But no one has preordered them so I just don’t want them on the rack, I’d like to stand for something, you know? 

Anyway, I am conflicted. But I am not ordering them. If someone really wants one they can do a special order. 

1:39pm: So APE Entertainment’s The Trouble With Katie Rogers (p190) looks kind of neat. A contemporary romantic comedy in graphic novel format. We have a healthy balance of men and women shopping at the store, I’m curious if something like this will do well for us, or if it really is a bookstore thing. I’ll give it a go. (Nice MySpace page too, actually). 

Oh, also on this page is Zeke Deadwood: Zombie Lawman from SLG. I’m actually not “sick” of the Zombie thing yet, and this looks pretty good, played for laughs. Looks like a sort of Westerns versions of Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse. We’ll give this a solid order, hopefully it works out.

1:45pm: So all of my questioning is for naught, it looks very much like the Mouse Guard series has finished, and at Archaia to boot. Now here comes the second graphic novel collection, Mouse Guard Volume 2: Winter 1152.  I imagine it will do well for us.

I think I saw someone, maybe Mike Sterling, wondering aloud on his blog as to why the sales on the single-issues of the MOUSE GUARD series had dropped through the floor at his store. I think one reason why might be that the solicit for this collection promises “a new epilogue”, which, considering the series just ended this past week, is kind of unfortunate. I don’t subscribe to the idea that putting new content is “screwing” people who bought the singles–I did when I was a little younger but now I realize that you get what you pay for. You paid four bucks and issue for 6 issues of a comic, and you didn’t mind doing so at the time, you probably got $4 of enjoyment out of that book, epilogue or no. But seeing stuff like this happen? It does make customers less likely to support serialization, it does erode customers faith and interest in a series, and when you make it a selling feature that the pretty new hardcover contains a bunch of stuff not in the smelly-old issues, it makes me as a retailer reconsider my approach to ordering your single issue comics. Not just from this creator, but from this whole publisher.

So, you know, as a publisher you can do whatever the hell you want, it’s your business. Just know that there are reprecussions.

1:56pm: The ASPEN MLT INC. publisher pages look an awful lot like advertisements, but it turns out those are the solicitations, and the only ones at that. Meanwhile, flipping along, the AVATAR solicits look a lot more like solicits than advertisements (although the Anna Mercury 2 #2 spread was a little confusing at first). Still, one looks like it is imparting information, the other is drowning in graphic elements, headlines, logos, and tiny tiny text. It’s pretty easy to figure out which is more successful.

2:17pm: I know they’re “just” licensed books, but I’m kind of shocked to see that the first wave of trade paperback collections of Boom’s THE MUPPET SHOW, THE INCREDIBLES, and THE WORLD OF CARS got almost no play at all in the catalogue. We’ve done very well with the single issues of all of these books, Very Well, and the treade paperback collections (at a friendly $10 price point) are going to do gangbusters for us, I think? Maybe I’m wrong on this, but we’re definitely investing in them at the store… We’re doing progressively better with kids material and this is really solid looking stuff.

2:41pm: Similarly surprising? No special-attention paid to Cartoon Books’ solicitation of the limited-edition RASL HC (P222).  Limited edition oversized HC of Jeff Smith material… you’d think that Diamond would be all over that. I mean, I know it’s not going to sell BONE HC numbers, but we’ve been doing really well with RASL. Again, I’m all over this collection, particularly for the long-haul collectors that are going to want this (very) limited collection, but might not have the pocket-money on hand to do so now.

2:46pm: Also on page 222 is Jack Moriarty’s THE COMPLETE JACK SURVIVES from Buenaventura Press. Originally published in the venerable RAW magazine, this collects every Jack Survives strip in a lovely 11×14 package, in full colour. I’m only very casually familiar with the material, but it’s spoken-of very reverently amongst my artcomix friends, and anything out of RAW is obviously work at least a look.

3:20pm: I know this is going a little slower than usual today, but man, things are a little intense at work here today. Lots of stuff in the air. Sorry.

DMP BOOKS is changing the size of some of their manga? I think I missed this announcement, but going through their solicitations today (starting on P237) it looks like they’re doing some of their books at B6 (a format more-or-less unknown in North America), which measure 5 1/8″ x 7 3/16″, or thereabouts… which is a little smaller than the current “TOKYOPOP SIZE” favoured by the majority of the comics industry. They’re doing the rest of their books in the A5 size, which measure 5.875″ x 8.25″, or slightly smaller than their current size of manga. Basically their entire line is changing size over the next few months. I… assume this is to cut costs? But I’ve got no idea.

I hope that the effect of this is minimized when it comes to changes in size between volumes of the same series, because comics fans of all ages, genders, and sexual proviclivities, FUCKING HATE IT when the spines don’t match up on their manga.

Just saying.

3:29pm: I had kind of thought that Big Questions #12 by Anders Nilsen (P243) was the last issue of the series, but the solicit makes no mention either way. I am greatly, greatly looking forward to a collection of this series… though these individual issues are just gorgeous too. Hopefully any collection will include all of the colour paintings and things. But of course, it’s D&Q, so that’s probably very likely…

Speaking of D&Q, THE JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY: NANCY VOL 1 is also solicited this week. I have to say I kinda dug the old-school repro on their recent Melvin The Monster collection… The feel of reading old comics is a much nicer one, to me, than the feel of reading badly-computer-recoloured comics with digitally altered linework. I hope I’m not in the minority? I’d much rather see this kind of reprint, when good-quality copies exist to shoot from (or be fixed with minor tweaks).

6:15pm: Okay, let’s try and power through to the end of the Previews, shall we?

Page 245: I’m always pretty excited about new work from Fanfare/Ponent-Mon. Their new graphic novel YEARS OF THE ELEPHANT is something of a departure for them, a European work with no Japanese connection. I got to see a preview of this one at the New York Comicon this past winter, and it’s a really unique work. It’s nicely drawn, in pencils mostly, though a bit sketchy sloppy at times. The solicit calls it “rudimentary” but it has a classical cartooning kind of feel. And the nature of the story, about a many who’s sort of slowly and humourously losing his mind after his son committs suicide, it takes a while but it definitely grows on you as you flip the pages. I have no idea how something like this will be received in North America, quite honestly. As far as I can tell it’s at least partly autobiographical, and personal tragedy memoirs tend to find their audiences more often than not. But it really is a strange book… One that I’m personally looking forward to, particularly considering that Editor Stephen Robson has the foresight to pick up strange-tale-of-personal-tragedy Hideo Azuma’s DISAPPEARANCE DIARY and it was fantastic. I figure this one is at least worth a shot.

Page 246-247: Fantagraphics’ acid-trip orange-and-purple spread is certainly eye-catching, and the info is laid out in a professional, easy-to-read way. It’s just that the overall effect is sort of hideous. But anyway, good books in here. The one I’m most immediately interested in is the TALES DESIGNED TO THRIZZLE hardcover collection, collecting the first four issues of the series, and now in full colour. THRIZZLE has been an easy single-issue sale for us since its debut, I imagine this handsome new hardcover will do similarly well.

For the classic strips guys, there’s another volume of POPEYE. For the art guys, there’s a third JIM FLORA art book. For nerds, there’s THE BEST AMERICAN COMICS CRITICISM OF THE 21ST CENTURY. Pretty solid month for Fanta.

Page 252: It’s not often that authors tend to really get behind the graphic novel adaptations of their work, but Tim Hamilton’s graphic adaptation of FARENHEIT 451 features an introduction by Bradbury himself, quite a coup. The $30 price tag is surprisingly high, but then so are the expectations on this one if the advance press I’ve seen is anything to go by.

Also on this page, Kevin Eastman releases his (competing? complimentary?) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Anniversary collection. the TMNT 25TH ANNIVERSARY BY KEVIN EASTMAN (kind of a fuck-you-title, isn’t that?) features Eastman’s fav Turtles stories, some of them in colour for the first time. That’s kind of interesting? But the big turtles release is a few pages away still.

Page 253: RICHARD STARK’S PARKER: THE HUNTER adapted by Darwyn Cooke. What can I say? This looks pretty darned amazing. IDW let me know that they sent me a preview of this one a few days ago, but it hasn’t shown up yet unfortunately. I was hoping to have read it before I could just unequivocally recommend it, but since I can’t I’ll have to just say that it’s PROBABLY the best new book in the Previews this month and you should pick it up. If you’re not sure, there’s tons of great preview/interview stuff online, and if just reading the first 20 pages doesn’t convince you I dunno what will. 

Hey IDW guys: Maybe I’m blind here, but why isn’t that PARKER preview linked off of your frontpage? I actually couldn’t find it on your site, had to google it.

Page 270: Alright, here you go. It’s the first 540 pages of Eastman and Laird’s TMNT from the 80s, in black and white (11 issues plus the four ‘micro-series’ issues) for $30. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: THE COLLECTED BOOK VOLUME 1 SC. I am definitely going to take one of these home with me. I’ve read a bunch of these through random reprints and stuff, but I think I’d really dig reading these all at once. Hell, SOMEBODY did… And it’s been one of our most-demanded trade paperback collections for years…!

Page 278: The long-anticipated Jeff Smith TOON BOOKS entry drops in July. LITTLE MOUSE GETS READY seems to be in the format of their youngest-reader stuff, like the Silly Lily books, and it looks great. I kind of felt like the Silly Lily books had a lower vocabulary for the 4-6 year old set, and this one seems like a book that you read-to a child, rather than one they can read on their own? I’m not an expert or anything, but I’d be curious to know who the age group is for this one. Either way, it’s lovely looking.

Page 280: The kids comic series THE STUFF OF LEGEND got a bit of buzz following Free Comic Book Day, so I’ll give the first issue a decent order, see if it will pick up a following in our store. It seems to be in Mouse Guard format, so I guess they know who they’re going-after audience-wise.

Page 282: Long awaited D.N. ANGEL VOLUME 12 from Tokyopop, and no a whole hell of a lot else. BISENGHAST VOLUME 6, possible the last “OEL” title that TP is physically publishing, actually, that’s kind of news too. 

Page 284: For those of you who read my earlier bitching, the LENORE: NOOGIES color edition is here. 128 pages for $24.95.  Also this page is the second collection of Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele’s SURROGATES, FLESH AND BONE, a prequel to the first trade and, conveniently enough, the upcoming movie. Also from Top Shelf on the following page is a new printing of SURROGATES VOLUME ONE, and an omnibus HC collecting one and 2, for people that need to own things in HC.

Page 286: Speaking of Darwyn Cooke, Twomorrows solicits MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 23: DARWYN COOKE to coincide with THE HUNTER. A 120 page collection of sketches, rare art, and illustration. Generally the Modern Masters series of books are snapped-up by the fans of the creators they cover, this one will be no different. Actually, that’s not true; thanks to his huge fanbase and a hometown crowd, we’ll probably just add a zero to the end of whatever number we ordered on volume 22 for this one.

Page 292: So this year Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s A DRIFTING LIFE shared the top prize for the Tezuka Cultural Prize for manga. It shared it with Fumi Yoshinaga’s series OOKU: THE INNER CHAMBERS, and the first volume of that series drops this month from Viz. If it’s half as interesting or well-done as A DRIFTING LIFE, it’ll be a must-buy for sure. Yoshinaga is the author of ANTIQUE BAKERY and FLOWER OF LIFE amongst many other fan-fav almost-yaoi titles, and more of her work will certainly be appreciated.

Okay then, I think we’re done for this month. Thanks for reading, hopefully next month will go a little more smoothly.

- Chris

Oh look, we’re liveblogging the Previews again this month! It’s actually not due for 5 whole days, so expect a slightly less-manic, but hopefully no-less enjoyable look at all of the comics and graphic novels being solicited by Diamond Comics Distributors, scheduled to begin arriving in stores in July 2009. I’ll be updating this every few minutes as I get to the next thing I wanna talk about… and I really will try and mention page numbers this month, if you wanna play along at home…!

4:09pm: FWIW, these aren’t awful covers this month, just sort of meh. But we have more unsold copies of Previews this month than in the last 12, both actual copies and percentage ordered. Apparently Spider-Man versus Doctor Octopus and a random skull just aren’t that interesting?

4:18pm: Page FS-1 has an article with the title EXTREME MOMS. Italics in the original title. What? Ah, I see, I have opened this to the wrong side. That is my fault.

4:19pm: FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! IS OVER! I guess this is the final month of Diamond advertising their big event. I guess there’s no way anyone in comic industry could say they didn’t KNOW about it, anyway…

On to page 2…  Wow, those Final Fantasy IX figures are hideous. Like, I know they’re in the sort of “Chibi” style that the game was in, and this is all about accuracy, but I even like the character designs and I would definitely not buy these. Awful… The Chibi versions of the FF VII, X, and XII figures on the opposite page look much cooler.

4:36pm: Whoa, rush of customers. Sorry about the delay there. So this month’s Editor’s Note (p7) from Marty Grosser is all about… Mom. Geez, what a bunch of momma’s boys. I love my mom (but not as much as I love your mom), but it is weird to see the editor of Previews telling my to make sure to call my mom on Mother’s Day.

Anyway, the editor breaks down every mother in the world to one of two types, either “The Terminatrix”, who is “the stereotypical mother” who threw out all of your comics, or “The Source”, who got you started on comic books. VIRGIN OR WHORE! CHOOSE, READERS OF PREVIEWS! VIRGIN OR WHORE!?

Actually, I got one better for you Marty. “There is only one woman in the world. One woman, with many faces.” There’s your reductionist argument, courtesy of The Last Temptation of Christ. They’re both Virgins AND Whores. Or Source Terminatrixes. Terminatricies? Either way, lame editorial Marty.

4:55pm: Shit we’re not even to any of the actual books yet. Anyway, Page 9 is an interview with ROMAN DIRGE, the “Featured Creator” of the month. For all of you industry watchers wondering about the Lenore creator leaving SLG for, of all places, Titan Publishing (in the U.K.), here’s a fun quote from the interview with Mr. Dirge.

“I’m excited to be working with Titan. It tugged on the heart-strings to leave SLG Publishing after having such a long relationship with them. I have nothing but love for them, especially their founder, Dan Vado. He gave me my start in the industry and it was like family. I regret how we parted ways. Without SLG, I’d rpobably be asking you what kind of cheese you want on your sandwich and if you want the combo meal. Titan has a lot of things planned for me.” – Roman Dirge

Huh, so apparently the parting was not pleasant. Kudos to Dan Vado for keeping it under his hat, if that’s the case. I haven’t heard a bad word about Mr. Dirge. I’m in support of creators going for the best deal, and if Titan offered Dirge a good one, then sure, what the hell. But it seems like the first part of Dirge’s statement, and the second part, they’re a little incongruous? Like “These guys at SLG are family and I owe them everything! Can’t wait to start working with my new pub!” Is that a platitude? Is that the dictionary definition of a platitude? Hmm.

It’s not an either/or proposition, I’m aware, and I know these guys are friends and I’ll likely take some heat for this, but: I was a huge Jhonen Vasquez fan a few years ago, and I still appreciate his work a great deal, but I have never… ever… understood the appeal of any of Dirge’s work. It seems fantastically lazy. It seems like you start with Vasquez’s JTHM or SQUEE, which are literally bursting at the seams with creativity and ideas, tons and tons of them, and then you take an issue of that and stretch it out into 13 issues of Lenore. But to be fair, you take a single panel of a children’s book and put it on 10,000 stickers and you end up with the utterly-vacant Emily the Strange, so. It’s sort of like the Matterhorn of talent, with Vasquez perched on top and everything else sliding rapidly into the abyss.

At any rate, this month Titan is offering a full-colour edition of Dirge’s Lenore: Noogies. I’m certainly not complaining about the money we’ve made off of Dirge’s work; it sells. But I wonder if exactly the same stuff will sell, to the same audience, again (his work just isn’t that colourful even with ‘full colour’). And hearing that the ‘breakup’ was full of regret and it’s only been… what, a year? That doesn’t make me say “I CAN’T WAIT TO SUPPORT THIS DUDE’S WORK!”

Perhaps I am in the minority.

5:20pm: Alright! Comics! P.24 has STAR WARS: INVASION, which features a bunch of characters that look exactly like a cross between Aliens and Predators attacking the post-Return of the Jedi Star Wars Universe! Luke Skywalker using crazy Force-Powers to take on hybrid Aliens/Predators (but not really)? I can see some nerds definitely being into that.

Jo Chen cover too. Nice.

5:24pm: The new BPRD series featuring art by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba drops this month. Lovely. Not sure if I’ve entirely forgiven them for their Casanova April Fool’s Day prank. Also “The Witchfinder #1″, a new Hellboy spinoff series.

5:29pm: So I guess I understand why the solicitation for Guy Davis’ The Marquis: Inferno trade paperback doesn’t mention anywhere that it’s a collection of all of the perviously-published material, i.e.: The trade paperbacks ”Danse Macabre” and “Intermezzo,” but it’s still pretty crappy of them not to mention that. It’s a great deal, a 336 page trade of very strong comics material by Davis, who’s really found an audience for his work thanks to BPRD. And it’s got a new sketchbook and Mignola intro. It’s a great, worthwhile book. But hiding the solicit info is amateur hour, seriously. I had to track down an interview with Davis at CBR to figure that out. It should be in the solicit, period.

5:34pm: THE GOON versus DETHKLOK from Metalpocalypse. Alright, 37 pages into the Previews, I’m calling it: This will be the most under-ordered comic book of the month. Oh and they’re relaunching Creepy too, which is weird. I have no idea if there’s an audience for a black and white horror anthology, but hey, new Bernie Wrightson art.

5:45pm: DH has got a brand new black and white crime-fiction anthology called NOIR (p41), dropping… September 30th. Well, at least they’ll have plenty of time to hype it up. I think it’ll need some hype too, It’s not the kind of thing that generally sells gangbusters (I think FLIGHT is probably the exception), but look at the list of creators on this thing… Azzarello, Brubaker, Grist, Lapham, Moon & Ba, Phillips, maybe a dozen or two more. Everyone doing any critically acclaimed crime/noir fiction stuff, except maybe Darwyn Cooke, in one book. It should sell itself, but I feel like it’ll be an uphill battle… I hope they promote the hell out of this.

5:52pm: New Gilbert and Mario Hernandez series! Citizen Rex #1 coming monthly, starting the first week of July. Nice.

5:55pm: Conan drops “The Cimmerian” as the subtitle this issue. Or at least the solicit does, hopefully that’s just for the solicit.

5:56pm: Here on page 47 we’ve got a solicitation for “3 STORY: SECRET HISTORY OF THE GIANT MAN” by Pistolwhip and Super Spy creator Matt Kindt. I totally had not heard that Kindt was doing a graphic novel for DH. I guess it makes sense, it’s a full-colour book and Top Shelf’s full colour stuff is pretty rare in general. Hmm. Anyway, this one will be out September 23rd. If Matt (or anyone really) is reading, send me a preview, I’d love to see what this is all about.

6:00pm: Awwwwwwwwwwwesome. Dark Horse is reprinting the fairly-hard-to-find PICTURES THAT TICK, a collection of Dave McKean’s short comics stories. I suppose this comes alongside their reprinting of pretty-much every other comic he’s done save Mr. Punch, including the resolicit of CAGES a month or two back. V. Cool. I never owned this one–a friend had it and I read it 2 or 3 times–and am looking at adding it to my collection this September. I can only imagine a few dozen of my customers feel the same way. And it’s only $20 too, what a steal. We’re going to order a ton.

6:23pm: DC Comics! Alright. Geez, that took kinda forever, didn’t it? Sorry, it’s a busy comic day. I just spent 25 minutes helping the cutest guy ever. Like Seth Rogan but cuter (and taller). Good day at the comic store. Yessss.

So what do we have? Another 1 in 250 copy variant on Blackest Night #1. I appreciate that DC is getting behind this one in a big way… Free Comic Book Day, two years of build-up, all of that. But again, this is a program that rewards large retailers and encourages small retailers to take potentially very unhealthy positions on books. Man, if I’ve heard the rumours about Diamond being in a cash-crunch because of the number of comic stores closing (and not paying their bills…) then SURELY DC has heard the same thing… and yet they’re encouraging stores to drop an extra 500-600 bucks to nab an “incentive” cover. Or they’re just shutting those customers out entirely. This is the worst thing in the comics industry right now. The Worst.

6:34pm: … and it’s weird because WEDNESDAY COMICS might just be one of the neatest things in the industry right now. Get top talent to do the stories they’ve always wanted with their favourite characters. Pope, Allred, Azzarello & Risso, Gaiman, Dave Bullock, Kyle Baker, Gibbons and Sook. Tons and tons more. That’s just cool, you know? I feel like this one will be a little underordered as well, but I appreciate them taking a risk on format, and on great creators and off-beat stories. We’re going to be supporting this one, at least for the first month or two of issues (it’s a weekly), and hopefully it lives up to all of its promise.

7:02pm: So I’m actually at page 81 and haven’t had anything else to say. Still busy (I swear it’s attractive-man day here at the store…) but also the DC solicits are pretty boring! Actually!

7:05pm: I heard from a customer, I think? I think it was a customer. Anyway, I heard from someone today that McDuffie was finally let go from Justice League. No disrespect intended to McDuffie, he seems like a nice guy, but it was pretty clear he fucking hated that job. I mean, whatever, people don’t like their jobs, but you can only complain about how fucking broken the book is and how your hands are tied, in public, for so long, before Dan DiDio reads his e-mail. You know what I’m saying? That dude seems like a biiiiiiiiiiiit of a control freak, I can’t imagine he’s reading McDuffie complaining about a scene needing to be re-written at the last minute and the scene being clumsy because of it, and DiDio steps back and goes “Yeah, shit, good point man. We really gotta get our act together here at DC!” 

Dan DiDio doesn’t seem like that kind of guy is all I’m saying.

To The Extreme.

7:10pm: So… JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE #1. The James Robinson Justice League series that is now a mini-series. Well… sure, why not, whatever. Maybe it’ll be good? I like James Robinson, and Batwoman, and the blue-skinned Starman dude. Sounds like a winner to me. Has he given the interview where he says that his creativity was brutally compromised on this series so I shouldn’t bother? Or is he gonna give that interview AFTER the series has come out, so we understand why we were unhappy? I guess I know why people wait for the trade.

7:27pm: Happy to see a new printing of Absolute New Frontier.

7:29pm: Alright, here we are, page 105. NORTH 40 #1 by Aaron Williams and Fiona Staples. Really lovely, understated piece of cover art. Sort of a mysterious premise. Tentacle monster on the cover (tasteful!). Looks good. I’ll check this out.

7:37pm: So it looks like DC is doing a hardcover collecting the first two Tom Strong collections (p111). I actually liked those first 12 issues a lot, some often-lovely art from Chris Sprouse in there, great big pulp concepts, very human stories. I never bought the collections for this (I used to have the issues), but I can see adding this to the shelf, the whole series in 3 hardcover volumes. Cool.

7:42pm: Huh, how about that. A gay lead character on the first page of the preview for GREEK STREET #1, from Peter Milligan. I’m sure there’s an obvious joke there but I ain’t gonna make it, I’m just happy to see any gay character in a comic book, they’re so underrepresented (and poorly represented when they do make an appearance!). GREEK STREET #1 is also one of Vertigo’s $1.00 first issues. I really dug THE UNWRITTEN #1, and the $1 promotion made me more inclined to give it a read, so cool beans. I’ll give this one a heavy order too, hopefully get a whole bunch of people hooked on it.

As for what it’s about? Apparently it’s a gritty-crime-update of Greek Mythology. Done and done.

7:49pm: So my friend Paul was so repulsed by the cover of Hellblazer #257 (p119) that he appeared to be flustered with anger. It’s… it’s not good, he’s totally right. I like Bisley, but. Yeah. At any rate, I think I said at the time “Well maybe they’re going for a lurid pulp-novel thing. It’ll work in context, once you get like, the right cover elements up there. Make it look like an old pulp-novel!” But as the date approaches, I grow more unsure. I guess we’ll know on July 22nd, but until then… Yeah. Not the best Hellblazer cover, that’s for sure.

8:02pm: As I skim quickly, so quickly, over the terrible DC Direct section, I just want to give props to all-around lovely guy Mike Sterling at Progressive Ruin, who takes the time to mock the most egregious bits of nerd ephemera solicited in the PREVIEWS catalogue every month. He calls his recaps THE END OF CIVILIZATION, which I think is an incredibly appropriate title, actually. Unfortunately he doesn’t tag or categorize his site, so far as I can tell, so linking to those posts is a little tough. But here’s a few workarounds:

The May ’09 End Of Civilization (The Previews you’re reading about now!)
The June ’09 End Of Civilization 

Mike also has a fairly-regularly updated list of his END OF CIVILIZATION posts on his right-sidebar, you can check those out for hours of hilarity. It’s the sort of hilarity where you cry a little. 

Okay, next…

8:16pm: IMAGE! Okay, new Mice Templar series (p139), Savage Dragon hits 150 issues (p141), and… here we go! ARMAGEDDON NOW: THE BEAST #1 (p142) featuring some dude desparately digitally painting over top of Rob Liefeld’s pencils, to try and make them look better. This is great. You know why? Because when you put A REALISTIC SHEEN on top of CRAP, it brings out EVERY FLAW. Liefeld’s stiffly-posed action characters on a sliding background, leaping in the air? It’s bold and graphic and, whatever, it looks like “comic book” art. It’s got a lot of energy and not much else. But when you render the fuck out of that, and colour it all brown and put it on top of a painted background and make it “realistic”? That’s when you notice OMG THE CHARATERS ARE ALL HOVERING 6-12 INCHES OFF THE GROUND. Like he can’t draw a character running, fine, everyone knows that, but when it’s “superheroey” it doesn’t matter, it’s just a cool pose. But when you try and make it REAL, then we get into distressing Uncanny Valley territory. Oh, snap, I got it. Rob Liefeld’s ARMAGEDDON NOW is the uncanny valley of comic books. AWESOME. Someone put that on the book jacket please. Here’s a shitty photo with my phone camera, so you can understand what EXACTLY I am talking about:

Seriously. That panel.. (actually, shit, that’s a FULL PAGE SPLASH of those two dudes, hahaha). “RARGH! LET’S FLOAT SLOWLY TOWARDS THE ENEMY WHILE SHOOTING DUDES IN THE HEAD!” If the actual dialogue was “RARGH! LET’S FLOAT SLOWLY TOWARDS THE ENEMIES WHILE SHOOTING THEM IN THE HEAD!!!” I’d be way more inclined to be charitable.

As it is, I am ordering zeh-ro of this clunker.

Oh, and, just so you don’t think I’m being totally vicious, we did order the similarly-awful Armageddon Now original hard cover, and have yet to sell it. But I’m still being totally vicious.

8:37pm: So I guess I officially don’t understand Dan Brereton. After pulling his NOCTURNALS books from Oni (…and I think Dark Horse too? No?), then self-publishing a nice omnibus collection of some of his older work, he is now at Image with the second collection of his work, meaning that there’s an orphan self-pub’d vol-1 HC floating around out there… and about 75% of all comics retailers are seeing this omnibus collection NOCTURNALS VOLUME 2 (p150) for the first time, cuz now it’s in the Image section. With no accompanying relist of volume 1. Which means 75% of retailers are just gonna skip this, because they “can’t get the first volume”. It’s tough out there for creator-owned work, I know that. I’ve got ENORMOUS sympathy for Mr. Brereton, and I really like NOCTURNALS too. But I look at something like this and just shake my head. I don’t get these decisions at all. 

(I just checked Diamond and the first HC omnibus is “Out Of Stock, No Back Orders”).

8:47pm: New printing of Matt Fraction and Steven Sanders’ FIVE FISTS OF SCIENCE this month. That’s nice. (p152). Oh, also a new volume of INVINCIBLE, which was solicited BEFORE the previous volume had come out. And! AND! All of the issues contained in this trade? Totally already printed. Will actually ship on time! Thanks for living up to your promise Mr. Kirkman, we’re selling a shitload of your books.

9:00pm: I’ll give Kevin Smith this: I can’t see the word BERSERKER (p168) without singing Would You Like Some Making Fuck BERSERKER quietly to myself. So, score one for him?

9:12pm: Hey, Marvel’s got a new HALO series! (p.4) I actually laughed at that. Good for them! Keep running up that hill, Marvel.

(That was for you, Naudi.)

9:15pm: Looks like The Previews Pages in the Marvel Previews are a little out of order this month… At any rate, nice cover on Wonderful Wizard of Oz #8 (p.17).

Actually, I did want to say that I think that Marvel’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of their most thoroughly-conceived, well-executed stories in a very long time. Eric Shanower and Skottie Young have done a great job at adapting the story for new audiences, and it’s sold very well here at the store. Good job all-around.

9:21pm: I’m gonna be honest, I’m still pretty out-of-the-loop on the superhero front because of TCAF and Anime North and all that. So Dark X-Men: The Beginning (p.21) has this header that says UTOPIA TIE-IN! and I have no idea what the hell that’s about. Cloak and Dagger are in this and Dagger has an X-Men logo over top her va-jay-jay. 

Okay, flipping the page, it seems UTOPIA is running through Uncanny X-Men and Dark Avengers, both of which are written by Matt Fraction. That makes me feel a little better I guess. So that Dark X-Men: The Beginning is one of those interminable side-stories that don’t affect the plot in any way that Marvel likes to pump out? Okay, good, I know how to order those at least. And I just assume I order the Fraction stuff as normal, maybe with a little bit of a bump because there isn’t, generally, a 100% overlap between Uncanny X-Men and Avengers readers. See! This is how I figure out how to order everything! This column isn’t just pointless snark, you’re learning how retailers think!

9:26pm: You know it’s 9:30pm on a Friday, we should all be out drinking. Just saying. 

9:30pm: So am I reading this right? Spider-Man is getting married in Amazing Spider-Man #600? (p.42) Like I said, I’m out of the loop, but didn’t they undo all that shit like… a year ago? Or is this like how Archie is about to get married, as in, not real?

Also, is it just me or is the anatomy on Spidey’s shoulder in this Quesada cover totally fucked up? It looks like he’s got a shoulder wedged between his bicep and chin, and another on his back where his back and arm meet. Any thoughts on this from any artists reading? Cuz… cuz it looks pretty wonky.

9:45pm: So Incredible Hulk #600 threatens to unleash the secret of who The Red Hulk actually is. That’s pretty cool. We’ve been doing well with that series, and the recent switchover from Thor’s reboot numbering to the new-numbering went alright. Although a big part of that is keeping a strong creative team. Let’s peak ahead and see who’s on Incredible Hulk #601… Van Lente and Pak? Huh, apparently they’re launching this as a new ongoing, not as a replacement for the HULK series (which has issues 13 and 14 next month). That’s… weird. It’s probably difficult to be a Marvel fan and keep your collection in order? I am glad that is not my problem.

9:48pm: Haha… That’s great. Immortal Iron Fist has a spin-off: IMMORTAL WEAPONS (p.53). Sort of like team-Iron Fist. Featuring FAT COBRA in the first issue. Big-ups on Fraction for introducing that character, and for everything he represents.

9:50pm: So this month we see the debut of IRON MAN: IRON ADVENTURES based on the new 3d animated cartoon. I actually caught an episode of that and thought it was alright… Decent animation, engaging-enough story. Good character designs. Unfortunately the writer and artist on this are “To Be Announced”, so I can’t tell if this is comics or just frames from the show blown up and printed. As such, I’ll order low and try to reorder, I guess. The cinemanga-type comics just don’t do well for us. 

9:51pm: I’ve got no comment on Marvel Divas #1. I don’t really know who it’s for, and I don’t think IT knows who it’s for either. Low order.

9:53pm: Okay, wait. So they’ve got the HULK series with the Red Hulk, and they’re launching an Incredible Hulk ongoing featuring Skaar, Son of Hulk, but they’re… also going to keep the Son of Hulk series going? Really? Are there really enough fans for this, for 3 ongoing Hulk series’? Cuz I don’t think they shop at my store.

9:57pm: So it looks like it’s the end for INCOGNITO (p.79) with issue #6… and I couldn’t be happier! I’m always happy when stories have endings, that this is going to be a great book for the bookshelf and a strong seller for us. Hopefully it gooses the sales on CRIMINAL as well, which should start up again soon. I kind of wonder if, on some level (not the only level obv.), INCOGNITO was a six-issue advertisement for CRIMINAL… You know, all these guys reading Marvel comics, hanging out on message boards, they probably hear how great CRIMINAL is but, let’s face it, they only ever read the superhero books. So even though it’s published by Marvel, even though it got relaunched with a new #1 issue, they’re probably going to pass. But you take all the bits that make up a great CRIMINAL story-arc, and you put superhero-masks on all of the characters, and maybe that’s enough for them, to meet them half way so they realize “Hey this is pretty good!” I mean, the Marvel: Noir stuff sort of dilutes the brand, but really, our INCOGNITO sales are great, higher even than CRIMINAL, and I’m hoping… not just hoping but banking actually… that when CRIMINAL comes back in a month or two, we’ll see higher sales across the board. And we’ve got 4 trade paperbacks to sell them too.

Here’s hoping, eh?

10:06pm: And we’re done. For tonight. 

Not that I’m not enjoying myself, but it really IS 10:00 on a Friday night, so at the very least I’m gonna go and grab a drink. We’ll continue the dissection of the May 2009 Previews catalogue with… THE BACK OF THE CATALOGUE… on Monday morning. Thanks for reading, feel free to comment in the comment section!

- Chris

10:19pm: I know Wizard has been firing a lot of people lately, but seriously, did they let go of all of their designers? These Previews pages look like the intern threw them together, and the intern only knows how to use MS Word. Meanwhile, ANOTHER Obama cover on this issue. That poor dead horse that these guys keep beating.

10:21pm: I’m just saying, “Obama Cover, by Artist To Be Announced.” Come on…

10:22pm: Another month, another solicited issue of Anime Insider that is never going to come out. Actually, I just realized that these pages look like they’ve been designed by the PREVIEWS team, which is why I don’t like them. They look seriously weak. Oh how the mighty… etc.

10:23pm: Ah, and thanks to Super-Con in San Jose, we get a little Comic Sans. How Avant Garde.

10:25pm: Speaking of which, Cerebus Archive #2 has a Zombie/Obama Variant for $15.00. At least I’m not as cynical as Dave Sim.

10:27pm: I feel kinda bad, I never actually checked out Scott Morse’s first “Ancient Book of” book for Adhouse. Although this one is about Sex, so that will probably entice me more than Myth/War. Oh, and Johnny Hiro gets a lovely collection that I shall be ordering. Good series, that one. Nice price-point too, 200 pages for $15.00. That’s a steal.

10:29pm: SLG Publishing have thrown a lot of marketting muscle behind their new CAPTAIN BLOOD comic book, and it does look quite nice. Beautiful colours on the cover too. We had some success with The Black Coat, a pirate adventure series published intermitently over the past few years. Hopefully this one will do well for us too.

10:32pm: So I actually read the description for Bad Kids Go To Hell #1, from Antarctic. It’s a high-concept comedy/thriller, described as “The Breakfast Club” meets “The Grudge”. And, yeah, alright, it sounds like a sort of cheesy movie, I’d watch it if it came on the TV and it wasn’t censored on TBS or something. But it’s a movie on paper; a book about sexy teens intended for a sexy teen audience. Where in the hell are they going to find that audience at Antarctic Press? Why is this a comic at all, other than just as an intermediate step to getting it optioned soemwhere? It’s described as a movie, and the cover art just looks awkward (the proportions are all off). Why turn a movie pitch into a mediocre comic book? Or a comic at all?

10:36pm: Archaia Studios Returns! At least The Killer will end now, and Alex Sheikman who creates Robotika is a nice guy. But I don’t really feel good about the company, I’ve heard too much from creators unhappy how they were treated during the fallow period… and I’m not crazy about what I heard about their new parent company either. Anyway, whatever. I’ll order what I think will sell, but I’m certainly not going to ‘invest’ in the company until they get back on track and make amends with the people they’ve wronged.

10:41pm: Hey, a second collection of Julia Wertz’ Fart Party. Cool stuff. The first one was pretty great actually, recommended.

10:44pm: I have to bump the numbers on Gravel again. Nice to see a series picking up readers as it goes. Oh and Ignition City did alright too… And contrary to Ellis’ assertions that “we wouldn’t do variant covers if people didn’t buy them”, our order for the single-cover FRANKENSTEIN’S WOMB (there’s a HC too, but we’ll ignore that) just ended up being higher than our orders for all of the covers on Ignition or Gravel combined. We order the variants because they’re available, not because people are buying more than one. At least not in my experience. Or in an apples-to-apples comparisson, We’re ordering exactly as many copies of all Anna Mercury #1 with 4 different covers  as we did of Ignition City #1 with 3 covers, we just divided them differently. Anyway, not that this has anything to do with anything, it’s just been sticking in my craw, so to speak, seeing Ellis send that message out into the world.

10:55pm: Am i really supposed to order the Tek War comic? Really? Someone weigh in in the comments. I just don’t know.

10:57pm: I have to say, an extended, faithful adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a surprisingly ambitious project for BOOM to take on… i think that’s kind of amazing actually. I hope they do a good job, and I’m excited to see it.

I have to say, their section on the whole looks kind of put-together and organized this month, which is nice. I feel like the past few months have been a little haphazzard, particularly with the volume of books they solicit in a given month. A set-up in the Previews more like IDW would benefit them for sure.

11:06pm: Alright! I wanted to take a second to mention Box Brown’s Love is A Peculiar Type Of Thing! It’s a Xeric Grant winning book, a collection of webcomics and short strips, and it’s about this dude growing up and being fucked up and trying to get over it. It’s navel-gazing indy autobio comics, the exact sort of terrible filth that superhero fans like to step up and deride! Loudly! In an us versus them argument, this is THEM with a capital EVERY LETTER. It’s got Drug Use in it, for pete’s sake! Drugs! How could he!?

It’s great, I loved it. Totally worth your $10. Order two: one for you, and give the other one to a feckless 20-something that can’t figure a way out of their current situation.

More at:  http://www.topshelfcomix.com/ts2.0/artist/318  and  http://boxbrown.com/book/.

11:13pm: On the other end of the spectrum, Devil’s Due Productions has declared June OBAMA MONTH! Fuuuuuuuuuuuck. Comics you ruin fucking everything. I refuse to engage your awful offerings.

Actually, fuck it. I’m not ordering any of this for the shelf. We’re The Beguiling. We have principles. If you want any of this nonsense, I hope you pre-ordered.

11:26pm: So, First Second’s THE COLOR OF WATER by Dong Hwa Kim. I really liked this actually, it’s probably the only thing like it in English. It’s very strange though. It’s very much a book for women, about the life of a woman from being a girl to being grown. It’s a book club book; a Lifetime movie in the making. But it’s neat. And Kim is an outstanding artist, several of the sequences and illustrations featuring the countryside are just amazing. The first book, COLOR OF EARTH, is available from stores now, check it out. 

Oh, and to my friends at First Second? You mis-spelled COLOUR. I didn’t want to say anything to embarass you, but since the books are already printed and in circulation it’s probably alright now.

11:31pm: Taniguchi! Yay! Fucking Whoo! Hoo! Jiro Taniguchi, for those of you thus far uninitiated, is the wonderful creator behind The Walking Man, which I love. A new work is solicited here, SUMMIT OF THE GODS. Taniguchi is one of those creators on my automatic-buy list, just… he brings such incredible professionalism and skill to everything he attempts. It’s lovely.

11:35pm: The Fantagraphics section features what will be the book of the month for many, a the new collection of Peter Bagge’s reportage comic strips for REASON magazine. They’ve generally been good, thought provoking stuff, and I’m sure fans of his self-involved, self-pitying Buddy Bradley character will find a lot to interest them in a collection of comic strips from a Libertarian magazine.

Zing!

11:41pm: Actually, let’s go back a second. I Twittered a question to digital manga publishing but they don’t seem to be online, so I skipped over mentioning the fact that their SWALLOWING THE EARTH, by Osamu Tezuka, is shipping in June. Well, the first volume anyway. I am totally, totally interested in reading this. I own a bunch of Tezuka in French just to studdy the storytelling. But the cover of the book they’ve got here in PREVIEWS is just terrible, hideous stuff. It’s like they took a look at the great strides that Vertical had made in packaging 30 or 40 year old books and making them appeal to a contemporary audience and decided “That’s not really for us.” I love Tezuka, but some of his stuff is kinda goofy looking. I’m not saying every book needs to be abstract and downplay the comics connection, but the difference between the cover they’ve got for solicitation here and even the Buddha volumes? Miles and miles apart, and not in a good way. Granted, it’s got a great big ART NOT FINAL on it, but this is a little disappointing, because it seems like a wonderful work by Tezuka, and I’d really like the chance to sell it.

I don’t think this cover will help me.

11:50pm: Alright, back to Fantagraphics. The Abstract Comics collection soudns neat. The second massive Locas HC is a must buy. Another collection of comics by Fletcher Hanks, by Paul Karasik. A collection of Danish comics! Good month for Fanta.

11:53pm: Oh shit, how did I miss the Rand Holmes retrospective!? They’re gonna take away my Canadian citizenship. Basically:

Rand Holmes was Canadas most revolutionary artist in his heyday, the star cartoonist at the Georgia Straight newspaper in British Columbia during the 1970s. His hippie hero, Harold Hedd, became the spokesman of the emerging counterculture as he avoided work, explored free love, and flouted drug laws. The Adventures of Harold Hedd spread across the globe in the wave of underground comix and newspapers of the era and Holmes became famous – or at least notorious. While his comic character was bold and blatant, the artist was shy and quiet, well on his way to becoming a complete hermit.

This book is an intimate and expansive account of a very private man who expressed his deepest feelings in the then disreputable medium of comix. He didnt talk much but he sure wrote a lot, avowed his widow Martha. This biography/retrospective includes generous selections from his private journals and correspondence, family photo albums, sketchbooks, and personal anecdotes from his friends and colleagues. His artistic history began haltingly on the lonely windswept plateau of Edmonton, flourished in Vancouver and San Francisco, and concluded peacefully on Lasqueti Island, a remote backwater in the Straits of Georgia where he lived out his dreams of pioneering and homesteading.

Holmes life story is richly illustrated with drawings, comic strips, watercolors, and paintings that span his whole career, from the hot rod cartoons he drew as a teenager, dozens of covers for the Georgia Straight, pornographic cartoons for the sex tabloid Vancouver Star, to complete comic stories from Slow Death Funnies, Dope Comix, All Canadian Beaver, Death Rattle, Grateful Dead Comix, and many more. The full-length Harold Hedd comic novels, Wings Over Tijuana and Hitlers Cocaine are reprinted in their entirety together for the first time. 

Essentially, it’s the only book on a Canadian Underground cartooning legend. And a GIANT OF THE NORTH, actually (Google it). Sorry I forgot to mention it on the first pass.

12:03pm: See, here we are, in the IDW section and they’ve got a book called THE ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE BARACK OBAMA and you know what’s different about this one? It’s not co-opting the man’s image to sell your some other idea. It’s a book about Obama. And sure, that’s as much of a commercial product as the stupid barbarian one the DDP is publishing, but this one is actually about the man, his beliefs, his life. I can get behind that.

12:19pm: So, big-ups to fellow Canadians New Reliable Press, who have got their new books TRUE LOVES 2 and JAN’S ATOMIC HEART in the new Previews. These fine cats are gonna be at TCAF, TCAF’n it up, and TRUE LOVES at least managed to get a lot of press first time around. And hey, retailers and customers? THEY’RE GIVING AWAY BOOKS. For every copy of TRUE LOVES 2 you buy, they’re shipping out a free copy of TRUE LOVES 1. That’s a steal!

12:23pm: Okay, Oni Press has got the first issue of the just-relaunched RESURRECTION comic, now in full colour. Fine, interesting enough, Except they’re shipping out 10s of thousands of copies of the #0 prequel for Free Comic Book Day, AND (AND!) the trade paeprback collecting the first RESURRECTION series? SIX BUCKS. Six dollars for like, 184 pages. And it’s all gonna be out in the next 7 days. So, you know, KUDOS, Oni. You win this month’s award for “working your ass off to support your new ongoing series”. Buuuuuut unfortunately you’re disqualified because the first issue here doesn’t feature a 1 in 250 variant cover. Too bad, so sad. :P

12:28: Page 282 has an indy anthology from “Poseur Ink” called SIDE B: THE MUSIC LOVER’S COMIC ANTHOLOGY. It’s got a bunch of stories from folks including Jeffrey Brown, Brandon Graham, Ryan Kelly, and Jim Mahfood. That’s some pretty cool shit. 

Oh, and on page 284, as a favour to my friend George I wanna give a shout out to ATOMIC ROBO AND THE SHADOW FROM BEYOND TIME #3. The Atomic Robo stuff has been fun, well drawn, and a consistent seller for us here at the store. I’m happy to recommend it to fans who like Hellboy for more than just Mignola’s art. :)

12:39pm: So! The one thing in the Viz section that I didn’t know about before I got to it is STARTING POINT: 1979-1996 By Hayao Miyazaki. It’s “A hefty compilation of essays (both pictorial and prose), notes, concept sketches, and interviews by 9and with) Hayao Miyazaki.” It’s 500 pages of reading for $30. That’s sort of a given, isn’t it? Like, that one is an automatic purchase? Awesome. Thanks Viz!

12:56pm: FLIGHT VOLUME 6 IS COMING SOON. Excellent news! New stories from all of the Flight Creators and friends. Page 301, preorder your copy, etc.

–

Alright, I think that’s it for this month. I gotta go through the last few pages of the catalogue and see what kinda magazines and stuff I’m gonna order. Thanks for reading…!

- Christopher

First up? We totally sold out of PREVIEWS this month, because the cover looked great and had a top-notch creative team featured. I don’t know what it is, but usually the cover of previews is either an incomprehensible mess of digital paint, or just plain hideous. Morrison and Quitely’s BATMAN AND ROBIN for the win.

2:25pm: Huh, the Editor’s Note on page 7 actually mentions that the Previews is thinner, and they’re being “more choosy” with what they offer. I always thought choosey was spelt with an ‘e’, but perhaps in this “tough economic climate” we can’t afford a surfeit of e’s.

Oh, and I’ll try to mention page-numbers for those of you playing along at home.

2:27pm: God’s honest quote: “What would William Shatner Do? Apparently, create some good comics.” Thank you, “indieEdge”, for the most depressing thing I’ve seen in days. And we’re only at Page 9.

2:28pm: Is this the fourth or fifth consecutive month of Free Comic Book Day ads in the front of the catalogue? Yikes. Though it is still nice to see Comics Festival in there.

2:29pm: This is actually what I meant about a mess of digital paint on the covers of Previews. This Predator #1 cover is a nightmare. Comics fans aren’t known for being big “impressionist art” fans at the best of times, and this is just all rendering and no composition. Although the strictly realist interpretation of the Predator on the facing page is… ugly. I mean, perhaps that’s the point, but it’s not attractive at either. At least there’s some thought to the composition with the figure framed by the window/doorway. Still, not auspicious for a debut to the section.

2:33pm: The Art of Tony Millionaire has an introduction by Elvis Fucking Costello. That’s cool, but is that gonna sell the book? It’s so cool.

2:42pm: I think I mentioned these “Neil Gaiman Presents” novels last month…. I just saw that the first one was cancelled by Diamond on my last invoice. Does anyone know if it’s just going to get resolicited or if the line isn’t happening? Because this one, Spave Chanety, with are by Vaughn Bode, that will probably do alright for us.

2:46pm: I’ve been really, really hard on Dark Horse in the past. I know it’s not easy keeping tons and tons of backlist in print, but I’ve never understood their handling of the Usagi Yojimbo series by Stan Sakai. Volumes out of print for huge stretches of time, and a general confusion about how to handle the series seem to pervade it. I’m really glad to see that they’re doing new editions of all of the Usagi stuff, starting with volumes 8-10. Completely remastered and rescanned artwork, new story notes. Sounds good, you know? Sounds good.

2:50pm: So Buffy the Vampire Slayer is doing a new TALES OF THE VAMPIRES one shot featuring Becky Cloonan, Vasilis Lolos, and covers by Ba and Moon and Jo Chen. Sounds like a pretty amazing crossover, and given the creative pedigree is likely to be awesome. My only fear is that the hardcore Buffy fans won’t pick it up because it’s not “cannon” or by “Joss” or whatever, even though it’s quite likely to be a really strong genre comic. Blessing and curse of setting the bar high?

2:54pm: Man, 12 volumes of EDEN: IT’S AN ENDLESS WORLD. Nice. If you’re the kind of person who misses Masamune Shirow’s regular output, but kind of wish he stayed on the “interesting philosophical digressions on humanity + kick ass art” track, instead of, you know, a cyber-version of Hot Biker Sluts, you should check this out. Also, if you’re the kind of person who was repulsed by every part of the previous sentence, you can check this out too, it’s actually really solid and enjoyable.

2:58pm: Alright, DC COMICS! … You know, I even LIKED Final Crisis (seriously, it was a lot of fun) but? Is anyone at all gonna care about these Final Crisis spin-off books by the time they come out, months after the end of the series?

BTW, I decided the one written by Joe Casey and drawn by Chris Cross has the strongest crative team, despite having the most ridiculous (within the context of superhero fanboy names), so that’s the one I’m ordering the strongest.

3:00pm: It would be nice if there was not a 1-in-250 variant on Batman and Robin #1.

Actually, let me expand on this. This is fucking stupid. It either rewards the absolute largest retailers, the ones who are already ordering thousands of copies of these sorts of books anyway (chains mostly) while thumbing its nose at the mass of small-to-mid-sized accounts that make up the meat of the orders on many of these books. 

Or? Or it’s encouraging retailers to take untennable positions on books, in a time of economic downturn. Is it a biased, favouritist promotion, or just totally irresponsible?

We are going to qualify for this incentive, we are going to be fine. But “I got mine” is not an acceptable way of doing business in the same month that the editor of Previews says “We all have to tighten our belts.”

3:20pm: Okay, that out of the way, is anyone going to be rushing to pick up these new Batman books that don’t have the real Batman in them? Like, Gotham City Sirens I kinda get, put a bunch of popular sexy characters in the same book, get a cheesecake artist to draw them. But like, Paul Dini’s “Another Batman Ongoing Series” has a solid creative team, but are people on board with reading this? I have no feeling, except negative.

Also, Red Robin #1? Really?

I feel disconnected from this. I am ordering low.

3:24pm: Our Superman sales are really taking a hit right now. That is unfortunate… but unsurprising.

3:25pm: Really? Superman vs. The Flash cover on issue #3? I… I dunno.

The DC section is kinda depressing me here.

3:28pm: Man, new series are Not having a good go of it right now. Dead Romeo #1? Tanked. The Mighty #1-3? Not promising numbers. I guess I could’ve done more to promote both series, but with so much on the racks it’s a little tough. But the lack of sales were not for a lack of copies on the rack…

3:35pm: You know, I like Mike Oeming’s artwork; I own all of Powers. I think that Kevin Nowlan is an incredibly talented artist, just the bees knees. What I am less on board with, is getting Kevin Nowlan to do a cover for The Spirit #30, and then having Mike Oeming draw (and write) the interiors. Because, you know what? Those two artists are very different. Their work does not compliment one another. That is what we in the biz call a bait-and-switch. That is a poor choice.

3:40pm: Time for the monthly “bitching-about-DC’s-collected-editions-department”. Listen folks, I DON’T LIKE DOING THIS ANYMORE THAN YOU LIKE HEARING ABOUT IT. But what do you want me to do, exactly? Huh?

You’re releasing a prestige-format Alex Ross project years after the demand was at it’s peak! AND you’re asking me to order it now, but it’s not arriving until November 25th, 2009. I’m officially ordering Christmas Product here when, and let’s be honest with ourselves here, last Christmas would’ve been a much more realistic window for release of this book.. Hell, Christmas 2007 would’ve been the ideal time to release this book. The “heat” has sort of dissipated from this project… released as it was 3 years ago, when everyone knew there was an absolute edtion coming. Who knew it would take DC this long to put it together.

3:46pm: Who is the audience for the “El Diablo: Haunted Horseman” collection? I thinik Phil Hester and Ande Parks are great, but did this mini-series get rave reviews or huge sales and I missed it? I am willing to accept that I missed it.

3:47pm: The Final Crisis: Revelations Miniseries does not need a hardcover.

3:48pm: Ugggggh. Why are you doing simultaneous Hardcover and Softcover releases of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League Material? We only have so much shelf space, Jesus. Just stop it. The HC and SC are coming out within a year of each other for a series of books. JUST PICK A FORMAT. PLEASE. Stop with these dual releases on projects, it’s So Fucking Pointless.

3:51pm: Seriously. Like, DC must know that these collections are broken, right? Terror Titans? Is someone really demanding a Terror Titans collection for the ages? I honestly don’t give a shit if Terror Titans is your favourite mini-series of all time, good for you! But… But we don’t need a trade paperback of a series that people are going to be fishing out of quarter bins in under a year. It’s a waste of trees, of shelf-space in my store, of resources on DC’s part.  Not everything is worth collecting, not everything is worth a larger audience.

Prepare for me to cut and paste this when we get to the Marvel section.

3:56pm: That really, really looks like Blue Beetle on the Cartoon Network Action Pack #38 cover.

3:59pm: I had no idea that the kangaroo that Sylvester thinks is a mouse is named “Hippety-Hopper”. At least according to the cover of Looney Tunes #175. Weird.

4:05pm: The first Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash mini-series sold well, and surprised the hell out of by actually sending new customers to my store, asking for a book by name. That’s how licensed books are supposed to work, offering fans of other media something that they can only get from a comic book. Unfortunately most times these books are just aimed at existing comic fans, doing nothing to grow the market… So yeah, we’re putting a solid order in on this new series.

4:13pm: Oh man, I just read the most brutal, brutal review of Azzarello’s Filthy Rich graphic novel. I mean, I dig his work and all, 100 Bullets is aces, but I avoided that Joker HC specifically because it seemed callous and awful and… and tossed-off even. Just random. So to read this dude at The Oregonian just tear this book to pieces. I cringed a little. I don’t think it’ll affect the first few weeks of sales, actually, negative reviews rarely do. But I know that I personally am not that interested in picking it up anymore… Yikes.

4:18pm: …but by all accounts 100 Bullets ended well. My orders on the last trade, WILT, are going to be pretty darned strong.

4:25pm: Second Northlanders TPB. Good good.

4:26pm: Does Nightwing always look constipated, or just in this statue on page 128?

4:28pm: IMAGE: I’m not really a Dawn/Linsner fan, so maybe I don’t know, but I kind of get the feeling that these one-shots? If you slapped a hardcover on them and charged $14.99 instead of $5.99 for the same story? We’d sell just as many. I understand the French-market “album” format doesn’t really work for North America, but I can’t help but feel that this is one of the few properties that could really make a go.

4:31pm: Writer John Layman e-mailed me about his new series here, Chew, from Image. I have to admit that I didn’t actually read the email very closely, I’ve been incredibly busy for the past month. But I’m looking at this here, and the art is a very appealing indie/lo-fi sort of a thing, and the idea of a detective who gets psychic impressions from whatever he eats? Pretty good, pretty good. I’ll give this a shot for the store. And then probably go back and read the e-mail and figure out I shoulda ordered more. But, you know, only so many hours in a month.

Oh, and John Layman’s website is http://themightylayman.blogspot.com/.

There, good deed done for a creator-owned book. I can go back to being a jackass.

4:38pm: Fair enough, I could probably discern that T.RUNT by Derek McCulloch and Jimmie Robinson is going to be in an odd format, a square book, just by looking at the solicit image. But it would be nice if that information was in the actual solicit somewhere.

4:43pm: Douglas Fredericks & The House of They is written by Joe Kelly, whose work I generally enjoy, and illustrated by Benjamin Roman, whose work is kind of hideous, but also in an enjoyable way. OGN for 13 bucks, I’ll give it a whirl.

5:06pm: sorry for the big break, I had a rash of customers come in and sadly had to stop working on the previews… this is exactly why I’ve started working from home btw. Someone at The Beguiling needs to build me an office before I go all Les Nessman and start taping up the floors. YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING PETER? I AM JUST A FEW WEEKS AWAY FROM LES NESSMAN. That reflects poorly on all of us.

5:08pm: There are WALLS here.

5:09pm: Okay, MARVEL. Hah, Halo. It’s funny, last month I made mean jokes about how Halo #4 and Detective #857 were never going to come out, and then they both came out less than 4 weeks later. Perhaps I have a gift? Perhaps my snide disbelief and criticism is what Gets Shit Done TM. Alright, let’s try this: “Yeah, a MIRACLEMAN trade paperback! That’ll be the day! Haw Haw haw!”…

If it’s announced in the next 30 days you’ll have to give me credit, you know that right?

Huh, no shit. Colourist Richard Isanove is now illustrating the Dark Tower series. I would not have seen that coming. I’m not really digging the cover; it’s well-illustrated but lacks the broody menace of the series, and of Jae Lee’s take. Still, this is just the cover.

5:14pm: Really? Spider-Man election day seems… Like a poor choice. I’d really like a book that has the (terrible) Spider-Man/Obama book in it, but the story arc it’s attached to… How accessible is that? Isn’t there material in the archives that would serve as a better introduction to the character, or would be of the same sort of kitsch-value as the Obama material in the first place? Or what about just doing a thin stand-alone collection, like 48 pages for $15 or something? This product just doesn’t make any sense to me as anything other than “the next Spider-Man collection”. 

Which is a missed opportunity, considering.

5:20pm: I have no specific interest in the golden age Marvel reprints, but I do find the 832 page omnibus of Golden Age Marvel Comics incredibly tempting. 

5:23pm: Jesus does Anita Blake ever do anything other than stand around with her hands in her pockets? What an intensely boring looking comic book. Also, I guess those are supposed to be “Ladies of the night” milling about behind her on this cover. but you know what? That’s just what all women in mainstream comics look like, so it totally fails as a visual cue! Even moreso because that cover is horribly underdrawn hackwork.

5:27pm: Fun-fact: This month in the Marvel Previews “illustrated” section there are colour-bars with the names of the classic authors in all caps. It’s very Marvel. Like, we can visually pick up what Wolverine looks like, even “Wolverine Noir”, but who’s that buncha chicks in that image? Is it one of those “The ladies of X-Men go shopping” down-time issues? Oh, no, wait, it’s JANE AUSTEN. Dude with a sword? HOMER. Got it. Sadly no similar one for L. FRANK BAUM. Actually, Baum isn’t mentioned anywhere in the solicit for Shanower and Young’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz adaptation. Kinda disappointing.

5:32pm: Marvel’s got way, waaay too much sub-mediocre product out here. All of these Dark Reign tie-in mini-series and stuff. You’ve got an almost-weekly Spider-Man book now, the story of his mysterious new villain introduced in that series couldn’t be told in that series? We need a mini-series for this? Well, no, we don’t. But we’re getting one. Weaksauce.

5:40pm: Is Reed Richards uncovering a mass grave in the middle of New York? That’s a bit much, isn’t it? Am I just being a prude?

5:47pm: Wow, the new creative team on Runaways seems awesome! Kathryn Immonen, really lovely cover by David Lafuente, and the interior art by Sara Pichelli looks great too. Cool beans, I hope this team sticks around for a while.

5:50pm: The cover to Deadpool: Suicide Kings #3, is stupid.

5:52pm: I’ve been out of the store for a while so I had to check, but it says Kick Ass #5 came out in April. That means the last two issues have gotta come out monthly for this hardcover to release in July… I don’t really see it happening? Did someone give an interview somewhere where the editors and creative team promised monthly shipping on issues 6-8? I’m willing to accept that I missed it. But I find it unlikely.

5:59pm: Ugh, really? The Jeph Loeb FALLEN SON story is getting an oversized hardcover? That’s just brutal.

Edit: Okay, I’m a huge jack-ass. Somehow I completely missed the page (99 in the Marvel Previews) where Joss Whedon’s Runaways was solicited as volume 8 of the Digest series. Missed it completely. So, officially? I am a huge jack-ass. Apologies to Marvel, and thanks, for giving us product that I know we can sell. But because I don’t believe in editing these things to make myself look better, here’s me being douchey to Marvel (although in my defence my heart was in the right place):

6:01pm: Maybe I’m inappropriately holding out hope here, but this will make the third regular-sized hardcover RUNAWAYS collection since we had a digest. We Really Sell A Lot Of Digests. Please Print More Digests. This would be volume 10. And you know, Runaways sells like manga for us, and manga sells _well_. Please let us keep selling these books to more than just anal fanboys who need to own everything in bullshit prestige-format hardcovers. Please.

6:04pm: Ah, I’ve answered my own question. Regular-size tpb of the first Terry Moore Runaways arc. And $16 for 136 pages too, lovely. Marvel: You’re kind of fucking up a good thing here.

6:08pm: …and I’m done. Well, the first half here anyway. After I take a little break to do something about this headache and maybe have some dinner, I’ll come back and do the back-half of Previews. Thanks for reading so far!

- Chris

There we go.

8:49pm: Page 178: bahahaha. Now you can own an action figure of sad little Wolverine Teen, trying to figure out what the hell those are coming out of his hands. WOLVERTEEN’S ANGSTY AWAKENING. Is it slash? Is it an action figure? No, it’s a mini-mate, the Go-Bots of miniature figures. Comes in a set with Wolverine in Cowboy Hat, Wolverine from Mark Millar’s dark future, and BWS Wolverine-all-hairy-in-a-metal-diaper. At least it is only $16?

8:50pm: Is making fun of Wizard still funny at this point, or is it cruel? Because I’m up for either. You know, I’m Game. But I just want to make sure I’m being P.C. about all of this.

8:54pm: Oo… Anime Insider. Wait, if I order 10,000 copies of a magazine that I know isn’t coming out, does that still count as maxing out my Diamond Discount?

8:56pm: Dave Sim is mocking superheroes in glamourpuss now. And doing an examination of the arrival of Stan Drake on the photorealism in the early 50s. Is “incongruous” a word he just doesn’t know? Is it a feminine word, and therefore he refused to learn it?

8:59pm: Terry Moore’s ECHO — the sales on that kind of bottomed out on that for us around issue 7, but since then it’s been climbing every month. We’re almost back up to first-issue numbers, which is pretty good.

Also digging this REMAKE book from Adhouse… Sort of like Astro Boy by Rodney Greenblat as a mini-comic. Looking forward to it.

Holy shit, only 2 listings for Slave Labor this month, and they’re reoffers of Nightmares & Fairy Tales.  Luckily there’s a full page ad here with more order codes, but a good reminder that I need to put together an order for those guys.

Oh, the Public Enemy Graphic Novel. You are awesome.

9:04pm: My brother loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic from Archie when he was a kid. I think it’s actually kind of cool that they’re releasing them as a trade. He wasn’t a big comics guy, but he did like 3 or 4 of them if they were around and TMNT was second only to Defiant’s GOOD GUYS. Make of that what you will?

9:06pm: Second FREAKANGELS collection. That one is the best-selling (for us) Ellis collection in years… I wonder what that says about alternate distribution methods eh?

9:09pm: There’s seriously another LEPRECHAUN comic? That’s fucked up.

9:11pm: Holy shit there’s a WARLOCK comic too? My eyes usually just glaze over when I get to Bluewater, I must not have been paying attention for the last few months… It looks like I didn’t order it, which is good. Heh. WARLOCK is the film from my youth that I bring up most often, because I point out to my married, kid-having friends, that if they don’t baptize their child the Warlock will boil the fat off of it and use the fat to make a flying potion. 

If you haven’t seen Warlock, that’s a pretty fucked-up thing to say to someone about their newborn child.

9:19pm: Those Disney Comics from Boom did much, much better than we were expecting. We did a reasonable order on it, and we sold more than half of our Incredibles and all of our Muppet Shows. Cool stuff. I’m going to go bump the orders for the rest of it. That said, I’ve got no idea if any of it is going to kids or not.

9:21pm: Page 226 is the full-page XERIC ad, which includes some neat looking books again. I wanna give props to Box Brown’s Love is a Peculiar Type of Thing which I read and enjoyed, and Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly, which I also read and enjoyed. Box Brown’s book is in the Previews coming out tomorrow, make sure to order one!

9:24pm: Maybe I’m going to hell for this, maybe not, but Alex Ross’ Buck Rogers design actually looks pretty cool. For 25 cents I’ll give BUCK ROGERS #0 a shot.

9:27pm: Also trending upwards? Garth Ennis’ BATTLEFIELDS. Although “The Tankies” sounds a bit ridiculous as a title. I’m sure it’s Very British though.

9:33pm: New Seth book! GEORGE SPROT 1894-1975, all of the stuff that ran in the Times, and much more. Cool.

9:34pm: I am super-into this manga biographyof the Dalai Lama on page 252. I am there, this looks just utterly wonderful. It is published by “Emotional Content”. NICE.

9:35pm: Congratulations! You get your first image of the Previews:

Jiro Taniguchi's Distant Neighborhood. Published by Fanfare.

Buy it!

9:42pm: The Fantagraphics section is like a little Oasis in the middle of the Previews. It’s lovely. New graphic novel from Jason (LOW MOON from The Times), new comics from Linda Medley and Jordan Crane, a new MOME. Good stuff.

Oh and look! It’s the two graphic novels by Toronto Comic Arts Festival Guests Of Honour Emmanuel Guibert and Derek Kirk Kim! Innnnteresting. Guibert’s THE PHOTOGRAPHER and Kim’s THE ETERNAL SMILE are both excellent works, worth putting on your shelf. Don’t miss’em.

9:46pm: Sherrilyn Kenyon’s softcore vamporn for ladies, now in convenient manga format! DARK HUNTERS was all over NYCC this year, kind of making everyone glance askew at the busty belly-shirt wearing cardboard cutouts that dotted the show. Heh.

9:48pm: Oh look, PEDRO & ME got a much-needed new cover! And just in time for the film biography of Pedro Zamora’s life. Good stuff, Henry Holt.

9:50pm: I love Optimus Prime as much as the next 30-something year old, but why is IDW doing a children’s picture book featuring a deptiction of the character that is from my childhood, and not the kids who are watching Transformers today? Makes no sense to me.

Speaking of which, a double page spread of Transformers products followed by a double page spread of GI Joe products is very weird to me. I can’t explain it, it’s just like… yeah. This is my childhood, and it’s weird to see it on the page again.

Actually, ignore everything I just said. The ASTRO BOY Movie Prequel cover is just bizarre looking and a much stranger interpretation of someone’s childhood hero than Transformers or Gi Joe…

Astro Boy Movie Prequel: Underground #1

Dude.

Also, what’s with the colouring? Did someone just find the airbrush tool?

Man, I know I sound like I’m being a huge asshole to IDW here, and I don’t mean to be–I think they’re actually a really good company. But… Yowza. That is an awful image. I haven’t coloured anything in years and I know I could do better.

9:59pm: Okay, wait, here we go. Same page (266) as AmerAstro Boy up there, is SWORD OF MY MOUTH #1 by Toronto creators Jim Munroe and Shannon Gerard. A great looking book, from two great creators, both of whom live within 10 blocks of the store (I think)… Thanks IDW for putting out cool books like this! And it got a Staff Pick and a Certified Cool too, which is good on Diamond. FROM THE ASHES #1 by Fingerman also looks kinda neat. His kids vs. zombies story, Recess Pieces, was awesome. Hopefully this is as good.

10:04pm: Holy shit there’s a DOCTOR WHO one-shot (THE TIME MACHINATIONS) by Paul Grist? I wish I cared about Doctor Who in the slightest! But man, do we have a lot of Paul Grist fans at the store!

OH MY GOD IT’S 10:04 AND THIS SHIT IS DUE IN 2 HOURS.

10:07pm: I’m pretty happy to see a second volume of WONTON SOUP come out. Oni Launched a bunch of really awesome series-oriented graphic novels 2 years ago this summer, and this is the first one that’s managed a second volume. It was a tasty read, and I’m looking forward to another serving…

(pun, edited)

10:10pm: Huh, new Mazzuccelli graphic novel. I honestly thought we’d never see one. If anyone from Pantheon/Random House Canada is reading, I wouldn’t turn down an advance copy. JUST SAYING.

10:12pm: Two pages for Tokyopop eh? How the might have fallen. Still, this is probably their strongest solicit month in a long time… TAKERU OPERAN SUSANOH SWORD OF THE DEVIL has a pretty cool looking cover, I’d read that. And they’re finally bringing GRAVITATION back into print in omnibus volumes, so that’s kinda cool. Still: Sigh.\

10:14pm: Every one of Top Shelf’s books looks awesome in its own way. I invite you to check them all out.

10:15pm: I am seriously running out of time here, shit, but this is the month that UDON launches their line of kids manga. I’ve gotten to read all of this stuff too, it’s actually really solid and fun, and totally appropriate for kids 6-12. I know there’ve been some reviews that have popped up already, check them out if you’re in the market for comics for kids.

OH MAN, the first two books in the Viz section are CHILDREN OF THE SEA VOL 1 by Daisuke Igarashi, whose work I’ve been wanting to read in English forever, and NAOKI URASAWA’S 20TH CENTURY BOYS VOL 3, and the first volume of that kicked ass. Yes! Good comics! To get me through the end of the section…!

10:19pm: DETROIT METAL CITY

Come on, how can you NOT want to read that, it’s ridiculous.

Okay, that’s where I’m going to stop because if I don’t I’m not going to get this done before 11:59pm, and me ordering the books from the Previews is far more important than talking about ordering the books from the Previews.

Anyway, thanks for everyone who read along and enjoyed this! Maybe I’ll do it next month OH WAIT THAT WILL BE 10 DAYS BEFORE TCAF AND I WILL BE INSANE, PERHAPS NOT.

Love,

- Christopher

2:48pm: SPAWN. Talk about your auspicious debuts! At least it’s not a toy? Anyway, apparently SPAWN: Architects of Fear is the long-awaited sequel to SPAWN: SIMONY. I have not heard of this. Auspicious debut.

2:50pm: I dunno if it’s just me, but I can’t remember the last time I read one of the articles in the front of PREVIEWS.

2:51pm: Exception to the rule: I really like seeing my Free Comic Book Day book in the little spread of FCBD books.

2:52pm: DARK HORSE! PIXU looks great, man. I was totally surprised to hear that DH picked up this one, but happy to hear it. It’s already a great couple of comics, it’s going to be an outstanding book. New issue of Buffy, which is our highest-ordered floppy comic of any given month, I think. BUFFY: Holy shit, it sells a lot. Still.

2:56pm: Almost didn’t realize that new Lobster Johnston book was a novel, and not just a comic with a pulp novel-styled cover. Crisis averted.

2:58pm: I’m not sure that anyone still cares about ALIENS comic books, but I’ll give the first issue a shot.

3:00pm: That BEANWORLD hc sold fantastically well for us, we actually sold out in under a month for what I thought was a generous order. Cool stuff. And look at that, a new version of CAGES on the opposite page. I hope the binding on this one is a bit better than the last HC edition. I loved that last edition (it’s the one I’ve got) but man, you hold that thing the wrong way for a few minutes and the binding just cracks.

3:02pm: So far, the recession hasn’t hurt the sales of prestige-edition books, but I guess we’re going to test that with this MARTHA WASHINGTON hard cover. Pardon me for being a jerk, but maybe this is the kind of thing that would’ve sold REALLY WELL during all that Watchmen hoopla? You know, the dude who did the book that WATCHMEN was based on, and the dude who did the book that the director of WATCHMEN directed before this one? No? Anyone?

3:09pm: New Usagi trade is always nice. Not really sure what to make of these Neil Gaiman Presents novels… We’re cutting back on prose here at the store, but Gaiman tends to have a real following that would likely extend to his favourite prose. We’ll give it a go. Also? VAMPIRE DANCE: As high-concepts go, vampires vs. neo-nazis isn’t bad at all.

3:13pm: Whoo, new Blade of the Immortal!

3:22pm: Digging into the stand-alone-for-this-month DC catalogue. If I can editorialize for a moment, I think we all know that comics, hell all literature, is not “essential”. Food, water, shelter, love. Essential. Comic books? Not so much. But within the context of comics, or more approrpiately superhero comics, certain books can seem “essential”. Like being a Spider-Man fan, and needing to pick up New Avengers to see all of the surprising developments with the character that happened there, that sort of thing. Using that scale, I can successfully say that FINAL CRISIS AFTERMATH: RUN #1, where we find out what happened to “The Human Flame” after Final Crisis,  is about as essential has stepping on a rusty nail. Awful.

3:29pm: I’m with Spurge, why the hell does Mark Waid on Batman need to be a one-shot? There are like 5 regular Batman books, you couldn’t slot a Mark Wait two-parter in there anywhere? (Batman in Barcelona: Dragon’s Knight #1)

3:32pm: Props to DC for bringing Supergirl back into the mainstream continuity of the Superman books., our sales are close to double what they were before the New Krypton stuff.

3:33pm: Not being a dick here, but I could swear that Booster Gold was cancelled. But no, here it is with a Keith Giffen fill-in issue. HUH.

3:37pm: Does the dude who lays out DC’s section of the Previews just hate alphabetizing things? 

Green Arrow & Black Canary #20
The Flash Rebirth #2
Jonah Hex #43
Mighty #4
Green Lantern Corps #36

What the fuck man?

3:40pm: Because I ordered more of THE LAST DAYS OF ANIMAL MAN than POWER GIRL, am I: a) sexist, b) sexist and a prime example of the sexism in comics, or c) counting on DC to keep one of these first issues in print should I need more, but not the other? Phrase your answer in the form of a bitter polemic.

3:45pm: Comic that I am fucking shocked is selling as well as it is: R.E.B.E.L.S. I had to reorder! Both issues! Apparently it’s really, really good. Good for you, creative team!

3:49pm: I think assuming that Andy Kubert will get the second half of that Neil Gaiman story done by July, in time for this hardcover edition, is wishful thinking. I kind of feel like the whole Andy-Kubert-exclusive-at-DC thing was Joe Quesada playing a practical joke on DC. What did he do, 150 pages of comics total in 2 years? Totally fucked the schedule on Morrison’s Batman and gave us Tony Daniel? TONY DANIEL!? Well-played, Mr. Quesada.

3:52pm: Kind of annoyed that DC opted to reprint the existing Hitman collections, and not just go for omnibus editions. 

3:54pm: I actually like the look of the DC kids stuff, though it’s odd to see STORMWATCH PHD and CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY on facing pages. Speaking of Stormwatch PHD, I remember Leandro Fernandez absolutely Kicking Ass on Queen & Country back in the day, but that art excerpt from Stormwatch looks awful. Is that actually his stuff? What happened there? Yikes.

4:04pm: Yeah, see, there we go! SLEEPER SEASON ONE! Take Sleeper vol 1 & 2, put it in one book, and knock $5 off of the total price. Good call DC Collections dept!

4:07pm: Holy shit there is a comic called KILLAPALOOZA. Trevor Hairsine too. Nice.

4:09pm: I am happy with myself that I had no reaction to the STARCRAFT comic book. Looks like I finally kicked that particular addiction.

4:12pm: Alright THE UNWRITTEN by Mike Carey, I shall give you the benefit of the doubt and order a bunch of your first issue priced at only a dollar. But I would double that number again if Yoko Shimizu did the interior art as well. JUST SAYING.

4:13pm: Hah. ABSOLUTE DEATH HC. I just gotta say, it shouldn’t take Neil Gaiman being pissy on his blog for DC’s Collections department to pull their heads out and keep to a consistant format for their prestige releases.  Particularly for Gaiman’s work. That said, speaking as a retailer who has sold a lot of $99 slipcase’d books, I am really happy that Gaiman got pissy at DC on his blog, because hey, another $99 slipcase’d book!

4:21pm: Man, Jeff Lemire’s artwork (THE NOBODY HC) really looks like it’s just slapping the Vertigo house-style across the face, doesn’t it? Like just having it’s way with it. Heh.

4:23pm: Are you fucking kidding me? The prop replica of all of the Green Lantern rings (all the different coloured rings from the new prism of lanterns)? RINGS ARE REMOVABLE BUT ARE PROP REPLICAS ONLY AND ARE NOT MEANT TO BE WORN. $250. Sorry to get all ‘internet’ on you here, but EPIC. FAIL.

…and that’s DC done. Way to go out on a low-note.

4:27pm: Image! OLYMPUS looks kind of neat actually. Interesting art, not sure if it’s pretty enough for comics fans, but it is nice-looking. I’ll give it a go. Spawn. Youngblood. More Liefeld. New Tennapel graphic novel, I wonder how he’s going to turn THIS one into a paean to the healing power of Christ?

4:31pm: Sure, why not steal the Marvel Digest design for your G-MAN trade paperback. Marvel stole it from Tokyopop in the first place…

4:32pm: If Kyle Baker is reading this, Kyle? Why is there a trade paperback collection of issues #1-4 of SPECIAL FORCES when that series is apparently a six-issue mini series?

4:34pm: There’s seriously a thousand-page Walking Dead book coming out, collecting issues 1-48. Huh.

4:35pm: Huh, Dead@17 is at Image now? Had no idea. Glad to have an omnibus collection though.

4:37pm: Huh, looks like Image is going to keep the first 5 POWERS trades after all, new printing of volume 1.

4:48pm: Got a little distracted there. Big-ups to EVIL AND MALICE SAVE THE WORLD on page 165. I coloured this, back in the day, and it’s a great series for all ages, particularly girls. If you like me or this site, then order one of these and support my friend Jimmie Robinson.

4:50pm: Ah. Marvel. Alright. Apparently “THE WORLD STILL NEEDS THE NEW MUTANTS”. “Disagree.” “Circle gets the square!”

4:52pm: Doesn’t the HALO UPRISING HC presuppose that the fourth issue will ever, ever come out?

No Idea what “RIFTWAR” is, I imagine a popular sci-fi novel series. Meh. You know what I’d read though? RIFTS comics. The old Palladium game. That was fun. Who owns the license to that? Is it BOOM? I imagine it would be BOOM. Hey Church, why don’t you pitch Ross on a RIFTS comic?

4:55pm: Heh, Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers. That is actually kind of amazing. Props for Speedball’s tabbycat.

4:56pm: I can’t help but feel like Roy Thomas’ TROJAN WAR #1 isn’t going to be nearly gay enough. All the naked dudes are drawn in shadow (in the middle of the day).

4:58pm: “Spider-Man: The Short Halloween” actually wins funniest title of the month, so far. 

5:00pm: Heh, I think the DARK REIGN YOUNG AVENGERS should have lesbians. Are lesbians the dark reflection of gay dudes? Or is that sexist too? What’s the dark reflection of gay teenagers? Gay teenagers that have killed themselves? Also, wait, the Dark Avengers are bad guys that are pretending to be Avengers. But these are kids pretending to be bad guys but calling themselves Young Avengers. So would that make two of the characters gay guys PRETENDING to be “Ex-Gay”? But aren’t all of the Ex-Gay’s just pretending anyway? Fuck it, too complicated. I’m not ordering this one.

5:12pm: And, done Marvel. It turns out I am not that interested in Marvel. Gotta take a little break, be back in an hour or two to do the back-half of Previews. Actually, I’ll put that in a separate post. Thanks for reading along…!

- Christopher