September Previews 2008 Part One

This is something new I want to try.  One of my favorite things each month is Previews, the magazine that gives about a three month warning and chance to order ahead of time all comics and comic related merchandise being distributed by the worlds largest comic distributor, Diamond Comics Inc.  So I’m going to start blogging my way through the book.  I don’t have a scanner, unfortunately, but without pictures one can’t realize how completely retarded most of the stuff they’re selling is.  But I do have a digital camera, so bare with me and if it’s that annoying, just buy me a damned scanner.

Now, I was sold on this.  Mark Powers, who pretty much runs most of DDP’s content, is writing, you get a cover by Tim Sale, a cheap $0.99 zero issue and an interesting science fiction concept: what if you could take a pill that would replace sleep?  What if you weren’t sure if it was safe or legitimate, would you care?  Would you ask who made it or why or what the cost ultimately would be?  I bought the zero issue and liked where it’s headed, I’m supporting this good-looking mini-series from a small publisher but here’s the thing that I find to be strange as hell – the guy from Heroes has seemingly licensed his likeness to appear in comics, oddly enough, but that seems to be the biggest thing they’re pushing, that an actor is “producing” it.  Strange, to say the least.  Executive Produced seems more like “let us put his name on the cover”, but whatever.  I’m essentially unaffected.

based on a video game that does not yet exist. yeah, that sounds like a literarily complex and engaging read.  I just hope it’s as good as the super mario bros comics. what an achievement of literature to live up to.  Good luck guys.

Some things make me feel so geeky I want to hose myself off.

$30 for a cheap t-shirt so you can PAY to promote their work?  This is capitalist douchebaggery at it’s finest.  I really like the Umbrella Academy and would like to show off their logos but everything they’re selling is insanely overpriced.  $5.00 patches, $1.50 for a one inch pin? No. This is clearly where Avatar, fine purveyors of the $13 shirt with free shipping, know what they’re doing and Dark Horse are being assholes.  Fuck you guys.

Okay, so The End League is still pretending like it hasn’t been on hiatus for six months.  So far only three issues have come out and issue eight is coming out on November 26? STOP PRETENDING YOU ARE ON TIME

So you pitch an animated series that you want to make and a bunch of producers make it seem like you’re going to get to make it and then they back out. You become enraged, trying to think up a scheme to make them suffer.  How to make them regret ignoring your talent? Oh, make the characters of your comic watch the show that nobody wants to see, that will teach them.  I like how Buffy is clearly forcing Willow to watch, pushing her towards the television.  JOSS SAYS IT IS GOOD. WATCH AND LOVE

Sometimes something is just so insane that I have to try it and in this department Japan knows how to bring their A-game.  Kurosagi. Corpse. Delivery Service. I’m in just on the title alone, but this insane front cover attempting to make a multi-media collage impressionist reinterpretation of a seizure? YES!  It was enough to make me order volume one off of Amazon within a few hours of buying the catalogue.  Thanks, Japan!

FUCK. YES.  What if there was a mythology that George Lucas couldn’t repeatedly molest until fans everywhere were curled up into the corner crying out, “no uncle George! NO!”

A riddle, if you dare! I spent about ten minutes staring at it, trying to decide if it was a printing error, some kind of preview or giveaway or they just hadn’t decided on a cover price for a standard size trade paperback and didn’t have the sense to just put TBA in the price column.  I can afford zero dollars and zero cents, but when this comes out and it’s $17.99, I’ll buy it on Amazon for $12.  It was a fun ten minutes.

 

this next segment is called DC Comics: The Sickness

I don’t think it’s humanly possible for me to be more excited about New Krypton this fall all throughout the Superman line.  Alex Ross, Geoff Johns and James Robinson have successfully made me a Superman junkie, which is astonishing, considering I never cared much for the guy until Geoff Johns took over Action.  The fact that all of these covers will by ross will be connecting to make a panorama is even better.  I might buy two copies and frame them all together.  Like a fucking nerd.

These aren’t to complain about or mock.  I’m just jazzed.

That’s three – THREE Kingdom Come one shots that month to coincide with the glorious sequel that will sadly probably end soon after.

I feel like this is my reward for waiting it out and not buying the ugly hardcover.  240 pages by a half dozen really talented people for $20 is really a great deal. WIN

And again.  I persevere once again! TPB FTW!  Over the last two months I’ve become an enormous Ed Brubaker fan, so I’m looking forward to this.  As I write this I realize I have almost no Batman trades, which is strange, because Morrison has made me love the character.  I’ll have to fix that.

This will be interesting.  I’m interested in this war of the Kubert covers business.

So a sandman comic not scripted by Neil Gaiman, not drawn by an artist I like.  Definitely waiting for the trade on this one.  Happy 20th birthday Morpheus, here’s a subpar story.

Wolverine #68: Old Man Logan Part 3 of 8

Written by Mark Millar

Art by Steve McNiven

Reuniting the Civil War creative team, this eight issue run on Wolverine has been so good that I’m actually willing to buy an X-Men spin-off book and not only like it, but rant about it, pass it out among friends and generally try to pimp it to all decent human beings(sorry John McCain).  Taking place 50 years in the future when, by undisclosed events, a small handful of supervillains have conquered earth, killed all of the superheroes and essentially displaced humanity into small regions across the glob, a pacifist Wolverine and a supposedly blind Hawkeye run drugs across the country to pay the Hulk’s offspring the rent they owe them for living on their land.  But it’s so much bigger than that.

“No one knows what happened on the night the heroes fell. All we know is that they disappeared and evil triumphed and the bad guys have been calling the shots ever since. What happened to Wolverine is the biggest mystery of them all. Some say they hurt him like no one ever hurt before. Others say he just grew tired of all the fighting and retired to a simpler life. Either way he hasn’t raised his voice or popped his claws in fifty years. His old friends would barely recognize him now.”

Millar, a crazy Scottish bastard, is a top form here and in only three issues has created a new, unexplored landscape and small cast of characters so fascinating that it’s impossible to put down.  Millar has done for Wolverine what the Kirkman achieves in Walking Dead; making the monthly wait for a new issue painfully suspenseful.  Something that’s interesting is that, although the current journey across America with the two main characters talking and having short form adventures, what’s truly interesting is watching the past 50 years unfold as the days slowly proceed into the future.  For anyone craving dystopia, this is exactly where you want to be.

The idea here is that you have this pacifist who loves his family and doesn’t want to fight and his best friend is dragging him into a situation where ultimately he’ll have to fight, to pop his claws and kill some people.  Through the story Millar also creates a mythology that the X-Men comics of the 1990’s did a great job of capturing, building on the reverse formula that Chris Claremont used, which was to tell a story set in a possible future where everything has gone wrong.  Millar turns the tables and sets up a future where everything is already wrong but we don’t know why, we have to hang on and watch the situations unfold, situations that are not inherently based in the past, but slowly elude to them, crafting a past we never knew.  With this method he is incredibly successful. The series is slowly building to either an early resolution followed by some kind of serious self-reflection and conflict situation or, the scenario I’d prefer – following in the footsteps of Garth Ennis’ Saint of Killers one-shot in which the violent man makes good, starts a family and loses his family.  And then he kills everything that ever breathes at him.

Also – an evil Spider-Girl beheading a blinged out 50 Cent version of the Kingpin, virtually every superhero is dead and you get the feeling nothing is going to work out.

X-Men Origins: Jean Grey One-Shot

 

Written by Sean McKeever

Art by Mike Mayhew

 

In the first of hopefully several(at least enough to spotlight the original 60’s line-up, which would make a half dozen or so issues, which would essentially quantify an average mini-series anyway, which would also collect quite nicely into a trade paperback or even perhaps a hardcover) card stock single issue stories recounting the initial discovery of a character’s manifestation of power, McKeever and Mayhew seriously deliver in a way that completely shocked me.

McKeever is a capable writer with a familiar name, though I cannot initially recall any of his previous work, I assume he’s been published by both of the majors and is likely to have assembled some mass of independent work.  I’ll certainly be looking for more from him because, when coupled with a talented artist like Mike Mayhew, he assembles one hell of a book.  Clocking around 40 pages of painted art and sequential story, the initial display of a young Jean Grey being shocked by her psionic manifestation, leading to mental problems and eventually an intervention and invitation to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters by the man himself.  Though the script doesn’t defy any medium standards, he does a good job guiding the book along.  I feel bad for him though, because no matter how good he’s writing here, the literary aspect of the book is bound to be overshadowed by Mike Mayhew’s intensely beautiful brushes.  Hence:

The first three quarters of the book are a refreshing departure from the typical superhero antics commonly found in x-men comics; spandex clad action shots rife with explosions and typically unexciting action sequences.  It is here that Mayhew owns the page in it’s entirety with people who dress like people, actual human beings in pants and shirts and sweaters and from this very first page, the realism of the story is grounded immediately.  

 

I can’t help but compare this to Alex Ross’ work, though there are stark differences, I would rank this on par with him.  I’ve always been a huge Ross fan, as my constant pimping of Project Superpowers proves, but I can honestly say that this is the pay off of Ross’ contribution to sequential storytelling; influencing others to follow in his footsteps with high quality brushwork realism, showing artists that it’s possible to sell comics and produce high quality art at the same time.  For this, I hope this book sells a shitload.

These realistic physical portrayals set the tone for the book quite well, but they also lead up to the last few pages featuring the young x-men in costumes which, due to undersaturation(a serious rarity) you actually get excited when they break out the spandex and start destroying things.

I look forward with hungry eyes and great anticipation for more from this team.