It’s time once again for our monthly trip through Previews looking for cool, new comics. As usual, we’re focusing on graphic novels, collected volumes and first issues so that we don’t have to come up with a new way to say, “Batwoman is still awesome!” every month. And we’ll continue letting Tom and Carla do the heavy lifting in regards to DC and Marvel’s solicitations.
One cool change this month and for the foreseeable future: I'm joined by Graeme McMillan who'll also be pointing out his favorites.
Finally, please feel free to play along in the comments. Tell us what we missed that you’re looking forward to or – if you’re a comics creator – mention your own stuff.
Abrams Comicarts
The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist - I admit, I tend to run hot and cold on Clowes' output, but I'm a sucker for coffee-table career retrospectives, so the idea of taking 224 pages to look back at his career to date (with, of course, the traditional little-seen artwork and commentary) seems like a must-look at the very least. [Graeme]
Abstract Studios
Rachel Rising, Volume 1: The Shadow of Death - Terry Moore's latest series gets its first collection and I love the premise of a woman's waking up in a shallow grave with no memory of how she got there and needing to figure out who tried to kill to her. [Michael]
Arcana
Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom - I don't know enough about Lovecraft, but man I love me some undersea kingdoms. [Michael]
Archaia
Cow Boy - As much as I don't want to stick writer Nate Cosby in an all-ages box, I'm eager to read his and Chris Eliopoulos' story of a kid bounty hunter trying to bring in his family of outlaws. [Michael]
If nothing else, Nate Cosby's Twitter feed made me curious about checking out his western collaboration with Eliopoulos, but finding out that Roger Langridge and Colleen Coover were also contributing pushed me over the edge. [Graeme]
I'm Not A Plastic Bag - Color me skeptical but hopeful about Rachel Hope Allison's ecological debut, even if that title makes me a little nervous. [Graeme]
Archie
Archie #631 - Picks up on that story where Archie and Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats hook up. Look, Archie's going nowhere with either Betty or Veronica, so I'm rooting for the furry. [Michael]
Stan Lee's Mighty 7 #1 - At first, finding out that this comic was actually by Tony Blake and Alex Saviuk without Lee was a letdown; until I found out that the comic is actually about Stan Lee, which pushes it into the "This will either be horrendous or bizarrely enjoyable" category. [Graeme]
I'm not sure that I've ever unreservedly enjoyed a comic that Stan Lee wrote, much less just came up with the idea for, but I love his persona and putting him in the comic with some superheroes is so crazy it just might work. [Michael]
Avatar Press
Crossed: Badlands #1 and 2 - I'm definitely not a horror fan, but the idea of Garth Ennis' writing an ongoing biweekly series feels like it's as good a lure to get me to pick this up as anything else. (I think the plan is to have creators alternate on arcs, with Si Spurrier and David Lapham as part of the alternate writers on the book. That's a pretty impressive line-up.) [Graeme]
Boom!
Exile on the Planet of the Apes #1 - I'm all for another Planet of the Apes comic from Boom!. [Michael]
More Apes by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman (art by Marc Laming)? This can only be a good thing. [Graeme]
Supurbia #1 - I feel like we've seen a few of these "what if superheroes and reality shows were mashed together?" series, but here's the first of four issues of another one written by former Marvel staffer Grace Randolph. [Graeme]
Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years - Remember what I said about being a sucker for coffee table retrospectives above? That goes double for this one, which has the added benefits of being both cheap (only $15!) and having contributions from Alan Moore and other creators from Denis Kitchen's vast address book. [Graeme]
Dark Horse
BPRD: Hell on Earth - The Pickens County Horror #1 - I'm all for new BPRD comics, but it's getting more and more difficult to keep track of everything. Still, I'll buy a Scott Allie Mignolaverse story any day. [Michael]
Abe Sapien, Volume 2: The Devil Does Not Jest and Other Stories - Abe's my favorite BPRD character, so I feel like this the way I do the previous item: grateful, but also a little saturated. [Michael]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Volume 1 - The first ten issues - or two trades, if that's how your brain works - of the Joss Whedon-led series get an oversized hardcover edition. [Graeme]
Channel Zero - Brian Wood's breakthrough book comes back into print with this collection of the original series, the Becky Cloonan-illustrated follow-up and material from the awesome Public Domain design book. Jonathan Hickman fans, you should really pick this up. [Graeme]
Manara Erotica, Vol. 1: Click! and Other Stories - Yes, it's comic porn. But unlike Lost Girls, this is actually sexy comic porn. [Graeme]
Ragemoor #1 - If they hadn't got me with Richard Corben, they certainly would have with "living castle nurtured on pagan blood." [Michael]
Avatar: The Last Airbender, Volume 2 - The Promise, Part 2 - Yikes, what a title. I'm still missing Avatar: The Last Airbender though, so this is welcome. [Michael]
Empowered, Volume 7 - Why haven't I started reading this critical darling yet? I do not know. [Michael]
DC
Batman: Death by Design - Chip Kidd's writing a Batman book and it's a real-live, honest-to-goodness superhero adventure. What's more awesome is that the concept of design plays a large role in the story in the form of a massive reconstruction project in Gotham City. [Michael]
Saucer Country #1 - Paul Cornell + Ryan Kelly + saucer aliens = SOLD. [Michael]
Fairest #1 - Bill Willingham launches a new series about the women of Fables and makes me even less interested in everyone else's modern updates of fairy tales. [Michael]
New Deadwardians #1 - The solicit opens, "Another vampire/zombie comic? Really, Vertigo?" My sentiments exactly and yet, this one's illustrated by INJ Culbard whose work I've loved on the Sherlock Holmes adaptations he's done with Ian Edginton. [Michael]
Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child #1 - It would be redundant to mention that the cover to this is both "striking" and "by Rafael Grampá," so I'll just mention the concept, which is also eye-catching. It's the story of a grad student who also happens to be heir to the Voodoo Queenship of the most haunted city in America, and someone is killing off the royal family. Vertigo was created for stuff like this. [Michael]
Dynamite
Bionic Woman #1 - I had the deepest crush on Jaime Sommers as an 11-year-old. My current crush on Paul Tobin's writing is slightly less deep, but still significant enough to make me want to read this. [Michael]
I've been following Dynamite's Bionic Man series and surprising myself by digging the hell out've it; seeing that this spin-off is being written by the insanely-underrated Paul Tobin was all I needed to convince me to read this. [Graeme]
George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones: The Graphic Novel, Vol. 1 - For the fantasy fan (or HBO subscriber) in your life, here's the first quarter of Dynamite's adaptation of the not-so-cult-anymore novel. [Graeme]
Vampirella: The Red Room #1: On the one hand, it's "monster vs. human cage matches." On the other, it's written by Dan Brereton, so it's probably going to be good fun… [Graeme]
Fantagraphics
Angelman - I've not read much by Austrian cartoonist Nicolas Mahler, but I think I'm won over just by the idea of his new book, which satirizes not just superheroes, but the business behind them. [Graeme]
Interiorae - Lovely, lovely art by Gabriella Giandelli in this collection of his Ignatz series. (It's also in full-color, unlike the original serialization, which is another win.) [Graeme]
I don't know why it's taken this long for Fantagraphics to collect the comics that got their cool Ignatz format a few years ago, but I'll shut up and be grateful. I greatly enjoyed Giandelli's creepy tale of an apartment building, its residents, the large rabbit who roams its halls, and the creature the rabbit seems to serve. What's also exciting though is that this means Richard Sala's Delphine will get a collection too. [Michael]
Humanoids
Monsieur Jean: The Singles Theory - So, so excited for this new book by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian, making its English language debut in this edition. [Graeme]
IDW
Berkeley Breathed's Outland: The Complete Collection Sunday Comics, 1989-1995 - The star of this collection of Breathed's Bloom County follow-up isn't the title strip, but the reprints of his early, college-era work that'll accompany them. [Graeme]
Funny Stuff By Frank Frazetta - It makes me a bad nerd to admit that I don't think I've ever seen Frazetta's legendary early comics work, so I'm pretty excited for this oversized hardcover collection, especially to see just how much he… homaged other, more famous strips. [Graeme]
Rocketeer Adventures 2 #1 - Featuring work by Stan Sakai, Bill Sienkiewicz, Marc Guggenheim, Peter David, and Sandy Plunkett. Plus covers and pin-ups by Dave Stevens, Darwyn Cooke, and Art Adams. [Michael]
The first series of anthology tributes to Dave Stevens and his retro creation worked so much more than I'd expected, so I'm definitely up for a second go-'round. [Graeme]
Smoke And Mirrors #1: Mike Costa's been winning me over every month with his Cobra series, so I'm looking forward to this creator-owned book he's co-writing about a stage magician who gets trapped in a world where magic has taken the place of science. [Graeme]
Star Trek, Volume 1 - Dear all fellow Trekkies/Trekkers/whatever you want to call yourselves: If you liked the original TV show and also the JJ Abrams movie reboot, you owe it to yourself to check out this monthly series, so grab this collection of the first issues and dig in. [Graeme]
Will Eisner's The Spirit: Artist's Edition - Of all the IDW "Artists Edition" books to date, this is the one that just feels like a must-have. Eisner's Spirit pages as they appeared on his drafting table? I cannot wait to see these. [Graeme]
IDW probably explained the "Artist's Edition" concept before and I just wasn't paying attention, but I am now and I finally get why it's cool to have COLOR scans of original-size black-and-white art so you can see blue pencils, art corrections, editorial notes, and stuff like that. Especially for someone as legendary as Will Eisner. [Michael]
Image
Saga #1 - New Brian K. Vaughan. Does anything else need to be said? Oh, alright: FIona Staples on art. Seriously, you guys. [Graeme]
I'd buy a Fiona Staple fantasy epic anyway. That Brian K Vaughan is writing it makes me sigh like a Belieber. [Michael]
Hell Yeah #1: There's something weirdly fitting about reading a series about the generation who's grown up with super-heroes that's created by someone like Joe Keatinge, who's been around in comics for a long time, and Andre Szymanowicz' art looks good as well... [Graeme]
The Manhattan Projects #1 - Jonathan Hickman returns to indie roots with the true story behind the atomic bomb. Turns out, Oppenheimer created this rocket ship, but forgot to shield it against cosmic rays... [Graeme]
Mad scientists! By Jonathan Hickman! [Michael]
'68, Volume 1: Better Run Through the Jungle - Mark Kidwell, Nat Jones, and Jay Fotos' Vietnam War/zombie series is collected. [Michael]
The Walking Dead: Cutting Room Floor - I'm very, very curious about this collection of Robert Kirkman's handwritten notes about the creation of his hit series. It sounds like a joke, doesn't it? But it could very well be awesome... [Graeme]
Marvel
Avengers Academy #27 - Guest-starring the Runaways, ya'll! And Bruiser's totally punching Mettle cross-eyed on the cover. [Michael]
Moonstone
Savage Beauty Limited Edition Hardcover - I'm really curious to see how Mike Bullock's contemporary, political jungle-girl story turns out. [Michael]
Oni
The Coldest City - If Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy taught me anything, it's that I'm really not done with Cold War spy stories just yet. This one's set in Berlin, which is even cooler. [Michael]
I've already read this one in galley format, and it is really, really good for those who like the spy stuff (Queen and Country fans, it's written by Antony Johnston, so you know that it's great; the art by Sam Hart follows Steve Yeowell's lead from his early Zenith days, and for those who know my love for that series, there are few higher compliments I can offer). [Graeme]
The Secret History of DB Cooper #1 - Beyond "colorful weirdness and conspiracy-laden Americana," I have no idea what to expect from Brian Churilla's new series, and that just makes me look forward to it all the more. [Graeme]
I can't wait to find out once and for all if Mr James is Doobie Keebler. [Michael]
Red 5
Atomic Robo: Real Science Adventures #1 - Eep! An Atomic Robo anthology! Great news for a series whose back-up stories have always been just as entertaining as its lead feature. [Michael]
Atomic Robo returns with an all-new ongoing series?!? Surely this means that Christmas is either not over, or coming early or… well, you know what I mean. Good stuff. [Graeme]
Top Shelf
Blue - I've never heard of Pat Grant, the creator of this OGN, but Craig Thompson calls him "the Australian Mark Twain," which is good enough for me. [Graeme]
Zenescope
The Jungle Book #1: Zenescope get around to "updating" the classic and well-loved story, which is more than likely going to mean adding more cleavage than you would've thought appropriate. Welcome to the year 20BOOB, everyone. [Graeme]