Flippin’ through ‘Previews’ – February 2022

It’s time to check out Previews #401, with Cliff Secord flying right! at! you! Get excited! Remember, Travis is always in Goth black (because he typed this wearing a fishnet shirt, a leather jacket, Doc Martens, and black skinny jeans), while I am in cheery blue!

DC:

Hey-yo! It’s the solcitations!

Boy, the cover art from Flashpoint Beyond is so terribly generic and bad.

But … but … They’re BROODING!!!! BROODING, damn it! How dare you criticize a good brood! And there’s a chick on it, because even chicks enjoy a good brood!!!!

Bravo, sir, for that fine wordplay!

Well, I mean, I was an English major, y’know.

The “Shadow War” in Batman is all about Deathstroke having killed Ra’s Al-Ghul!  Oh no, what a sad turn of events that will never be undone!  Please, DC, don’t break our hearts like this!

Oh, no, the man who has two defining features, one of which is that he’s functionally immortal, has been killed!

Shirtless fighting being the other defining feature, I presume.

Comics artists know what the readers want, and that’s a middle-aged dude fighting shirtless!

In Batman: Killing Time 2 on page 6, the terrifying new villain is The Help.  Was that movie that bad, though?

Wow, that’s a bad name. That villain probably plays for the Washington Commanders!

Oh my word, in news of stuff that has never been done before, Detective 1059 will have a neon green fifth color on the cover!  What a delightful treat, DC, and in no way does it indicate that things are going badly with your sales!

How dare you besmirch the neon green! Don’t you get it? It’s NEON. It’s GREEN. It’s the Riddler! It’s “fifth-color”! You are not worthy for such a cover, sir!

Fifth color for the 5G world!

We’re so very lucky that they tell us right on page 8 that there will be the surprise appearance of Deadman in World’s Finest 2!

“Hey, should we try to keep this a secret?” “Why bother? Some nerd on the internet will just find out anyway and tell everyone the day before it comes out.” “Stupid nerds!”

Just when you thought things were bleak and comics were circling the drain, DC brings us Flashpoint: The 10th Anniversary Omnibus on page 10! Huzzah! The world makes sense again! Comics are beautiful, and they love you and you love them! Oh, the wonder and majesty of Flashpoint is back in our lives!!!!

And what’s this? On page 11 there’s Flashpoint Beyond (yes, I know we mentioned if above, but it’s so important we need to mention it twice!), with Thomas Wayne-as-Batman trying to solve a dimension-spanning mystery! Oh, how lucky we are to live in such a Golden Age of Comics!!!!

It’s such a big story that Johns needs help from other writers, dammit!

So this is set in the Flashpoint universe?  But this Batman was a villain in King’s Bat run.  Is this reversing that?  Already?  At least it’s pretty art for a bad story.

Maybe everyone is trying to forget King’s run, because it was so very bad. I do like how in the preview art, TomBat has a white board with “5G” crossed out AND the word “averted” written next to it. BatDad REALLY doesn’t want people to have good cell coverage!!!!

Well, duh, it’s how they’re spreading COVID, so …

Oh no, Justice League #75 (page 22) is the final issue, and the League is killed off! But … but … but this is the “beginning” of another big event in the DC Universe, according to the solicits! Could this be a cynical maneuver to scam people out of their hard-earned cash? I can’t believe DC would do that!!!!

No!!!

There’s a new Sandman “Universe” story on page 26 called Nightmare Country, in which James Tynion has the Corinthian wandering the country. DC actually advertises that it features the first appearance of new characters, which should make it hot HOT HAWTTTTTTT!!!!! Could this be a cynical maneuver to scam people out of their hard-earned cash? I can’t believe DC would do that!!!!

Don’t blame your career on Neil Gaiman, Tynion!  Hyuck-hyuck!  I sure hope someone will remind us how good Sandman is soon!

It’s been fun to read about the people who hate Woke Superman (the first collection of which, the new Son of Kal-El series, is on page 32), and how mad they are about it, even trying to gloat about it not hitting the top of the December charts, despite the fact that apparently there wasn’t an issue that came out in December.  So mad!

Yeah, I saw that. I think my crazy conservative Facebook friend might have posted something about it. I enjoy dumbness sometimes.

Crush & Lobo gets a trade on page 34, and I will be getting it. I don’t care too much about the characters or the “pride”-ness of it all (good for Crush, dating a girl and all), but I do like Mariko Tamaki and Amancay Nahuelpan, so why not check it out?

The Joker #14 (page 44) is the “final” issue, even though the solicits simply claims it’s the end of the “season.” That the solicit writer felt the need to put “season” in quotation marks should tell you everything you need to know about calling comics series “seasons.”

In case you ever wanted to see how you follow the best run in the history of comics, a Doom Patrol by Rachel Pollack Omnibus is on page 47. The answer may surprise you!

I actually picked up most of this run for like a quarter each a few years back, despite knowing the answer lol. There are some amazing interior and cover artists on this run though!

The Batman movie is on the back cover, and I saw a commercial for it that looked so dumb, as well as seeing the new Bat guy in the … Calvin Klein? Dior? ad, which is trying to ruin Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man”.  Just to report.

I have seen one Bat-ad, and man, it looks terrible. We shall see …

On to the regular book, and the order form, which at least online has anywhere that FI is together, those two letters are in bold.  Apparently their program highlighted Featured Items with the FI and then just did it on everything else, like FIrefly!

Don’t pick on Diamond’s programmers! They have feelings, too!

Marvel:

Whoo-hoo! Here are the solicits!

Page 2! Amazing Spider-Man #1! Sure to be worth thousands of dollars in a short period of time! Coming not even a year after Marvel did that whole “Beyond” thing with a slew of writers! Could this be a cynical maneuver to scam people out of their hard-earned cash? I can’t believe DC Marvel would do that!!!!

NO!!!  They are not like that at all.  Actually, it’s impressive they didn’t renumber the book with that Beyond thing.  According to the online solicit, though, this first issue is by Stan Lee and John Romita!  If you want a good Amazing Spider-Man #1, get either the Annual or original #1 facsimile on page 1, although again, weird credit Diamond gives to the cover of ASM 1, which was apparently by Kaci Kirby, everybody’s favorite.

They list Lee as the writer? That’s odd. I guess when Zeb Wells is writing it, you’d probably rather have Stan the Man!

Well, it’s obviously an error.  I think things get stuck from one book to another, but it’s weird that the solicit does have Romita paired with Lee.

Page 5! Amazing Spider-Man #2! Are Peter and Mary Jane breaking up? Say it isn’t so! THIS STORY HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE AND I’M SO EXCITED FOR IT!!!!!

No!  Why does Marvel hate love?  I am intrigued to find out what Peter did that’s so terrible all of his friends and family are abandoning him. Did he send pics of the l’il webslinger?  Did he wear a MAGA hat?  Did he get COVID but use ivermectin to “cure” himself?  The world wants to know!

Oh, man, I would read that if all three of those things happened.

Pages 8-9! Captain America #0! Why a ZERO issue when there are now TWO Captains America! They should have started the series with issue TWO!!!! That would have really messed the speculators up something fierce!!!!

That would be kinda awesome, actually.  The old timey numbers did mean anything to anyone, so why should these numbers matter?

“Did”? Or “didn’t”? You are unclear, sir!

Dammit, that’s what I get when I don’t reread my typing!  Didn’t!

Page 10!  I thought, from the way it was listed, that it was Hulk vs Thor Banner War, which sounds ok, but it’s Banner of War, which sorta makes it sound bad ass!  Or am I wrong?

It’s a pun! Of course it’s bad-ass!!!!!

Page 15!  Thor 24 actually sounds pretty good, with new stories by all sorts of good creators, like Simonson, Ewing and Garbett from Loki Agent of Asgard, and other creators.  I’m gonna have to get this sometime, aren’t I?

YOU ARE NOT EXCITED ENOUGH TO PREVIEW MARVEL’S COMICS, SIR!!!!!!

Page 16! Deadpool: Bad Blood is now available in single issue form, hurrah!!!

OK I KNOW I JUST WROTE THAT YOU’RE NOT EXCITED ENOUGH BUT I THINK WE CAN PUMP THE BRAKES ON GETTING EXCITED ABOUT THIS!!!!!

I’m sorry that my caps lock works!

Page 18! Elektra #100 is a ONE-SHOT!!!!! How innovative! Could this be a cynical maneuver to scam people out of their hard-earned cash? I can’t believe Marvel would do that!!!! But hey, Ty Templeton is getting some work, that’s good to see!

I can’t remember if it was this book or another but I was very glad to see Ty the Guy is back after he announced his cancer diagnosis last year. He’s one of my all-time favorites!

Page 19! X-MEN OREO! I would so read that.

I would so eat that.

Page 27! Moon Knight: Black, White & Blood 1 is here!  That’s a cool Billy The Sink cover and the stories sound like they might be neat.  I’m surprised you didn’t react!

I only react to trade paperbacks these days, sir! I do like the cover, but I figured it wasn’t anything to get too excited about. It will be cool, and I will enjoy it in a nice, collected format.

Page 36! Spider-Punk #1! Nothing says “punk” like a corporate-owned superhero, so you know this is going to be super-cool!

Page 76! Black Panther by Christopher Priest Omnibus volume 1! Good stuff from Priest, Tex, and Velluto! Everett Ross sells his soul for some pants!!!!!

Image:

Huzzah! The solicits are here!

On page 46 is the Lego Ninjago book, which I find funny given the union forming at Image.  I don’t know why, exactly, but it seems like teaming with a big corporation like Lego at the same time that the workers are unsatisfied is an amusing juxtaposition.

Image! (page 52) is a year-long anthology series that Image is putting to celebrate their 30th anniversary. I guess the only question is if I will get the single issues or wait for the massive collection. If I buy the single issues, it will be 72 dollars, and I can’t believe a trade will be more than 30-35. It’s a puzzle!

I doubt that they’ll do a massive collection of this, and will probably instead do a couple of trades of the 12 part serials and the other serials will appear as prologues to other books or collected in other books of the creators involved.  So if you want all of the stuff, the singles are probably the way to go.

Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn, and Scott Koblish, who are responsible for some of the best Deadpool issues EVER, team up again for The Secret History of the War on Weed on page 53, which is set in 1985 and sounds nifty. It’s getting released, naturally, on 20 April.

Brian Posehn has an interest in weed?  Whoa!

Do you need a fainting couch?

Farmhand is back on page 54. I encourage everyone to get it, because it’s keen. Sadly, Guillory is only doing 10 more issues – I had hoped he could do 15, as I think 30 issues was his original plan, but either his planning was off or financially, he just couldn’t swing it. Either way, it’s the home stretch!

He’s taken some time between the last arc and this, so hopefully he was able to figure out how to tell the story he wants to tell in the number of issues he can afford to do.  I think I have at least the first trade, so I should read this.  In other news, my wonderful girlfriend got me the first Chew Smorgasbord Edition for Christmas (signed edition, even!), so I’ll be able to read Chew soon, and I also snagged Bay City Jive in singles recently, so I can go on a Layman/Guillory binge soon!

So we can stop hearing about how you need the Chew Smorgasbord Edition? Dang, I’ll marry her just for that if you won’t! And Bay City Jive is actually pretty good. It would have been nice to get more of it!

Simon Roy and Damon Gentry bring us Grip of the Kombinat on page 56, which is a comic about two corporations waging an eternal war. It sounds polemical, of course, but also quite fun. Both Roy and Gentry are fine creators (it appears Gentry is doing the line work on this, but perhaps they’re splitting the duties on everything, including art), so I’ll have to pick this up.

Ooh, that does sound good.

Dark Horse:

Ooof! Here are the solicits!

Page 92 has the new edition of the Grendel Omnibus, and it says there’s a Netflix show of this?  When did that happen?

Well, I mean, technically it hasn’t happened yet, as it’s in development …

I hadn’t even heard about it going into development.  I heard that Groo might become an animated series, he says, in news that’s only related because both characters are published by Dark Horse.

Bendis is scamming Dark Horse these days, so they reprint Torso on page 93. This is the one super-early Bendis work I don’t own yet, so I’ll pick this up.

It’s a fascinating story as well, so it should be a good read.  Jeez, once Dark Horse prints all the Jinxworld stuff, where can he go after that? AHOY? Scout?

He’s off to Avatar!

Cold Bodies, a comic about the survivor of a horror movie-esque massacre and what happens when the media sensationalizes it and messes with her head, is in trade on page 96. I will pick this up, even though Magdalene Visaggio seems to be going down the “Steve Niles/Rick Remender” road of writers – great ideas, less-than-stellar execution. We shall see.

It does sound interesting.

Orphan and the Five Beasts is solicited in trade on page 105. Of course, the final issue has yet to come out, because this has been tremendously delayed, but it’s a stunning-looking comic, and I imagine it’s fun to read. Pre-order the trade and hope it comes out before November, when the Republicans retake Congress and ban reading itself!!!!

I’ll probably preorder!

Look at that Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Omnibus on page 119. Wouldn’t it be nice if Dark Horse ever released the entire series? Wouldn’t it?!?!?!?

Oh so nice, because it’s so great.  They gave us the first 4 omnibi within a year in 2015-2016, and then it was another 4 years before they originally solicited this, and now it’s another year and a half.  Just get these out, Dark Horse!

IDW:

Do’h! Here are the solicits!

Stephen Mooney and Gabriel Rodriguez are doing a new Rocketeer series on page 122 for the character’s 40th anniversary. I did get the Rocketeer comics they did some years ago, but as I am trying to cut back on my comics-purchasing, I’m not sure about this. The Rocketeer comics are always very nice to look at and very slight on story, so it’s a pickle.

On 124 there’s the GI Joe 40th Anniversary, and it’s got a bunch of people redoing the Silent Interlude issue, a la these Marvel specials recently. Sounds fun!

That is neat.

Dynamite:

Sigh … here are the solicits.

On page 145 is John Carter of Mars 1, with art by George Kambadais, who does good stuff, and might make this worth getting.

Let’s get to the back of the book!

You know, usually Travis – who might secretly be Dave Sim’s love child – writes about the Cerebus-related junk from Aardvark-Vanaheim, but I happened to look at the solicit of Batvark: A Poet in the Family (page 219), and now I think I might be insane. Seriously, this is how it reads:

Introducing Cousin Batvark Girl! Hubba Hubba! (or whatever the Politically-Correct term for Hubba-Hubba is these days) and her new husband, Batvirgil! Ever wonder what the Batvarks who play Batvark in the CIH? comics are like in real life and behind the scenes? Batvark: A Poet in the Family answers your questions as we take you to Mama Batvark’s place in infernal Gilead for the High Holidays and the evening of Yom Kippur. Meet the Batvark Cousins: Jethro Batvark, Abner Batvark, Elvis Batvark, Jerry Lee Batvark and Jed “Too-Tall” Batvark. After reading the issue, vote on what you want to have happen to Batvirgil’s bottom half. You’ll swear it’s 1988 all over again!

I’m used to weird, cryptic solicits in Previews because I read comics, for crying out loud, but nothing in that solicit makes a lick of sense to me. I trust you are now as insane as I am!

Hey, I don’t get it either.

I might want to get Bigfoot Frankenstein on page 220 from Action Lab, but there’s a big class action suit against Action Lab, so there might not BE an Action Lab for too much longer.  I’d heard stuff about them, and recently saw that the creator of Zombie Tramp got the rights back, but a lawsuit took me a little by surprise.

Yeah, that seems like a mess. Too bad, as it seems like it was a good company.

I might get Cross to Bear from AfterShock on page 233, but dang, it’s a grab-bag of comics clichés, ain’t it? Jack the Ripper … in the Old West … hunted by a secret Order … descended from Crusaders (which in comics lingo means “Templars”). I mean, that’s a lot. But because I am a sucker, it sounds groovy!

It does sound like goofy fun.

If you’ve wondered what happened to Alisa Kwitney (I know you have!!!), she’s writing G.I.L.T. from Ahoy Comics on page 236. It’s a time travel book!

It sounds fun, but then, she did also write the Vertigo Visions: Phantom Stranger one shot, and that was bad.  Also from AHOY is the trade of My Bad, which is a satirical take on superheroes from Mark Russell.

On 243 Antarctic Press has a couple good ones.  Alias Black and White [Why don’t you like colons, sir?] [I am lazy!] is collected in trade, so people can take a look at that, and Cat Shit One Omnibus collects all 9 issues that Antarctic put out.  I just saw there’s a Kickstarter for this.  I liked the first issue or two that I read, and I didn’t get all of these issues, so I might get this.

I will get the noir thing. I like Chuck Dixon, despite him going a bit ’round the bend a bit recently.

Asylum Press has Beyond Doomsday on page 252, with stories by Steve Mannion and others.

On the same page is A Wave Blue World’s Poser trade, with a new take on slasher movies.

As I trust Tyler Chin-Tanner, I will be getting this.

I’m not sure if I want to get Telepaths on page 263 from AWA. On the one hand, it’s Steve Epting, and that’s good. On the other hand, it’s J. Michael Stracyznski, which isn’t necessarily bad, but isn’t that exciting. It sounds a bit bland, too, unfortunately. I’ll have to have a think about it.

I’m assuming it’s tied into the Resistance comics that AWA are doing, even though it doesn’t specifically say so, so approach with caution.

The guy at my comic book store, who has pretty good taste, said this was garbage. Now I’m even more torn!

Behemoth has some neat stuff, with Vermillion #0, about a weird night (although I don’t know why it’s a zero issue), on page 264, and on the next page is Dark Beach 1, about a future world where earth is moving away from the sun.

There’s nothing about Vermillion (which annoys me because apparently a double-l in the middle of the word is acceptable now, and I hate that) in the solicits, but that sure is a cover:

Binge Books has a new Blue Baron book on page 268, so that’s neat.

Elephant Eater Comics on page 294 has A Hunter’s Tale #0, a poem by the grandfather of the guy who’s adapting it to comics.  I just supported this on Kickstarter recently, because it looked really neat.

6000 Miles to Freedom on page 305 from Graphic Mundi doesn’t exactly sound fun, but it sounds interesting – it’s a story of two teenagers who escape Afghanistan and try to make it to England.

Magnetic continues their Collected Toppi with Sharaz De on page 321, which is basically Arabian Nights. I have this volume already (from back before Magnetic took over publishing Toppi’s work), and it’s brilliant. It’s not a bad place to start if you’ve resisted getting into Toppi!

On page 323, Margaret Ferguson has Little Monarchs, a new GN from Jonathan Case about a post-apocalyptic society where the sun has shifted but a scientist creates a way to combat sun sickness so that she and a young girl can exist in the daylight.  Case is good, so this might be interesting.

I don’t know how I missed this, because I dig Case. So yeah, I’ll get this.

Prestel has a biography of Francis Bacon on page 334.  The 20th century painter, not the 16th century English philosopher.  Them screaming, nearly faceless popes are fascinating!

It should be about the philosopher!!!!

Rebellion/2000AD has Hawk the Slayer on page 337, for the somewhat exorbitant price of $6.50 (look, DC can get away with that, but you can’t!). It’s drawn by Henry Flint, so it will look very good, and it’s written by … Garth Ennis? Really? It seems like a strange thing for Ennis to be doing, but whatever floats his boat, I guess. I will hope for a trade!

Apparently Ennis is a big fan of the movie. The comic is currently coming bagged with the Judge Dredd Megazine, I believe.  It’s possible I’ll read this (as I get 2000AD preview emails) and write about it soon, but you know me …

I’m laughing so hard I spit soda onto my screen, in case you’re wondering.

I don’t know what’s so funny about Ennis being a fan of a movie!

Rocketship Entertainment has Outrage on page 339, a book I saw on Kickstarter, where Fabian Nicieza and Reilly Brown have created a world where someone is attacking people through the internet.  It sounded interesting.

Yes, but it’s Nicieza, which doesn’t bode well.

That’s true.  Those early X-Force books weren’t only bad because they were Liefeld, and they didn’t improve that much when he left.

Scout has Snatched in trade on page 341, about the human hair black market for hair weaves.  It sounds like it’d be weird but also kind of fascinating?  They also have David Byrne’s Canceled on 340, which is not a comic book where the Talking Heads dude starts bitching about cancel culture, apparently.  And thankfully.

You’d still read it if that were true!

Yeah, you’re totally right!

Somos Arte has La Borinquena (with the accent over the second n) starring Rosario Dawson on page 344, which … sure?

Do you seriously not know what a tilde is called? You’re so white, man.

I know, and I totally blanked.

Source Point Press has a bunch of interesting things like usual, like the new volume of Sham Comics on page 349, which was some fun rewriting of public domain comics, and Corollary on page 346, a sci-fi book where everyone and thing has a twin, and when the twin dies, the other match of the pair dies too, yet when Captain Andromeda’s twin dies, she does not die!  Oh hell no!  There’s also 5 Bullets, 6 Men on page 351, which is about gangsters, but reminds me of the Office joke where Michael talks about how he’d like if he had Bin Laden, Hitler, and Toby in a room and had a gun with only 2 bullets.

I like the sound of that last one.

Uncivilized Comics has Collected Prairie Pothole on page 362 from John Porcellino, of King-Cat fame.  It’s stories about growing up in the Chicago area in 4 panel comic strip form.

Vault has Quests Aside on page 373, where a fantasy world’s tavern is threatened with being shut down, and how the owner is going to try to keep it going.  I’m intrigued because of the Always Sunny reference in the solicit, so maybe it has some of the same humor.  Vault also has an omnibus of Heathen on page 378, which has been very hyped.  You will not be surprised that while I own the three volumes of this, I have not yet read them.

Brian Schirmer writes the first one, and he’s a good writer, so I’ll get the trade of it. And maybe I’ll pick up Heathen, as I’ve been curious about it ever since you started hyping it!

Z2 has Freddie Mercury: Lover of Life, Singer of Songs on page 380, which has a neat David Mack cover (I’m assuming, or else it’s someone doing a good Mack imitation), and Freddie is the man, of course.

Showing how diverse Osamu Tezuka was, page 388 has The Thief Inoue Akikazu, a selection of psychological thriller stories from Digital Manga Distribution, while page 425 has Apollo’s Song Omnibus from Vertical Comics, a story about how love wins out over evil.

Flip it!

On M-17, there’s a Psylocke figure. My collection of the best X-Men will now be complete!!!!

How do those two statements go together?

How dare you besmirch the excellent Betsy Braddock?!?!? Pistols at dawn, sir! PISTOLS AT DAWN!!!!!!

On M-85, there’s a fantastic looking Man-Thing figure.  It’s spendy, but the amount of detail makes it look worth it!

That is pretty sweet. Not $250 sweet, but sweet!

That’s all for us, folk! Have a grand time going through the catalog, seeing what’s what!