Flippin’ through ‘Previews’ – September 2024

Travis claimed that he was going to start this post and therefore get his name as the author, but Travis, as we know, is notoriously flighty, so he probably went off and groomed his gorgeous beard instead of writing, so it falls to me! I claim the unbolded text, while Travis is in bold!

I am glad that you find the beard gorgeous.  You do pretty well yourself when you let it grow.  Although in those pictures of you and your daughter at the D-Backs stadium, have you applied highlighter to your head?

I have been coloring my hair since the beginning of the year, a different hue each time I go to get it cut! Keep up with the times, sir!

I didn’t know you could color your hair with crayon!  Wakka wakka wakka!

You’re just mad because my hair is so much prettier than yours!

Marvel:

On pages 2-3, we get the latest Spidey-Event with “The 8 Deaths of Spider-Man.” Doctor Doom is Sorcerer Supreme, and he turns Spider-Man into a video game character. Wow. I know I say this a lot, but dang, this sounds stupid. Is Ed McGuinness supposed to be drawing the entire thing? Yeah, good luck getting that out before the end of 2025!

I assume they know he can’t do the whole thing, but I don’t know why they didn’t just have a different artist for each “death”.  It’s the perfect time for something like that, especially with twice monthly shipping!

Because that would be logical, and if there’s one thing that Marvel and DC don’t do, it’s logic.

According to some reports, Aliens vs. Avengers #1 was pretty darned good (#2 is offered on page 4). I’m not sure I buy that, but, you know, good for it!

I might check out the trade, it did sound interesting.

Oh, goody, there’s a new West Coast Avengers (page 6). Just what we need!

Of course!  So many questions.  Why two Iron Men, essentially, on this team?  Why try to redeem a genocidal robot?  Isn’t Ultron combined with Hank Pym and in outer space?  Well, I suppose we’ll find out, as I believe Garth Ennis once said about Ultron, every time he appears his entire fucking life story is recapped in full.

Ah, we’re this cycle of Iron Man — he’s down to just one (or less) armor suit(s), so he can show off how badass he is as Tony Stark (page 8).  I didn’t end up preordering this but I still might check out the trade.

Page 17: Oh, hey, Psylocke #1, cool, cool – one of my favorite characters gets a mini-series. Let’s see … Alyssa Wong, ok, ok, I don’t think I’ve read anything of hers, but ok. Let’s have a look at the solicits … “Trained to be an assassin since birth, Kwannon –” and there I stop. I kind of knew it would be Kwannon, but I had my hopes it would be the real Psylocke. The Curse of Fabian Nicieza strikes again, and I will — more than likely, although there’s always a possibility — skip this thing.

I can’t remember all of that Kwannon/Psylocke shit, but it might be more confusing than Cable’s origin.

There’s no need to remember it, because it’s stupid!

The adorable Jeff the Land Shark gets weirdly involved in a crossover with Venom War: It’s Jeff! on page 33.  I will have to check this out!

Speaking of great beards as we were up top, Wolverine’s beard on page 41 is fantastic.  I would not have guessed that adamantium would be so good for hair care, especially when one is taking REVENGE!

I had heard that Spider-Man: Reign aped DKR and Miller quite a bit, and apparently that continues in the second mini on page 48.  Lookit that mutant (Doc Ock?) on the cover, like the gang leader Batman fought.

I mean … it looks much more like a weird Wilson Fisk to me, but you do you!

I think those are tentacle arms in the background.

Hmmm … yeah, that’s probable.

Argh, I knew the Spider-Gwen: The Ghost Spider 7 cover on page 49 was an homage, and it’s a Billy the Sink cover, and I still can’t remember the original!  This version is fun though.

Really? That’s Elektra: Assassin # … 4? One of them. It’s Elektra and Garrett, making moony eyes at each other! (Hey, I checked, and it IS issue #4! I can be a weird comics nerd as well as anyone!)

Ah, that’s right!

You aren’t getting the Cosmic X-Men Omnibus on page 74?  Just because you think the X-Men in space suck ass?  I don’t know about you, man!

That’s actually not a bad collection. The early Claremont/Byrne Shi’ar stuff (including the death of Phoenix), the Cockrum space stuff (with the Brood!), the Jim Lee space stuff, the Brubaker space stuff, the Cassaday (dang, what the hell?) space stuff … I mean, I own most of it, so I won’t be getting it, and yes, the X-Men In Space is a boring plot, but … this isn’t a terrible collection if you’ve never read these issues.

I expected some rage, sir, not this … equanimity!

Sorry about that. I mean, only some of the stories are really good, and the Cockrum stuff goes on too long, but the Jim Lee art is cool, so there’s that. It’s just a dumb idea – it doesn’t always mean the stories absolutely suck.

(And I didn’t realize what you meant with your Cassaday comment until I heard the sad news of his passing!)

I had finally gotten the second printing of the Doom one shot from a few months back, and now they’re offering a Treasury Edition of the book on page 84.  I guess I should read it and see if it would be extra good at extra big size.

Speaking of Treasury Editions, the mini Spider-Man: Black Suit and Blood is offered in that format on page 87, and I suspect it should look pretty good, but how much do I want it?

Yeah, I don’t know – some of these made sense with a “blood” theme – Moon Knight and Elektra, and I guess Deadpool – but I don’t want Spider-Man stories with this kind of theme. Blech.

Garth Ennis’s Get Fury is in trade on page 90. I imagine this is pretty good, as Ennis does good war stories. And Jacen Burrows is a good artist, so I’m sure it looks keen!

I loved that Fury book he did a few (or longer?) years ago for the Max line, and I assume this is sort of a continuation of that.  I’m in!

His original Fury mini-series was over 20 years ago, sir, if that’s the one you’re talking about. And I don’t think this is a sequel of any sort!

No, he did Fury Max in 2012/13 (y’know, a few years ago!), subtitled My War Gone By, with art by Goran Parlov, and it was quite good.  If you didn’t actually get it you ought to!  It might not be a sequel per se but it’s more of Nick Fury and Frank Castle back in Vietnam era comics.

Oh, yeah, I remember that one. It was pretty good.

DC:

Absolute Batman (page 4) fights … Alfred Pennyworth, MI6 agent. Man, this is going to be a clusterfuck of epic proportions, isn’t it?

Jeez, I think so.  Why does this Alfred go to the same barber as Ra’s al-Ghul?

Absolute Superman #1 gets resolicited. That bodes well.

No really, they’ve been planning this for years …

Artists really like the kind of sword-like weapon that Absolute Wonder Woman is holding on page 6. It always seemed impractical to me.

It does look kewl, but by gum, how would you really wield them properly?  Plus, this looks more like long paddles.  Is she going to smack the monster’s bottom?

Two things about Batgirl #1 on page 17: First, it’s written by a dude named “Tate.” My first college roommate was named “Tate,” and I honestly never got over my feeling that it was a weird name (he was a good dude, but that has nothing to do with his – to me – unfortunate name). Second, the solicit tells us we’re supposed to “clutch [our] pearls.” Do … do they know what that expression means? I feel like Mandy Patinkin:

They sure aren’t using it properly here!  Egad.  Cool that Cassandra Cain gets a new series, though, I guess.  I was in the local big box store just recently, and a young boy was there with his mom, and he had a Batgirl/Cass Funko Pop in his hand, and they were looking for the rest of the Pops on the shelf.  I was going to say something about it being a cool pick on his part when the reason I was going to say something came up, as both son and mother saw that it was BatGIRL and he went “ew” and she went “let’s find you a boy one”.  It’s a goddamn bobblehead, ffs!  I feel like I should have said something to get across the idea that the character can be cool even though she’s an icky girl, but more likely I would have been maced.

Get maced for the kid, Travis. FOR THE CHILDREN!!!!

I’m torn, because I like the JSA and Jeff Lemire, but I’m not liking the idea of the intergenerational clash within the JSA, so I don’t know if I’m going to be getting the new JSA series on page 24.  I do like that now that Alan Scott is out of the closet, he still has to have a beard.  Wokka wokka wokka!

You know, just because you have a beard, it doesn’t mean you have to mention them all the time!

On page 25, we find Black Canary: Best of the Best #1. It’s drawn by Ryan Sook, which means there are two prop bets you can make: When will issue #6 come out and will it be before the end of 2025; OR in which issue will we get the fill-in artist? Oh, it’s a doozy!!!!

I’m sure they planned well ahead and your bets will be irrelevant … HAHA, I can’t keep a straight face, you’re undoubtedly right to worry.  I’m going to say issue 4 will have the fill-in.

Wait, the villain (who’s pretending to be a hero, but we know!) in Power Girl #15 (page 27) is named … Ejecta? What the what the what?

I’m wondering why she looks like Dolly Parton dressing like Lady Gaga!

I am going to highly recommend the Penguin Special on page 30.  It’s got his debut story, the Secret Origins Special story by Alan Grant (not William Messner-Loebs like I would have guessed) and Sam Kieth, the Joker’s Asylum one shot by Jason Aaron and Jason Pearson, which is delightfully wicked, and a new story.  Great stuff, but now I’m bummed out because Jason Pearson passed a few years ago, and that Secret Origins special has the Riddler story with the recently deceased Bernie Mireault on — did he do all the art on that, or was he the colorist for Matt Wagner?  I can’t remember.  Anyway, the Penguin book should be good.

Mireault did the art, not Wagner.

You know you’re getting the covers featuring McFarlane’s toys, right?!?!? (Page 33)

These do look cool, but I will pass.

I’m hoping the Milestone Universe: The Shadow Cabinet mini on page 36 will be a cool event, as I’ve always liked those characters.  Plus, that Sean Murphy variant cover looks awesome.

The Hero Initiative has another cover collection with The Superman 100 Project on page 42.  They only do one printing so I’m going to be picking this up.  So many great artists as usual!

If you’ve never read Mark Millar’s Swamp Thing, DC has a nice giant omnibus of it on page 46. It’s $125, but that’s for 32 issues, plus it’s really, really good.

I have read about the first third/half of the run (River Run?), and it is amazing.  I didn’t remember that Phil Hester was the artist on this run, but I love his stuff.  I will hope to find this book for cheap down the road.

I’m not going to tell you NOT to get the Warren Ellis StormWatch “compendium” on page 47, because it’s very good, but it seems to be missing a crucial crossover due to Marvel holding the license on some of the characters in said crossover. That just sucks. Why would DC reprint that if they’re not allowed to reprint that issue? It’s kind of important!

I am looking for said issue (WildCATS/Aliens, for those not in the know) because I have the two StormWatch HCs from several years back, as well as the Authority trades, and I want to read them all in one go, but that crossover is kinda hard to find (although my LCS guy just had a copy pass through right before I let him know I’m looking for it.  ARRGH!).  It was reprinted in the fifth trade of SW in the early 2000s, but I don’t know that it’s been reprinted in any volume since.  Oh, I guess there was a DC/Dark Horse trade of Aliens crossovers that reprinted it as well, and that’s also hard to find.  As to why reprint it if they aren’t doing them all, I’m not as sad that I didn’t preorder the Amalgam omnibus since a few of the issues aren’t being reprinted due to them being written by Gerard Jones, so this isn’t the only trade where not all of the issues essential to the book are included.  If they think they can make money off it, they’ll do it!  (And since I wrote this I have ordered a copy from eBay because I couldn’t stop thinking about it!)

Boom! Studios:

Blow Away, which sounds pretty keen, is collected in a trade on page 56. I don’t know if anyone read this and has an opinion about it, but I’m going to pick it up!

It does sound good.

Deep State was a fairly entertaining story, and the entire thing gets a collection on page 57. Yes, it’s a dumb conspiracy comic, but those can be fun!

I was hoping you had read it.  $20 for 8 issues isn’t an awful deal either, and I like conspiracy stuff!

Dynamite:

The Green Hornet/Miss Fury crossover on page 77 looks cool.  I’ll keep an eye out for the trade.

Garth Ennis’s James Bond comic gets a fancy hardcover on page 113, which is tempting. I know a softcover will come out eventually, but … I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.

Go for the fancier version signed by Ennis!  HAHA!  Go nuts!

Image:

If you’ve been wondering what Peter Tomasi has been up to recently (and, let’s be honest, I think we’ve all been wondering that), he has two new series on page 147. First up is Hornsby & Halo, which is about a demon child and an angel child being swapped to an opposite family to keep the peace in the heavens. It’s drawn by Peter Snejbjerg. Then, we have The Rocketfellers, drawn by Francis Manapul, which is about a family from the 25th century has to escape bad people by time-traveling to our present. Both of these showed up in … I want to say that Image 30th anniversary thing from a few years ago? I don’t know, but I’ve read short previews of both of them, and they both seem pretty keen.

They do both sound awesome, with H&H sounding like a riff on the Fourth World (among other influences, I’m sure), and I do love a good time travel story with the other book.  Maybe they know Booster Gold?  HAHA!  Anyway, I’ll probably try both of these, as Tomasi is an underrated writer.  I don’t know if these were in the Image 30 book or not, even though I have all those issues.

On 149 is 3D Anomaly trade, collecting several series of Brian Haberlin’s, like Hellcop and such, and the art is in 3D.  Sounds like it might be fun.

Anzuelo (page 150) sounds weird, but it’s by Emma Ríos, whose art is amazing, so I’ll probably give it a look.

That does sound wacky, but in a good way.

Same page has Blood Squad Seven volume 1, collecting the new series written by Joe Casey that seems to be commenting on teams like Youngblood and such, and it’s got graphic design by our old pal Sonia Harris.  And it’s only 10 bucks, so even though I got this in singles (that you know I didn’t read yet), I’ll probably grab the trade too.  I think they’re doing more since there was a “sourcebook” or whatever that’s not collected here that appeared.

Also on page 150, we get the Complete Deadbone Erotica Omnibus by Vaughn Bodé. I don’t have anything by Bodé, although I’ve seen plenty of his art, so I might pick this sucker up.

I love Bodé’s stuff, and I’m thrilled that a company like Image is doing this.  Not that Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly or anyone are bad, but this should get eyeballs on it that wouldn’t necessarily see it if one of those companies published this.

There’s also a fancy hardcover of Desolation Jones on page 150. This is beautiful, of course, but I recall being a bit disappointed by the story. Still, there it is!

I think I only read the first issue or two, then finally snagged the other issues a few years back but hadn’t gotten around to reading the whole thing (wha?), but JHW3 is so good this HC should be amazing.  Interesting that Image is publishing an Ellis book, but I guess he might not be persona non grata still.  Hopefully he actually did work on himself.

I normally wouldn’t write up about one of the GI Joe books, but our old pal Kelly Thompson wrote the Scarlett mini on page 152, and I’m sure it kicks ass.

So, on page 168, Ablaze has a fancy, European hardcover with gorgeous watercolor art, that tells the story of … Popeye. Yep, it’s a Popeye origin story. I am honestly seriously tempted by this thing. It looks so amazing!

That is great looking.  Did Popeye go public domain sooner in Europe than it does here in the States?  I thought there was still a year until it’s public domain here.  Or maybe it doesn’t actually come out until 2025.  There’s more Popeye on page 182 with Eye Lie Popeye 4 from Massive, which I got the first issue of but didn’t yet read (Pelkie-ing it all up as usual!).

On page 222, Dark Horse has (which is just still so weird that DH is so far into the book these days!) Christmas 365, from Mikey Way, Jonathan Rivera, and Piotr Kowalski, which sounds almost wholesome, where a dude whose family has been having a rough year takes advice from a mall Santa to make every day Christmas.  I’m sure there’s no significant reason his last name is Rockwell!

Why is Dark Horse doing a book of Kirby’s Marvel covers? (page 228)  Not that these shouldn’t be highlighted, but … Dark Horse?

Don’t question the vagaries of publishing!

A couple of fun ones on page 229, with Saint John, about a dude who does good deeds in Portland OR, with art by Dan Schkade; True Weird from James Tynion IV and Klaus Janson and more, with weird “true” stories of supernatural events; and William of Newbury, a collection from Michael Avon Oeming with anthropomorphic supernatural wackiness loosely based on 12th Century England.  Good stuff all!

Schkade is a good artist, and he lives in Portland (at least he did; I assume he’s still there), so it should look like Portland!

On page 235, IDW collects the TMNT Black White and Green mini, with short stories by a variety of creators.  It should be fun, if you like the Turtles!

On page 238, we’ve got another non-Marvel Marvel book, from Abrams Fanfare, with Marvel Super Stories: Amazing Adventures HC. It has a bunch of creators, and one of them is Dean Haspiel, so I might want to get this. It’s too bad, though, that Marvel can’t be the one to, y’know, publish superhero stories to introduce the next generation of readers to comics!

Yeah, but Abrams and Marvel have some kind of arrangement – the Alex Ross FF book came out first from Abrams. So that’s not as weird as the Dark Horse one.

Damn, Alaxis Press on page 249 has the first Obscure Cities book by Peeters and Schuiten, The Return of Captain Nemo, which sounds wild, with Nemo meeting Jules Verne himself. I think I may have read one of these books years ago, maybe, so I’m not super familiar with the stuff, but they look beautiful.

Yeah, those books are very cool.

Oh shit, I missed that Antarctic Press and Ben Dunn are having Tomorrow Girl meet Herbie Popnecker on page 261! And Fatman the Flying Saucer and Atomic Mouse?!  Hells yeah!

Anthony Del Col has a new “Kill Shakespeare” story on page 309 from Gemstone, as he puts Romeo and Juliet in a Western, which sounds dumb at first, but when you consider that all of Kill Shakespeare sounds kind of dumb but Del Col made it work, makes me think this could too. We shall see!

What the heck is this Punch: The Second Coming HC on page 319 from Holy Crow Press, and how is GMozz involved? Probably just a foreword, but still, bar fights between God’s Virtues and the Devil’s Seven Deadly Sins? Sounds fun!

On page 329, Mad Cave has a trade of Dick Tracy, which has looked pretty keen. It might suck, but it looks pretty keen!

It’s so weird that Warren Beatty apparently owns the rights to Dick Tracy, and he makes appearances in character on TMC and shit every few years to keep his rights.  I just read an article about it (which had no citations, so I’m not sure how accurate it was).

That’s TCM, sir. And as far as I know, it’s accurate.

Mad Cave also has The Legendary Lynx on page 332, which might be fun. I wrote about Alex Segura’s novel Secret Identity recently, and he’s taken the comic that exists in that book and expanded it to a full story. Sandy Jarrell’s art in the novel is very good, so it will be neat seeing more of it in this.

Magma Comix brings us Rome Eternal on page 341, a comic in which Rome never fell but is now in trouble from a group of enigmatic terrorists. You know I’m interested in this!

That does sound cool, I enjoy stories that posit that old empires lasted and continued without much change to their fashions, HA!

That’s because Roman fashion was the best, so why change?

On page 350, we find Calavera, P.I. from Oni, which is about a Los Angeles detective who gets killed in 1925 but whose spirit is summoned back five years later to help solve a kidnapping case … and of course, his own murder! Sounds like pulpy fun.

On page 360, Oni has The Damned Deluxe Omnibus HC, where the Sixth Gun creators did a Prohibition with demon gangsters comic. I don’t know if the prelude story is in my trade of the first volume, but if it is, I have all of these comics in some form. I just need to read them.

It’s quite good, sir. You sould read it!

Wet Moon from Sophie Campbell comes out in the first of 3 20th Anniversary Omnibus editions on page 362. I have the manga size trades and still haven’t read them, so I don’t need these, but I’ll probably get them. I love how the introduction is “never-before-seen”, which I’m guessing is just code for “Sophie hasn’t written it yet”.

Aw yeah cute, Art Baltazar and Franco are doing Flash Gordon Adventures for Papercutz on page 365!

That should be fun.

2000AD/Rebellion has, on page 373, Rebellion Presents The Jose Munoz Collection. Speaking of Keith Giffen …

I still don’t get the comparison. I mean, I haven’t seen too much Munoz, but what I have seen doesn’t look much like anything Giffen stole.

TwoMorrows has a Keith Giffen tribute issue for Back Issue #157, so you know you’re going to want to pick that up!

Fuck yeah, the Giff is so amazing.  Reprint Heckler, dammit!  I’m amazed that DC hasn’t tried milking his death yet with reprints.  A nice Giff omni with Ambush Bug, Heckler, Ragman, some Legion stuff, maybe the more recent Inferior Five … I think if DiDio was still at DC, there would be a collection of some sort.  That’s on page 396 for the completists!

That’s all for this month, folks! Thanks for reading, as always, and we hope you were able to find some cool stuff!