Flippin’ through Previews – August 2008 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources

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Flippin' through Previews - August 2008

by Greg Burgas
in Flippin' Through Previews

I know I've pointed this out before, but Previews is kind of great for finding new stuff. I know a lot of retailers refuse to give it out for free, and if you can't convince your comics shoppe owner to pass it out gratis, ask him (yes, I'm assuming it's a him) if you can have it for $3. That's how much it costs him to get it! This month: Vol. XVIII, #8, with some weird-looking red chap on the cover!

Dark Horse:

Mike Mignola is drawing a new Hellboy story, "In the Chapel of Moloch" (page 26; 29 October). I guess that's a big deal or something.
Boy, there's just not a lot that's compelling from Dark Horse this month. Their MySpace thing (page 49) announces a new Mister X story by Dean Motter, but that's about it. Let's move on.

DC:

On page 57, the "art and covers" for Final Crisis #5 (29 October) lists Jones and Carlos Pacheco. Pacheco is doing a cover, but is he doing interior art as well? If so, what the hell? I love Pacheco's art, so I wouldn't mind, but how long has Jones had to do the interiors of this comic? If Pacheco is only doing the cover, never mind.
Terror Titans (page 64; 1 October)? Really?
Morrison promises that the Black Glove is someone obvious (Batman #681; page 67; 29 October). I'm going out on a limb here and saying that it's Tim Callahan. How much more obvious could it be?
The sixth issue of Batman: Gotham After Midnight (page 71) takes place on Halloween, so of course DC is releasing it ... on 22 October, not the 29th. That makes sense.
I've been wondering if I'm going to keep up with Checkmate, and page 78 makes it moot, as #31 is the final one (29 October). Oh well. I'll probably just buy the rest, at least to see if Jones could have done anything with the book.
Also on page 78, we get this tidbit from Green Lantern Corps #29 (8 October): "Ice proposes to Guy Gardner!" If that's your sort of thing.
I asked Marc Andreyko why they didn't renumber Manhunter (#35 is on page 79 for 1 October), and he had a good answer: It probably wouldn't have helped sales, and he wants it to be a complete whole when it's done, instead of encompassing two "volumes." That makes sense.
DC's idiotic policy of printing trade paperbacks is spotlighted on page 84, where they offer JLA/Avengers in trade ... for the first freakin' time (12 November)! Maybe Marvel had something to do with it taking so long, but that's just ridiculous. I've been interested in this, but not enough to spend goofy amounts of money on the hardcover. 20 bucks is about right. But why did it take so long?

Hey, check it out! It's the new Top 10 mini-series that Zander Cannon mentioned at last year's Comic-Con (page 99; 1 October). Gene Ha got around to drawing it!
The new Unknown Soldier ongoing (page 106; 22 October) could be good or bad - Dysart is a pretty good writer, so who knows - but what I found interesting is that he spent a month in Uganda doing research. Two things strike me about this: Who paid for him to go to Uganda, and is the book always going to be set in Uganda? These are things I wonder about in the dead of night, when my thoughts torment me!
Andy Diggle's final issue of Hellblazer is offered on page 113 (22 October). Wasn't that only, like, a year on the book for him?
Bill Reed will be happy, as Kill Your Boyfriend gets a new printing on page 113 (29 October). Isn't it Bill who loves this? Or is it Mark? Anyway, someone here will be happy about this! And then there are others who loathe this book. Let the back-and-forth commence!

Ryan Kelly draws the next arc of Northlanders (page 115; 29 October). Damn, that's going to be awesome.
There's an alien in Young Liars #8 (page 115; 8 October). Not an alien who comes from another country, but an alien who comes from another planet. What a weird comic.

Image:

If a writer/artist team falls in the woods and no one cares, did it really happen? That's how I feel about the new McFarlane/Portacio pairing on Spawn #185 (page 130; 22 October). This isn't 1992, so I don't know how anyone cares about this.
Page 137 has a new hardcover collection of Elephantmen (15 October). It's 35 dollars, so it might be a bit steep for you, but those hardcover collections are really nice.
That's a pretty damned cool cover of Noble Causes #39 (page 148; 22 October):

In case you're interested, there's a big ol' trade of DNAgents on page 158 (14 October). It's 25 dollars for 452 pages, which ain't bad. I wonder if it's any good.
For you Ted McKeever fans (and doesn't that include everyone?), a trade of Transit is offered on page 161 (1 October), including the "never-before-published final chapter." From the fact that they're labeling this the "Ted McKeever Library Book 1," it seems like Image is publishing more old McKeever stuff. That can't be a bad thing!

Joshua Hale Fialkov mentioned to me that he and Rick Mays were doing a Cyblade ongoing, and it's offered on page 164. He said he tries to get more into Cyblade's psyche, which might make this an interesting comic.

Marvel:

Hulk have mohawk on cover of Ultimate Origins #5 (page 11). Mohawks make Hulk mad!!!!!
Marvel has gone out of its way to whitewash the fact that Flash Thompson fought in Vietnam, because that would date the character. So, on page 18, Amazing Spider-Man #574 features ... a story about Flash Thompson in the Middle East. How long before that gets swept under the carpet?
Page 20 made me chuckle. It's Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1! So not only does Joey Q want us to forget that Peter and Mary Jane were ever married, he's casually erased the comic in which it happened from existence! "An Amazing Spider-Man Annual in 1987? Sorry, that's impossible. This is the first one!"
I bet you never thought you'd read this in a Marvel solicit: "All hell has broken loose in Birmingham." That's why Captain Britain and MI 13 (page 30) is so freakin' cool.
Monster-Size Hulk #1 (page 40) will probably kick ass because Jeff Parker is writing it, but the fact that the pencils are "TBA" doesn't fill me with confidence. It's August. The book, presumably, is coming out in October. They don't know who's drawing it yet?
Klaw starts a country and western band in Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #4 (page 44). That's quality entertainment.
I won't be reading Marvel Apes (page 45), but that's a great cover:

So there's a two-issue tie-in to Astonishing X-Men on page 70 called "Ghost Boxes." Remember when you could read a title and get the complete story in that title? Good times!
Speaking of Jeff Parker (and I was, just a bit ago), remember that the dude can draw quite a bit:

(Of course, he mentioned that he only did it because Kevin Nowlan was inking it, but still.)
There's a new trade of old Spidey stuff on page 112, with a collection of Amazing Spider-Man #176-180. Wouldn't it be nice if Marvel got onto releasing more Essential volumes that would collect this? I'm just saying.

With the Big Four behind us, let's peruse the back of the book! Do you dare?

Brad Curran ought to be happy: Markosia is publishing Headlocked: The Tryout (page 188), which is "the world's first real wrestling comic!" Of course, it says it "continues" even though this is a #1, but whatever. It's a wrestling comic!

Over on page 192, Amaze Ink/Slave Labor offers Rex Libris #13. I point this out only because I read somewhere that it's the final issue, although it doesn't say so in the text. That's too bad, but at least we got 13 fantastic issues out of James Turner!

I have no idea if Almighty from Blackhalo Productions (page 218) is any good, but it sounds pretty keen. I am, of course, a sucker for post-Apocalyptic stuff, and this is one of those comics.

This is weird: Cartoon Books, Jeff Smith's company, is offering Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails and Rose again (pages 226 and 227), even though they were just offered recently. What bothers me about that is I ordered Rose, but haven't gotten it yet. Do I need to re-order, or is this just a re-solicit and anyone who ordered it before can skip it?

On page 247, we learn that Jon Bogdanove apparently named his son Kal-El. Sigh.

If you're not burned out by Garth Ennis war stories yet, he has another one from Dynamite Entertainment on page 257. It sports the rather unwieldy title of Garth Ennis' Battlefields: The Night Witches, but it features chick bomber squadrons! Who doesn't love chicks dropping bombs!

Hey, there's a new Acme Novelty Library from Drawn & Quarterly on page 278. Maybe one day I'll read one of these!

For 50 bucks, you can get a signed hardcover version of the Zot! collection that just came out (page 297, HarperCollins). Or you could just find the softcover in a bookstore, because it's so very, very excellent.

There's an odd comic on page 298 from Hill & Wang: Isadora Duncan: A Graphic Biography. It sounds somewhat surreal, which might make it more interesting than just a straight bio.

I've never read Dykes To Watch Out For (mainly because I have no interest in sea barriers), but Houghton Mifflin has an "essential" hardcover for $25 on page 298. Fun Home, as you know, was quite good, so this might be something to check out.

For some reason, I've never liked Larry Hama, but apparently his G. I. Joe stuff is pretty good. He's back on the title as IDW picks up the license on page 299. It might be a good place to jump on. Of course, you can still get the "World War III" trade from Devil's Due, which was a very good story arc to end their involvement with the Joes.
IDW, never one to turn down a licensing agreement, also has a new Ghostbusters comic on page 303, right above their two comics about the presidential candidates (with the J. Scott Campbell covers). Something for everyone!
As I've mentioned, I've never been interested in Doctor Who, but on page 304, there's a collection of Grant Morrison-written Who stories from the Eighties. I still doubt if I'll get them, but I'll be tempted, I must say!
I forgot to mention something about IDW in my convention post. I spoke to some dude at the IDW booth (I didn't get his name, because I suck) who told me that the likelihood of them publishing more GrimJack trades is slim to none. Apparently I was the only person in the country buying them! That depresses me, because they only had about 20 issues to go to finish the run. I get that the initial print cost would be high, but wouldn't it be good for them to have them in print forever? I guess not. Now I have to go through the back issue boxes for the latter issues of Ostrander's early classic.

I'm quoted in Previews on page 317, which is kind of neat. Soon I will rule the world!

Steven Grant is always an interesting hard-boiled kind of writer, so Socorro from Platinum Studios on page 324 might be nice. A former CIA soldier becomes a one-man A-Team in Los Angeles. Why wouldn't he?

Yet another post-Apocalyptic comic shows up on page 326: City of Dust from Radical Publishing. Steve Niles writes it, which means it has a great hook - in the future, cops patrol for crimes of the imagination, and a homicide detective must confront a killing spree - but may not be scripted particularly well. That's the way it seems with Steve Niles books! Still, it sounds like a cool set-up.

I spoke briefly with the Brian Clevinger at San Diego, and assured him that Atomic Robo is indeed quite good. I just mention this becuase the third issue of the second series is offered on page 327 from Red 5 Comics.

If you skipped the exclusive Previews version of Watching the Watchmen, the inclusive hardcover is offered on page 330 from Titan Publishing. Of course, you can probably get it on Amazon for cheaper than 40 bucks, but it still looks like a keen book.

The third of Jeff Lemire's Essex County trilogy, The Country Nurse, comes out on page 338 from Top Shelf. The first two graphic novels are offered as well. The first two were very good, and I have no doubt the third will be as well.

That's about it for this tour through Previews. Oh sure, there's other stuff, but do you really need to know about it? Can't you just trust me? Remember to ask your retailer nicely if you can have it for free, and find your own hidden treasures! Who knows what you'll find!

Posted on August 4, 2008 @ 03:12 PM

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32 Comments

Bill Reed

August 4, 2008 at 4:00 pm

Nothing interesting from Dark Horse? What about Herbie Archives: Volume 2?!?!?

Yes, Kill Your Boyfriend *is* spectacular. I am also interested in the G-Mozz Who stuff. It's a very Morrison month in October. Woo!

Jerry McMullen

August 4, 2008 at 4:05 pm

Essential Spider-Man Vol 8 has already collected that material that Marvel is recollecting in the paperback. But yes, they are long overdue to release Essential S-M Vol 9 and on.

layne

August 4, 2008 at 4:31 pm

a story about Flash Thompson in the Middle East. How long before that gets swept under the carpet?

If I were a more cynical man, I'd say probably a good long while.

For some reason, Iâ€™ve never liked Larry Hama, but apparently his G. I. Joe stuff is pretty good.

If you haven't read Nth Man, check out your local store's quarter bin. I've been meaning to do a write-up on how good that series is for a while now.
And if you have read Nth Man and didn't like it, you are a bad person.

Andrew Collins

August 4, 2008 at 4:33 pm

That is utter and total suckage if that's true about IDW not doing any more Grimjack trades. I had had hopes the delays since the last volume were just the result of them acquiring the films for processing. Ugh. I'm going to assume Jon Sable is in the same boat since we haven't seen anymore of those solicited in just about as long. Makes me scared how many Badger trades we'll get out of IDW...

Very cool of Image to be putting out the DNAgents trade too. I see it's in black and white, which could be kind of cool as Will Meugniot's artwork in the samples looks like it holds up well without the full color treatment. I noticed it doesn't say "volume 1" anywhere in the solicits though, so I'm wondering if this is a one-shot deal unless sales warrant more...?

Tom Fitzpatrick

August 4, 2008 at 4:47 pm

I figured I was the only one getting the Grim Jack and Jon Sable Freelance trades up here in Canada.
Apparently, they (IDW) do one trade at a time, and if sales warrants it, then they do another. It's a shame that they didn't finish Grim Jack, but they did reprint all of Mike Grell's art in JSF.

I wonder if the Ted McKeever Library Book 1 (and so on) is in hardcover or in softcover.
Would love to see the third part of METROPOL done as well in this series.

Michael Rawdon

August 4, 2008 at 5:01 pm

I was buying GrimJack in hardcover, but they only did, what, 3 of those, so I stopped there. I already own all the original comics, so buying them in trade didn't really interest me. Hardcover was a nice deal, though.

I think the GrimJack revival has been handled very strangely, frankly. Doing stories which take place before the original series makes them considerably less interesting, no matter how well done they are. In part because there's just not a lot of Gaunt's past that's really left to explore (and I think the two stories they've done - Killer Instinct and The Manx Cat - demonstrate this).

I presume the reason they did it this way is because GrimJack's original premise and setting is more interesting than where it ended up by issue #50 (which I think is what precipitated the 'a hundred years later' leap to start with). I would rather they had just said, "Okay, we realize we kind of screwed the pooch on the original series, so we're going to say that the original series went up to and everything else after that was an imaginary story. Now we're going to do new stories that pick up from ." This would have preserved the supporting cast while allowing the story to move forward rather than just looking backwards.

And I think that would have helped build word-of-mouth and a better market for the reprints and maybe a new ongoing series. Instead, it seems like GrimJack is somewhere between treading water and dead-in-the-water. Which is a shame.

TimCallahan

August 4, 2008 at 5:37 pm

You've uncovered my secret.

Now I will send my lesser-known minions to your lair. Prepare to face Fancy Steve, the Monocled-Man; the Blight of the Unknown; Rex the Forsaken; and Hush.

Greg Burgas

August 4, 2008 at 5:41 pm

Bill: Yeah, I guess the Herbie thing is okay. I probably should have mentioned that.

Jerry: See? It's been so long since Essential Spidey volume 8 came out I plumb forgot those issues were reprinted! Come on, Marvel - where's volume 9????

Layne: I have NOT read Nth Man. Perhaps I'll check it out.

Tom: The McKeever book is a hardcover.

The IDW guy didn't say anything specifically about Jon Sable and Badger, but he kind of implied those weren't coming, either. I haven't seen them offered in a while, so I'm going to assume we won't be seeing more of them. But I'm not positive.

Greg Hatcher

August 4, 2008 at 5:46 pm

I quite liked DNAgents, though it might be a bit old-school for some of our readers here. I'll be getting it, partly because I missed a lot of them the first time around and because my students enjoy them... but mostly, because I'm hoping supporting this book will persuade Image to give Evanier and Spiegle's DNAgents spin-off book, the magnificent Crossfire, the same treatment.

Ã‡teve!

August 4, 2008 at 6:00 pm

New England Comics is offering a Complete Ben Edlund's THE TICK, "Essentials"-style, with extras and a mock last-issue-that-never-was. I also saw that EC Comics is offering big bundles of certain reprinted comics (Haunt of Fear - War Stories - Vault of Horror...) at various prices.

DanLarkin

August 4, 2008 at 7:03 pm

That Captain Britain solicit really should've read " panic on the streets of Birmingham." Somebody dropped the ball.

stealthwise

August 4, 2008 at 9:36 pm

Kal-El is a kickass name.

Michael

August 4, 2008 at 10:14 pm

Putting Flash back in the army pretty much cinches that the driving force behind Brand New Day is to rehash Spider-Man's 1970s continuity.

Anyone want to offer odds on him falling in love with a girl from Fallujah?

Jack Norris

August 4, 2008 at 10:24 pm

Just FYI: That "Tim Callahan" link doesn't work.

The Mad Monkey

August 4, 2008 at 10:29 pm

I keep forgetting that this is mostly a new generation of comic geeks here...
I don't really mean that in a bad way...I just find myself often amazed by some of the things said by the contributing writers of the various columns on this site. I say that only because I grew up when the DC multiverse DID make sense and it was fun and I (admittedly) forget that the comic world has completely changed since that time. This old comic geek gives all due respect to the current generation of comic geeks.
With that said...
The news of Bogdanove's child-naming is about as recent as Ronald Reagan being elected President and the DNAgents was very much the precurser for books like John "Ego" Byrne's Next Men and Valiant's Harbinger series. And DNAgents only gets better when you find out that the late Mike Sekowsky drew an issue.
If memory serves (I've been watching too much Iron Chef lately), the original DNAgents series was in B&W because it was a traditional thing for independent companies (such as Eclipse) to try and keep their costs down by not coloring them. It took Dark Horse to break that habit. The DNAgents second run was in color as Eclipse relaunched the series with a new Airboy comic (good readin' there) in a reduced page/price format that Dark Horse tried, in the early '90s, with their super-hero line.
As for Bogdanove...
Well...I sincerely hope his son learned how to defend himself from the beatings he probably got during elementary school recess...
It's one thing to get a Jon Bon Jovi-inspired tattoo...it's another to ruin the future life of your progeny just because you have a massive woody for a comic book character (no matter how iconic).
Of course, if I had kids, I'd probably name them Brother Power and Obnoxio...so, I'm not really one to talk about that...lol...

Michael Rawdon

August 4, 2008 at 11:18 pm

Mad Monkey:

I think Eclipse, First and Comico (and maybe Pacific, too) were all publishing most of their titles in color before Dark Horse came along. Besides which, Dark Horse Presents was a B&W title to start with. I think it basically had to do with whether the company had the capital to make the jump to color in the first place.

Dark Horse has managed to do a lot of things right while those other companies went out of business, but I don't think they deserve the credit for bringing color to independent publishers.

Dan K

August 5, 2008 at 7:44 am

Glad to see Kill Your Boyfriend is getting a new printing. I was recently agonising over whether to buy it on ebay for a stupidly inflated price.

Craig

August 5, 2008 at 9:39 am

I feel compelled to plug Night School by Platinum Studios on page 323. Amy Tomlinson is an old friend of mine, and her webcomic Charby the Vampirate has quite a cult following. I can only imagine how much of that work was drawn while she sat in the corner of my living room...

Blackjak

August 5, 2008 at 10:00 am

DNAgents!?!?! YAHOO!!

Hang on... Who's publishing it?

It was an Eclipse title to begin with, but don't I recall DC buying the right s to the title then killing them off/canning them in some kind of lame crossover with Teen Titans?

Basically I thought that at the time, DC were jealous that DNAgents actually worked the whole teen-superhero story WAY better!

Mark Evanier was brilliant... And the last couple of issues of the second volume were some of Erik Larsen's first comics work weren't they?

If this does spin-off Crossfire as well, then even better!

Sorry, I also missed - is this S/C or H/C, B/W or recoloured?

Michael Rawdon

August 5, 2008 at 10:17 am

Blackjak:

DC never bought the rights to DNAgents, as far as I know. The New Teen Titans story you're thinking of is this one, where some characters based on the DNAgents went up against the Titans. Steve Rude did most of the artwork. It was one of those "semi-crossover" projects similar in spirit to the Squadron Supreme.

I doubt DC was jealous of the DNAgents, since The New Teen Titans was a runaway smash hit for them.

Greg Burgas

August 5, 2008 at 10:26 am

Blackjak: Image is publishing it, under the Shadowline imprint. It's in black and white, and it appears to be softcover. It's listed as a "TP" rather than a "HC," so I'm going to assume it's softcover.

Blackjak

August 5, 2008 at 10:29 am

Ahh... thanks for the clarification...

Like I said... At the time, I thought it was that DC were jealous... I was about ten or eleven, and had no idea which one was outselling which... Just that I thought (and all my friends did too) that DNAgents was a better "Teen" title than titans...

We still read both mind you... (actually our newsagent only got Tales of... but still...)

Also explains why Project Youngblood were so familiar...

So Image own the rights to the old Eclipse stuff? What about Tim Truman's Scout??

Michael Rawdon

August 5, 2008 at 10:40 am

Blackjak:

Companies which owned the rights to what they published (which I think included First, Eclipse and Comico) have often sat on those rights after they went out of business (since they're assets which could arguably be claimed by their creditors), but many of them have been reclaimed by either their creators or by other companies. Sometimes after a lengthy procedure to repurchase those rights. I don't know all the details, but this sort of thing is why we've gotten new Nexus, Grendel, and GrimJack stories over the last 15 years - the creators managed to get the rights to the characters back.

I would guess that Mark Evanier got the rights to DNAgents and Crossfire and is publishing them through Image. I bet most of Eclipse's intellectual property is still in limbo; not a whole lot of demand for them, if the creators didn't want to fight to reclaim the rights.

It looks like Tim Truman's Scout is being reprinted in paperback by Dynamite Entertainment. I have no idea whether they expect there will be any new stories.

Blackjak

August 5, 2008 at 10:48 am

Michael:

Thank you!

Dynamite are getting interesting as a publisher... Red Sonja was their first title wasn't it? and they got a great variety of tie-ins/original series...

Sort of the way that I thought Devil's Due were originally going in... Following the sort of Dark Horse path... a couple of licensed properties holding up the more experimental stuff... (though thinknig about it, i take that back... there's not that much experimental about the Dynamite line-up really is there?)