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MARVEL COMICS
UNCANNY X-MEN #1
Set in New Orleans, Rogue leads Gambit, Wolverine, Jubilee and Nightcrawler in X-adventures written by Gail Simone. Jubilee has been, thankfully, powered up a bit (and seems to be without her son permanently now). I've never cared for Gambit — the accent puts my teeth on edge — and a book calling itself Uncanny X-Men without Cyclops seems like heresy. I guess they had to divvy them up somehow, and Simone got Logan while Jed MacKay's X-Men got Scott.
Here are some creator quotes:
“Most of my time lately has been spent trying to keep my brain from exploding right out of my skull from this book,” Simone shared. “It's either the fun of all my favorite mutants acting in surprising and wonderful ways, the impossibly brilliant work of the art team, or the thrilling collaboration with all the other writers, but somehow every DAY is just filled with some kind of manic joy. Ever since I took the book, I've been scribbling notes and plots and bits of dialogue day and night. I feel like a kid at a carnival. Who DOESN'T want to write Rogue and Jubilee and Gambit all the rest?”
"Uncanny X-Men is the book that made me fall in love with comics,” Marquez said. “It's been a dream come true getting to work with Gail, Matt [Wilson], and the whole Marvel editorial crew under Tom to put together this story: a badass, heartfelt, action-packed, character driven X-Men mystery. I hope readers have at least half as much fun reading it as we have had making it."
“I absolutely have to take a moment to praise David Marquez,” Simone added. “Not only is this going to be one of the best-looking books on the stands, he's simply an idea MACHINE and he makes every single page better than I wrote it. Anyway, come join us, we're having an X adventure and you're all INVITED!”
The seventh cover below, with Rogue flying up on the left and a closeup of her face on the right, looks verrrrry familiar. But I can't put my finger on it.
Elsewhere at Marvel:
AVENGERS #17
Storm joins the Avengers! It's not clear to me what the post-Blood Hunt lineup is, but the covers give us lots of suggestions. Here are some creator quotes from writer Jed MacKay and new artist Valerio Schiti (who really ought to consider changing his surname):
"When we were putting together thoughts for X-Men, one problem kept coming up — Storm needed to have a presence in a book befitting her status, but it would be weird for her to be on an X-Men team if she wasn't the leader," MacKay said. "The solution was simple — she needed to be on the global stage, among equals, and what better place for that than the Avengers? We're excited to bring Storm back to the Avengers and show what adventures she'll get up to as part of Earth's Mightiest Heroes!"
"As a reader, I am a great fan of Jed's run, and I really love the way he writes the team: not just as fellow soldiers, but as a group of friends with a shared past," Schiti said. "At the same time he doesn't hold back on action and fight scenes! The balance between these two moods is exactly what excites me the most when I have to start a new gig!
"I have a soft spot for the mutants, so you can imagine my happiness when I knew that Storm was joining the team,” Schiti continued. “It's always fun to draw her powers, her body language, and her outfits. There's just one challenge: you always have to remember that she's not just a mutant, she's a goddess!"
Note that the second cover below is an homage to Avengers #144 (you can still see Gil Kane's unique style). Also, "Deadpool and Wolverine: Weapon X-Traction" Part 6 is included, which explains the cover with the two of them.
BLOOD HUNTERS #1 (OF 5): "Blood Hunt" is over, but apparently Elsa Bloodstone, Dagger, White Widow and Hallows' Eve are going to hang together and hunt stray vampires. Very nice. Friends should share their common interests. But, uh oh, it looks like Miles Morales is still among the undead. They wouldn't stake him, would they? He stars in two books!
DOCTOR STRANGE #18: Final issue. I hope at least they de-vamped him. Yes, Doom becomes Sorcerer Supreme, as we'd surmised. "Blood Hunt" is going to lead to the next crossover, "One World Under Doom."
SPIDER-MAN: BLACK SUIT AND BLOOD #1 (OF 4): "An all-star lineup of writers and artists assemble to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Spider-Man's iconic black costume, "black, white & blood" style!" Always hated that suit (not to mention Venom), so here's a book I'll ignore.
THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MEN #6: In case you forgot what the cover of X-Men #141 looked like.
VENOM WAR #1: Nope.
DC COMICS
"Absolute Power" week 6:
ABSOLUTE POWER #2 (OF 4)
BATMAN #151
Batman and Catwoman go to Gamorra to steal Amanda Waller's Mother Box, but things are not what they seem. Also, it looks like they're going to have Bizarro trouble. Do either of them have Kryptonian powers? Alas, no.
Elsewhere at DC:
BATMAN: HUSH COMPACT COMICS TP
BIRDS OF PREY #12: Looks like this issue will introduce chibi versions of the Birds.
GOTHAM CITY SIRENS #1 (OF 4): Catwoman, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy go on hiatus while this miniseries runs, which is a pretty good idea. Also, this mini will introduce the cowboy himbos, which I'm sure will give Catwoman, at least, something to do.
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD #8 (OF 8): Zod battles Sinestro, but I don't know if it's the usual yellow Sinestro or the red Sinestro I saw briefly in the latest Green Lantern.
POLICE COMICS #1 FACSIMILE EDITION: First Plastic Man.
SHAZAM #14: I asked on another thread why Mary Bromfield calls herself Mary Marvel, when there isn't a Captain Marvel to pattern herself after. It seems arbitrary. Billy calls himself "the Captain" (and that seems arbitrary, too), so she ought to call herself "the Colonel" or something. But let's flip that question around. If Mary has arbitrarily decided to call herself Mary Marvel, maybe Billy and Freddy should pattern themselves after her, and call themselves Billy Marvel and Freddy Marvel. Would that push the House of Mouse to sue? It would be ironic if Billy Batson's heroic persona were eventually to be called Captain Billy. As in Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, where the whole magilla started.
WONDER WOMAN: EARTH ONE COMPACT COMICS TP
IMAGE COMICS
ORE: A STARHENGE GRAPHIC NOVELLA
This is a sequel to Liam Sharp's StarHenge: The Dragon and the Boar, in which "a future Merlin travels to 5th century Britain to prevent monstrous time-traveling robots from robbing the universe of magic." I didn't happen to read that book, but I did re-read Mary Stewart's "The Crystal Cave" trilogy over the winter. No time travelers there, so I guess I missed out.
"Ore: A StarHenge Graphic Novella blurs the line between illustrated books and comics, with a blistering, hard sci-fi saga of epic proportions,” said Sharp. “The graphic novella expands the StarHenge universe with a galaxy-spanning saga focusing on the Ur-Queen after her physical death. Becoming an agent of vengeance against the implacable might of the CAST — alien AI wearing human skin faces — she fights a losing battle in search of a single idea that might tip the balance ..."
Elsewhere at Image:
COWL 1964 #1 (OF 3): A miniseries about the Chicago Organized Workers League, the first superhero labor union, which is going national. I haven't been following this franchise, sadly.
CYBER FORCE: SHOOTOUT (ONE-SHOT): Ballistic has to hunt down an Aphrodite IV android that's gone rogue. Never followed this one, either.
SCARLETT #3 (OF 5)
DARK HORSE COMICS
ARKHAM HORROR: TERROR AT END OF TIME #1
When her sister is kidnapped, a socialite fights dangerous cults and eldritch monsters, based on the "Arkham Horror" video game. It appears to be a period piece (flapper era), and I always find it hard to resist those.
LOVING, OHIO GN
Several teens fight an evil born of the religious cult that runs their town. It's described as "surreal" and "moody," but some people might call that "slow-moving" and "navel-gazing." Your call!
PRODIGY: SLAVES OF MARS #1
A Mark Millar book about a guy whose father was involved in some big secret at NASA (I bet it involves Mars!) that ruined his life. Now people are after the son. Soon to be a Netflix show, of course.
DYNAMITE
THUNDERCATS: CHEETARA #2
The second cover looks familiar.
BOOM! STUDIOS
GARFIELD #1 (OF 4): A comic strip I have never enjoyed. Here's a FIRST LOOK.
RED BEFORE BLACK #1 (OF 6): A disgraced Army veteran goes to Florida to hunt down a drug dealer, and for some reason they team up. Here's a FIRST LOOK.
MORE COMICS
ABLAZE ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: WERTHER DELLEDERA BANDED SET: I'm not familiar with this guy, but here's a preview.
ABLAZE PRIDE 2024 COLL BANDED SET
Here's Ablaze jumping on the Pride Month bandwagon, a little late. (Pride Month is June.) This collects "Red Lightning," "Tales of the CIty" and "A Man's Skin," none of which I have read, but presumably are created by and/or are about LGBTQ+.
Speaking of which, the other day I learned that the "bandwagon" expression is uniquely American, because Europe and elsewhere didn't have the 19th century American election tradition of having a band on a wagon that they'd haul around to attract people to candidates' speeches. American TV and movies are so ubiquitous that probably most non-Americans have become familiar with the expression and understand its meaning by context. But don't be surprised if you use it when talking to, say, an Englishman, and he doesn't know what you mean.
AKUTAGAWA'S RASHOMON & OTHER STORIES MANGA EDITION (Tuttle Publishing): Ryunosuke Akutagawa, "father of the Japanese short story," adapts "Rashomon," "In the Grove," "Otomi's Pride" and "The Martyr" to manga. If I was at all into manga I'd get this.
ALPI: SOUL SENDER VOL 4 GN
ARCHIE MILESTONES JUMBO DIGEST #25 JUGHEAD'S FUN FOR ALL
ATLAS COMICS LIBRARY VOL 3: IN THE DAYS OF THE ROCKETS GN
Collects all five issues of Space Squadron (plus a Space Squadron story from Space Worlds, 1951-52) and all six issues of Speed Carter, Spaceman, (1953-54). Includes art from George Tuska, Werner Roth, Joe Maneely, George Klein, Mike Sekowsky and Bob Forgione. One interesting thing of note is that Maneely drew the first three issues of Spaceman before Stan Lee assigned issues #4-6 to lesser artists, a practice Lee would continue when his main artist was Jack Kirby at early 1960s Marvel.
Obviously, I'm very excited to see these stories, although I expect actually reading them will be a little painful. Sci-fi in the 1950s was all cliched ray guns and space ships, and written as if it were cops and robbers with airplanes. Many of the writers conceived of most planets as lush with life, with Earth-like atmospheres where you didn't need a helmet. And aliens who spoke English, or used the all-purpose cop-out of telepathy. The writers thought of planets as lined up in a row ("We're passing Jupiter ... should reach Saturn soon"), instead of having independent orbits (and not necessaily on the plane of the ecliptic — Uranus' orbit, for example, is pretty eccentric). People survived being in space without space suits long enough to be rescued all the time in '50s comics ("Hurry up, Space Patrol — it's cold out here"), instead of going blind in three seconds and dying in less than seven. Worse, they seemed to have no concept of three-dimensional space without gravity, maintaining concepts like "up" and "down" in outer space, which makes modern audiences roll their eyes. Oh, and they loved to make up "futuristic" slang that was always lame, or just put "space' in front of everything. ("According to the space clock, it's time for space dinner! Set the space table, kids, while I get the space casserole!")
So maybe I'll skim a little. Sue me. It's worth it to see Joe Maneely in his prime.
Here's some interesting news: Atlas Comics Library Vol. 4 will reprint early issues of War Comics, Atlas Comics Library Vol. 5 will reprint Police Action #1-7 and Atlas Library Vol. 6 will reprint stories from Men's Adventures and Amazing Detective Cases.
BETTY & ME #16 FACSIMILE EDITION
I remember laughing at the unintended double entendre on this cover when I was 10. I still think it's funny, because at heart, I'm still 10. Credit to Archie Comics for leaning into the blunder instead of being outraged by "dirty minds."
Also, I think of the late 1960s and early 1970s as the peak of Archie's Riverdale books. With artists like Dan DeCarlo, Harry Lucey and Samm Schwartz, and middle-aged writers who seemed to be writing to amuse each other instead of writing down to children, Archie comics were good reads. Or at least that's how I remember it. I'm curious to read this and see if my memory holds up.
BLURRY HC by Dash Shaw (New York Review of Books): "By the author of Discipline, one of the New York Times Best Comics of 2021, a warm and quietly inventive new graphic novel about a group of characters whose lives interconnect in subtle, often unseen ways — and the seemingly mundane choices that bring them together or draw them apart." As usual, the description doesn't really help me. HERE'S A PREVIEW.
BRYAN TALBOT'S BRAINSTORM GN (About Comics): Before Luther Arkwright, Talbot was an underground comix artist. Here's a graphic novel and other work from the artist's early days.
DEADWEIGHTS #5 (OF 6): Ahoy Comics alert!
DREAM MACHINE: PORTRAIT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GN (MIT Press): A French graphic novel about a scientist who develops an artificial intelligence in the near future in Paris. I'll bet a dollar the AI becomes self-aware.
EC: CRUEL UNIVERSE #1 (OF 5):
The second of Oni's new EC titles. I'm waiting for one of the Legionnaires to tell the rest of us if they're worth tradewaiting.
Meanwhile, Oni is expanding the line in three ways. First, Epitaphs From the Abyss will expand from five issues to 12. Second, the 56-page Shiver SuspenStories one-shot arrives in December, with horror, science fiction and combat stories. Third, the five-issue Cruel Universe will be followed by the four-issue Cruel Kingdom in January.
FATE: THE WINX SAGA VOL 1: DARK DESTINY GN (Maverick-Mad Cave)
This is based on the Netflix series of the same name, a teen drama I was unaware existed. I was further unaware that the live-action TV show was based on the animated series Winx Club on Nickelodeon. Now I know these things, for all the good it does me. And so do you.
It's about some teen girls at a witch school who are learning to master their powers, and no doubt dealing with all those teen things that I vaguely remember from the last century. I suspect you'll enjoy this more if you're a teenager yourself.
FLASH GORDON CLASSIC COLLECTION VOL 1 HC (Mad Cave Studios): Comic-strip collectors' alert! Collects the Sunday strips from 1934-1937. I'm pretty sure I have all the Sunday strips already, and the dailies in scattershot fashion from various publishers that didn't finish the run. (Looking at you, Checker Comics.)
FRONTIER GN (Magnetic Press): A scientist, a miner and a mercenary walk into a bar ... in space! Seriously, the three characters are described as eking out a living in a future where Earth has been stripped of all resources so our species has to go a-spacing. HERE'S A PREVIEW.
FUTURE TP by Tommy Masuri (Fantagraphics)
"A graphic, genre-mashing magnum opus from one of the most restlessly creative voices in comics. Tommi Musturi's Future traps the reader into a web of stories happening in different time spaces, providing perspectives on the possible futures of mankind through imaginary future worlds, current events, historical references, utopias, and ideals. Future is a mash-up of the familiar and the terribly alien: quotidian existence, sci-fi spectacle, utopian fantasy, AI dystopia, and other worst-case scenarios. Richly philosophical and allegorical, Musturi chronicles alcoholic magicians, guerrilla art squads, mutant reality television hosts, and incel archaeologist-astronauts, among many others."
What does that mean? Dunno. It might be cool, it might be self-indulgent. Hard to say.
GIRL POWER AMANDA CONNER GALLERY VARIANT EDITION HC (Graphitti Designs): A gallery of Amanda Conner's work, which I rather like.
GROUND ZERO COMICS: MOVE BEYOND NUCLEAR WEAPONS (Fantagraphics): Reprinting activist underground comix of the 1970s and 1980s.
HANAMI YOU ME & 200 SQ FT IN JAPAN GN (Humanoids): Appears to be a biographical depiction of a cartoonist and her engineer husband when they up and move to Japan. Amazon has a PREVIEW.
I'M A MESS: GUIDE FOR MESSY LIFE GN (Maverick-Mad Cave): A graphic novel about lives where messiness is a feature, not a bug.
THE LAST STARRY NIGHT HC (Black Panel Press): After his release from an insane asylum, Vincent Van Gogh lived at a small French inn in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he painted more than 75 works of art in three months. Here's a graphic novel about it.
NEVER AGAIN WILL I VISIT AUSCHWITZ HC: A Jewish cartoonist illustrates his journey to understand his grandfather and great-grandfather's experience in Nazi concentration camps. Here's a PREVIEW.
PEDESTRIAN #1 (Magma Comix): A speedwalker shows up in a sleepy town and justice follows. Don't ask me, I just work here.
SLAINE: THE HORNED GOD ANNIVERSARY EDITION TP: Rebellion/2000AD comics alert!
STAR TREK ILLUSTRATED ORAL HISTORY ORIGINAL CAST HC (Titan): I love original Star Trek like nobody's bidniss, but I worry this will be a bunch of interviews with the TOS cast and crew explaining how much they hate William Shatner. I'm not there for that.
VALIANT UNIVERSE: HERO ORIGINS BLOODSHOT TP: Valiant "Road to Resurgence" alert!
WHAT WE MEAN BY YESTERDAY TP (Fantagraphics): A black comedy about a teacher's descent into madness.
X-O MANOWAR INVICTUS #4 (OF 4): Valiant "Road to Resurgence" alert!
Replies
EC: CRUEL UNIVERSE #1 (OF 5)
#1 "of 5"? Boo!
I'm waiting for one of the Legionnaires to tell the rest of us if they're worth tradewaiting.
I started an Epitaphs from the Abyss topic HERE but it hasn't generated any interest.
Oni is expanding the line in three ways. First, Epitaphs From the Abyss will expand from five issues to 12. Second, the 56-page Shiver SuspenStories one-shot arrives in December, with horror, science fiction and combat stories. Third, the five-issue Cruel Universe will be followed by the four-issue Cruel Kingdom in January.
Well, that's good news. Maybe Cruel Universe will be extended as well.
I checked for Epitaphs from the Abyss #1 today, thinking I could comment on that even if I am tradewaiting. But it had, of course, sold out. My LCS says they're re-ordering, but we'll see. I'll try to pick up Cruel Universe #1 next week.
Following up on what I said above for "One World Under Doom," Marvel thoughfully released a teaser:
It reminds me a lot of the cover to Super-Villain Team-Up #14 (Oct 77) by John Byrne.
Gail Simone and the New Orleans setting have gotten me to dip my toe into the X-universe again for the first time since... oh, wow, since Ed Brubaker wrote that "X-Men in space" run. Which was probably around 2006 or so. I liked the first issue, and hope we don't get too many crossovers!
I don't have the hate for Gambit that a lot of folks do -- I'd already dropped the book by the time he appeared. So he's pretty much a new character to me, and I can't say that "charming cajun con-man who throws explosive playing cards" is a deal-breaker for me. That's actually right in my sweet spot.
Everyone calling Rogue "Anna Marie" is going to take some getting used to, though.