The Secret of the Wednesday’s Haul

As a kid, I really looked forward to the late fall when Sears and JC Penney’s Christmas wishbooks would come out. The joy of looking through the books over and over to figure out what precisely I wanted to put on my Christmas lists to Santa was immeasurable. Over time, the toy sections in those books became slimmer and slimmer and eventually I just forgot about them and found other ways to make up a Christmas list.

Now that I’m older, I get the same thrill on a monthly basis thanks to all of the advance comic solicitations and the pull-lists I give to my comic shops (yes, plural.) Each month, I put together up to three lists of books based off of the Diamond Previews catalog: one for a podcast, one for my regular comic shop and one for the mail-order books that I do. So, why not add another to that list and highlight some great books and potentially great books here on Pop Syndicate.

Since Marvel and DC usually get all of the love, we’ll save them to the end and start with the “Comics & Graphic Novels” section of the book.

Mouse Guard Winter: 1152 by David Petersen begins. The recent hard cover collection was a great opening to this series and it’s great to see it returning and focussing on what a medieval society of mice need to do to survive in the harsh world.

Years later, Mark Millar and Avatar Press finally get around to releasing the final two issues of Mark Millar’s The Unfunnies. The first two issues get repackaged into one to hit stands just before the third and fourth issues do. I remember the first issue living up to it’s name- unfunny– but maybe that was the point of it. If I remember correctly, this series was somehow supposed to thematically connect all of Millar’s Millarworld titles (Unfunnies, Chosen, Wanted and the unpublished Run.)

The old Crossgen series Negation and Sigil respectively get their fourth and sixth collections thanks to Checker Books. Sigil petered off a bit toward the end but under Tony Bedard and Paul Pelletier, Negation turned into the backbone of the Crossgen universe, bringing together inhabitants from most of the other worlds in Crossgen titles.

A book that I never tried but I heard great things about, the Desperado miniseries Hatter M: The Looking Glass Wars gets collected in a Diamond exclusive hardcover. Featuring art by the hardest working man in comics, Ben Templesmith, this book also ties into the novel The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor. (Hint to Desperado: If you’re going to advertise a book as getting nominated for “Best Painter” in your ad, it’s a good idea to list who the painter is. Luckily I already knew who did the artwork.)

Digital Webbing has another E-Man special– E:Man: Dolly by Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton. I may have to check these out sometime.

Adrain Tomine’s Shortcomings hardcover is released by Drawn & Quarterly. Collecting the stories from the three most recent Optic Nerve issues, it’s the typical “young people disconnected from the society around them looking for a connection to something or someone” that Tomine’s known for but he’s one of the best there is at that type of story and Shortcomings, one of his longer works, is a great story.

ExPress Publishing has a collection of Roy Thomas and Gil Kane’s The Ring of the Nebelung series originally published by DC. I’d be interested in taking this collection and comparing it to the two-book collection of Richard Wagner’s Ring operas by P. Craig Russell.

The Ultimate Spider-Man 100 Project TP from Hero Initiative collects the special one-of-a-kind sketch covers for Ultimate Spider-Man #100 done for the charity and auctioned off at various conventions this year. Artists who contributed to this book include Mark Bagley, J. Scott Campbell, Frank Cho, Neil Gaiman, Joe Quesada, George Perez and a lot more beyond that. This was a great project for a worthy cause and I’m glad to see these works of art collected in a project like this.

I’m not a huge Steve Niles fan but I don’t know if I can pass up Bill Sienkiewicz doing the 30 Days of Night mini Beyond Barrow. #1 is out in September from IDW. Sienkiewicz doing vampires may be too much to easily pass up.

Zombies Vs. Robots Vs. Amazons #1? With just that basic premise, how can this 3 part miniseries by Chris Ryall and Ashley Woods go wrong?

I’ve never read Tintin before but I’m almost tempted by the Tintin Hardcover Boxed Set from Little Brown and Company, a sharp looking collection of Herge’s twenty four Tintin stories in eight boxes. With a movie by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson coming out in the next year or two, this may be just the time to start checking out Tintin stories.

After a long delay, Queen & Country gets a new collection– Volume 8/ Operation: Red Panda. By Greg Rucka and Chris Samnee, this one fills in the gaps between the two Q&C novels. I’ve loved the red-bound hardcover editions of this title. And now we wait some more while this series goes on a planned hiatus for a while.

Sunday Press Books have an impressive looking collection with Sundays with Walt and Skeezix Volume 1 but 96 pages at $95.00? I like my nice, expensive archives as much as anyone but this seems steep.

The Comic.Com has a gn adaptation of King Lear and somehow Gareth Hinds (who’s he?) gets billing over William Shakespeare?

If you missed Battle Royale the first time around, Tokyopop is repackaging it and includes 3 volumes in one hefty book in their “Ultimate Edition.” It looks like buying it this way will save you about $5 for every 3 volumes. Have collections of manga like this worked before? I know Viz used to do this but they didn’t seem as popular as the regular editions.

Jeff Lemire follows up Tales of the Farm TP with the second volume of Essex County: Ghost Stories. These appear to be only thematically linked but the first one was a nice tale of loneliness and unfulfilled dreams.

Marvel, DC, Image and Dark Horse musings will follow sometime later this week.

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