I was travelling a bit over the weekend and wasn’t able to do any reviews while on the road like I hoped to. I’ve got a couple started and should be finishing them up tonight and tomorrow and I’ve got at least 2 or 3 more in the note-taking stage right now as well as a podcast or two to work on. So instead of reviews, let’s take a quick look at some books coming out this week.
- Creepy Archives HC– I’d so love to get this but $50 is a bit too much for me right now. It’s already added to the Christmas list and will be a high, high priority. (It’s times like this I wish my mother read my blog.) I just recently picked up some later Creepy magazines and love the stories and the artwork. There’s no Photoshop or fancy coloring here. Everything was produced by hand with a brush, a pen and a lot of ink. And we liked it!
- Grendel God & The Devil TP– Matt Wagner, J.K. Snyder III and Jay Geldhof joined forces almost 20 years ago to produce this wildly mad and anarchic tale of the future where bananas power giant, world destroying cannons. This will probably end up in my pile this week or ordered soon via Amazon because I’ve been waiting for a long time to reread this story.
- Final Crisis #1 Directors Cut Special– If there’s a script in here, I’m a sucker for these kind of books and I want to see what a Grant Morrison script looks like.
- Final Crisis #3– And I’ll get this to see what a Morrison comic looks like. It’s been a slow burn so far but something has to hit the fan eventually.
- Showcase Presents House Of Secrets Vol 1 TP– I need to take a look through this and see what artists are represented. I love the first Showcase for House of Mysteries because it represents the work of some fantastic artists. If the lineup for this book is similar to HoM, this one should be going home with me this week.
- DMZ Vol 5 The Hidden War TP– I still have to read the 4th volume of this. I really liked the 2nd and 3rd volumes of DMZ but everytime I start the 4th one, my eyes kind of glaze over and I get easily distracted (oooohhh, Skrulls.)
- Invincible Iron Man #4 – I really, really want to love this series but I’m stuck right now at only liking it. Fraction is doing some interesting things and I like Larocca’s artwork but something about it (probably the D’Armata coloring) makes the book look to slick and artificial. It’s one of those books that feels like it’s trying too hard to be something more than “an Iron Man story.” I kind of wish Larocca would change up his inking style a bit and they’d get a different colorist on the book.
- Criminal 2 #4– Probably one of the best series out there right now and I can’t wait to see where Brubaker & Philips take this latest story. I wonder if the covers will really look as Gulacy-like as they do in the tiny previews. I’m reading American Flagg! right now and for some reason I’m thinking that Criminal is one of the biggest Chaykin-influenced books on the stand right now. It doesn’t read or look like a Chaykin book but it sets up a story and builds a world similar to the way Chaykin did with AF! and with The Shadow.