Like Looking Through a Bag of Razor Blades, Hoping to Find Apples
It’s Halloween and what’s scarier than a trip through the latest Previews?
On first pass, this looks like it’ll be a very light month for me. Let’s see if that’s true.
The cover story this month concerns these “quarter-scale action figures.” On page 60 we see Darth Maul. He’s “over 19 inches tall” and features “intricate layered cloth costumes”. Guys, I can roll with the action figures that are eight inches tall or less, but when you’re at 19″ with cloth clothing, then what you have is a doll. And that’s cool, I’m not judging or anything, I’m just saying that if Darth Maul doesn’t have hair you can comb and style he should at least eat or cry. He does have two lines quoted in the ad, and the fact that the doll features “electronic voice and sound clips” it’s likely his third and final line is in there too. Darth Maul, man. Remember how cool we thought he was gonna be?
Page 90 gives us the first thing I’m getting, Showcase Presents: Superman Family vol 3. Although I have slowed down on Showcases (I’m in the middle of Flash vol 2 right now and I believe I have hit and exceeded my lifetime requirement of Silver Age Flash) the Superman Family ones are a must. Jimmy Olsen is a werewolf on the cover! Spooky, scary!
There’s a Spirit movie coming out, and since it’s adapted by Frank Miller, it’s going to be awful. However, because of it, DC is releasing some Spirit stuff in unusually affordable formats. Thanks to their “Best of the Spirit” trade I already have two of the four stories in The Spirit Special #1 (p. 91), but I’ll happily pay three bucks for the other two.
Tales of the Green Lantern Corps vol 1 (p. 92) tempts me. I do like Green Lantern, and these stories are from when I was reading and enjoying his book as a kid. I remember the main story as a good one, and I’d like to see the backup stories, as I enjoyed the GLC. Of course, when I was a kid, I also enjoyed Styx’s Kilroy Was Here album, so my taste from that era is suspect. We’ll see.
Image is resoliciting Jack Staff #21 (p. 154) and I’ll kick at the football again.
Zombie Cop (p. 164) “will leave you questioning just what it means to be…human.” So it’s the exact same Zombie story as all the others then.
This is not good art.
What is pathos? Pathos is really wanting to do a pig-themed parody of Spider-Man, being beaten to “Peter Porker, the Amazing Spider-Ham”, and proceeding anyway with “The Hamazing Spider-Mad”.
I’ll be getting Comic Book Comics #4 (p. 271) even though I’m not that crazy about the series. It’s not really telling me much of anything I didn’t already know, and it’s not telling it in a particularly interesting fashion. A let down after Action Philosophers.
Yes indeed on Doctor Who: The Forgotten #6 (p. 285).
I found the first Little Nothings book to be quite delightful. It convinced me that I really am a fan of Lewis Trondheim. So I’ll certainly be getting Little Nothings Volume 2: The Prisoner Syndrome (p. 294).
Wasteland is damn fine comics. I’ll be getting Wasteland #23 (p. 298).
Page 311 brings you Tantric Stripfighter Trina.
“Trina is skilled in Rama’s native art of stripfighting: a tantalizing fusion of Shaolin martial arts and tantric sensuality.”
Hey, here’s the PICK OF THE MONTH!
20th Century Boys vol 1 (p. 319) was solicited way back in caveman times and then immediately un-solicited in favor of releasing two other works by Urasawa. But now it’s finally coming out and I’m pretty stoked about it.
I won’t be getting Teenagers from the Future (p. 352) because I’m not that into the Legion of Super-Heroes, but I’d like to point out that if you buy it, you’ll be putting money into the filthy, filthy hands of Chris Sims (who contributes an essay to it) and you should expect this connection to him to be brought up in a derogatory fashion should you choose to run for President.
“A BLOO”
By now you’re saying, “Dave, you promised thrills and chills but have delivered none!” and you’re right, so let’s turn to our friends in Japan!
It’s a $90 statue of a girl in a gothic maid costume with cat ears and a chain around her neck, on a mirrored base so that you can see her panties. PEOPLE WILL BUY THIS. Oh, and what are those paw-looking things next to her? According to the solicitation text it’s “a bearclaw-like object”. They’re selling this and THEY don’t know what the hell that thing is!
And finally
“I SHALL BECOME A DELICATE FLUFFY CLOUD”
Tags: previews
20th Century Boys was de-solicited at the request of the creator, who didn’t want his work released in the U.S. out of chronological order, for fear that fans would unfavorably compare his older art style to his more recent work.
This has been your pedantic and pointless comics trivia moment for the day
Comment by Dorian — October 31, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
I was at B&N earlier in the week, and thought “Hey what the hell, let’s look over the manga section…I used to like manga after all.”
Good. God. I’d be hard pressed to find a book there I’d be willing to read, much less buy.
Comment by Lanf — October 31, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
Dear God, somebody call an ambulance for that Scribbles girl and her obviously devastating spinal injury!
Comment by Bill D. — November 2, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
[...] That manga, Monster was a bunch of volumes, so 20th Century Boys slipped off my radar until a few months ago, when it finally was solicited [...]
Pingback by Dave Ex Machina - A Thousand Points of Articulation » 20th Century Boys — March 23, 2009 @ 1:53 pm