'Twas the Night Before Wednesday...

AVENGERS AI #1
I didn't read past the first issue of Age of Ultron yet, I don't know most of the characters in this (and of those I do know, I only really like one of 'em) and the goofy title seems to be setting a new standard in brand dilution and I'm not terribly familiar with the work of either writer Sam Humphries or artist Andre Araujo, but I kinda don't care about any of that—This is a Marvel team book in which the whole team is comprised of robots, it's only $2.99 and I'd really like to read more superhero comics than the small handful I'm reading serially now. Oh, and there's that sweet variant cover. So I'm giving this a shot. I hope it's good.

AXE COP TP VOL 04 PRESIDENT WORLD
Hey, I'm waaaaayyyy behind on this one now. I'm really curious about what will happen to this series in the future, because it's selling point—"written by a five-year-old and illustrated by his 29-year-old brother"—has a built-in expiration point. Like, will the writer be as good when he's eight? Or 12? Or 16?

DISNEY MICKEY MOUSE COLOR SUNDAYS HC VOL 01 CALL WILD
Of Fantagraphics' two Disney reprint projects, I'm enjoying the Carl Barks library of duck comics to Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse strips (in large part because the former were comic book stories and the latter were comic strip stories, and the flow of the former reads better in large chunks than that of the latter), but I'm really curious to see what these look like in color and to see how they read when they're not part of a daily continuity (At lest, I assume most of these won't be part of the weekly continuity, but instead are standalone stories.

Plus, I love how crazy and off-model that Donald Duck on the cover looks, compared to the "final" version of the character we see most often.

JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY NANCY HC VOL 04
And hey, speaking of ambitious collection projects focused on the works of all-time comics masters...

PAUL JOINS THE SCOUTS GN
I love Michel Rabagliati's Paul comics. This is another one. It's coming from Conundrum Press rather than Drawn and Quartley, who published the previous Paul books I've read. Conundrum is apparently also publishing a new graphic novel by Joe Ollmann (of Mid-Life fame), with the bland title of Science Fiction. I liked that previous Ollmann book I read a whole lot, and would sure like to see what he's doing now.

PERSIA BLUES SC VOL 01
They had me at "written by Dara Naraghi." Look for a review of this by me...somewhere. Soon.

SATELLITE SAM #1 (MR)
A collaboration between Matt Fraction and Howard Chaykin has got to be interesting, whether it's any good or not. Although I imagine it will be good. Fraction writes good, right? And Chaykin draws good, right? Especially ladies' undergarments, which I see are on the cover of this comic. It's probably worth noting that this new series written by Matt Fraction, who is currently writing Hawkeye, Fantastic Four, FF and probably a few more books I'm blanking on for Marvel Entertainment, is not being published by Marvel, but is instead being published by Image Comics. So here's one more example of an established-as-you-can-get writer with a healthy relationship with one of the Big Two comics taking a new or original idea to Image Comics for publication. Seems like we've been seeing an awful lot of that lately.

TRINITY OF SIN PANDORA #1
TRINITY OF SIN THE PHANTOM STRANGER #10
The former stars the hooded lady character from the final issue of Flashpoint, the person assigned in-story responsibility for creating "The New 52" and who DC placed in the backgrounds of all 52 #1's that were released in August and September of 2011, starring in what seems like a somewhat belated new series that has something to do with ...the state of the DC Universe, I guess...?

The Phantom Stranger comic is interesting in that its title recently changed from just plain old Phantom Stranger to Trinity of Sin The Phantom Stranger to suggest a stronger correlation to whatever important stuff is supposedly going to be goin on in Pandora and the upcoming "Trinity War" crossover story, but Pandora #1 is the prelude to "Trinity War," while ToStPS #10 doesn't make the list of tie-ins on the house ad or on this little flier from my comic shop listing all of the books that are a part of "The Epic Event That Will Destroy The World's Greatest Heroes!"

'Twas the Night Before Wednesday...

ALTERNATIVE COMICS #4
The revitalized publisher Alternative Comics releases the next issue of its flagship anthology, a $6, 48-page comic book comic—which sound expensive until you remember how much a 20-22-page Marvel comic book costs you these days—featuring work from James Kochalka, Sam Henderson, Noah Van Sciver and a bunch of other talented folks whose names I can't recall at the moment because they did not make me laugh like those other three gentleman did. I will likely write at some length about this later in the week, but, in the mean-time: Heads up!

BATMAN/SUPERMAN #1
Essentially the New 52 version of Superman/Batman, this Greg Pak/Jae Lee/Ben Oliver joint is differentiated from that pre-New 52 iteration by the fact that this is a "Year One" story, presumably dedicated to telling the tale of how Superman and Batman first met (aside from the other time they first met in Justice League #2, anyway). It's a $4, 26-page book, and those first 19-pages sure are pretty looking. Again: Full review forthcoming.

LARFLEEZE #1
So right now there are four—count 'em, four—Green Lantern titles, three with the words "Green Lantern" actually in them, and Red Lanterns, starring the Red Lanterns. This new ongoing will make a fifth Lantern ongoing, and I'm pretty sure this is where we'll see the Lantern book bubble burst. The title character, alternately known as "Agent Orange" or, to civilians, Orange Lantern, previously starred in a Christmas special and a back-up in Threshold, a book that got canceled almost as soon as it was announced. Like Threshold, this will be written by Keith Giffen, whose resume makes him seen an ideal writer for a sometimes funny character having outer space adventures, but whose New 52 track-record is pretty dismal. Scott Kolins will be providing the art.

MALEVOLENT MR BURNS #1
That's just an adjective that just doesn't get thrown around enough these days.

MARS ATTACKS CLASSICS OBLITERATED (ONE SHOT)
This $8 giant looks a lot like three issues of a miniseries smooshed into a single, unnaturally large one-shot. The premise is right there in the title—mash-ups of classic literature with the aliens from the old Mars Attacks trading cards—but is notable around my apartment for featuring the work of two of my all-time favorite artists, John McCrea (drawing the Moby Dick portion) and Kelley Jones (drawing the Jekyll and Hyde portion). Comic Book Resources has a preview. Hopefully this does well enough that a series will be generated, and we can see Mars attack Wonderland, Neverland, Camelot, Pemberley, fair Verona and, ultimately, Mars Attacks War of the Worlds....

MOUSE GUARD LEGENDS O/T GUARD VOL 2 #1
I really enjoy David Petersen's Mouse Guard comics, and really, really enjoyed the Legends of the Guard series he put together, in which he drew a framing sequence while other artists got to tell stories in his world of medieval mice. This week, Petersen and company are kicking off a new volume of the series, with Stan Sakai and Ben Caldwell serving as the guest artists. ComicsAlliance has a nice preview here.

ORIGINAL DAREDEVIL ARCHIVES HC VOL 01
This is the comic book released this week that I most want to read, and its $50 price tag makes it the comic book released this week I can least afford to purchase. (Confidential to Dark Horse: Got any review copies lying around the old warehouse? 'Cause I know a very talented and astute comic book critic who could review that for you somewhere...)

SUPERMAN FAMILY ADVENTURES TP VOL 01
The Superman family of characters get the Tiny Titans treatment courtesy of Art Baltazar and Franco. Highly recommended for Superman fans of all ages (Bonus: Baltazar is the only artist to kinda sorta make the New 52 Superman costume work).

'Twas the Night Before Wednesday...

So I thought I'd try doing this again here, because it makes for an easier Tuesday night post than writing an actual review or something. But maybe I'll stop after a few weeks. I don't know. Anyway, here are some comic books that will likely be on the shelves of your local comic shop tomorrow...

ADVENTURE TIME TP VOL 03
My plan was to read this comic in trade. So far I have read one trade.  Not only am I now officially two volumes behind, but I believe there are even trade collections of some of the spin-off series available now too.

BARNABY HC VOL 01
Part of me hopes a review copy of this shows up on my doorstop tomorrow afternoon, and part of me hopes it doesn't—I have a full day planned, and I'd hate to have to drop everything and spend the rest of the day and night reading this collection, which I'm not sure I'd be able to avoid doing if I found it thrust into my hands.

BATGIRL ROBIN YEAR ONE TP
This is a new collection featuring two different origin miniseries from the writing team of Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon and pencil artists Marcos Martin (Batgirl) and Javier Pulido (Robin). Both are incredibly incredible, although the Batgirl one a bit moreso. I'd highly recommend this, and if you need more than my recommendation, here's a review that ran on ComicsAlliance by John Parker today

BOYS OF STEEL THE CREATORS OF SUPERMAN YR SC
I'm assuming this is a new printing or edition of the Marc Tyler Nobleman and Ross MacDonald picture book that I reviewed here a while back, timed to capitalize on the interest generated by some big Hollywood movie or another. If they keep screwing up making Superman movies, maybe they'd be better off doing a biopic of his creators...? Theirs is a pretty incredible story.

DONT PIGEONHOLE ME 2 DECADES MO WILLEMS SKETCHBOOK HC
The $40 price tag is a little too rich for my freelance writing blood, but you can bet damn sure I've already reserved this at my local library. Willems is one of my favorite artists and one of the few complete strangers I know who can make me laugh on a fairly regular basis.

FAILURE GN
I'm only about 30 pages into this Alternative Comics collection of Karl Stevens' strips for The Boston Phoenix, but the artwork in it is astounding. And that's not a word I use very often. Wait, I'm not sure if I've ever used "astounding" before, to describe comics art or otherwise...

IT GIRL & THE ATOMICS #11
I read the first six issues of this series, but Jamie S. Rich's scripting just never really connected with me, despite the great pleasure I took in the artwork and in getting to see some of Mike Allred's characters again (Allred's one of my favorite character designers). That said, I'm still kind of sorry to hear that the book is getting canceled. If nothing else, I'll miss seeing those gorgeous, Allred-drawn pin-up style covers show up on the racks each month.

PRIMATES FEARLESS SCIENCE OF GOODALL FOSSEY & GALDIKAS HC
Jim Ottaviani! Maris Wicks! Monkeys! If I were only allowed to read one comic book this week, this would probably be the one I'd choose based on all of the available information. Luckily, there's no such stupid rule, so I can feel free to read as many of these as I want.

SAGA TP VOL 02
I really enjoy reading this comic book series as a comic book, but I bet it reads really well in trade too, and I imagine there are a whole lot of people who will be reading it in that format thanks to cool librarians ordering copies for their graphic novel collections.

SPONGEBOB COMICS ANNUAL GIANT SWIMTACULAR #1
Attention Comics Internet! (Especially the corners that talk about wanting to see more women drawin more superheroes and/or talking about wanting to see more Jerry Ordway art). This $5, 48-page, superhero-themed SpongeBob special contains artwork by Jerry Ordway (who is credited with "flashback fun," which I believe refers to the comic within the comic and a few images that appear in thought bubbles) and Ramona Fradon, doing a nice, long Aquaman riff. That is in addition to providing the usual pleasure of SpongeBob comics, of course. But don't take my word for it, take my word for it.