Were Money No Object – The August Previews Edition With Dark Horse, DC Comics, IDW & Marvel

Columns, Top Story

It’s time once again to look through a new issues of Previews, and see how the comics world is going to look in October.

Dark Horse

I’m pleased to see that another volume of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is getting printed by Dark Horse.  I find that I never get around to reading webcomics on the actual web, and still much prefer reading the paper volumes.  The first one that Dark Horse printed was a fun comic, and I expect this would be the same.

I’m also pleased to see that there is going to be a second Star Wars: Agent of the Empire mini-series.  John Ostrander writes this book, which is like a James Bond comic, if James Bond worked for the Empire in the years leading up to the first Star Wars movie.  This new mini-series, ‘Hard Targets’ promises appearances by Leia and Bobba Fett.

DC

Marc Andreyko is writing DC Universe Presents?  I’m sold, even before figuring out that it’s featuring Black Lightning and Blue Devil.  Too bad it’s not Manhunter though…

I’m willing to give Talon a try, because so far Scott Snyder’s done no wrong, but I can’t escape the feeling that this series is going to be the Azrael of the New 52.

What are the chances that Detective Comics under John Layman is going to be as amusing and wonderful as Chew?  I can hope, right?

Out of 19 New 52 books that I’ll be buying in October (including two annuals), 7 of them are from the Batman family of titles.  Is it just me, or is DC really concentrating their talent in that segment of their line-up?  That’s probably not a healthy publishing plan, if the goal of the relaunch was to reinvigorate their entire library.

I really want to get the Joe Kubert Presents series starting in October, but $4.99 for a 48-page comic is getting a little ridiculous.  I think I’ll be trade-waiting this one…

IDW

When I think of IDW, I tend to only think of licensed comics that don’t really interest me (with the exception of James Stokoe’s Godzilla) or books that are over-priced.  This month though, they are soliciting The Zaucer of Zilk, a new two-parter by Brendan McCarthy, the most psychedelic and strangely wonderful artist I can think of.  This should be great!

Image

So Nick Spencer has a new book with Riley Rossmo called Bedlam.  I haven’t been too fond of Rossmo’s post-Proof work, but Spencer is a writer I admire a great deal.  This promises ‘murder, mayhem, and mystery’, but then so do most comics.  I have no idea if this is an on-going or a mini-series.  I wish Image would tell us things like that.

I remember when MacGyver was announced during last year’s convention circuit.  At the time, Becky Cloonan was attached to the project, which made it a guaranteed buy.  Nothing against Will Sliney, but I’ve never seen the TV show, and so will probably pass on this.

The single thing that has me most excited in this whole issue of previews is the solicitation for Brandon Graham’s Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity.  Graham published one book in this series at Oni Press years ago, and it was brilliant.  This series is about a girl named Sexica who has a werewolf boyfriend.  They live in a post-Apocalyptic world where she traffics in illegal organs.  Graham is getting a lot of attention for his work on Prophet, and I’m happy to see that has allowed him to go back to these characters.

Marvel

I have a couple of thoughts about Marvel Now! Point One.  First of all, whatever happened to the two kids in the first Point One comic?  You know – one had fire powers, the other ice, and their story looked to be something that would continued?  Salvador Larroca drew it, and I see he’s in this new one, so maybe we’ll find out.  Also, looking at the Joe Quesada image in the Previews, what’s with the floating helmet thing next to Jean Grey?  Is Quislet coming over to Marvel?  This has a story by Jeph Loeb, so I’m going to have to decide if my Jeph Loeb rule works like race in the US – is one story out of six enough to keep me from buying this whole thing?  I guess we’ll find out in October…

Uncanny Avengers has my attention, because Rick Remender has really impressed me on Uncanny X-Force, but has had mixed success with Secret Avengers.  I’m hoping this is more like the former (and replaces the latter on the schedule – there are too many books!).

And now that Avengers Vs. X-Men is over, it’s time to milk it for all that it’s worth, with A+X (which is half-written by Jeph Loeb, and is so being ignored by yours truly) and AVX: Consequences, which is being written by Kieron Gillen, so it would be a guaranteed buy, except that it’s five weekly issues at $4 each.  Why?  The thing is, Gillen’s probably the best person currently working at Marvel to make sense of whatever kind of trainwreck AvsX is going to end up being.  I just don’t know if it’s going to be worth $20 in one month…

I’m tempted to check out Nathan Edmondson’s Ultimate Comics Iron Man, but I’m not sure.  His Grifter was not all that good, but his creator-owned books like The Light, Who is Jake Ellis? and The Activity have been great.  I got burned with the last Ultimate Iron Man though, so I’ll wait to see.

Daredevil End of Days has my attention, mostly because of Klaus Janson and Bill Sienkiewicz’s involvement.  I kind of hate these ‘The End’ mini-series, and the fact that Brian Michael Bendis is co-writing does not give me a lot of faith.  He’s not the writer he was when he first worked with DD.  Eight issues feels awfully long, considering Bendis’s penchant for having nothing happen in a whole issue.  I’ll wait and see.

Hey look – another Punisher #1!  I guess that rebranding Greg Rucka’s series as Punisher: War Zone, and including the Avengers is a bit of a Hail Mary for this property.

I wasn’t as impressed with the first issue of Captain Marvel as others on this site, but the fact of Emma Rios drawing the fifth issue means I will check it out again.  Oh wait – I just saw that Marvel’s double-shipping it that month.  Never mind.

Reading through the Independents section through the middle of Previews, I didn’t find anything to comment on, except to remind everyone that they should be reading Brian Buccellato and Noel Tuazon’s amazing series Foster from Dog Year Entertainment.  It’s excellent.

So, what would you buy Were Money No Object?

Get in touch and share your thoughts on what I've written: jfulton@insidepulse.com