Were Money No Object – the January Previews Edition with Dark Horse, DC, Image, Marvel & Oni

Columns, Top Story

Time to look through Previews and see what goodies are coming our way in March!

Dark Horse

Following up on the events of BPRD 1948 is a new mini-series, BPRD Vampire, which I’m very excited for, because of the involvement of two of my favourite artists – Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon!  Granted, this isn’t going to be as brilliant as their Daytrippers, but I’m always happy to see their art.

Mike Mignola is launching a brand new series this month as well, Sledgehammer 44, with John Arcudi and Jason Latour.  It looks like this is an Iron Man in WWII kind of story, and since Mignola’s more bizarre projects are usually his most entertaining, I’ll be checking it out.  The guy really has become his own little industry though – he has four books being published by Dark Horse this month.

Despite learning that they are going to be losing the Star Wars license, Dark Horse is continuing to put out some of the best-looking titles in the franchise of all time.  In addition to Brian Wood’s Star Wars series, Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman are picking up some of the strands of John Ostrander and Jan Duursema’s excellent Star Wars Legacy with a new on-going title that features the great great granddaughter of Han Solo.  I love the work that Bechko and Hardman have been doing at Boom on Planet of the Apes, and Hardman is drawing this, so I’m all over it, at least until Marvel takes it away…

DC

I’m a little curious to see what Birds of Prey under Jim Zubkavich is going to be like.  His Skullkickers is an excellent, fun read, but he’d have to take a very different approach for a title like this.  Lately, I’ve noticed that working for DC has sanitized the writing of other independent writers I admire (Joshua Hale Fialkov and Matt Kindt come to mind), so perhaps I’d do better to just ignore this.

The same sense of caution informs my considering of Constantine, the New 52-ified version of Hellblazer.  Now, it’s been a few years since I’ve read Hellblazer regularly (Peter Milligan’s run wasn’t doing it for me, but I can see why it got so much acclaim), and I have been enjoying John’s appearances in Justice League Dark, but I’m worried that centring a book on Constantine, without letting him be the uncensored evil bastard we love, will just not work.  Robert Venditti has impressed on both The Surrogates and X-O Manowar, but neither of those books feel like this one, so I’m going to wait and see.

Phantom Stranger #6 is co-written by JM DeMatteis, and drawn by Gene Ha and Zander Cannon.  That sounds like an instant buy, except for the fact that Dan Didio is still the other writer on this comic.  Tempting, but not really.

I think it’s pretty amazing that the Rotworld storyline has run for eighteen issues in both Animal Man and Swamp Thing.  It’s rare that a storyline be stretched out beyond a single trade these days, and that the story was not wildly decompressed is a testament to both Jeff Lemire and Scott Snyder.  Both of these runs are going to be looked back on fondly, which is not really the case for a lot of New 52 books.

The trade for Punk Rock Jesus is being solicited this month.  Get it – it’s amazing.

I’m a little hesitant to get Time Warp #1, the new Vertigo quarterly anthology.  The Ghosts one didn’t do much for me, and I don’t like that they are serializing stories like the Dead Boy Detectives in these books, but with work by Kindt, Simone, Lemire, Albuquerque, Perker, and Culbard, I know I won’t be able to pass it up.

Image

I’m always happy to hear about another Jonathan Hickman series, so East of West has me excited, although with Secret so far behind schedule, and his Marvel books coming out almost every week, I do worry about how often this book will see publication.  Still, it’s Hickman and his FF collaborator Nick Dragotta working on a book that is some kind of future Western about the four horsemen of the Apocalypse trying to kill the President.  I can’t wait.

Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray sounds pretty interesting.  It’s about a treasure hunter who has been possessed by five ‘literary ghosts’.  From the preview pages, I can identify Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, and perhaps Merlin?  It’s a cool concept, although how much cooler would it have been if the ghosts were real literary figures, such as Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, and I don’t know, Gertrude Stein?  Oh wait, that’s Ann Nocenti’s Kid Eternity run…

Joe Casey has a new series called Sex.  Sold.  I don’t even need to read the solicitation.  I just know that it’s going to be hella late before long.

Hey look, Rob Liefeld has taken over Bloodstrike and Youngblood now that he’s not working at DC.  We should start a pool on when they actually come out.  We could start a pool on how much they suck, but who would bet against that?  I’m just glad he’s not touching Glory or Prophet, but I feel badly for my Nexus brethren who have been enjoying these other two titles.  Anyone remember the last time he took Youngblood back from a much more talented writer?  He added Obama to the team, and then stopped publishing the book entirely.

Marvel

We’ve known that Age of Ultron has been in the planning/developing stage for a few years now, right?  The cover to issue one shows Captain America in his old uniform.  I’m wondering if this book is going to fit into continuity very well, even with the tie-in issues affecting titles like the Fantastic Four and Superior Spider-Man.  I really feel like sitting this event out, as I doubt it will impact the Marvel books I’m enjoying most right now.

Alan Davis drawing the new Wolverine series is tempting, but for my money, Wolverine is a $3 title, not a $4 one.  I’m going to pass.

I think it’s funny that Marvel is still soliciting Uncanny Avengers every month.  That means that for it to meet its March 6 sale date, issues 3-5 will have to come out first, which would have to be almost bi-weekly.  With John Cassaday art?  Maybe it’s time for a skip month?

The X-Termination cross-over will be spread across X-Treme X-Men, Age of Apocalypse, and Astonishing X-Men.  This is exactly the kind of cross-over I like the most – one that doesn’t include a single title that I buy.

I was right on the cusp of dropping Wolverine and the X-Men, but seeing that the two issues solicited this month are drawn by Ramon Perez, I’m going to stick around for a bit.  I find I have less and less interest in the stories in this comic though, so I figure these may be the last ones I buy.

The solicitation for Powers: Bureau #3 says that the book is “back on track!  Guaranteed to ship!”  Note though, they don’t say guaranteed to ship on time.  So it’s coming, but who knows when?  I used to love Powers, but I doubt I’m going to get the first issue of this latest renumbering (the fourth?).  I’ll just get the trade in a few years, after the first four or five issues have come out.

Oni Press

Cullen Bunn has a new series with Joëlle Jones called Helheim.  It looks to be a Viking horror story.  Having seen what Bunn can do with a Western horror story like The Sixth Gun, I’m definitely on board for this.

So, what would you buy, Were Money No Object?

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