It looks like the New Year is going to be bringing us lots of good new comics, especially since Marvel has decided to throw just about everything they can think of at the wall to see what sticks.
Dark Horse
I had no idea that there was a new 
Greg Rucka series coming from Dark Horse. Veil looks interesting, with a story about an amnesiac girl who appears to have some sort of powers or something. I don’t know; it’s Greg Rucka, so I’ll buy it.
I’m really excited to see that there is some new Beasts of Burden coming from Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. These are always wonderful comics – I just hope that this is new stuff and not something that I read in early issues of Dark Horse Presents. Anyone know?
DC
I guess with all the Forever Evil stuff coming to a close, next month’s Previews will be the interesting one, as DC needs to replace a pile of mini-series with something on their schedule. Maybe there will even be something that I want to read…
Should we read into the solicitation for the Suicide Squad: Amanda Waller one-shot that perhaps Jim Zub(kavich) is going to be taking over that title? I’d buy that, but at $5, with an artist I don’t know, I won’t be getting this.
Another over-sized, over-priced issue of Batman? I think it’s time to give up on it. I’m done.
I’m not all that upset that Animal Man is coming to an ending. I’ve enjoyed Jeff Lemire’s work on this title, but the last few months have not been as good as the first two years of the title. I’m really happy to see that Lemire is drawing some of the final issue though – had he been drawing it all along, I’m sure I would have loved the book a lot more.
It’s worth pointing out that I’m only ordering 4 of the New 52 books in March (Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing, and the aforementioned Animal Man). That’s insane. I used to love DC books, and none of these were titles I was reading five years ago.
I’m going to make a couple assumptions about American Vampire: Second Cycle, and order it. First, I’m going to trust that this issue is $4 because it’s 40 pages long, and that subsequent issues will be $3. Secondly, I’m going to hope that Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque, having had a hiatus from the title, are going to come back to it refreshed and enthusiastic, because the last couple of arcs of the first volume felt a little tired.
Image
I loved Stray Bullets back in the 1990s. I remember that when David Lapham debuted, working for Jim Shooter at Valiant, he’d compared him to Frank Miller in terms of his potential. Those early Harbinger comics never showed it to me, but Stray Bullets did. I don’t remember if I stopped buying the title, or if it just stopped on me, but I’m very excited to dive back in to Lapham’s violent world. Image is publishing #41 of the original run, and starting a new series, Stray Bullets: Killers this month, and I can’t wait to get my hands on both of them. I’m also tempted to pick up the Über Alles Edition, which collects the whole series. I’ll have to see on that one though…
I’m never sure if I should pick up a new Mark Millar title or not. His Icon work (with the exception of Supercriminals) has been sub-par, but I like Jupiter’s Legacy. This new series, Starlight, has art by Goran Parlov, and looks pretty European, so I think I’m on board.
Real Heroes is a new series by Bryan Hitch, which he is both writing and drawing. I like Hitch, but I don’t know what he’s like as a writer, and with him having more responsibilities, you know this is going to end up being hella late. I’ll wait to see what the reviews say.
So filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is writing a new graphic novel that updates the Biblical story of Noah. Normally, I’d stay far away from a project like this, but the art is by Nico Henrichon, who drew the beautiful Pride of Baghdad, and barely any comics since. The previews are gorgeous, so I’ll have to check it out.
Paul Maybury has been killing the art on Catalyst Comix, and now he has a new series with Chris Roberson called Sovereign. The fact that the solicitation describes it as “an epic fantasy in the tradition of Game of Thrones” makes me want to avoid it, but I respect both of these creators enough to give it a try.
I’ve never read Top Cow’s The Darkness, but there’s a one-shot, Vicious Traditions, by Ales Kot and Dean Ormston. How can that not be good?
I’m really happy to see that Skullkickers is coming off hiatus. This is a wickedly funny fantasy series, that I urge everyone to check out. I’m sure this would be a good point to jump on the title.
Simon Roy, of Prophet, has an anthology coming out this month – Jan’s Atomic Heart and Other Stories. I loved JAH when I picked it up from Roy at a Toronto Comics Art Festival a few years ago, and am really excited to see what the other stories contain. He’s a major talent – get in on the second or third floor!
Marvel
It looks like this is the month of the gratuitous relaunch at Marvel, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I’m pleased to see that Mark Waid and Chris Samnee are sticking around on Daredevil, but I don’t like that it looks like Marvel is using Matt Murdock’s relocating to the West Coast as an excuse to increase the price of the book.
It’s interesting that Rags Morales is drawing New Avengers #16.NOW. Is this his first Marvel work? He’s a good fit for that title.
Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey on Moon Knight? Sign me up. I imagine this won’t be around past eight issues, but those are eight issues I know I’m going to treasure.
I’m going to wait and see how I feel about a new Silver Surfer series by Dan Slott and Michael Allred. It’s a solid $3 buy, but of course Marvel is over-pricing it. The Francesco Francavilla variant cover is beautiful, and I want it.
It looks like Captain Marvel is also getting relaunched just to justify a price jump. Has no one at Marvel looked at the sales number for this book? This is kind of what happened to Fearless Defenders, isn’t it? The price went up and sales went down, and the book was cancelled.
I’d really like to start getting Iron Patriot. I’ve always liked Jim Rhodes more than Tony Stark, and it’s written by Ales Kot, but it’s $4. Also, if Garry Brown is drawing this, who’s going to draw The Massive?
I feel much the same about Magneto. I really love this character, especially when he’s trying to ‘be good’, and the series is by Cullen Bunn and Gabriel Hernandez Walta, but this is also not a $4 book. It’s like Marvel is throwing titles out there to fail…
Why is Secret Avengers getting relaunched again? It looks like it has almost the same character lineup, with Ales Kot taking over full writing chores, and being joined by the capable Michael Walsh. This should just be a continuation of the current series.
Oh look, Wolverine and the X-Men is getting relaunched too, a month after Marvel made a big deal about its last issue. Do these relaunches have much of an effect on sales numbers? Is this just an excuse to have variants? I find this frustrating.
Now Avengers Undercover is a relaunch I can get behind. This is a continuation of Avengers Arena, with some of the survivors from that title going undercover to infiltrate the Masters of Evil. It’s by the same creative team, Dennis Hopeless and Kev Walker, and it looks very good. I wish more of the cast from that series was in it, but I do like all of the survivors.
So there’s a whole page in Marvel previews that just has the word Survive! emblazoned across a black cover, credited to Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quinones. I’m going to assume that this is the end of Cataclysm, because God forbid Bendis end an event in the comic it started in, and I’m not going to buy it. I love Ultimate Spider-Man, but I’m feeling Ultimate Event Fatigue.
Apparently Marvel doesn’t fully understand the concept of the Annual anymore. These are books that are supposed to come out once a year. Sure, there was a Superior Spider-Man Annual in October or November, and this new one is due to come out in March, so they are in separate years, but still, this does not feel like an annual event. Leave it to Marvel to figure out how to double-ship Annuals. I’m amazed they didn’t relaunch this and give it the number one…
Marco Rudy is drawing Uncanny X-Men #18? That’s the most exciting thing in this month’s Previews so far. I hope he’s allowed to go as crazy as he did in Marvel Knights: Spider-Man. This guy should be the biggest superstar Marvel has in another year.
Dynamite
I’m really pretty tempted to check out the new Magnus: Robot Fighter series. The last one, that Jim Shooter wrote at Dark Horse was pretty lacklustre, but this one is written by Fred Van Lente, who is making Archer & Armstrong so delightful. I’m not sure about it though – it can be a tough concept to pull off in the 21st Century, because it just feels so old fashioned. I’ll be taking a look at it for sure.
Oni
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Rick Spears’s name attached to a project, so I’m excited about The Auteur, his new series about a Hollywood producer who is on a downward spiral. Spears’s books are frequently awesome (I still mourn that fact that his Pirates of Coney Island never finished), so I’m down with this.
One of the only webcomics that I’ve been following is Joshua Hale Fialkov and Joe Infurnari’s Bunker, but now that it’s being published by Oni, it’s not going to be distributed digitally anymore. It’s all good – I often forget to read digital books, but I always work my way through the paper ones.
Christopher Mitten is returning to Wasteland? It’s probably just for this issue, since he and writer Antony Johnston are working on Umbral together, but still, this is very good news. The series, while still very good, has just not been the same since Mitten left it.
So, what are you going to be ordering for March? Let me know in the comments!
