The Book I Might Like to Buy:
Blue Beetle Black and Blue TP
by 
Will Pfeiffer, Matthew Sturges, Mike Norton, Carlo Barbieri, and more;DC, $17.99
I enjoyed the latest Blue Beetle series a lot – especially when John Rogers and Keith Giffen were at the helm. They really invested a lot of energy into making Jaime, the new Blue Beetle, an interesting character with a unique supporting cast. Matthew Sturges’s run was fine too, and was getting better when the book was canceled and sent to back-up status in DC’s Booster Gold series, which I had no interest in at the time.
This trade collects the back-ups, although apparently they only ran for four issues, which would make this a pretty slim volume, so DC has also crammed in a two-part filler story that was written by Will Pfeiffer and which got over-looked in previous trades.
I don’t know – I’d like to read more with this character, but I don’t think there’s enough material here to justify the price. It’s too bad this title couldn’t survive, and that the character has been relegated to the place he has been in the DC Universe.
Books I Think You Should Buy:
Viking TP
by Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein; Image, $16.99
Viking was the first Image comic to be published in their ‘Golden Age’ format – oversized, but still at a $3 price point, although I don’t think this edition is going to be printed at the same size.
Viking is a crime comic set in the 9th Century, and much like Brian Wood’s excellent Northlanders series, it deals with Northern Europeans. This comic uses ‘viking’ as a verb, referring to the act of setting forth by sea to pillage. The plot revolves around two brothers, who have plans to steal from the local king.
The story was a little unclear when I read the series, but some of that may have come from the episodic nature of the story and the delays between issues. Regardless, this is a book that should be bought for the art before the story.
Klein uses a number of different techniques and styles over the course of this comic, using stylistic changes to help signify the mood or the weight of the story. This book is not as good as Northlanders, but if that’s your thing, you’ll enjoy this too.
The Tikitis HC
by Jerry Frissen and Fabien Mense; Humanoids, $29.95
A while ago, Image was putting out this comic called Lucha Libre. It was an over-sized anthology title, reprinting some French comics that featured various Mexican Luchadore superheroes. There were different characters each given short, episodic chapters in the book, all written by Jerry Frissen. The comic abruptly ended, with a few solicited issues never seeing publication. Now, Humanoids has come along and started collecting this stuff. The Luchadores Five were supposed to appear in a mini-series, although I think that got canceled too (I was watching for it, because their story was never concluded).
One story that did get to end in the original comics was that of the Tikitis. These are a group of retired luchadores who live on a Polynesian island. They are supposed to be keeping some kind of creature in check, but mostly they just hang out and sleep with local girls. One of the character’s mother arrives for a visit around the same time that some sort of evil scientist voodoo zombie stuff starts happening, and they have to save the day.
These are fun, entertaining comics, and are quite different from most North American stuff. I really enjoyed getting Lucha Libre, and hope to access more of this material in some other form. I’m curious to get a look at this book and see if there is any new material in it as well.
So, what would you buy Were Money No Object?
