Comics and More

Sword of Sorcery made its debut during DC's zero issue month, and features the character Amethyst, with a short back-up story focusing on Beowulf. Amethyst is a fantasy with a lot of potential.  Written by Christy Marx (creator of Jem ) and illustrated by Aaron Lopresti, this title follows Amy Winston, a loner who has been shifted between schools as she has grown up, her mother training her to fight with a sword in the evenings leading up to her seventeenth birthday.  At her latest school, Amy gets in the middle of a fight as three guys try to take advantage of one of Amy's classmates.  Amy is able to fight them off rather easily, but to accentuate the fact that she really is a lone wolf, the girl she rescues, who has been nice to her in the past, runs from her screaming, despite the fact that she just saved her.  But Amy's high school drama hardly matters as, that evening, her mother whisks her away to a new world, where her evil sister wants noth...

Here is the book you should be paying attention to, in comic stores today... Barbara GN - Here's another Osamu Tezuka work in print, thanks to DMP ! This one's a 400+ page thriller. Other Noteworthy Releases Absolute Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War HC American Vampire (Volume 4) HC Archie: The Best of Harry Lucey (Volume 2) HC Dark Matter (Volume 1): Rebirth TP Gasoline Alley (Volume 1) HC Joe Kubert's Tarzan of the Apes Artist's Edition HC Marvel Zombies: Destroy HC The Mighty Thor by Matt Fraction (Volume 3) HC The Milkman Murders HC Next Men (Volume 3) HC Showcase Presents: Amethyst (Volume 1) TP Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Volume 3): Shadows TP Tellos: Colossal (Volume 2) HC Voodoo (Volume 1): What Lies Beneath TP The Walking Dead (Volume 8) HC Wolverine and the X-Men by Jason Aaron (Volume 3) HC

Here is the book you should pay attention to, in comic shops today... Sword of Sorcery #0 - Amethyst returns in a new series this month, thanks to Jem creator Christy Marx, who worked on a bunch of animated shows you probably remember from your childhood like G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . Also contains a Beowulf back-up story by Tony Bedard. Great artists on this issue too: Aaron Lopresti, Matt Ryan and Jesus Saiz. Other Noteworthy Releases Angelic Layer (Book 1) TP Comics Sketchbooks: The Private Worlds of Today's Most Creative Talents SC Eerie Archives (Volume 11) HC Ghost #0 Green Lantern Corps (Volume 1): Fearsome TP Legion Lost (Volume 1): Run From Tomorrow TP Memorial (Volume 1) HC The Secret of the Stone Frog HC Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Volume 3): Shadows TP Thanos: Final Threat #1 Womanthology: Space #1 X-Men: The Wedding of Cyclops and Phoenix TP

Jo Rioux I'm a big fan of all-ages fantasy in all mediums, but especially in comics.  Jeff Smith's Bone is kind of the gold standard for all-ages fantasy comics, but there have been a slew of great new comics in the past few years:  Thomas Siddel's  Gunnerkrigg Court   and Scott Chantler's  Three Thieves , to name a few.  Well, you can add Jo Rioux's Cat's Cradle to the list.  This fresh new fantasy series stars Suri, an orphaned girl who has been living with a merchant caravan, following them as they move from town to town, despite the owner's attempts to get rid of her.  The rest of the caravan is like a family to her however, and she dreams of one day becoming a monster tamer, as she feels is her destiny.  In this world, monsters drift into our world through a rift in the mountains, where giants keep most of the dangerous monsters away from civilized areas, but some slip through anyway.  One day, a strange man comes to the cara...

This is the book you should be paying special attention to, in comic shops tomorrow... Stumptown (Volume 2): The Case of the Baby In the Velvet Case #1 - A brand-new Stumptown detective mystery featuring great private eye Dex Parios, from creators Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth. The first mini-series was fantastic, so I have high hopes for this one. Other Noteworthy Releases Amazing Agent Jennifer Omnibus (Volume 1) Birds of Prey (Volume 1): Trouble In Mind TP Bucko HC Buffy the Vampire Slayer Library Edition (Volume 2): Wolves At the Gate HC Bulletproof Coffin (Volume 2): Disinterred TP Clockwork Sky (Volume 1) The Crackle of the Frost HC Dorothy and the Wizard In Oz HC Dr. Strange: Season One HC Drama GN Fury of Firestorm, Nuclear Man (Volume 1): God Particle TP Genshiken: Second Season (Volume 1) Hugo Tate GN The Judas Coin HC Legends of Zita the Spacegirl GN Love & Rockets: New Stories #5 Savage Dragon: Invasion TP

Victor Gischler & Paul Lee I like that season nine of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics is expanding the universe through various series and mini-series.  I thought that season eight relied way too heavily on appearances from characters, one after another, and this expansion kind of gives the individual books room to breathe, and lets fan-favorite characters, like Spike, shine on their own.  I really liked that this first issue of Spike has no characters from the television series or other Buffy books at all.  It's all Spike and a supporting crew of space cockroaches, in outer space.  Gischler does a fine job of getting Spike's voice across here, and we get to see all sides of Spike that we love to see: the funny sarcastic guy, the bad boy, and the heart throb being all pensive over Buffy.  It's all here in this first issue.  I think that the space cockroaches are a great addition to the Buffy universe, and they work well with Spike, playing off of ...

Here is the book you should be paying attention to, in comic shops tomorrow...   Dal Tokyo HC -  Dal Tokyo is a strip about a future Mars terraformed by Texans and Japanese workers, from the great Gary Panter.  After several delays, it finally gets an offical US release this week from Fantagraphics. Other Noteworthy Releases Aquaman (Volume 1): The Trench HC Avengers: Celestial Quest TP Aya: Aya In Yop City GN Benny & Penny: Lights Out GN A Chinese Life GN Glory (Volume 1): The Once & Future Destroyer TP Guarding the Globe #1 Harker (Volume 1): Book of Solomon HC The Manhattan Projects (Volume 1): Science Bad TP New Avengers Omnibus (Volume 1) HC Road To Oz #1 Spider-Man: Revenge of the Sinister Six HC Starman Omnibus (Volume 2) TP Teen Titans (Volume 1): It's Our Right To Fight TP Tezuka's Message To Adolf (Volume 1) GN Thanos Quest #1

On this month's Comics-and-More Podcast , Patrick Markfort and I discuss two works from manga creator Shigeru Mizuki, that Drawn & Quarterly has released. Reviewed: Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths Shigeru Mizuki Nonnonba Shigeru Mizuki For further reading: A Drifting Life Yoshihiro Tatsumi