Previews: May 2009

Here are the highlights of books shipping to comic stores this May!

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Adhouse Books

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Remake (Volume 1) TP - Lamar Abrams book follows a "robot-boy" in a book that's described as Astro Boy meets Scott Pilgrim. Hmm.

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Archie Comic Publications

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Sonic the Hedgehog #200 - The furry little speedster hits quite the milestone in the ever-popular comic.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures (Volume 1): Heroes In a Half Shell TP - I know people have been waiting for this for a looong while now. The Archie Ninja Turtles comic is supposed to be awesome. It begins with an adaptation of the television series, which is collected in this first volume, before moving on to its own crazy universe.

***Pick of the Month***

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Boom! Studios

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The Unknown #1 (of 4) - This is a new mini-series from Mark Waid about a famous police investigator. What's kind of funny about the description is that they compare it to former Crossgen title Ruse. Which was an awesome book, but it seems odd to compare it to a title from an unsuccessful company.

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Dark Horse

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Aliens #1 (of 4) - Aliens are kind of a staple for Dark Horse, so it's about time they bring back their hit series.

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Cages - Regarded by many as one of the greatest graphic novels out there, Dave McKean's Cages is finally back in print.

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Pixu: The Mark of Evil - The acclaimed work of horror is being collected in a hardcover, featuring the work of Becky Cloonan, Gabriel Ba, Vasilis Lolos and Fabio Moon.

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Rapture #1 (of 6) - A new mini by Michael Avon Oeming and Taki Soma, this is the rapture of superheroes, leaving humanity behind to forge a new world.

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DC Comics

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The Absolute Death HC - The latest title to receive the "Absolute" treatment is Neil Gaiman's spin-off of Sandman featuring his sister Death. This collects both of the Death mini-series with plenty of extras.

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The Nobody HC - An original graphic novel by Jeff Lemire (Essex County) featuring a mysterious stranger who may or may not be The Invisible Man.

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Power Girl #1 - A new ongoing series featuring the fan-favorite character, fresh off the latest Justice Society of America incarnation.

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Superman: Tales From the Phantom Zone TP - DC has been releasing quite a few of these classic "themed" collections, and this one is a great choice.

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Trinity (Volume 1) TP - This is the first collection of DC's latest weekly series, collecting a whopping seventeen issues for $29.99, and featuring the big three DC characters.

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The Unwritten #1 - A new Vertigo series from Mike Carey (Lucifer) and Peter Gross, this debut issue will be only $1 for people to give it a go.

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Drawn & Quarterly

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The Collected Doug Wright: Canada's Master Cartoonist (Volume 1) HC - The first of a two-volume work looking back at the career and work of the influential cartoonist, featuring his classic comic strip.

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George Sprott HC - Seth's new book, featuring the title originally featured in New York Times Magazine.

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Fanfare/Ponent Mon

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A Distant Neighborhood (Volume 1) GN - A manga by Jiro Taniguchi that follows a forty-year-old businessman who returns to his home town to find that he's reverted back to his 14-year-old self, reliving painful childhood moments and coming to new realizations.

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Fantagraphics Books

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The Great Anti-War Cartoons - Craig Yoe edits this anthology that aspires to be the greatest collection of anti-war cartoons, featuring the works of greats like R. Crumb and Fancisco Goya.

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Low Moon - Jason's latest graphic novel collects his work featured in New York Times Magazine, as well as some new stories.

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:01 First Second Books

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The Eternal Smile - A new book written by Gene Luen Yang, award-winning author of American Born Chinese, and drawn by Derek Kirk Kim, exploring the boundaries between reality and fantasy through three stories.

Griffin Books

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The Dark-Hunters (Volume 1) GN - Working in a bookstore, I find this kind of funny. This is the graphic novel adaptation of books by Sherrilyn Kenyon, the romance novelist! Either the focus has shifted away from the romantic elements in the adaptation, or they're really downplaying that aspect.

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Image Comics

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Evil & Malice Save the World TP - This sounds cute. Jimmie Robinson's story of twin teenage girls who become superheroes in face of their supervillian father. Very Runaways-ish, but fun.

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Special Forces (Volume 1) TP - Kyle Baker's story of a couple of American teenagers facing down a villain in Baghdad gets collected.

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The Walking Dead Compendium (Volume 1) TP - Still aren't on board with Robert Kirkman's zombie epic? Well, you can get caught up easily enough with this mammoth collection that includes the first forty-eight issues of the series under one cover (that's over a thousand pages!) for just under $60.

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IDW Publishing

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Astro Boy Movie Prequel: Underground #1 - A prequel to the animated film coming out later this year featuring Osamu Tezuka's beloved creation.

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Marvel Comics

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Alias Ultimate Collection (Book 1) TP - I'm glad to see this get new printings. This first "ultimate" collection includes the first fifteen pages of the MAX series.

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Black Widow: The Sting of the Widow Premiere HC - Featuring many of the Widow's earliest adventures in a nice hardcover collection!

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Dark Reign: The Hood #1 (of 5) - I really enjoy The Hood's appearances in the Avengers titles, so I'm glad to see him get a new mini-series as part of the big Marvel crossover, and written by Jeff Parker (of the excellent Agents of Atlas) no less.

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Dark Reign: Young Avengers #1 (of 5) - I've absolutely hated every Marvel crossover involving The Young Avengers and the Runaways, but this one actually sounds decent. Kind of like how Norman Osborn has his bad guy Illuminati counterpart to the original Marvel Illuminati, these are the young villains of the Marvel U banding together as a dark mirror to the Young Avengers.

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Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #1 (of 4) - It's like a Superpets team-up! Featuring Lockjaw, Lockheed, Redwing, Hairball and Frog Thor, these animals are sure to get into plenty of mischief while saving the world in their first mini-series. I love the variant cover of Lockheed with Kitty Pryde by Niko Henrichon.

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Ms. Marvel #39 - I love Ms. Marvel. The book and the character of Carol Danvers. I would be a tad bit upset if Carol dies like the solicitations for this book indicate, but it's pretty cool that the new "bad" Ms. Marvel (Moonstone of the Thunderbolts) is taking over this title.

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New Mutants #1 - Zeb Wells and Diogenes Neves take on the task of reviving the classic team of New Mutants to fill in the void left by the Young X-Men or New X-Men or whatever they were called before their cancellation. Cannonball, Magma, Magik, Sunspot, Dani Moonstar and Karma gather together once more, with the obvious omission of Wolfsbane, as she's on the horrible X-Force team roster. Love that classic team cover by Alex Ross, even if some of those characters won't have permanent spots on the team.

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Thor: Tales of Asgard by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby #1 (of 5) - They've reprinted these Thor back-up stories a few times in various incarnations (including floppies), so here we go again...

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Ultimatum: Spider-Man Requiem Book #1 (of 2) - This is the bridge between Ultimate Spider-Man and the launch of its new incarnation, the cumbersomely-titled Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (gugh). Pencils by both artists who've worked on the book - Mark Bagley and Stuart Immonen.

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X-Men: Forever Alpha - This is kind of neat. Chris Claremont tells the story of what he would have done with the X-Men had he not left fifteen years ago, and it's all pencilled by the artist of that time period, fan-favorite Jim Lee.

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X-Men: Magneto Testament Premiere HC - I rather liked this WWII tale featuring a young Magneto, helpless and powerless as the people around him are executed. Historically acurate and pretty riveting, if not utterly depressing.

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NBM

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George McManus' Bringing Up Father HC - This collects the first two years worth of dailies from the classic comic strip by McManus, many which haven't been reprinted in 90+ years.

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Pantheon Books

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Asterios Polyp GN - A new graphic novel by David Mazzucchelli that sounds like it's gunning to be one of the best books of the year.

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Top Shelf Productions

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Second Thoughts GN - New Swedish cartoonist Niklas Asker brings us a story of chance encounters and its impact on two lives.

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Viz Media

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Children of the Sea (Volume 1) - This new Viz Signature line title follows a young boy drawn to the local aquarium and two mysterious boys he meets there at the same time as fish begin disappearing from the world's oceans.

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Yen Press

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The History of the West Wing - A historical romance illustrated in full color, this is based on a classic Chinese saga.