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Friday, April 03, 2009

Quick thoughts on some upcoming books

Haven't really paid that much attention to comic book solicitations for a while, except to keep track of the Kirby and Ditko. In one sense, that's good, since occasionally I get surprised by something I didn't even know was going to exist, and then get to read it right away instead of three to six months later. On the other hand, it means there's probably a bunch of things that I'd have loved that I still don't know about.

Anyway, took a bit of a closer look this time, here's some stuff worth noting.

First Second is re-releasing the Trondheim/Parme TINY TYRANT, which I rather enjoyed, in what they call a more "kid-friendly" format. Larger pages, fewer of them, lower cover price. Great little book, and the first volume TINY TYRANT: THE ETHELBERTOSAURUS includes my favourite of the dozen stories from the original book right there in the title, so that's okay.

Steve Rude is re-releasing the early NEXUS stories from his own Rude Dude Productions, and this time he's going manga style, smaller black&white books for $10, starting with NEXUS: AS IT HAPPENED BOOK 1, reprinting the original 3-issue b&w series and first four issues of the colour series. I already have this stuff, but might pick these up to have them for easy reference, which I wasn't likely to do for the $50 colour hardcovers from Dark Horse (which surprise me by continuing now to a 9th book, by the way, so I guess there's a market for them in the not-me world). Of course, it would be nice if NEXUS #101 came out...

Jack Katz, of FIRST KINGDOM fame, has a new 100 page graphic novel coming from The Hero Initiative, titled LEGACY. I never did read all of THE FIRST KINGDOM. I liked parts of it, but it felt a bit overblown. I do like Katz's art, even have a sketchbook by him, so this might be worth checking out to see how he does with a story not quite as epic.

Tezuka's BLACK JACK gets up to a sixth book from Vertical (of, apparently, seventeen). I'm in the middle of the second one right now, not really loving it, but it has its moments.

I'm looking forward to seeing the colour volumes of the Stanley/Tripp LITTLE LULU that Dark Horse has coming out, picking up where their 18-book black&white series left off, though I'm waiting to see how the colouring actually looks.

P. Craig Russell's wonderful adaptation of Neil Gaiman's CORALINE comes out in a $10 paperback. And Gaiman has another children's book with Dave McKean, CRAZY HAIR. Wonder how long before that gets made into a movie (that feels nothing like the book) and adapted to comics (faithfully) by Russell?

I've been waiting 30 years to be able to buy a deluxe hardcover reprint of CAPTAIN CANUCK. Now IDW makes all our dreams come true.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BAT LASH. Aragones, O'Neil, Cardy. I'm sold. Plus they include some of the later stuff which I don't have, including work by Dan Spiegle.

Rick Geary's latest from NBM is A TREASURY OF 20TH-CENTURY MURDER VOLUME 2: FAMOUS PLAYERS. I need to catch up on these before he gets to OJ Simpson...

Sunday Press has another of their big books of gorgeous comic strips, this time reprinting some Wizard of Oz comic strip stuff by L. Frank Baum, W.W. Denslow and John Neill (although apparently not together) in QUEER VISITORS FROM THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ. Pricey, but sure to look great.

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