On The Shelves: 06/07/06, by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Reprinted courtesy of Comic Book Commentary.

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My weekly look at select comic books being released Thursday, 06/07/06. The full shipping is list available at ComicList.

[NOTE: Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure to take advantage of it. If not, find another one; or try Khepri.com or MidtownComics.com]

PICK OF THE WEEK

Action Philosophers Vol 1: Giant-Size Thing


BOOM! STUDIOS
Tag #1 (Of 3), $3.99

Zombies...with a twist! Actually, this first issue sets up a fun premise, as the child's game of Tag is perverted into the method of transmission that infects the tagged while curing the tagger, and the answers to the mystery behind it can be found on the internet. One of Keith Giffen's better efforts to come from Boom! so far, and Kody (Punks) Chamberlain is perfectly suited for it.

DARK HORSE COMICS
Archenemies #3 (Of 4), $2.99
Star Wars Legacy #0, $0.25

Archenemies has actually been a pretty fun read so far, as the extremely odd coupling is played for laughs and it mostly works. If you have a spare $3, you could do much worse. *** I've never been into the Star Wars adaptations, in any medium, but the recent Boba Fett one-shot was entertaining and got me curious. That this Legacy preview -- taking place 100 years after Return of the Jedi -- is by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, though, would be enough to get me to check it out even if it was a relaunch of Crystar. (Which I wouldn't mind seeing anyway. **ahem**)

DC COMICS
Detective Comics #820, $2.99
Jonah Hex #8, $2.99

JSA #86, $2.99
Wonder Woman #1, $2.99

A depressingly light week from the Diminished Competition, but since I'm dramatically slashing my pull list anyway, I guess it's a blessing in disguise *** The previous issue of the "Face-to-Face" crossover was rather disappointing, but I'm still onboard with the overall feel of OYL Batman and Gotham City. Curious to see when/if the new Batwoman pops up since she's technically been around for the 40 weeks or so prior to this story arc, and how they reconcile her presumed crime-fighting (not to mention Renee Montoya and the Question) when supposedly Harvey Dent was the only one holding down the fort. It's also interesting that now both Batman and Superman (in Shadowpact #1) have been shown running around the DCU when they were supposed to be way out-of-town and depowered, respectively. So much for years of planning and tightly coordinated continuity! *** In cutting back my pull list, I wasn't sure what to do about Jonah Hex, a title I'm enjoying well enough but suffers a bit from its lack of a connection to anything else I'm reading from DC. When it comes to Marvel and DC, I'm generally looking for my capes and spandex fix -- and to a lesser degree, that sense of a larger shared universe -- so it almost feels like the money I spend on Hex is taking away from my non-superhero budget. If it were a Vertigo title, I probably wouldn't feel the same way, which of course makes no sense at all, but that's why fan is short for fanatic, I guess! *** JSA never really grabbed me, but I am looking forward to its relaunch, thanks as much to their presence in the Vs. TCG (and my current team of choice when playing) than anything else. Hopefully Johns delivers some solid character-driven storytelling like he did the first year and a half or so on Teen Titans. *** Am I wrong for having zero interest in Wonder Woman? Like Superman, the character has never interested me in the slightest, though I was intrigued by what I'd read about Rucka's take on her before Infinite Crisis derailed things. There's something inherently silly about most of DC's major (and minor) icons -- though I've recently learned that Green Lantern no longer suffers from a weakness to all things yellow -- and my inability to connect to any of them largely comes from a sense of their being created powers-first, character-second. Probably explains why Batman and his various unpowered partners and rogues have always been my favorites.

DEVILS DUE PUBLISHING
GI Joe Declassified Manapul Cvr A #1 (Of 3), $4.95

Larry Hama returns to the scene of the crime! I was a casual fan on the original Marvel series back in the day, but Back Issue #16 has a great interview with Hama about those glory days that really got me excited about seeing his return to the characters he effectively created.

EVIL TWIN COMICS
Action Philosophers Vol 1 Giant Sized Thing TPB, $6.95

I have the individual issues, but if you slept on them, pick this Giant Sized Thing up and enjoy! You'll laugh, you'll learn, you'll be hooked.

IMAGE COMICS
Hector Plasm De Mortuis One Shot, $5.99

Hector Plasm was one of my favorite entries from the short-lived Western Tales of Terror anthology series (Hey, Villard! How about putting out a collection of that one?), a sort of Old West Ghostbuster, so I'm looking forward to this. Kind of steep cover price, though, so it better be a double-sized issue.

MARVEL COMICS
Civil War Front Line #1 (Of 10), $2.99

Wow, the House of Ideas comes up short this week, too! I was somewhat intrigued by Front Lines' premise, but it falls victim to the Great Pull List Purge of the Summer of Ought-Six. Might check it out in TPB if it gets good reviews.

NEW DIMENSION COMICS
Backstreet Boys Backstreet Project #1 Collectors Ed, $3.95

Um...what?!?! --hits Google-- Ah! New Dimension apparently bought Stan Lee Media and are now the "exclusive source for the rare BSB comic book and extra goodies. Best of all, weown [sic] ALL of the production artwork for the BSB 'webisodes'. We can never show it all, but if you have a favorite character, we can try to dig up a nice one for you. Just e-mail us!" Jim Salicrup offered some interesting background on this "rare" comic, including this little tidbit: "At an outrageous ten dollars a copy, the first printing quickly grossed a million dollars." That works out to 100,000 copies sold, a certifiable hit by today's standards. Interesting that New Dimension seems to believe that BSB still has enough of a fanbase that they can get $3.95/copy for this "rarity" in the direct market. Of course, real fans will prefer the variant edition: "Backstreet Project Comic - Hand Sketched Edition. Only 99 Copies Exisit! [sic] Each with a drawing of Nick Carter on the cover. Comes with Certificate of Authenticity. $24.99" Yikes!

PANTHEON BOOKS
Embroideries SC, $10.95

Finally read both volumes of Persepolis (soon to be an animated movie!), which not only did I enjoy, but my wife loved, too. (And she actually read them before me, which was a first!) I'll be picking Embroideries up to complete the quasi-trilogy.

SALT PETER PRESS
Lump Vol 1 TPB, $14.95

There's something very wrong about naming your comics publishing company after what has long been believed -- mistakenly, BTW -- to be an anaphrodisiac. And yet, there's a certain poetry to it, too.