Christmas Covers - December 1

Last year's Christmas Covers were a big hit, so we're doing it again: twenty-five more comic covers with a holiday theme, in our little virtual comic book advent calendar.

Hover over the image to reveal today's cover, and click on it to see the larger-sized version.

The first Christmas Cover of 2005 is by Bob Moore, from 1951's Walt Disney's Christmas Parade #3.

Come back tomorrow, and every day this month, for a new Christmas cover.


Just 24 more 'get-ups' until Santa!

The Goose is Getting Fat

That's right: Christmas is coming, and it's coming to Yet Another Comics Blog!

Playing now on Yet Another Music Radio is my Holiday 2005 mix, with over three hours of Christmas music.

Starting tomorrow we'll have our 25 days of Christmas Covers, counting down the days until Santa brings us lots of comics and graphic novels and manga for our stockings.

And next week will be the start of my 2nd Annual CBLDF fund drive.

Plus I'll scatter in reviews of holiday-themed comics, and who knows what else?

(And I'm sure you've already seen it, but David & Immelda over at Love Manga will be kicking off an Advent Calendar/Manga give-a-way, starting tomorrow.)

New This Week: November 30, 2005

Based on the NCRL list for this week's comics shipping from Diamond, here are a few things to look for at the local comic shop tomorrow:


The Pick of the Week is Jeff Nicholson's Colonia, vol. 2: On Into Great Lands from AiT/PlanetLAR, the second chapter in his alternate world fantasy. I can understand how, with Nicholson's slow production schedule, you may not have wanted to buy Colonia in the individual issues; but now that it's collected, you should really pick it up.


In other comics:

Aeon have the second issue of Matt Howarth's latest Keif Llama: Xenotech series. I get the feeling sometimes that I'm the only person around who loves Howarth's stuff. Won't you please give it a try?

Dark Horse have new issues of BPRD: The Black Flame (#4) and Usagi Yojimbo (#89).

DC have a collection of Warren Ellis's 'reclarified' Ocean; the penultimate issue of Kyle Baker's Plastic Man (#19); and new issues of JLA: Classified (#14), Legion of Super-Heroes (#12), and The Losers (#30).

IDW have a new collection of classic Grimjack: Legend of Grimjack, vol. 4.

Image have a fourth Walking Dead collection; and new issues of Fell (#3) and Ferro City (#4).

Ludovico Technique debut their new high-concept series Living in Infamy. (The concept? Witness protection for super-villains.)

Marvel have the Marvel Holiday Special 2005, anew issue of X-Men and Power Pack (#2), and the final issue of X-Men: Kitty Pride - Shadow & Flame (#5).

NBM have the latest of Rick Geary's Treasury of Victorian Murder: Vol. 7: Abraham Lincoln.

If it's the last week of the month, that must mean that TokyoPop is dumping a pile of books on the market. Among their 30(!) tankobons is the debut of Queenie Chan's OEL manga The Dreaming.

Viper have the final issue of the first Middleman mini (#4)--with monkeys on the cover!


Another relatively short week, so how about spending some of your hard-earned dough on some comics as presents for your friends and family?

The Legion of Librarian Comics Bloggers

Okay, so it's not quite a legion (yet...)

Besides me, there's TangognaT, Redhead Fangirl, and the newest addition: Shelly's Comic Book Shelf.

I'm surely missing one or two, yes?

Anyway, the Legion of Super-Heroes started with just three members, so I think we're well on our way!

Previews-o-Rama part 1: The Front

Yes, Previews-o-Rama is back, at least for this month. We'll see how it goes...


Dark Horse

Hellboy: Makoma is a two-part flashback mini telling a story of the big red horned one in Africa. It's written by Mignola with art by Richard Corben. The preview page looks pretty good.

The chronological Concrete collection continue with the fourth volume: Killer Smile, collecting the titular mini plus a bunch of short stories.

The Territory is a hardcover OGN by Jaimie Delano and David Lloyd. The description summary given doesn't do much for me, but that creative team makes it worth a consideration, as Lloyd doesn't seem to do much comic work these days.

Okay, who the heck asked for a Scarface prequel novel? And wtf is Dark Horse doing publishing this?

Okay now, let's talk Crying Freeman: writer Kazuo Koike wrote Lone Wolf & Cub, one of the best manga series ever; and artist Ryoichi Ikegami is a fantastic artist. Yet I'm telling you to stay away from this series. Why? It starts rather strong, focusing on the titular reluctant assassin; but as it continues, it gets more and more violent and misogynistic. I was reading this when Viz published it many years ago, and its one of the few comics I ever stopped buying because it became too offensive. It's quite a shame, actually. If you need an Ikegami fix, hunt down the out-of-print editions of Sanctuary or, even better, Mai, the Psychic Girl (and hope that Viz sees fit to release those again at some point).

There are a couple more Harlequin Manga as well: Idol Dreams in the pink (all ages) line, and Holding On to Alex in the purple (smutty) line. I know they're probably targeting the February Valentine's Day crowd, but wouldn't it make more sense to space out the releases on these rather than putting two out in the same month?

Fans of horror manga will no doubt be happy to see Octopus Girl and School Zone.

The post-movie Star Wars titles kick off with a 25 cent flip-book issue.

Oh, I'm loving the half-page The Goon strips that Eric Powell is providing in the Previews listings--hopefully they'll be collecte dup at some point.


DC Comics

Paul Pope on Batman: Year One Hundred looks cool (and will probably look just as cool in the inevitable trade collection later in the year).

Hey look: Cliff Chiang is drawing Detective Comics! I suppose it's too much to ask that he'll be sticking around as the regular artists after the OYG (One Year Gap).

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight hits the magic 200th issue. Eddie Campbell writes, and Bart Sears does the art--depending on which Bart Sears shows up, this could be good, or could be an eyesore.

The unnecessary Batman: Gotham Knights finally comes to an end.

Alas, so does the wonderful Gotham Knights, which just goes to show that a major publisher can have a quality, critically acclaimed title and have it still not make it in today's market (see also: Plastic Man).

Superman, Action Comics and Adventures of Superman give us a three-part overview of the history of the Earth-2 Superman, by Joe Kelly, Ed Benes & Dan Jurgens.

Showcase Presents this months brings us House of Mystery: 552 pages of classic silver-age code-approved horror.

Paul Levitz and George Perez on JSA? Sold!

Jonah Hex! Sgt. Rock! And now Warlord!--the 70s are back in a big way at DC. It looks like Bart Sears is using his good art for this book, so it may be worth picking up.

Dude, that's Dawnstar, Blok & Tyroc on the cover of Legion of Super-Heroes #15! If they'd pring back Quislet, Polar Boy, & Tellus my life would be happy (at least for the 15 minutes it would take to read the thing).

Wonder Woman also come to an end (at least until she is rebooted after the OYG)--wouldn't be a Crisis without a Wonder Woman cancelation, would it?

Speaking of Crisis, there's plenty to go around this month, including Superman vs. Superman in Infinity Crisis #5. Look, you know whether or not you're getting this; nothing I say one way or the other will change you mind, will it?

If you're looking for some good, accessible Superman stories, you can't go wrong with the two Superman Adventures digest-sozed collections.

Golly, but all of a sudden CMX seem to be publishing a ton of manga. They're not quite at the TokyoPop or Viz level yet, but they're getting there. Too bad none of it interests me.

John Ridley's Those Who Walk in Darkness was a darn good super-hero novel, so I'll give his new mini-series, The American Way a try.

Hey look: Planetary! Which comic do you think will fall behind first: The irregular Planetary or the suppsoedly bi-monthly Astonishing X-Men?

Along with his Solo issue, Howard Chaykin's City of Tomorrow was one of his strongest efforts in a long time. Hopefully it'll find the audience it deserves in the trade collection.

Those of you late on the Grant Morrison bandwagon will want to check out the Kid Eternity collection.


Image

Bendis's Sam and Twitch finally get a propper trade collection. it was actually pretty good stuff, if I rememebr correctly.

I suppose if I were a big Belle & Sebastian fan I'd be totally stoked about Put the Book Back on the Shelf, an anthology of adaptatios of B&S songs into comics form. I'm not, but maybe you are?

I am, however, toally stoked to see that Jimmie Robinson has a new mini: Bomb Queen. This from the man who brought us the underrated CyberZone, Amanda & Gunn and Evil & Malice.

Hey wait; there was a zero issue of Rocketo? I missed it. It's not worth it to me to buy the whoel colelction just for that, but if you missed this series when it was at Speakeasy, you have a second change to get yourself some slow-moving but pretty pretty comix.

If you're not buying and enjoying Fell or Gødland, there may be something wrong with you; see your family doctor soon!


Marvel

For no good reason, Ultimate Thor steps off the cover of a romance novel and onto the cover of Ultimate Fantastic Four #27, where he hovers myseriously and gigantically over the White House. Note the complete lack of any mention of Thor in he solicitation copy.

Yeah yeah, Astonishing X-Men is back. Supposedly bi-monthly. Figure in the inevitable delays, and I figure you'll be able to buy the trade collection sometime in mid-2007...

The real first issue of Peter David & Mike Wieringo's Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man finally hits with the fifth issue.

Sean McKeever and Takeshi Miyazawa deserve your money, so you are buying Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, right? Right? Look, if you don't spend it on this comic, that big bully is just going to beat your lunch money out of you anyway, so you may as well get a good comic out of it.

Ed Brumaker and Michael Lark take over Daredevil--this better be worth losing Gotham Central over, is all I'm saying.

Look: a fun new Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius one-shot. Coolness.

Why oh why do Marvel insist on publishing things like Ares, Doc Sampson, New Mangaverse, Sable & Fortune, and Underworld?--C-list characters by 2nd-tier creative teams that will get no promotion support to speak of? They may be perfectly good comics--heck, one or two of them may even be great--but does Marvel expect these things to sell themselves?

Can I just say how damn happy I am that Peter Milligan is writing an X-Statix mini? Oh, I'm sure it'll sell for crap (see the previous paragraph) but I don't care. I'll be reading it (along with three or four of you other people), and that's enough.

File also under damn happy: Peter David & Ryan Sook doing X-Factor.

Y'know, if Ladronn were doing the interiors of Incredible Hulk, and not just the covers, I'd be tempted to read it again.

Funniest solicitation of the month: The Secret War hardcover collection. Nothing intrinsically funny about the solicit; just the humorously misplaced optimism that issue #5 will come out in time to be collection.

Essential Moon Knight! I missed this stuff the first time around, so I'm happy to see this affordable collection come down the pipe.

Just in case you missed any of it when it came out in comics form, Marvel are dumping ever single House of M story into a collection this month. Cause nothing says oversaturation like eight trade paperbacks.


Whew--I forgot how much work this is! Part 2, the middle, will be along at some point in the near future...

Review: 1000 Steps to World Domination

1000 Steps to World Domination
by Rob Osborne
AiT/PlanetLAR. $12.95.

1000 Steps to World Domination is not an easy comic to describe. It's kind of a semi-autobiographical story about the trials and tribulations of a freelance artist. But there are aliens. And a talking monkey. And a tortoise and hare. And of course there's a long-suffering wife (isn't there always in stories about artists?)

Through it all, Rob--the artist in question--ruminates on taking over the world through cartooning. This sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but it does have the novelty of having never been tried before. (I myself have at various times been involved in no less than two world domination plans. One never went beyond high school graduation, but the other is still ongoing, so I shant speak of it here...)

But it's not really a story at all. It's more of a series of loosely connected vignettes--some fanciful, others down to earth. I hesitate to call it stream-of-consciousness, because it's not really that at all, although it sometimes feels like it is. Most of the vingettes are just a page long, and there's rarely an actual connection from one to the next. But they somehow make sense, and despite the lack of obvious flow between them, it all flows together nonetheless.

At 136 pages, it seems to be just about the right length; Osborne wisely cuts things off before they become too cute or cloying. It all makes for an interesting and entertaining read.

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)

Monkey Covers

Sunday is Monkey Covers day here at YACB. Because there's nothing better than a comic with a monkey on the cover.

This is the last monkey cover for 2005 (we take the month of December off), so what better way to wrap things up for the time being than with the original big bad ape himself: King Kong #1.

(standard disclaimer about apes not really being monkeys applies)


Image courtesy of the GCD. Click on the image for a larger version.