Previews-o-Rama part 2: The Middle

It's time to go through the latest Previews to discover the good, the bad, and the strange:





Abiogenesis resolicits Strangehaven #17, so now you have a second chance to order it.



Adhouse has Project: Superior, an original anthology with indy-type creators doing original super-hero creations. Contributors include Paul Hornshcemeier, Dean Haspiel, John Lucas, Jim Mahfood, Tara McPherson, Scott Morse, Brian Lee O'Malley, Paul Pope, Paul Rivoche, Jim Rugg, and Brian Wood.



AiT/PlanetLAR brings us Scurvy Dogs, vol. 1: Rags to Riches, collecting the 5-issue humor series.



Alternative Comics has Jim Campbell's Xeric Award-winning Krachmacher.



Amaze Ink/Slave Labor has a third It's Science with Dr. Radium collection, and a new printing of Andi Watson's second Skeleton Key volume, Celestial Calendar (which remains my favorite thing that Watson has done--I may finally get the collection, even though I own all the original issues).



For those of you without enough T&A comics in your life, Anarchy Studios/Harris Comics has Vampirella/Witchblade: Feast of the Cannibal Dolls #1. I'm sure they're sending copies to the Harvey Awards committee even as I write this...



Antarctic Press has a Pocket Manga of Ben Dunn's Heaven Sent. Who's the sucker for paying full price for the individual issues when he could have waited for the inevitable collection? Me.



Antarctic also has Gold Digger Adventures, a GD-12 one-shot from Fred Perry.



Ape Entertainment's A Different Pace GN has pretty girl space pirates in four short stories.



Arcade is actually soliciting a Youngblood: Genesis collection. Wanna take bets on how many times this gets resolicited?



Archie's Betty & Veronica Spectacular gets a makeover in the form of teen magazines.



Lady Death survives the death of another publisher and is born again at Avatar as Brian Pulido's Medieval Lady Death. It claims to be all-ages, but if that's the case should she really be wearing a corset and brandishing a sword?



Beckett's second Ruule series, Kiss & Tell, comes to a conclusion.



That poor girl in the ad for Jim Balent's Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose is going to have a very sore back when she gets older. She should consider reduction surgery...



CPM Manga's new Masca manhwa says that it's a "sexy goth fantasy in the tradition of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, but it looks suspiciously like yaoi. Does anyone know if this is the case?



Drawn & Quarterly is reprinting Chester Brown's 80s mini-series Ed the Happy Clown, but wouldn't it have made mroe sense to issue this as a collection than as individual comics? They also have a second issue of Kevin Huizenga's Or Else



Deamwave continue to milk the Transformers nostalgia until it carries them to the grave.



A Zot! statue would be cool, but not for $90.



El Capitan is reissuing David Lapham's Stray Bullets trades in 10th anniversary editions.



Fantasgraphics finally has the final issue of Jessica Abel's La Perdita.



Graphix/Scholastic has the first of the color Bone digests, but if I were you I'd get the one-volume complete edition instead (DCBS has it for just twenty bucks...)



IDW's Bigfoot has art by Richard Corben. They also have a collection of the former Image series Sword of Dracula.



Kenzer & Company's Knights of the Dinner Table hits the big #100, which goes to show that even if your drawing ability is limited, you can still have a hit by knowing and appealing to your audience.



NBM/Papercutz has a collection of the first Hardy Boys stories and the first Nancy Drew OGN. NBM also has a second collection of Lewis Trondheim's Dungeon.



Oni has the second Scott Pilgrim OGN as well as a reissue of O'Malley's Lost at Sea.



Rosen Publishing Group has a new series of books about 'Graphic Novelists,' with individual volumes for Neil Gaiman, Bryan Talbot, Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, Colleen Doran & Will Eisner. They're all worthy talents, but wouldn't it have made more sense to release one of these hardcover volumes per month rather than all at once?



Domestic publisher Seven Seas debuts four titles, each done in 'authentic manga style'. Which means that not only are they 192-page black & white 5" x 7.5" books done with manga-style art, but they're also done to read 'backwards' like 'real' manga, despite the fact that they are original books done here in America for a western audience. We have now officially reached the silly point of the manga craze. They actually look like they could be interesting titles, but choosing to do your comics backwards to ape manga is just kind of sad.



SAF Comics has Tex, a black & white western GN with art by Joe Kubert.



Is it just me, or is TokyoPop publishing a lot of manhwa these days? Is the stuff from Korea cheaper to license than the stuff from Japan?



GTO is on volume 23. I gave it up when it started to get repetitive for me by volume 4; I can't imagine how it could be dragged this long.



Top Shelf has a second Owly volume. I haven't read the first, but I've read good things about it.



Viz's S.O.S., a shojo series about teenage girls who start a 'secret dating agency' at their school, looks like it could be interesting.





Well, that wraps up another trip through Previews. I hope that you find something that appeals to you.