New This Week: August 31, 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 AiT/PlanetLAR's Smoke & Guns by Kirsten Baldock & Fabio Moon. I've been in love with Moon's art ever since I read Rock 'n' Roll, and it will be great to see that art for a full 100 pages of action-packed fun!


In other comics:

Amazing Aaron Productions debut the first volume of A College Girl Named Joe (I hope it's good, because I've already pre-ordered vol. 2...)

Antarctic have a new issue of the Ben-Dunn-ified Ninja High School (#131) and the 2005 Gold Digger Annual.

Dark Horse have the debuts of the latest BPRD series, THe Black Flame, and Humberto Ramos's Revelations.

DC have new issues of Astro City: The Dark Age (#3), Ex Machina (#14), Flash (#225), Green Lantern (#4), JLA: Classified (#11), The Losers (#27), Solo (#6), Tom Strong (#34), Wonder Woman (#220), and the final issue of Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight (#4).

Drawn & Quarterly have the third issue of Kevin Huizenga's sublime Or Else.

GT Labs have the autobiography of Charles R. Knight--not a comic book, but it does have lovely illustrations by Mark Schultz.

IDW have collections of 30 Days of Night: Bloodsuckers Tales and Desperadoes: Banners of Gold.

Image have new issues of The Expatriate (#3) and Freshmen (#2), and the long, long delayed final issue of Dawn: Three Tiers (#6).

Jetpack Press have a new issue of Johnny Raygun Quarterly (#6).

Marvel have new issues of Captain America (#9), Powers (#12), Runaways (#7), and X-Men: Kitty Pryde--Shadow & Flame (#3); the final issue of Supreme Power (#18); and in the long delayed camp there's the final (for now) issue of Astonishing X-Men (#12), Wha Huh?, and Daredevil: Father #2!

(Good golly, next thing you know a new issue of Miracleman will be coming out... :) )

Moronik Comics debut both Bug Girl and Dirtboy.

Oni press have a new volume of Love As a Foreign Language (#3).

Pantheon have a paperback edition of Persepolis 2.

Renaissance Press have a new issue of Amelia Rules (#14).

Speakeasy have a trade collection of Jamie Delano's old Vertigo series 2020 Visions.

TokyoPop debuts Girl Got Game.

Wilson Place have a second volume of WJHC: Hold Tight.


Gee, that's a lot of comics--must be the end of the month or something...

My Latest Time-Sink

I spent waaay too much time over the weekend contributing to Tegan's new Comic Book Series Wiki. The goal of the Wiki is to provide people with an introduction to various on-going comic series. (She explains her whole rationale here. It's a worthwhile project, and I have that obsessive librarian personality combined with too many damn comics, so this helps me channel my geekdom constructively.

I started with just the intention of maintaining a couple of pages, but soon got really obsessed and now my fingerprints are all over the place on it. There's still plenty of information that could be filled-in, so if there's a comic series or two that you like/are obsessive about, please come on in and contribute!

(Of course, I *should* have spent my time more constructively by writing either the comics & libraries areticle that's due tomorrow, or the blogs in libraries article that's due next month. At least I can justify this time as learning more about Wikis...)

Infinite Crisis?

So last night I dreamed about Infinite Crisis. I don't normally dream about comics books, but it happens sometimes. It was one of those dreams where soemtimes I was reading a comic, sometimes I was watching it unfold like a movie, and sometimes I was actually in it. And since this was a dream, it followed dream logic. And I don't remember it all. But here's what happened:

'Issue #1': Superman decides that he's sick and tired of all the negativity happening around him--the killing and the secrets and the lies and the mind control and the whatnot--when it used to be that his adventures, while exciting, always ended well. So he rounds up a bunch of other heroes who feel the same way, and they 'pierce the veil' into the 'real world' and into the offices of DC Comics (really cool special effect of space-time ripping up like turning the corner of the page of a comic book, and Superman stepping through!) The heroes then confront Paul Levitz about the dire state of all the negativity. Levitz agrees that things need to change, so he calls an emergency story summit of DC's writers & editors; they meet with the heroes and plot out a massive cross-over series called Infinite Crisis which will return brightness and adventure to the DCU.

'Issue #2': The heroes return to the DCU and start to enact the plan/plot to restore the DCU to its glory days. Realizing that a bunch of heroes are of fighting in the Rann-Thanagar War and unaware of the plan, a team of heroes is dispatched to outer space to inform them. Meanwhile a couple of heroes (one of whom is me in the dream--know, I don't know which one) return to the 'real world' to ask Levitz to clarify a couple of unclear plot points in the story. But instead of a bustling workplace, we find the offices of DC Comics to be completely deserted. We soon learn that this is not the 'real world' at all, but rather a simulacrum designed to fool us and the other heroes. We deduce that this is really a pocket universe created by... The Time Trapper! The Time Trapper was posing as Paul Levitz and his true plan for 'saving' the DCU is not to return it to the old happy days, but rather destroy it and create a new universe that will play according to his rules. We want to return to the DCU and warn the others, but the Trapper is preventing us.

At this point I woke up. Which is a shame, because I really wanted to see where this was all going.

OF course, I'm sure the real Infinite Crisis won't resemble this at all. But I will be tickled pink if The Time Trapper ends up being the one behind it all...

Using the Library for your Manga Fix

Over on Animefringe, Shannon Fay has written an article for manga and anime fans on how to use your local public library to read manga and view anime: "Club Scene: Library Carded":

What kind of manga will the library have, if it does have any? Don't expect anything released last week. Although it will be unlikely that the library will have any hot new series, it may have classic titles anywhere from a few years to a decade old. If you ever wanted to read some of VIZ Media's older series, such as Sanctuary, or other titles from their Pulp line, but you weren't willing to shell out $19.99 for a manga, the library may be able to help you out. It also may have a few out of print or rare series that you can borrow as well.

She goes on to talk about how to use the library's online catalog to get on the hold list for titles that are checked out, and how to encourage your library to but more manga and anime. About the only thing she leaves out is how to use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to get things that your library doesn't own from other libraries that do.

New Library Comics: Week of August 22, 2005

Here are the comics we got in for our library collection last week:


Break 21 : International Festival of Young Independent Artists (2001 : Ljubljana) Break comics through art /Ljubljana : Studentski Kulturni Center, 2001.

Crumb, R. Robert Crumb : yeah, but is it art? : Museum Ludwig, Koln /Koln : Konig, c2004.

Hernandez, Jaime. Whoa, Nellie! /Seattle, WA : Fantagraphics Books, 2000.

Monkey Covers

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

Today's cover is Superman #324, from June 1978. The cover by Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano features the origin of Titano, the giant ape who shoots deadly beams of Kryptoniite from his eyes. Beams of Kryptonite. From his eyes. A giant ape. Man, that's just beautiful. This same comic story (writeen by Martin Pasko) also features the Atomic Skull, and the Supermobile. That's right, the Supermobile. This surely must be one of the greatest comics of all time!

(standard disclaimer about apes not really being monkeys applies)

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

Unshelved Book Club

While Unshelved, the best online comic strip about libraries ever, has always had strips on Sundays, they've just recently taken to having over-sized color strips. Featuring the Unshelved Book Club, these strips have Dewey, teh young adult librarian, giving a book talk in his own inimitable fashion. Last week was Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, and today is Neil Gaiman's Coraline.