Hi, Everybody!
The Vark Wars continue. If you want in: thevarkwars@gmail.com
And Then:
Travis Pelkie returns with his regular monthly selection for Cerebus fans of comics and books featured in the latest Diamond Previews catalog. Travis is co-founder of the Atomic Junk Shop, a site about comics and other fun pop culture. To see your comics featured here or at the Atomic Junk Shop feel free to send an email to Travis at: atomicjunkshoptravis [at] outlook [dot] com.
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| Didn't we suggest this one? |
CANADIAN VARK #1
(W) Dave Sim (A) Dave Sim, Gustave Dore (CA) Lee Thacker, Benjamin Hobbs
Now! With No Reprints! Book Length All-In-One Issue! Cerebus' Canadian Inaugural Address, 2020; Cerebus is his own Bioethics Mandarin; Cerebus beheads everyone at a campaign stop; Cerebus as "Mecca/Jerusalem/Vatican City"-style candidate; Voluntary carbon tax paid only by environmentalists; Nutrient-dense Locavore Eco-magno variant systems; Friedrich Nietzsche, Environment Minister; Dancing With The Inconvenient Stars starring Jennifer Lopez as Al Gore; The Whore of Babylon serializes her diary online from when she was Cerebus' intern; the three answers that answer ANY question in a Liberal or NDP riding; Cerebus, Political Jargon Monster; "And Men Shall Call Him H.E.L.O.C." Batvark and Woolly-Bully's Sacred African Mask of Doom.
Travis sez: Of course you already ordered this, it's got all new stuff!
WAR BEARS HC
(W) Margaret Atwood (A/CA) Ken Steacy
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Handmaid's Tale, comes this historical fiction graphic novel tracing the Golden Age of Canadian comic books.
Oursonette, a fictional Nazi-fighting superheroine, is created at the peak of World War II by comic book creator Al Zurakowski who dreams of making it big in the early world of comics publishing.
A story that follows the early days of comics in Toronto, a brutal war that greatly strains Al personally and professionally, and how the rise of post-war American comics puts an end to his dreams.
Internationally and New York Times best-selling novelist Margaret Atwood and acclaimed artist Ken Steacy collaborate for one of the most highly anticipated comic book and literary events! Collects War Bears issues #1-3.
Travis sez: I mentioned this when the first issue came out, but now comes the collection of the Margaret Atwood/Ken Steacy book about the Golden Age of Canadian comics. Sounded interesting!
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| Not art from this, this is from a previous series. Just FYI |
XERXES FALL HOUSE DARIUS RISE ALEXANDER HC
(W) Frank Miller (A/CA) Frank Miller
Frank Miller returns to the world of 300 with this sprawling historical epic! Persian King Xerxes sets out to conquer the world to avenge his father Darius's defeat and create an empire unlike anything the world has ever seen . . . Until the hardy Greeks produce a god king of their own, Alexander the Great. Collects issues #1-#5 of the miniseries.
Travis sez: Frank Miller's sequel (prequel?) to his 300 comic.
EC ARCHIVES HC PIRACY
(W) Carl Wessler, Various (A) Wally Wood, Various
Collecting the complete run of the EC Comics cult classic Piracy; featuring stories about the violence and cruelty of the pirates that sailed the seven seas. Across these pages sail plunderers, pillagers, buccaneers, whalers, smugglers, pearl divers, treasure hunters, mutineers, and many more, in these brutal tales of life on the water. Piracy issues #1-#7 in full color! Features stories drawn by all-star comic artists Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Al Williamson, Graham Ingels, Reed Crandall, Bernard Krigstein, George Evans, and more.
Travis sez: The comics that inspired the pirate bits in Watchmen, I believe. It's EC, it's pirates, it's great artists. It should be cool!
VOYAGE TO THE DEEP HC
(W) Sam Glanzman (A/CA) Sam Glanzman
Follow the adventures of a shape-shifting atomic sub battling sea creatures, arctic monsters, sonic attacks, anti-matter generators, global terrorism, and more! Four tales of the atomic submarine Proteus and her crew in one graphic novel! First, the submarine Proteus has just finished its shakedown run and heads out to explore the Mariana Trench, but when the ship arrives, it not only has to deal with giant sea creatures, but an act of terrorism that threatens the entire world! Plus, a monster larger than the Proteus, a fanged sea creature and an anti-matter generator that threatens to tear apart the world, and an unknown enemy unleashes sonic destruction on the Proteus, and then the world! Only the Proteus and her crew can stop them!
Advance solicited for February release!
Travis sez: It's Alive and IDW put out a hardcover of the Sam Glanzman stories from the '60s. I believe I contributed to the Kickstarter of this (and pledged for the print version), but I have not yet gotten a physical copy. I have to double check that I
was supposed to, though.
CHARLIES ANGELS TP VOL 01
(W) John Layman (A/CA) Joe Eisma
The Angels are back, baby! -- The original Angels, Jill, Kelly and Sabrina! Travel back to the swingin' 70s, and revisit the butt-kicking, crime-fighting, mold-breaking lady detectives who took 70s TV by storm, ready to do the same to comics 40 years later!
Break out your bell-bottoms, feather your hair, and jump back to an era of peanut-farmer presidents, gargantuan gas-guzzlers and foxy female detectives... for a globe-trotting adventure that's simply too big and epic for the 70s-era boob tube.
Written by elderly Eisner winner and solicitation-writing former-superstar John Layman, and with art by his scrappy but lovable youngster pal, Joe Eisma. This is one graphic novel you DON'T DARE TO MISS!!!!
Travis sez: The jiggle TV series comes to comics, written by Cerebus mega fan John Layman. He's a good writer, so it should be semi-interesting, at least.
HER INFERNAL DESCENT TP VOL 01
(W) Zac Thompson, Lonnie Nadler (A/CA) Kyle Charles
A tale of loss told in five parts.
Any good mom would march through the inferno of HELL to get her family back. Unable to cope with the burden of grief, a middle-aged mother descends the nine circles of hell to retrieve her forsaken family. Guided by the ghosts of William Blake and Agatha Christie, this no-nonsense matriarch journeys deep into a bizarre underworld filled with celebrity sinners, surreal landscapes and absurd tasks.
From Lonnie Nadler and Zac Thompson, the writers of the break-out hit The Dregs and Cable, and Kyle Charles, the artist of Roche Limit, comes a journey through hell unlike anything you've experienced before.
HER INFERNAL DESCENT vol 1 contains the complete first story arc, issues #1-5.
Travis sez: This one involves a trip to Hell where William Blake is encountered. Perhaps an aardvark is in a background shot?
ABSOLUTE SWAMP THING HC VOL 01 BY ALAN MOORE
(W) Alan Moore (A) Shawn McManus, Dan Day, Rick Veitch, Alfredo Alcala, Others (A/CA) Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben
Alan Moore's legendary run of Swamp Thing tales is collected in Absolute format at last, completely recolored for this new edition! This first of three volumes includes Moore's first Swamp Thing story, issue #20's "Loose Ends," a prelude to his haunting origin story, "The Anatomy Lesson," which reshapes Swamp Thing's mythology with terrifying revelations. Collects Saga Of The Swamp Thing #20-34 and Swamp Thing Annual #2.
Travis sez: I'm reluctant to tell you to spend money on DC books, and I'm wary of this one because it's newly recolored, but it's Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette, and John Totleben on Swamp Thing!
It's still a high water mark of the medium.
DETECTIVE COMICS BEFORE BATMAN OMNIBUS HC VOL 1 & 2
(W) Jerry Seigel, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Others (A) Others, Joe Shuster, Fred Guardineer, Bob Kane
DETECTIVE COMICS exploded in 1939 with the debut of Batman in issue #27-and now, for the first time, DC reprints the first 26 issues of this groundbreaking series, almost none of which have ever been reprinted before, in a two-volume slipcased set! The first volume, collecting issues #1-13, stars crime-fighters like Slam Bradley, Bart Regan, Speed Saunders and more! And Volume Two, collecting issues #14-26, stars characters like the Crimson Avenger, Fu Manchu and more! Please note that these stories will be scanned directly from original copies of these issues.
Travis sez: This is another one that makes me go ooh. The first 26 issues of Detective Comics (the pre-Batman stuff, as you probably know) is reprinted for the first time. You probably have a spare kidney you can sell for the scratch to buy this one.
DECADES MARVEL IN 40S TP HUMAN TORCH VS SUB-MARINER
(W) Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, More (A) Bill Everett, Carl Burgos, More (CA) Alex Schomburg
Celebrate 80 years of Marvel Comics, decade by decade - beginning with the first two superstars of the Flying Forties! The original Human Torch and Namor the Sub-Mariner get along as well as fire and water, and several of Timely's greatest comics feature the twin titans clashing in fantastic feature-length fisticuffs! A rivalry for the ages is born when Namor, mistreated by the surface world, attacks New York - and the Torch stands in his way! As World War II rages, Namor decides to create peace by flooding the planet! Can the Torch and his young sidekick, Toro, bring Namor back to his senses? They'd better - because the Nazis are on the attack, and the Golden Age archrivals must put aside their differences aside and unite against a common foe! Collecting material from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #7-10 and HUMAN TORCH COMICS #5B, #8 and #10.
Travis sez: Marvel's starting a new "Decades" series of trades, and this one is stuff from the 1940s, the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner fights. That's some pretty cool stuff (including, I think,
the "drawn over a weekend" issue).
Next Time: Hobbs.
