Chris vs. Previews: December, Round One!

Posted on by

Ah, Christmastime, when Jimmy Olsen straps on his Hawkman wings and delivers the new issue of Previews to every comics reader’s home!

 

 

At least, that’s how it happens around here.

 

Yes, it’s another five-and-a-half hundred pages of stuff you don’t need, and in the spirit of brotherhood and giving that comes with the most wonderful time of year, I’m doing my best to bust my way through it and pick out what’s worth mentioning.

Tonight, it’s the major publishers, so get ready! It’s gonna get rough.

 

 

Diamond Comics

 

P. 14 – Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas: The stuff in Previews is solicited about two months in advance, so while you guys are still doing your Christmas shopping, they’re already busying themselves with Valentine’s Day! But don’t worry: As always, the friendly folks over at Diamond are offering help in picking out the perfect gift for your special someone.

After all, if your sweethearts like Betty & Veronica…

 

 

…They’ll love Tarot!

 

NOTE: The preceeding gift advice only applies if your sweetheart is, in fact, me.

 

DC Comics

 

P. 59 – Salvation Run #4: Despite the fact that most of the people I heard from seem to like it a heck of a lot, the first issue of Salvation Run did absolutely nothing for me, to the point where I was planning on just cutting my losses and jumping off. This, however…

 

 

…appears to be a talking gorilla wailing on another talking gorilla with a malevolent brain in a jar.

Well-played, Sturges. Well-played.

 

P.61 – Booster Gold #0: Okay, look: As ridiculous and gimmicky as I know it is for this to be a Zero Hour tie-in–complete with a run-breaking issue number–I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t pretty excited about it.

Then again, the fact that I’m way more interested in a tie-in to a crossover that happened twelve years ago than the one that’s going on now probably says more about the state of DC Comics than it does about me.

 

P.73 – Countdown Special: OMAC:

 

 

I’m generally trying to avoid buying things that I already own–not to mention my standing rule against Countdown tie-ins–but it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that I’m making an exception for this, Jack Kirby’s most face-wrecking creation, especially given that awesome Ryan Sook cover. I’m not made of stone here, people.

Just for your edification, however, here’s a brief rundown of what this thing contains:

Let’s see, we’ve got OMAC #1, wherein OMAC evacuates and subsequently destroys a sector after finding out that his girlfriend is a talking RealDollâ„¢ built only for assassination (TRDâ„¢BOFA), the Jim Starlin backup stories from Warlord, wherein OMAC punches out what eventually becomes a thirty-foot pile of enemy soldiers, and the Len Wein / George Perez story from DC Comics Presents #61, which, unfortunately, is not very good. It does, however, feature a scene where OMAC beats up some punks in the subway and then emerges to tell Superman that “they thought they were dealing with one man… They didn’t know it was a ONE MAN ARMY!” Status: Awesome.

 

P.89 – Tiny Titans #1: So back at HeroesCon, I was at the DC Nation panel when Dan DiDio responded to a question about the lack of kid-friendly DC titles by asking the crowd “Do you guys really want to read something a five year-old would want?” and I yelled back “Yeah, if it’s any good!”

Admittedly, it was a pretty big, noisy room, and I didn’t yell it all that loud, but I guess enough of us felt the same way that now we’ve got this:

 

 

And you know what? I’m glad. Thanks largely to the animated series, kids love the Teen Titans, and judging by the preview pages, there’s a good chance this one might actually be a pretty safe bet. And really, thanks to the amazing Chris Giarrusso (along with M. Parkinson of the webcomic Year One), who’ve done some great stuff in a…. well, let’s just call it “a similar format,” we already know there’s a lot of potential there.

Now if I could only figure out why the solicitation starts off with “Awwww yeah.” Way to stay creepy, DC Marketing Department.

 

P.123 – Joker Cane Prop Replica:

 

 

I’ll admit it: As much as I roll my eyes at the utter nonsense of the DC Direct props–and the fact that they couldn’t think of anything better for the Bottle City of Kandor trade than posing one with an action figure and hoping we wouldn’t notice–there’s a very small part of me that would totally love to own a pimp cane with a fake “gas dispenser” and a big metal Joker head on it.

Still, for three hundred bucks, I might as well just have one made with my own damn head on it. And then my crime wave could truly begin!

 

Image Comics

 

P.133 – Scud, The Disposable Assassin #21: Back when I was growing up, Scud was always one of those comics–along with Madman and Sin City–that I’d heard of as part of this whole “indie” thing that was going on, but seeing as I was a kid in South Carolina, I never got the chance to check it out.

With this one, though, I’m planning on correcting that little oversight, but there’s still the problem of knowing nothing about the character beyond the description offered up by the high-concept title and the fact that he was once in a video game where you could shoot with a gun and the d-pad. So, anybody feel like filling me in?

 

P.136 – Hazed OGN: And now, Image Comics proudly presents the story of sorority girls spanking each other:

 

 

Mark Sable, I suggest you prepare to sit back and count your enormous pile of money.

 

P.155 – Savage Dragon #137: I ended up having a pretty good time with the first Archive trade when I managed to knock it out on a slow day at work, but I don’t usually pick up Savage Dragon. I am, however, making an exception for this issue, thanks to a pretty awesome guest appearance:

 

 

What’s that? Madman? No way, suckers! I’m in it for the Joy Buzzards!

For those of you whose lives have yet to be touched by the awesome, I’ll explain: Mark Andrew Smith and Dan Hipp’s Amazing Joy Buzzards are the world’s greatest supernatural adventure band. Just picture Josie and the Pussycats, except they’re all guys, they occasionally fight zombies, and they’re protected by an allegedly mythical Luchadore named El Campeon who won the tag-team championship with Santa Claus in 1951.

Further explanation of why this is awesome should not be necessary.

 

Marvel Comics

 

P. 3 – Marvel Illustrated: Moby Dick #1: And now, another installment of my ongoing series on Why Comics Are Way More Awesome Than Classical Literature. First, we have Page 3, and the solicitation for Moby Dick #1:

 

 

And for comparison, from page 72, The Punisher: Force of Nature:

 

 

Clearly, these are both pictures of someone fighting a giant white whale, but one of them involves the Punisher. I think you can see my point here.

And yes, those both come from this month’s Marvel Previews, so I’m pretty sure that the House of Ideas has their whale-fightin’ quota for February on lockdown.

 

P.27 – Fantastic Four #554:

 

 

And here we are with this month’s big news: The debut of the new creative team of Mark Millar and Bryan hitch on Fantastic Four–in an issue that was apparently sent to the design department at Redbook by mistake–and I’m going to go ahead and say that there’s a 90, 95% chance that this thing’ll come in at a solid not very good.

I mean, don’t get me wrong: Mark Millar’s written some of my favorite comics of all time, and I loved what he did with Hitch on Ultimates, which, just so we’re clear here, is a book where Ultimate Captain America did the Flash Kick from Street Fighter II on a Jihadist with two lightsabers, and no lie, that’s a lot of fun. And while that’s more than fine for a book that’s essentially one long fight scene punctuated by people talking about how awesome they are at fighting–which is exactly the kind of book that I want Millar on, see below–it just doesn’t work when you apply it to a group of characters that are going to be doing anything other than punching each other.

I mean, we’ve seen the way Millar writes the FF–and particularly Reed Richards–in the pages of Civil War, and it’s pretty rough. As for Hitch, well, fingerless glovesand the Thing’s perfectly circular head aside, I’m sure this book’ll look beautiful, but let’s be honest: It’ll never come out, and for Fantastic Four to be Marvel’s flagship title, it really oughtta be on the stands more than three times a year.

That said, I am planning on giving it a chance. Like I said, as bad as Civil War was, there’s always a chance that the Mark Millar who shows up to write Fantastic Four‘ll be the guy who was writing best Superman stories of the ’90s, as unlikely as that may be. A guy’s gotta dream, right?

 

P.61 – X-Force #1: Okay, true story: The day this issue of Previews comes out, my pal Phil comes in, and we start chit-chatting as usual. We’re talking, and he starts leafing through Marvel Previews, and in the middle of a sentence, he sees the ad for X-Force on the back cover, and just busts out laughing for a solid minute, then looks up at me, tears in his eyes, and goes:

“Seriously?!”

I think that says it all better than I ever could.

 

P.75 – Kick-Ass #1: Okay, seriously: How in the hell had I not heard about this comic until I saw it in Previews?

 

 

For those of you wondering what I meant earlier when I said there’s a certain type of comic that I actually do want to see Mark Millar on, well, this is it. Heck, there’s an interview out there where Millar explains the concept of the series–a kid who loves comics and decides to become a super-hero by putting on a mask, grabbing a baseball bat, and looking for trouble–and then follows it up with: “What would happen next? The obvious answer, of course, is incredible violence and that’s where the fun begins.”

Obviously, this has the potential to go wrong–like, y’know, most of the other Millarworld titles–but if there’s one thing I’ll give Millar, it’s that he’s fantastic at writing fight comics when he wants to be. I mean sure, there’s The Ultimates, but Wolverine: Enemy of the State, wherein Wolverine fights zombies, ninjas, super-heroes, and zombie ninja super-heroes? That thing’s a freakin’ masterpiece. And it’s helped in no small part by the fact that it’s drawn by John Romita Jr., who’s returning for this one as well.

Plus, it’s named “Kick-Ass,” and that’s got to be one of my top five adjectives.

 

 

And that’s what the majors have to offer. If anything caught your eye, feel free to leave a comment, but be here tomorrow when the ISB takes on the second half Previews in a bare-knuckled brawl that’ll leave you rocked with the best Yaoi title in history. Do you dare miss it?

44 thoughts on “Chris vs. Previews: December, Round One!”

  1. Y’know, I should be in love with Brian Hitch being on FF. But…Mark Millar? Man.

    I may check it out, though.

    Tiny Titans, though? Yeah, that I’ll be getting for sure.

  2. My face has been so rocked by the contents of Previews that I have almost forgotten that that Jimmy Olsen thing is the bitchiest caption box I have ever seen. “Once more, Superman’s valuable time is taken up…?” It’s like the narrator wants to be talking about important current events, but he has to follow Jimmy around, and he’s getting all passive/aggressive about it.

  3. Ok, I’ll skip the rest of your Previews review for the moment to give you the low-down on SCUD. Scud is a robot assassin. That you buy from a vending machine. Once they have killed their target they blow up. Thus disposable. Scud sees his warning tag in a mirror while hunting his target. And he becomes self-aware. So he just cripples his target and puts her in a tank under a hospital’s care. Then he becomes a mercenary and assassin to pay for her care…

    Oh yeah and the entire series takes place after the Rapture. Except for the time travel stuff that takes place BEFORE that. And Scud’s main arch-foe is the voodoo slinging murderous Ben Franklin. And his best buddies are a cyborg mafiosa and a little cloth dude covered in zippers who can pull seemingly anything from himself…

    And maybe there are some werewolves. And the disembodied head of Jayne Mansfield. And demons. And a zombie t-rex. And the greatest D&D parody ever put in a comic. And a robot who looks kind of like a bunny who seduces a zombie shark…

    Really, its the awesomest godsdamned thing ever written and the writer even includes what celebreties should be used to provide voices…

  4. Didn’t Marvel just relaunch X-Force a couple of years ago? I’m sure I remember buying the first issue of that (and then promptly selling it on ebay). I wasn’t even aware the series had failed in the first place.

  5. The only way that a series about a time traveling hero taking part in a crossover that ended twelve years ago would be if they had a tie-in with a crossover that ended twenty-one years ago. If they were going that way I really wish they would have gone all the way and done a Crisis tie-in complete with red banner 1985 style trade dress. Now if they do it then it would just be a shallow copy of the previous story.

    Still going with Zero Hour is cool too…

  6. Everything that LurkerWithout said about Scud times two when it comes to awesome, including notable things like:

    He’s a “Heartbreaker” model vending-machine robot assassin. Say no more

    Schrab recommending that the reader imagine Scud’s voice to be that of John Malkovich

    A two-tone robot on a street corner with twin automatics in shoulder rigs holding a sign saying “Will kill for money” is the greatest comics advert since “Amazing X-Ray Specs!!!”

    It’s about the only book (other than Groo) that I have a complete run of!

    Scud 21 is out? The world is suddenly a better place…

    Cheers!
    Mal

  8. Chris, what was it about the ad that your friend found so funny? That Marvel was relaunching X-Force, the lineup, or what?

    Wolverine: Okay, I want a team, but only people with claws!

    Warpath: I’ve got knives!

    Wolverine: Okay, close enough.

  9. Waitaminute… Tiny Titans has TWO Wonder Girls? Won’t they, y’know, wear each other’s monogrammed underwear by mistake, causing really, really cute mayhem to erupt?

  10. More to the point, that team’s got the greatest power-imbalance toward the distaff gender since Sovereign Seven. The girls have a Martian, two Amazons,freakin’Starfire, Raven, and… Bumblebee. The guys have Kid Flash (who can be defeated by a banana peel), Cyborg, and then they fall into the pit of lame. (Aqualad. I rest my case.) Maybe I’m reading too much into what’s clearly a fun kiddy title, but who’s gonna be writing this? Claremont??

  11. Tiny Titans will probably not have much in the way of superheroics as they’ll all be going to school.

    A school run by Principal Trigon.

  12. “Tiny Titans,” from what I gathered from the creative team (my brother is good friends with Franco, and talks to Art regularly, so I hear this stuff secondhand) is going to be very similar in tone to Art’s “Patrick The Wolf Boy” — a lot of silly shorts. Also, the “team” as pictured on the cover is not necessarily representative of all the Titans in the book. I for one cannot wait to see this.

  13. Furu-

    Tell me you’re not making that up. Please. I desperately want that to be true.

  15. All that folks have said about SCUD is true. The relevant point here is that, amazingly, back in the early ’90s, Rob Schrab said to himself, “Hey, I wonder if I could create a comic that features all the 100% Condensed Awesome that Chris Sims demands from his comics in the year 2007?”

    And he did. Trust me, Sims, if you don’t love SCUD (like a fat kid loves cake, as Fitty says), I’ll eat my hat.

  16. Not impressed enough by Marvel’s Moby Dick adaptation? What if I told you Ahab was in possession of … the ULTIMATE NULLIFIER?

    Well, I can dream, anyway.

  17. SCUD: definitely go buy the trades
    But the beauty of SCUD is, since it is nothing but pure awesome, you can pick it up at any point and be drunk on its sheer overwhelming awesomitude.
    While I have not read it in such a method, I believe that you could read SCUD backwards and still feel as if it was simply too much for your synapses to process.

    TRUE GRIT!!!!!
    (btw, Schrab stopped writing for a long time on this and I think is now finishing the series up. Trade out later this year. Or, you could wiki it.)

  18. I was surprised you didn’t mention the howard the duck omnibus! 900 pages of Steve Gerber awesomeness. Also after the scud four issue series comes out, theres going to be one big hardback volume of the entire series coming out in june i think.

  19. I must be the only person who didn’t liek Wolverine: Enemy of the State. It just felt like another ‘Wolverine gets used against his will’ story, but full of pointless cameos. Oh yeah, and Northstar dies (

  21. Chris, off topic, but have you seen the trailer of Machine Girl? Head over to EW.com and check it out on their Popwatch blog. My face is so rocked, that I may need to take a vacation day.

  22. SCUD is the awesome. Run, don’t walk, and get the first trade. I hope he is continuing in the fine tradition of the old stuff, as it will surely kick ass.

    Speaking of kicking ass, when is Marvel coming out with Ultimate Ahab? Millar would be hot shit on that book.

  23. Thanks for making me laugh with the alt-text on the Salvation Run cover, Chris*, but I’m sure that Bill Willingham is the writer on that book, while Matt Sturges has taken over Shadowpact for the time being.

    *I was seriously cracking up, I’m sick today so it was nice to have something to laugh out loud about.

  24. I am hard pressed to imagine you not liking Scud, Chris. Hell, it’s hard to figure how you haven’t read it already. Actually, I don’t know if it’s going to hold up to the buildup, since everyone who had been reading it has been waiting years now; so you might be in luck going in cold.

  25. Nothing to add to all the SCUD talk, other than to say (A) yes, it really was just that awesome and (B) I’m glad I’m not the only one who remembers it fondly. Hard to believe it’s been a decade since the last issue came out.

    There was also a short-lived SCUD spinoff about other disposable assassins: it wasn’t as good, but still entertaining; I still remember an issue done by a young Jim Mahfood.

  26. Bad news, Chris: The Mark Millar out there, loose on the streets, is not the Mark Millar of Superman Adventures.

    Yeah, I loved those stories too. But sometime around 2002, I think Millar was buried in an unmarked grave, and replaced by one of those duplicate robots that abound in Jimmy Olsen back issues.

    And since then, it wide-screen cinematic fun, but with a hollow center where the chewy soul should be.

    Damn Jimmy Olsen! If he wasn’t wasting Superman’s valuable time, maybe Civil War would never have occurred.

  28. I was quite disappointed when I saw that Dwayne McDuffie was leaving “Fantastic Four” and Mark Millar was showing up. Then, I saw that Marvel was trying to bill it as “The World’s Ultimatest Comic Magazine” or something stupid like that and my disappointment turned into resentment. Freaking Marvel…

  29. Well, I’m kinda surprised at all the Mark Millar criticism! I thought Ultimates vol 1 and 2, delays aside, was superb, and I’ve liked most of his other work. The Authority, Wanted, Ultimate Fantastic Four, even his small run in Spider Man.
    My only complaint about him is that all of his characters act like assholes, but I’d choose him over Bendis anyday

  30. Whether Millar’s run will be a trainwreck or just merely annoying, is beside the point for me, ‘cos Reed Richards is giving the Four Horsemen sign in that shot and that just warms my heart. Baxter Building is in Flair Country, baby! Whoooo!

  31. God, when Dusty got Flair to make him and Harley Race honorary Horsemen at the Hall of Fame last year, he really opened up a can of worms, didn’t he?

  32. Reporter: Hey Doc, how do you think you’ll do in the playoffs?

    RR: Fo’, fo’, fo’.

  33. I’m just going to jump on the pile with the other Scud-lovers. It’s like MST3K with mindless violence. Very clever mindless violence.

    Tiny Titans looks awesome. Since I have kids and they like to read comics, it’s always a thrill to find something other than Phallic Man vs. Thong Girl.

    And thank you for the surreal Ahab = Punisher moment. Hopefully, DC will ape this trend too, and we’ll see less characters being raped and killed by second-rate villains and more characters being eaten by whales.

  34. Isn’t it hilarious that the Fantastic Four title says “the return of Richards first love” and then it has him STARING AT HIS HUGE HAND?! WAHAHAHAHAHAH!

  36. A school run by Principal Trigon.

    …Actually, the school is run by Principal Deathstroke (wearing a fetching checked suit over his supervillain outfit)

    I believe Trigon is one of the teachers though!

    And Chris, the “Awww, yeah!” from the solicitation seems to be an in-joke to the writers. All the interviews with Art seem to have him saying that with fairly worrying regularity.

  37. “Yeah, I loved those stories too. But sometime around 2002, I think Millar was buried in an unmarked grave, and replaced by one of those duplicate robots that abound in Jimmy Olsen back issues.”

    It’s hopefully more like that big Dr. Doom retcon where he went off into space, leaving a bunch of duplicate robots that acted slightly out of character.

    But any good Millar stories that might have come out since then*? That was the real Mark visiting, to see if we’ve become the socialist paradise that he has wet dreams about.

    *There has to be at least one, right?

  38. Didn’t Marvel just relaunch X-Force a couple of years ago? I’m sure I remember buying the first issue of that (and then promptly selling it on ebay). I wasn’t even aware the series had failed in the first place.

    Well, there’s the Miligan / Allred X-Force that eventually became X-Statix that’s just plain awesome, but two or three years ago, they brought Liefeld back in for a six-issue series that was just… just awful. How the hell does that guy keep gettin’ work?!

     

    If they were going that way I really wish they would have gone all the way and done a Crisis tie-in complete with red banner 1985 style trade dress.

    Yeah, but it is a time travel story, and as we all know, Zero Hour… was a CRISIS IN TIME!!!

     

    I was surprised you didn’t mention the howard the duck omnibus!

    You know, I’ve only read a little bit of Howard the Duck, but I just don’t care for it.

     

    Chris, off topic, but have you seen the trailer of Machine Girl?

    Yes. Last weekend, actually, thanks to a friend of mine who sent it over before it hit big (and before I got a million emails about it, which is pretty radical in that people see that and immediately think of me), and it’s awesome.

     

    Thanks for making me laugh with the alt-text on the Salvation Run cover, Chris*, but I’m sure that Bill Willingham is the writer on that book, while Matt Sturges has taken over Shadowpact for the time being.

    Willingham wrote the first issue, but Sturges is credited in the solicitation for that one. I checked it before I wrote the joke.

     

    Well, I’m kinda surprised at all the Mark Millar criticism!

    Yeah, well. I like most of that stuff as much as the next guy, but Chosen and The Unfunnies are just awful, and Civil War‘s many, many shortcomings have been detailed elsewhere. The comment about how his writing has lost the soul that it once had is pretty dead on accurate.

  39. If they were going that way I really wish they would have gone all the way and done a Crisis tie-in complete with red banner 1985 style trade dress.

    Yeah, but it is a time travel story, and as we all know, Zero Hour… was a CRISIS IN TIME!!!

    Also Dan Jurgens wrote and drew Zero Hour, which ties it up nicely.

    Though really, a zero issue is really a Zero Month tie-in…

  40. Is that…blood on the paddle? I’m a little scared now. Luckily, I was never the target audience.

    Also, I borrowed the Courtney Crumrin collections from my library after you enjoyed one recently, and I must agree that they are AWESOME, even if no one gets kicked in the head.

  41. “Despite the fact that most of the people I heard from seem to like it a heck of a lot”

    Mr. Sims

    I’m one of the ones who likes Salvation Run. :)

  42. So back at HeroesCon, I was at the DC Nation panel when Dan DiDio responded to a question about the lack of kid-friendly DC titles by asking the crowd “Do you guys really want to read something a five year-old would want?”

    I can’t believe that man is that stupid. He didn’t.. I mean.. of COURSE they wouldn’t want it, it’s not FOR them..! I..!

    BRAIN MELTING

  43. I remember the Scud issue (#14??) involving the first werewolf on the moon. Needless to say, landing a werewolf on the source of his supernatural power turned out to be Not a Good Thing. Wish I’d gotten a complete run of the comic, as for reasonably obvious reasons I and my brother both wound up buying t-shirts.

  44. “Mark Sable, I suggest you prepare to sit back and count your enormous pile of money.”

    Hahahaha…this is by far the best comment I’ve received on the book so far. I’m tempted to put it on the back cover of HAZED as a blurb.

    Seriously, it’s a black and white OGN from Image, so I’m not holding my breath on the pile of cash, but I do hope people enjoy it.

    Thanks for posting about HAZED.

    Mark