5. X-MEN: DIVIDED WE STAND #1
Written by Mike Carey, Matt Fraction, Craig Kyle, Christopher Yost, Skottie Young; art by Brandon Peterson, Jamie McKelvie, Sana Takeda and Skottie Young
Marvel
$3.99

To be honest with you I haven't read the most recent X-men event, Messiah Complex, but it apparently ended with the X-men dissolving or breaking up or something like that. Somehow "no more X-men" leads to a new book with X-men in the title but don't start questioning how comic book franchises work. If you're interested in jumping in on the current state of the X-men universe you could do worse than picking up this anthology book which boasts short stories by some interesting creators like Matt Fraction, Jamie McKelvie, current X-men writer Mike Carey and more. The various stories touch base with what different X-men characters are up to right now in this post-breakup phase; characters like Storm, Cannonball, Nightcrawler and others.

Lots of preview pages to view here.

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4. INVINCIBLE IRON MAN OMNIBUS
Written by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and others; art by Jack Kirby, Don Heck, Steve Ditko and others
Marvel
$99.99 | 720 pgs

If you aren't excited about the new Iron Man movie then obviously you haven't seen the trailers yet. The question is, are you excited enough to drop $100 on a book that collects his first adventures when he was wearing that clunky gray fat suit? Well, though old Iron Man comics have never exactly been considered "classics", we are talking about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and other great Marvel creators from the early 60s. And you won't find this material printed in a better presentation than this omnibus format. Plus you can get it on Amazon for a mere $69.

This book collects Shell Head's first appearance in Tales of Suspense #39 and up to issue #83. Plus issue #82 of Tales to Astonish and I think there's some other goodies in here to make it all worth it.

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3. DRIFTING CLASSROOM VOL. 11
By Kazuo Umezu
Viz Media
$9.99 | 184 pgs

The final volume of Kazuo Umezu's 1972-74 classic horror manga hits the U.S. this week so, if you're like me and have never read it, this might be a good excuse to seek out volume 1 and get started.

An earthquake inexplicably transports a school full of children into a post-apocalyptic future and everything quickly turns into Lord of the Flies. Madness, desperation and violence sets in and then things really start getting strange. And that's just the beginning.

I probably don't recommend enough manga on these lists since, like a lot of readers of American and European comics, I just don't always know where to dip in. Umezu is considered one of the "godfathers" of the modern Japanese manga though and this book has received a lot of acclaim as it was rolled out here in the U.S. over the last couple of years. When in doubt, I follow Jog the Blog's lead, so check out his review of the first volume to get a sense of whether a story about 12-year olds struggling for their lives is something you might get a kick out of or not.

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2. PIGEONS FROM HELL #1
Written by Joe R. Lansdale; art by Nate Fox
Dark Horse
$2.99 | 32 pgs

Here's the kind of combination of talents that just get you excited about the absurd potential of comics. Pigeons from Hell is an old short story written by Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard that, here, is adapted by Bubba Ho-Tep writer Joe R. Lansdale and up and coming illlustrator Nathan Fox (check out his amazing website here). Oh and did I mention the story is about pigeons? Pigeons that may contain the souls of the damned, no less.

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1. NIXON'S PALS
Written by Joe Casey; art by Chris Burnham
Image Comics
$12.99 | 120 pgs

Unfortunately, this is not the Watergate comic that I've always dreamed about but it sounds good anyway. It's a crime-comic meets cosmic-superhero-comic starring Nixon Cooper, a parole officer for super villains in seedy Los Angeles. The solicitations describe this as "Elmore Leonard meets Jack Kirby", which is a pretty intriguing combination. You can see how that combo works in the two pages below, as the parole officer searches through a dank, rundown apartment and stumbles across a portal to another dimension - filled with what comic fans love to call "Kirby Dots".

Writer Joe Casey is always good for something a little different and unexpected. His most recent book is the ongoing series, Godland, which is steeped in Kirby aesthetic. This black and white graphic novel looks like it takes that love of old school superhero tropes and applies it a genre it probably doesn't belong in. Like chocolate that gets dipped in peanut butter.

See a longer preview here.