Recent "Wednesday is new comics day" Articles

Wednesday is New Comics Day - Lost fans take note

I haven't done one of these in a long time but I figure with so many Lost fans out there it would be worth mentioning that today is the release of issue 1 of Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine written by Lost creator Damon Lindelof.

I just read this over a hot bowl of chicken noodle soup and it is quite a ride. There are definitely little touches that feel like Lindelhof's style including the opening page starting off on a closeup of Wolverine's eye - very much like how most Lost episodes start- and slowly revealing that his entire lower half has been ripped away and thrown four miles up a mountain.

As the scene above shows, this is an intense comic featuring a much more brutal Hulk than most people are used to. This Hulk rips guys like Wolverine in half and literally eats people and shits out their pieces. And that's not the only Hulk shockers Lindelhof has in store in this issue.

For those of you with a more delicate comics palatte, Chris Ware's latest issue of the Acme Novelty Library is also out today.

Posted by Evil Richard on December 21, 2005| Comments (1) | Permalink

Wednesday is New Comics Day

This week's comic to look for is Loveless #1 by Brian Azzarello and Marcelo Frusin.

Loveless is a new series from DC's Vertigo line that hopes to kick up some dust around the Western comic, a genre that never dies but also hasn't exactly sold many comics since cowboy films were popular back in the 1960's. Writer Brian Azzarello plans to bring a brutal film noir approach to the book, something he does very well on a monthly basis in his great tough-guy crime epic 100 Bullets. His goal for the series is to show how bad things affect good people. Set in the Reconstruction era it introduces a Confederate soldier named Wes Cutter, believed dead, who returns home from the war, looking for his wife, and finds that his home is not how he remembered it.

Azarello and Frusin have collaborated before on another Vertigo comic Hellblazer. Frusin's liberal use of shadows make him an excellent partner for Azarello's dark and moody stories. Azarello promises to be relentless and unforgiving in his handling of this story as it unfolds over the next few years.

For a look at some interior artwork, click here.

Posted by Evil Richard on October 26, 2005| Comments (1) | Permalink

Wednesday is New Comics Day

This week's recommended new release is Black Hole by Charles Burns.

This new hardcover collection finally brings Burns' highly acclaimed and now hard to track down 12-part series together in one bookshelf-worthy package. Set in Seattle in the 1970s, it is a dark and unique depiction of adolescence as local teenagers find themselves victim to a sexually transmitted disease that turns them into mutated freaks. Some of the mutations are entirely deforming while others are subtle and easy to hide. The story focuses on a group of teens that are forced to join a group of mutated refugees that have started their own sub-culture in the woods outside of town.

Burns' woodcut-like linework and heavy use of blacks belies a psychological dark side to his storytelling and his penchant for clean, almost friendly depictions of the grotesque make you unsure whether you should laugh or cringe. This is his masterpiece which he has been toiling on for years and is now printed in a beautiful Pantheon-published book for us to pore over late into the night.

For a great interview with Burns about this book click here.

Posted by Evil Richard on October 19, 2005| Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday is New Comics Day

This week's comic to look out for is Infinite Crisis #1 by Geoff Johns and Phil Jimenez.

About 20 years ago, DC Comics released Crisis on Infinite Earths, a brave but flawed attempt to reboot decades of confusing continuity via a 12 part mega-event. When it was over, the DC Universe was simplified to make it less confusing to newer readers. Gone were the multiple earths that housed alternate versions of Superman, Batman and others. Killed and/or erased from existance were longtime characters like Supergirl and the Flash (the classic Barry Allen version of the character). It was an unprecedented attempt to deal with the confusing backlog of shared character continuity and the result was not only a loss of what made DC comics so fun but also the continuity tinkering created a need to do this sort of spring cleaning every once in a while.

For the past year, starting with the Brad Meltzer-written Identity Crisis mini-series, DC has been building up to this new event. Identity Crisis led into the 80 page Countdown to Infinite Crisis which in turn led into 4 separate Countdown mini-series plus various issues of other DC titles like Wonder Woman and JLA and now (for those of you who still have any cash left to spend) we have the actual Crisis itself.

The weird thing is, at this point it isn't clear yet what this 21st century Crisis is going to consist of. Will the Multiple Earths be brought back? Will major characters die? New characters be introduced? Are we talking reboot here or just some sort of shift in the status quo?

Either way, this series is being drawn by Phil Jimenez, the perfect choice to follow in the footsteps of past Crisis artist, George Perez (who will actually be involved in this series on a couple of levels as well including the cover shown above). Jimenez' artwork is detailed and energetic and handles a universe of characters well, just like Perez.

If you want to try to catch up on what you've missed so far in the various Countdown series, check out DC's Crisis Counseling page.

Posted by Evil Richard on October 12, 2005| Comments (2) | Permalink

Wednesday is New Comics Day

This week's comic to look for is The Push Man and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

Tatsumi is considered the "grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" but his work has never appeared in English or been published in this country before. The Pushman is a beautiful hardcover collection of some of his comic short stories that were originally published in 1969. Optic Nerve creator Adrian Tomine has helped champion the cause of reprinting Tatsumi's work and provides not only a foreword but has also designed the book.

The content of the stories collected here are steeped in dark, psychological, sexual situations. One story is about a man who keeps a mutilated sex slave in his apartment, another is about a man who dresses up in his wife's clothes and has an affair with another woman, and another follows a projectionist who screens porn for embarrassed and titillated office workers. In the many stories collected here, Tatsumi tackles themes of sexual depravity but depicts it with subtle economy. "All of the stories hint at much more than they make explicit, which rewards repeated reading," Tomine said of Tatsumi in a recent Village Voice interview.

Look for this book at your local comic shop or bookstore.

Posted by Evil Richard on October 05, 2005| Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday is New Comics Day

This week's recommended comics are SHOWCASE PRESENTS: GREEN LANTERN VOL. 1 and SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SUPERMAN VOL. 1.

Once upon a time, comics were for kids. Back in more innocent times, during what comics historians and over-30ish fanboys refer to as the Silver Age (roughly the 1960s and early 70's), comic books were pure escapist fantasy written for boys. Sure the plots were rudimentary but where they lacked in today's psychological drama, realistic dialogue, graphic violence and implausible sex they made up for in pure imagination.

This week DC comics begins reprinting affordable, black and white, 500 page phonebook size collections of some of these fun and truly out-there super hero classics with two Showcase books: Superman and Green Lantern. As long as these two characters have been around, the stories collected here are probably the pinnacle of what has been done with them. This is Gil Kane on Green Lantern, introducing the Hal Jordan version of the character and helping to usher in a new sci-fi inspired age in comics. And Curt Swan on Superman, drawing probably the definitive version of the man of steel with his quirky entourage of Supergirls, Superdogs, best pals, and ambitious villains.

Each of these volumes is a lot of comic book for only $9.99. And though it's sure to be laughably dated, at times even just plain dumb, the sheer refreshing lunacy of some of these stories is a great reminder of a time when comics were all about testing the imagination of it's young readers.

Posted by Evil Richard on September 28, 2005| Comments (0) | Permalink

Wednesday is New Comics Day

Some weeks I am a little hard pressed to pick out a good recommendation from the new releases. Last week was one of those. Then we have weeks like this week where there is so much it's stressful trying to choose just one to send people out to find. If I had more time today I would have actually recommended a few books such as BPRD Vol 4 The Dead TP, Seven Soldiers Mister Miracle #1, or Strangehaven Vol. 3.

Instead, I'm going to quickly single out The Acme Novelty Library Hardcover by Chris Ware. Anyone not familiar with Ware is missing out on one of the great living geniuses working in this medium. This book collects some of the odd little strips that accompanied the Jimmy Corrigan stories in his Acme Comic series. I can't really describe it any better than this self-deprecating excerpt from the book itself:

"Sometimes claimed to be his “best work” by those who really don’t know any better, this definitive congestion of stories of the future, the old west, and even of modern life nonetheless tries to stay interesting by including a luminescent map of the heavens, a chart of the general structure of the universe, assorted cut-out activitites,
and a complete history of The ACME Novelty Company itself, decorated by rare photographs, early business ventures, not to mention the smallest example of a Comic Strip ever before offered to the general public. All in all, it will likely prove a rather mild disappointment, but at least it catches the light in a nice way and may force a smile here and there before being shelved for the next generation’s ultimate disregard and/or disposal."

Check out your local comic shop today. If you don't know where your local comic shop is, find it here: http://www.the-master-list.com

Posted by Evil Richard on September 21, 2005| Comments (0) | Permalink

And the rest...

Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended new comic is All Star Batman & Robin #2 by Frank Miller and Jim Lee. One of the biggest comic events of the year has been the launch of DC Comics' new All-Star line with the...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended new comic is Ex Machina Vol. 2: Tag by Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris. Ex Machina is about 80% politics, 20% super-heroics which is certainly an interesting mix for a comic book. It is the...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's comic to look for is Ultimates 2 Vol. 1 by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. When the first "season" of Marvel Comics' The Ultimates came out it hit the comics world with shock and awe. With Bryan...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's comic to look for is Street Angel Vol. 1 by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. For those who don't like their comics to take themselves too seriously but at the same time hate comics that are predictable,...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's comic to look for is Mome #1. It's a slow week for new releases so looking back a bit to the recent releases we find an exciting new comics anthology from Fantagraphics Books called Mome. Describing itself...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's comic to look for is Winter Men #1 by Brett Lewis and Jean Paul Leon. The Cold War was an underlying element in a lot of great comics during that age. Without the arms race and the...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
(Click to enlarge) Evil Richard is on sick leave this week (one of the reason's it's been so quiet around here), so I'm stepping into his shoes for one week only to bring you his weekly comics feature. Get...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is JSA:Classified #1 by Geoff Johns, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti. Power Girl is generally known among the DC Comics heroes as "the one with the big tits", which is actually like describing a professional...
Wednesday is New Comics Day-HeroesCon Edition
I meant to post this last week, shortly after the big HeroesCon Comics Convention in Charlotte, NC but unfortunately real life interfered with my internet life last week. This week, I'm going to recommend some comics by some creators...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
As many of you have probably seen "Batman Begins" by now and are clamoring for more, this week's recommended comic is a top 5 list of highly recommended Batman graphic novels. Read the list after the jump:...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes. Ice Haven is a new hardcover collecting one of the greatest single issue comics ever written. Daniel Clowes has gained a lot of mainstream recognition in recent years due...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is We3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. New comics actually come out on Thursday this week due to the holiday and this week's new comic to look for is the collected edition of the...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is Gotham Central: Vol.2 - Half A Life by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark. Gotham Central is a police procedural drama set in Gotham City in which everyday cops have to deal with the typical...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is The Walking Dead: Vol.3 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. The Walking Dead has been consistently one of my favorite books since it began last year. It's a zombie comic in the tradition of...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is Ultra: Seven Days by the Luna Brothers. Ultra is a new comic published by Image Comics that looks at super heroes (super-heroines, to be precise) as celebrities to be consumed by our media-obsessed culture....
Saturday is Free Comics Day
Yes, yes Wednesday is new comics day, but this coming Saturday, May 7 is the 4th Annual Free Comics Day. Comic book retailers all over the country will have a variety of new comics that they will be giving away...
Wednesday is new comics day
This week's recommended comic is not actually a comic but an artbook, Process Recess: the art of James Jean. James Jean is arguably the best cover artist working in comics right now. I've gushed over his work here before...
Wednesday is new comics day
This week's recommended comic is The Long Haul by Antony Johnston and Eduardo Barreto. The Long Haul is an original black and white graphic novel that can probably best be described as Deadwood meets Oceans 11. It's a classic...
Wednesday is new comics day
Today's reommended comic is Batman Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. Just get back from a late showing of Sin City and want a fix of more Frank Miller comic book noir? Sure you can pick up...
Wednesday is new comics day
Today's reommended comic is Stray Bullets Vol. 1 by David Lapham. Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of this Eisner Award winning series, a new printing of the first story arc hits the stores today giving the uninitiated a great opportunity...
Wednesday is New Comics Day
Today's reommended comic is Seven Soldiers: Guardian by Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart. Normally I like to preview a new book that is coming out this week but today I'm actually going to recommend a book that came out...
Wednesday is new comics day
Today's reommended comic is Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. Change and character development is not generally something you get with mainstream superhero comics, especially ones centered around decades old trademarked characters like Daredevil. With Bendis and...
Wednesday is new comics day
Today's reommended comic is Sin City by Frank Miller. With Robert Rodriguez' innovative and star-studded movie fast approaching the theaters, now is a good time to try out the original graphic novels if you haven't yet experienced them. Sin...
Wednesday Is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is Sleeper by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Sleeper is a gritty noir spy thriller with a touch of superpowers. Holden Carver is a secret agent that has infiltrated the top levels of a secret...
Wednesday is new comics day
This week's recommended comic is Fables Vol. 5: The Mean Seasons. This is the 5th trade paperback collecting the brilliant ongoing Vertigo series written by Bill Willingham. The conceit of Fables is that it stars characters from every fairy...
Wednesday is new comics day
This week's recommended comic is Solo #3. Solo is a series in which each issue is a compliation of original stories showcasing one top artist, with free reign to tell any type of story he wants. He or she...
Wednesday is new comics day
This week's recommended comic is JLA:Classified #4. Comic fans from the '80's fondly remember Keith Giffen, JM Dematteis and Kevin Maguire's sit-com approach to the Justice League. Recently the creative team reunited for a mini-series called "Formerly Known as...
Wednesday Is New Comics Day
This week's recommended comic is Vimanarama, the first of a 3 issue mini-series that mixes superheroes, demons and Bollywood into a surreal romantic comedy. The son of a successful grocery chain owner, 19-year-old British-Asian Ali can't relate to his...