Don’t Ask! Just Buy It! – December 29, 2010: David Finch Sings the Year Out

Savage Critic and "Reading Comics" author Douglas Wolk runs down the hottest comics and graphic novels coming out this week.

KEY

* Fabulous ones

^ Those that have just broken a flower vase

% Those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush

@ Those that tremble as if they were mad

$ Those included in the present classification

Those that are trained

¢ Those that from a long way off look like flies

* ACTION COMICS #896

The first half of a crossover with Secret Six, this part written by Paul Cornell and drawn by Pete Woods. Preview. There's also the final installment (for now) of the Jimmy Olsen serial, which will apparently be reprinted in its entirety to go along with its conclusion in a one-shot coming out in March.

^ AVENGERS #8

Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr.'s Avengers-vs.-Red-Hulk serial continues, as does Bendis's "oral history of the Avengers" backup.

% BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT #1

The David Finch-written and -drawn series begins at last. I've actually read this much-delayed first issue (and how anyone's convinced themselves that soliciting this as a monthly is a good idea escapes me), and I can safely say that this is the closest thing DC is publishing to a circa-1993 Image title, for what that's worth. Also this week: Detective Comics #872, with Scott Snyder's double serial continuing in one place before the Jock and Francavilla-drawn sections of it start alternating arcs.

@ THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN #6

The end of David Hine and Shaky Kane's high-on-the-fumes-of-weird-old-comics mini.

$ CRICKETS #3

As somebody who's been known to call things "Crickets" myself, I am extra-fond of Sammy Harkham's extra-intermittent anthology for all things Sammy Harkham-related. (It falls into that rare category of comics series that are the work of a particular creator but aren't focused on a particular character or story: Uptight, Yummy Fur, Or Else... I suppose the old Will Eisner's Quarterly might be an example, too.) This one's in a new, bigger format, and it's eight bucks.

GREEN LANTERN #61

Keep going, Doug Mahnke!

% HELLBOY: THE SLEEPING AND THE DEAD #1

Written by Mike Mignola, drawn by Scott Hampton. This is Hampton's first work in the Mignolaverse, I believe, and he really seems re-energized by this gig; I gotta say, by the end of Simon Dark, he was seriously phoning it in.

@ OSBORN #2

Amazing Spider-Man is scrabbling to keep up with its announced schedule, but at least the secondary Spider-titles are coming out: this week we get the second issues of both this nifty Kelly Sue DeConnick/Emma Rios miniseries and Paul Tobin and Clayton Henry's Spider-Girl #2. In the dept. of "what Norman Osborn was doing before he ended up where he is here," this week also sees the paperback edition of Siege: Thunderbolts.

¢ RED: EYES ONLY #1

Cully Hamner's prequel to the original miniseries he did with Warren Ellis--and not to the not-particularly-successful movie, or the one-shots released alongside it--finally comes in from the cold. You know, if he'd delayed it just a couple of months it'd have been out in time for the DVD.

% S.H.I.E.L.D. #5

The Jonathan Hickman/Dustin Weaver series (which recasts Marvel's international spy agency as a scientific secret society with centuries of history behind it, as a framework for Weaver drawing lots of spectacular vistas and gizmos) has a lot of people pointing at it and going "no, really, it's good--no, really!" Those people are right. Get with the damn program.