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

KEY:

* Southern regions

^ NYC and environs

% The spandex belt


* THE SILENCE OF OUR FRIENDS

I wouldn't necessarily have expected Nate Powell's two projects after Swallow Me Whole and Any Empire to both be written by other people, but here we are: this one, a piece of civil-rights-movement historical semi-fiction, was written by Mark Long (also a character in the story) and Jim Demonakos, and the upcoming Year of the Beasts was written by Cecil Castellucci.

^ % AVENGERS SOLO #4

Jen Van Meter and Roger Robinson's Hawkeye miniseries continues.

* THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN DISINTERRED #1

The beginning of a six-issue sequel to David Hine and Shaky Kane's miniseries from last year about "David Hine," "Shaky Kane" and weird, scary old comic books.


% CATWOMAN VOL. 1

Remember that time about ten years ago when Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker made Catwoman awesome for a little while? I miss that. This new $30 collection includes their four-part prequel from Detective Comics, the first nine issues of the series, and Cooke's graphic novel Selina's Big Score.

^ % DAREDEVIL BY MARK WAID VOL. 1 HC

I understand the need to make the title distinguish this from the other books called Daredevil Vol. 1 out there, but I'd like to make the point that this is really by Waid and Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin. Anyway, this is enormously entertaining.

% FLASH #5

Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato's run continues. This actually falls into the same category as Waid/Rivera/Martin's Daredevil for me: a formerly thin-stretched superhero franchise invigorated by an approach that's about finding where the creators' strengths overlap with what's noteworthy about the character, rather than reacting to one "classic" run or another. Also: pretty colors!


^ JUDGE ANDERSON: THE PSYCHIC CRIME FILES

I'm maybe a little bit too thrilled that Olivia Thirlby is going to be playing Cassandra Anderson in the forthcoming Dredd movie. It's good news that there are two anthologies of Anderson's solo stories coming out, and odd news that they have nearly identical titles and totally different contents. Anyway, this is the American one: $20.99 gets you a healthy selection of full-color material that's mostly from the past five years (with lovely art by Boo Cook), although there's also a short story from 1998 and "The Random Man" from 1989, possibly because the black-and-white version in The Psi Files 1 a few years ago mangled Carlos Ezquerra's artwork. Alan Grant writes it all.

* ^ LI'L ABNER VOL. 4: 1941-1942

Here's what people were cracking up over seventy years ago: Al Capp's newspaper strip about what happens when back-hills hayseed types meet uptight city-slicker types. The Sundays are in color, the cost is a U.S. Grant, the new characters include Joe Btfsplk and Moonbeam McSwine, and there are still some giggles to be had.

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