Don’t Ask! Just Buy It! – July 14: That’s When I Reach For My Revolver

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

KEY

* Golden Age origins

^ Silver Age origins

% Bronze Age origins

@ We don't really go in for that kind of terminology around here

* ADVENTURE COMICS #516

The kinda-Superboy, kinda-Legion, Paul Levitz-written series resumes its original numbering, now with a Jeff Lemire-written Atom backup feature.

^ AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #637

The "Grim Hunt" sequence wraps up (and so Stan Lee and Marcos Martin's backup continues). Preview here. If that's not enough Kraven the Hunter for you, he also turns up in this week's "Marvel Adventures Super Heroes" #4, along with what I believe is the first Deadpool appearance in Marvel's all-ages line. Preview.

^ ASTRO CITY: SILVER AGENT #1

Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's meta-minded superhero series gets another two-issue, single-character-focused interlude, this one about a character who was active during the era suggested by his name.

* BATMAN #701

You know what happened between "Batman R.I.P." and "Final Crisis"? Batman swam to shore and headed back home, that's what. Nonetheless, Grant Morrison and Tony Daniel have re-teamed for a two-issue story that purportedly explains how those two stories fit together; Morrison has suggested that it will be very heavy on the Bruce's-P.O.V. captions. Interesting.Preview. Speaking of "Final Crisis," this week also sees Greg Cox's prose novelization of Morrison's famously non-linear event comic; I haven't read it yet, but a quick flip through reveals that both Comics Alliance's David Uzumeri and I get thanked for our annotations in the acknowledgements, and that Cox basically throws his hands up when it comes to adapting the "Superman Beyond 3-D" sequence into words without pictures.

* THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #35

And speaking of "Superman Beyond," Merryman turns up again here with his old pals the Inferior Five. In further J. Michael Straczynski news, this week also sees the beginning-in-earnest of his and Eddy Barrows' run on "Superman," #701. It's a flightless bird! It's a grounded plane!

* GIRL COMICS #3

Oh, they still publish this? I kid, but this final issue has been rather a long time coming. It's got the most promising lineup of the miniseries, though, including a Kitty Pryde and Wolverine story by the divine Carla Speed McNeil (preview here), more Colleen Coover, and--holy cow!--a collaboration between Ann Nocenti and Molly Crabapple. More previews!

^ INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #28

Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca's "Resilient" storyline continues (preview). Also out this week: the hardcover edition of their previous arc, "Stark Disassembled," and a one-shot, "Uncanny X-Men: The Heroic Age," which is three short stories written by Fraction and drawn by Whilce Portacio, Steve Sanders and Jamie McKelvie.

% JUDGE DREDD: THE RESTRICTED FILES VOL. 2

The second (imported) volume collecting all the miscellaneous Dredd stories that appeared in places other than "2000 A.D." proper or the "Judge Dredd Megazine"--this time beginning around 1985 or 1986. Dredd majordomos John Wagner and Alan Grant write; Carlos Ezquerra, Cam Kennedy, Bryan Talbot, Steve Dillon, Brendan McCarthy, etc. draw.

@ MOME VOL. 19

The "short pieces by regular contributors" paradigm for Fantagraphics' anthology series seems to have mostly gone out the window; instead, this volume involves Josh Simmons pushing some buttons, Olivier Schrauen doing a piece that looks like a Paper Rad/Winsor McCay mash-up, Gilbert Hernandez with one of his weird-ass Roy stories, and so on. Preview.

@ THE PLAYWRIGHT

Daren White and the redoubtable Eddie Campbell's new book: a curious thing about an aging, lonely man's sexuality. As befitting a story about celibacy, it seems to include a couple of allusions to the Smiths.

@ REVOLVER

Matt Kindt's graphic novel concerns a man who keeps shifting between our world and a world in which everything has gone horribly wrong. Here's a preview. In further "Vertigo titles named after Beatles records" news, the eighth issue of Bá and Moon's "Daytripper" is out this week too.

^ RICHARD STARK'S PARKER: THE MAN WITH THE GETAWAY FACE

Darwyn Cooke's second volume of his adaptations of Stark's ruthless "Parker" thrillers, "The Outfit," won't be out until later this year, but in the meantime we get its opening section as this taster: an oversized, two-dollar, rapid-fire version of the second "Parker" novel. (It was first offered for sale at WonderCon a few months back.) It's terrific-looking; how could it not be?