Don’t Ask! Just Buy It! – June 8, 2011: Out of the Vaults and Onto the Courts
Reading Comics author Douglas Wolk runs down the hottest comics and graphic novels coming out this week.
KEY:
* Blondes
^ Redheads
% Dads
* 15 LOVE #1
Andi Watson and Tommy Ohtsuka's tennis-romance (!) miniseries starring an updated (and down-aged: she's 15 years old here) Millie the Model, which was apparently written and drawn back in 2003, finally sees the light of day as three double-length issues. If Marvel's vault-clearing exercises mean that there are more Andi Watson comics commercially available, I'm all for them.
* ^ % BATWOMAN: ELEGY
Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III's fearsomely elegant Batwoman serial from Detective Comics appears in paperback, now that the tapping of feet in anticipation of Williams' relaunched Batwoman series is becoming deafening. Also out this week: an $8 mass-market edition of Rucka's Queen & Country prose novel The Last Run.
* GLAMOURPUSS #19
Dave Sim's bimonthly excuse to do his Dave Sim thing for 20 pages--more pretty women traced from fashion magazines, more super-close analysis of the final day of Alex Raymond's life. This issue's got a cover by Mike Allred.
* ^ % JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #624
Kieron Gillen and Doug(ie) Braithwaite's Loki serial is my favorite thing to have come out of the Fear Itself project thus far. In the Dept. of Crossover Tie-In Miniseries, I'm not totally sure what's going on with Fear Itself: Fearsome Four #1, but Howard the Duck and Michael Kaluta are both involved, so that's a definite thumbs-up right there.
* % LI'L ABNER COMPLETE DAILIES AND COLOR SUNDAYS VOL. 3: 1939-1940
Al Capp's wiseacre comic strip continues to ramp up toward its peak in this hardcover that can be had for an appropriate portrait of Ulysses S. Grant.
% LOVE AND CAPES: EVER AFTER #5
Thomas Zahler's superhero domestic sitcom concludes this incarnation with what is apparently a Very Special Episode.
* % NEW AVENGERS #13
The Brian Michael Bendis/Howard Chaykin/Mike Deodato flashback/present-day story involving Nick Fury concludes. (It does seem to be running a little late: last week's issue of Fear Itself appears to lead into #14.) Also out: New Avengers: Nannies and Nazis, a $5 reprint of #7-9, which is to say two fun one-offs and the first part of this serial.
* PREACHER BOOK 4
This hardcover collection of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's swaggering Western reprints #34-40, a.k.a. War in the Sun, plus three one-shots.