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

KEY:

´ Accent aigu

` Accent grave

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¨ Umlaut

´ THE ADVENTURES OF HERGÉ

Jose-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental and Stanislas Barthelemy's biography of the Tintin creator is executed in something like Hergé's own style, which is a clever idea. It's worth noting that some version of it appeared in Drawn and Quarterly vol. 4 a decade ago. (On the Midtown list, not the Diamond list.)˜ AVENGERS #19

The new order chargeth, courtesy of Brian Michael Bendis and Daniel Acuña. You know, lineup changes in team books used to mean more when 18 issues meant more than three stories.

¨ COMIC BOOK COMICS #6

The final issue of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's amusing history of the medium deals with the direct market, Osamu Tezuka and the term "graphic novel." (Midtown list, not Diamond list.)

` ˜ FEAR ITSELF #7.3

A.k.a. this month's issue of Iron Man, by the usual team of Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca. I'd sort of love it if superhero comics kept adjusting their numbering to reflect their continuity tweaks. Who wouldn't want to see Batman and Robin #14.5.3.6b7?

` ˜ iZOMBIE #19

Gwen eats a Deadhead's brain and is compelled to travel acros America. That's a good premise. Chris Roberson writes, Michael Allred draws.

` LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT: MARSHALL ROGERS

Collecting all of Rogers' lovely, design-intensive Batman comics, including the famous '70s ones written by Steve Englehart and a bunch of others--plus, I'm guessing, the Denny O'Neil prose story "Death Strikes at Midnight and Three," which he illustrated. ("To whimper. To beg. To crawl.") Hardcover, fifty bucks.

´ ˜ SERGIO ARAGONÉS FUNNIES #6

Lynda Barry's writing and drawing exercises (in What It Is and elsewhere) often suggest that your pen should not stop moving. Aragonés may have interpreted that instruction to mean "ever again." Don't tell him!

´ ¨ SMURFS VOL. 9: GARGAMEL AND THE SMURFS

This volume of Papercutz' new editions of the Peyo/Yvan Delporte series doesn't have an analogue in the French albums; its first story ("The Smurfnapper") appeared in the French version of "Les Schtroumpfs Noirs," published here as "The Purple Smurfs." (Midtown list, not Diamond list.)

˜ ¨ WALT DISNEY'S DONALD DUCK VOL. 1: LOST IN THE ANDES

Fantagraphics' reprinting of the complete Carl Barks duck comics, wisely, starts not with the master funny-animal cartoonist's earliest material but with a period in which he was firing on all cylinders: the late-'40s era of grand adventure stories, four of which appear here alongside some shorter stories, one-page gags, and explanatory material. Shorter version: this is where you'll find the square eggs. (Midtown list, not Diamond list.)

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