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

KEY

* Digging up the bones of Strummer and Jones

^ Rad summer of the indigo children

% Why march when you can riot?

* AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #643

"Origin of the Species" pt. 2, by Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta, plus that Stan Lee/Marcos Martin backup. Also this week: "Web of Spider-Man" #12, the final issue, by Roger Stern and Philippe Briones. As of next month, it appears Spider-Man is supporting only two ongoing, in-continuity comic books a month--is that the lowest number since 1976, when "Peter Parker" joined "Amazing" and "Marvel Team-Up"?

* DC UNIVERSE LEGACIES #5

George Pérez! Walt Simonson! The black-hole-ish period leading up to "Crisis on Infinite Earths"! Preview!

^ JOE THE BARBARIAN #7

The next-to-last issue of Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy's curiously low-key "boy's house as magical kingdom" story.

^ % LOVE & ROCKETS: NEW STORIES VOL. 3

Oh God the Hernandez brothers are so good. This isn't even on the Diamond list for this week, but it's on the Midtown list, it's propagating to lots of comics stores, and you need it: Jaime telling the sad story of Maggie's brother who nobody ever talks about, and Gilbert messing with everyone's mind. Plus Fantagraphics is running a special where all three issues so far of "New Stories" are thirty bucks total. Preview.

* MARVEL ADVENTURES SUPER HEROES #6

Because it's apparently been legally mandated that Thor is the new Deadpool, he takes center stage in this Paul Tobin/Ronan Cliquet issue. Also, there are pirates. Preview.

% PRISON PIT VOL. 2

Johnny Ryan's all-violence-and-scatology-all-the-time tour of some kind of personal videogame/quest-narrative mythology continues. Dude's got a vision. A really gross vision, and it's too bad for him that Peak Transgression was reached in comics a couple of decades ago, but you can tell that what he's making is, as far as he's concerned, the perfect comic book, and I admire that level of commitment. Preview.

% THE RAWHIDE KID: THE SENSATIONAL SEVEN #4

The final issue of this tongue-in-cheek Ron Zimmerman/Howard Chaykin series uniting a lot of Marvel's Western characters; it's not the most ambitious thing by a long shot, but it's been fun so far. I just wish Chaykin would find some new project he's actually really enthusiastic about in its own right--too much of what he's been drawing the last few years has come off "sure, that sounds like a gig." Preview.

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