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Disclaimer: This is actually three weeks worth of books so that I can play catch up.

Tom Strong Deluxe Hardcover vol. 1:  I own trade paperbacks in a variety of formats.  There’s the standard trade format, digests, hardcovers, Absolute Editions (DC’s oversized slipcase collections of classics), etc.  These formats range in quality from poor and flimsy (standard trades) to cumbersome and epic (Absolute Editions, but damn are they pretty) and that can make it hard to read them in a casual fashion.  One format that has always stood out to me as practically perfect is the deluxe hardcover format that both Marvel and DC use for larger collections of classic works.  Marvel did it with Runaways and Astonishing X-Men, for example and DC is doing it with Gotham Central and Grant Morrison’s JLA.  This is why I’m glad I’ve waited so long to begin buying Tom Strong in collected editions: I just knew DC would find a great way to present the series for consumption.   For those that haven’t read it, the series is Alan Moore’s take on the classic science heroes of pulp times like Doc Savage and Tom Swift with a bit of Tarzan thrown in for good measure.  Moore takes these classic pulp icon tropes and updates them for the new millenium (Tom Strong’s hometown is even called Millenium City) and shows off some great art, amazing story-telling and endearing characters.  Whether Tom is fighting his own rogue’s gallery of foes like the Modular Man or the Pangaen or traveling to distant worlds populated with a collection public domain superheroes from the 1940′s or having guest artists send him to the afterlife via a phantom autogyro, the series maintains a level of quality and charm throughout every chapter.  Great collection of a great title.

Showcase Presents: Warlord vol. 1:  Ok, I have a confession to make:  I’m kinda a hypocrite with my proclamations regarding genre likes and dislikes.  What I mean is that I can be known to swear up and down that I hate a particular type of material because I’ve never actually read anything in that genre that I liked before.  Sword and Sorcery is one of those genres that I just can’t stand because I’ve never gotten into any of the material that people have told me was the creme de la creme of published works in that field.  Lord of the Rings, for example, just didn’t do it for me.  Neither did Conan the Barbarian.  Hell, He-Man and Thundercats even left me cold.  So you can imagine how red my face was when I discovered Mike Grell’s Warlord series from DC circa 1975.  Now, in this case, what drew me to the book was the fact that it was Mike Grell working on it.  I’m a huge fan of the man’s work including Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters and his own character, Jon Sable: Freelance.  When I’d first read about Warlord in an old Who’s Who comic, nothing about it really intrigued me.  It seemed like yet another “warrior against sorcerers and demons, etc” story and I didn’t go out of my way to find any issues.  Then the Justice League Unlimited cartoon did an episode on this bygone character and suddenly, I was slightly interested.  Lo and behold, after digging up a couple of freebie issues in a back issue been from the 70′s, I was hooked.  Thank the reprint heavens that DC included this comic in their Showcase Presents series of black and white collections because it’s a great read.  The book follows Travis Morgan, an SR-71 pilot and Vietnam war veteran, who accidently finds himself sent to the mystical land of Skartaris when his flight plan goes awry over the North Pole.   Once he becomes familiar with the enchanted land, he learns that there is no one who will fight for the freedom of the besieged indiginous people and takes it upon himself to become their defender, thus earning the name Warlord.  The book is packed with action, terrific art by Grell, and one of DC’s hopefully not forgotten characters.  Currently, the company brought Warlord back for a new series written by Grell and drawn by Joe Prado.  Once you’ve made it through this collection, go give that series a shot, too.  Especially if you’re into this sword and sorcery stuff.

Secret Warriors vol. 1: Nick Fury Agent of Nothing HC:  I love a good espionage comic.  This is probably why I’ve been such a huge fan of Marvel’s classic super spy character, Nick Fury.  The best part about Fury, to me, was that he wasn’t your usual dapper secret agent like Patrick McGoohan or Pierce Brosnan.  No, Fury was a grizzled Word War II veteran who was still kicking ass in modern times with a cigar and a laser pistol.  Fury’s charms came from his tough-as-nails nature and had little to do with the idea that this guy could be sly or sneaky.  Imagine Kurt Russell doing a James Bond movie except he’s playing a character who’s a combination of his classic John Carpenter characters, Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China) and Snake Plisken (Escape from New York).  Now for a long time Fury ran the largest espionage network in the Marvel universe, S.H.I.E.L.D.  The acronymn has gone through many definitions.  When last defined, it stood for Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage Logistics Directorate.  Currently in the Marvel universe, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been shuttered and Nick Fury is on the outs with the federal government.  After watching former supervillain, Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin), put in charge of national security, Fury goes underground and assembles a team of young and inexperienced superhumans as his team of agents to perform missions that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have taken on had it still been in existence.  Y’know, defending the world from the scum of the earth and such, since Osborn is really just making life safe for supervillains while he’s in charge.  The series is written by Jonathan Hickman who is one of my personal favorite up and coming comic book creators.  He’s had four books published through Image Comics, the first of which, Nightly News, is an amazing mixed media work showing off Hickman’s skills at characterization and suspense.  Hickman brings those talents to writing this comic and it makes the twists and turns the plot takes work excellently alongside the expertly-rendered action scenes handed in by artist Stefano Caselli (Hack/Slash, Avengers: The Initiative).  All in all, this is a great title filled with brand new characters (thus, you never know if they’ll survive the issue and genuine suspense is created!) and classic heroes and villains, side-by-side in the classic Marvel manner.

Salt Water Taffy vol. 3: Truth about Dr. True:  There really aren’t that many comics for kids and adults.  For a long time in comics, it was seriously either/or with very little that could be enjoyed by both sets of readers.  Then writer/artist Matthew Loux showed up with Salt Water Taffy, his series of graphic novels from Oni Press.  The series follows two young brothers, Jack and Benny, as they’re begrudgingly dragged to the New England coastal town, Chowder Bay for the summer.  During their time there, Jack and Benny discover that there is a great deal of adventure to be had against the sleepy beach town.  All of the volumes released so far are full of innocent and fun tales of taffy-stealing lobsters, hat-loving giant eagles, and, with the release of volume 3, ghosts with a mystery to solve.  Loux’s art is fluid and dynamic while his story-telling style is both charming and well-paced.  You never feel pandered to or patronized as an audience member mostly due to the fact that his art carries a very innocent and yet witty comic timing that can translate very well in sequence.  It’s great to read a comic and then realize when I’ve finished it that I could pass it off to a friend’s kid and know that they’d enjoy it also.

Sleeper Season 2 TP:  Ed Brubaker is one of the better writers working in the mainstream today.  His Captain America is hailed as one of the best takes on the character to date and his run on Daredevil was one of my personal favorites.   He can find the voice in any character and can add a genuine flavor of noir to the darker books he chooses to write.  Sleeper, to me, was the best example of why Brubaker is an expert at his craft.  The book takes place in the Wildstorm universe of comics which I’ve always felt peaked with Warren Ellis’s Authority series and has since been coasting on characters and concepts that need to come to a calm and satisfying conclusion.  Within this world is an intelligence agency called I/O run by veteren spy, John Lynch.  Lynch is a master puppeteer of espionage and had decided that the best way to take down a villain known as Tao, rising star in the world terrorism trade, was to send in Holden Carver, a deep cover operative armed with superpowers.  In the mini-series, Point Blank (which can be picked up along with the two Sleeper trades), it’s revealed that Lynch was the only person who knew of Carver’s existence, but through the manipulations of Tao, Lynch is put in a coma and Carver is left in the cold to fend for himself.  This is where the Sleeper series picks up.  DC has made the wise decision to collect the series into two “seasons” (the story-telling is very similar to a television show) and has released them both as 12-issue trade paperbacks.  The book’s art by master artist Sean Philips is dark, gritty, seeped in noir flavor and the writing is rife with twist after twist as we watch Carver try to get out of the mess that he has become stuck in while trying to serve the mission and his country.  Sleeper is a great read for fans of Graham Greene-style spy novels and modern espionage comics.

Potter’s Field HC:  Mark Waid can do anything.  Seriously, if Mark Waid wrote the obituaries, I’d post them here as my weekly pick in the newspaper.  With Potter’s Field, Waid shows off how he can not only write superheroes and science fiction, but crime comics as well.  The series follows the mysterious John Doe, an enigmatic avenger of the silent dead in Potter’s field, a graveyard in New York City where corpses with no identity are buried with numerical headstones.  Doe is slowly making his way through the cemetary, number by number, identifying the deceased with the help of his crack investigator skills and network of agents in various areas of law enforcement.  Waid not only creates a winning procedural a la Law & Order, but also recaptures the feel of classic pulp comics like the Shadow and Operator #9 from the ’30′s and ’40′s.  Doe is a character with no identity, but still manages to be interesting and three-dimensional and the cases, while seemingly simple, still manage a third act plot-twist that keeps the readers interest.  The art by Paul Azaceta is also noteworthy.  In this day and age of artists who spent pages using photo-reference for intricate details, seeing an artist use the Mignola style of “less is just as good as more” approach is a relief, especially in a crime comic.  Azaceta renders scenes with minimal detail and maximum emotion and while that sounds difficult to imagine, just take a look at the book and you’ll see why I’m so impressed.  Waid shows once more why he is still a voice in the field that should be an automatic buy at the stands.  Potter’s Field is worth every penny.

Codeflesh HC:  A few years ago, Image comics scored what they thought was a coup with the hot writer at the time, Scott Lobdell, coming to do indie comics.  This “coup” lasted all of ten minutes but it produced a comic called Double Image with Lobdell’s lead story upfront (so amazing and original that it escapes me at this time) and Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard doing a back-up tale.  Codeflesh was that back-up tale and I was hooked from the pitch when I first heard it.  Bail bondsman Cameron Daltry doubles as his own masked bounty hunter to track down and recapture the super-powered convicts that use his services to post bond.  The question espoused by the comic is, “Why does Daltry do this at the expense of his lovelife and his health?”  The answer is never really addressed, but that question allows us a way into the main character’s psyche from which we’re intrigued enough to follow the rather simple and episodic plots from short to short.  This edition has been digitally colored and arranged in a very elegant reading format to showcase Adlard’s gritty and attractive style and Casey shows of his love for the character in his afterword reminicising about working on the project.

Note:  This was a pretty unique buying experience and not necessarily in a good way.  Both of these books are collections of extremely good indie crime books.  Potter’s Field was published by Boom! Studios and Codeflesh was published by Image (and then reprinted at AIT/PlanetLar and is now back at Image).  Both are written by top talent with Mark Waid on Potter’s Field and Joe Casey on Codeflesh.  Both books are reprinted in gorgeous formats with Potter’s Field getting a dust jacket, ribbon bookmark, and being packed with bonus scripts and sketches and Codeflesh being recolored from it’s original black and white with an all-new coda to its story.  So what’s the problem?  I paid over ten dollars more for Codeflesh than I did for Potter’s Field for probably equal the material (112 pages for Potter’s Field vs. 128 pages for Codeflesh).  Even my comic shop owner did a heavy sigh and noted the discrepancy in pricing.  That discrepancy equals out to almost a dollar extra a page difference.  Now, I ordered these books (since I’d read the material and wanted the proper treatment), so I was going to buy them regardless, but this felt slightly off as a consumer.  I could have sworn that the Codeflesh was originally solicited as cheaper than this final product and the fact that it took almost 5 more months to come out than the original release date… Regardless.  Just a note regarding hardcovers from independent publishers.

Big Book of Barry Ween, Boy Genius:  There are a lot of Judd Winick haters out there.  Don’t worry, I’m sort of one of them.  He’s the definition of hit and miss author with me.  His Exiles was pitch-perfect comics while his Green Arrow was preaching and banal.  His Batman was twist-filled and fun while his Outsiders was… well… preachy and banal.   When Winick just relaxes his inner liberal (and before anyone says anything, I’M a liberal also, so we can smell our own) and just writes comics, he can really pull out all of the stops of great humor and dialogue (his two biggest strengths as a writer).  Barry Ween, his first comic book work from Oni Press, showcases those abilities along with his own cartooning talents.  The book follows the title character,  who is the smartest person on the planet and is also only 10 years old.  Barry and his best friend, Jeremy, are constantly getting into trouble while he’s creating devices or working on experiments (usually due to the hyperactive Jeremy getting too curious) and hijinx ensue.  Winick manages to take what could be a too-simple concept and actually craft characters that are not only funny but deep and relatable.  Without being preachy, anyone who has ever suffered from depression can sympathize with Barry’s plight as he describes the fact that he’s ALWAYS thinking and can’t stop and how horrible it is to be this intelligent while the world is so distant to him.  Jeremy offers a simple voice of reason seeing as how he’s, well, simple in comparison to Barry and it’s these somber moments that cement the characters as a winning comedy pair with a great deal of heart.  The book contains all of their appearences including a color short from an Oni Color Special from back in the day.  It’s well worth the money to grab this book and own the best thing Judd Winick wrote that DIDN’T win a GLAAD award.

Thor vol. 2 HC:  As far as I’m concerned, J. Michael Straczynski should be the only person writing Thor right now.  I’m talking guest appearances, cameos, and even advertisements, too.  Here’s the thing to keep in mind:  I hated Straczynski’s Amazing Spider-Man run.  I mean, seriously loathed it.  Everything he came up with felt forced, uninteresting, and was devoid of anything worth reading for me.  When I heard that he had taken up the reigns of Thor, I was slightly intrigued but ultimately wasn’t going to give the book a shot until someone else read it for me and told me what to expect (we like to call this, “lazy criticism”).  Suffice it to say, every time I read anything about the book, I felt like I was missing the best book being published by Marvel at the time.   When I finally read the first hardcover of the series, I was floored.  Straczynski had managed to take a character that I’d never really felt close to in the Marvel Universe and slowly turned him into one of my current favorites.  The concept of gods walking among men (as the Asgardians due with their home now floating over Oklahoma, USA) may have been done many times, but Straczynski seems to add a freshness to it that takes these classic Lee/Kirby renditions and turns them on their heads as comedic foils for stories without drifiting into parody territory.  Thor himself is presented as being looking to reexamine what exactly it means to lead his fellow gods.  Straczynski subtley points out that Thor is not a superhero, but a god of old who protects the weak and vanquishes evil not because of the whole “great power, great responsibility” deal, but because that’s what Odin had always taught him was important.  When examining the character this way, you can feel that Straczynski knows what he’s doing and that the coming issues will only get better and better with each release.  Oliver Copiel and Marko Djurdjevic both handle art duties here and consistently show off why Thor is not only one of Marvel’s best written comics but also one of its best drawn titles as well.  Neither artist disappoints on their issues and if that created lateness, then honestly, I don’t care.  It’s worth the wait.  This hardcover completes the first year of the title and the arc of Thor and the Asgardians return and Loki’s sinister plot to overthrow Thor’s reign as King.  Enjoy and watch as I take back almost everything I ever said negative about J. Michael Straczyniski.  Almost.

BPRD: The Warning:  Dark Horse has taken to publishing their Hellboy spin-off series, the BPRD, as a series of mini-series and it has so far worked out pretty well for the title.  Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Guy Davis have been the creative team on almost every book in the BPRD series thus far and have been crafting quite the complex story for the core group of characters to follow.  Fans of the Hellboy property know Abe Sapien, Liz Sherman, and Johann Krause, but characters like Roger the Homunculus, Capt. Benjamin Daimio, and Kate Corrigan are somewhat new to people who have read a few Hellboy books or just seen the films.   There are many plotlines going on in the title at the moment from Capt. Daimio’s secrets to Abe’s origins to Liz’s importance to a coming war.  In the background (and in some books, the main plot) is a war with a race of creatures referred to as “the frogs” and their involvement in the destruction of the human race.  Dynamic characters and amazing art are a staple of the Hellboy series and the spin-off BPRD series manages to stand on its own with head held high.

Nova vol. 4:  To say I’m a fan of the Nova series from Marvel would be an understatement.  I’ve had an affection for the character since the New Warriors series in the early 90′s, but had pretty much lost track of him with every mishandling of him since that series insistence on giving him a five o’clock shadow and a ponytail (really, what was wrong with us in the 90′s anyway?).  Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (the affectionately named DnA writing team from the UK) have pretty much been given the keys to Marvel’s cosmic characters with Annihilation, Guardians of the Galaxy, and War of Kings and have shot every series out of the park.  The duo seem to be able to call all of the shots in their corner of the universe with any characters that they wish and that’s what can make a book like Nova work so well:  You never know what’s going to happen next.  This is what can truly make for a good comic.  You have an everyman hero that your reader can relate to (Nova’s alter ego, Richard Rider, constantly refers to himself as, “just a kid from Long Island”) and have him thrown into insane situations such as tracking down a serial killing, body-hopping alien during a planet’s final destruction by Galactus.  You have a guest star list that includes Darkhawk, the Silver Surfer, and Super Skrull.  You have plot twists that show just how much Nova can’t rely on anyone but himself.  Best of all, you have extremely clear and detailed action scenes from talent like Wellington Alves and Andrea Di Vito that really makes the book feel balanced between emotional and thrilling moments.  Nova is a book that I’ll most likely never cut from my pull list and even buy in trade and hardcover just to keep all the stories in one place.  Highly recommended for fans of great comics.

Scalped vol. 4:  Fans of noir and gritty southwestern drama alike can take heart knowing that a series like Scalped exists.  Jason Aaron carved his name in the pantheon of Vertigo’s top creators by crafting a story of the dark secrets that lie on a Native American reservation populated by “villains” that are almost more complex and interesting the “heroes” (I really do emphasize the “almost” there).  When I started this series, it seemed like pretty straight forward crime fiction in the vein of Elmore Leonard or James Ellroy with an emphasis on a formerly proud people and the corruption that they have to endure.  As the series has progressed, though, something amazing happened:  the main villain became one of the most sympathetic characters in the whole book.  That’s Aaron’s true achievement with this series.  The antagonist, Chief Lincoln Red Crow, who at first glance could have easily just been a Native American version of Marvel’s Kingpin, has had layers and layers of depth added to his portrayal until you are entranced by his story along with the stories of the other characters like main protagonist Dashiel Bad Horse, our anti-hero, or Dino Poor Bear, who you just know has a larger part to play down the line.  That’s the true beauty of Scalped:  It’s not about wondering what will happen next, it’s about wondering what new aspect of a character will draw you closer to them.

Astounding Wolf-Man vol. 2:   Robert Kirkman is an idea man.  He was obviously raised on a steady supply of 90′s Marvel comics and must have been constanly jotting notes in his margins about characters he wanted to one day explore in comics.  Thankfully, not only did he eventually achieve the success to do that as a full-time gig (and a new member of the Image partners), but he’s actually an extremely capable writer who not only creates human characters that come off as realistic and series that always zig when you think they’ll zag.  Whether it’s the Walking Dead or Invincible or Tech Jacket, Kirkman never rests on his laurels.  It’s for that reason that I leapt into his latest series, the Astounding Wolf-Man, with open arms and little to no trepidation.  The series follows Gary Hampton, a successful CEO who is bitten by a werewolf while on vacation with his family.  Hampton realizes the effect of the bite and what it means to his life and decides to combine his money and his newfound powers to fight for justice as the Wolf-Man.  Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned.  The second volume picks up on the cliffhanger of the previous one and also lays the groundwork for upcoming storylines while addressing the backstory and motivations of characters that are lining up to be the main antagonists.  Penciler Jason Howard is a find.  His simple style is almost like something from the DC Animated titles but he is able to handle gory action as deftly as emotional melodrama.  The book is one of my favorites from Image and I’m eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Thor: Ages of Thunder HC:  Matt Fraction is a god.  I don’t say this for embellishment.  Based on how he writes a Thor comic, it’s obvious that Matt Fraction has a little bit of a god in him.  I’m not one for the sword and sorcery set.  I am not a Wheel of Time or Lord of the Rings or Dark Tower reader.  I begrudgingly sat through the LOTR films and cringe at the thought of a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game.   Yet, I was spellbound by Matt Fraction’s take on Thor and the Asgardian Gods of legend as it unfolded in this collection of his one-shots.  Stories that tell the tale of magic apples, manipulative frost giants, vengeful fathers and defiant sons, and forgotten warriors unfold with a narrative that draws the reader in and refuses to let go.  With art chores from the likes Patrick Zircher, Dan Brereton, Doug Braithwaite, Clay Mann, and Marko Djurdjevic, not only does the book read well, but it looks gorgeous to boot.  The range in styles is never jarring to the reader and the narrative flows from one story to the next with ease.  While I also enjoy the ongoing series by Thor writer J. Michael Straczynski, I hope one day that Fraction is handed the keys to Asgard for what would promise to be a spectacular run.

Foolkiller: White Angels:  I was hesitant to give this series a shot when the first mini came about.  Foolkiller isn’t a character that can be made into something memorable too easily.  In the mainstream Marvel comics that he first appeared in, he was just a crazy man with a big hat and a disintegration gun.  Seriously.  He killed “fools” or those that he deemed as consisting of behavior that was foolish.  He wasn’t a hero remotely (barely even an anti-hero), but he was also not really a villain.  Frankly, the irony was that he acted like a fool and many different people carried his legacy on since, y’know, the character kept getting killed off.  Flashforward to a year ago when novelist Greg Hurwitz was interested in writing comics at Marvel.  He apparently was extremely interested in the Punisher, but at the time Garth Ennis’ truly superior run was still underway in Marvel’s MAX line of comics.  The editors proposed taking the Foolkiller character and seeing if Hurwitz could do anything with him.  Hurwitz, reluctantly up for a challenge, came up with a fresh take on the character: vigilante performance artist.  It actually worked.  The first Foolkiller series was gritty, dark, and violent following a protagonist that was governed by his own moral code and hunting down those he deemed unworthy to live for their crimes, punishing them in creatively gruesome ways and displaying them for all the world to see as the fools they were.  Imagine the Joker as a good guy and you’ve pretty much got the new Foolkiller.  The Foolkiller: White Angels series was another adventure of Foolkiller taking on the bad guys, this time white supremacists in LA.  The added bonus was that since Hurwitz had proven himself on the title, the editors gave him a crack at adding the Punisher as a costar for half the issues.   The story has simple villains and a pretty straightforward arc with minimal surprises, but really, do you actually need any?  Good Rated R fun for all.

Perhapanauts vol. 3:  Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau created the Perhapanauts way back in 2005 and published the initial issues through Dark Horse Comics.  It’s a shame that no one read this book at that time since it is extremely well-done and fun.  I personally didn’t hear about it until the late Mike Weiringo posted a sketch of the characters on his blog and gave a shout-out to the creators and said that people should give it a shot.  The next Wednesday at my shop, I grabbed the first trade and was hooked.  The characters were fun, the art was simple but clean and well done, and the story of a group of paranormal investigators (who were in turn made up of the paranormal) was played more for the Challengers of the Unknown than Hellboy that it was able to stand on its own.  With volume 3, the title has moved to Image comics and you can tell the creators are very excited about this.  Image has done a rather large advertising push for the book and has also packed this trade with enough bonus features to make fans new and old feel justified in their purchase.

Dan Dare Omnibus:  Apparently, Dan Dare is the biggest thing ever in England.  Twice as awesome as America’s Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers and also twice as old and timely.  I’d heard the name one or two times when imported comic book talent would talk about work they’d done before breaking in with the Big Two (Marvel and DC), but I’d never really read anything about the actual character.  Well, there I was talking to my local comic shop owner and he noticed I was a huge Garth Ennis fan.  ”Do you like his war comics?” he asks.  ”Yup.  Totally love his war comics and really anything he does that isn’t over-the-top gore or toilet humor,” I reply.  ”Well, what if I could give you a Garth Ennis war comic set in space that hits all the same highlights of his best stuff?”  Lo and behold, the Dan Dare Omnibus from the issues published by the now defunct Virgin Comics and republished in trade form by Devil’s Due Publishing.   Ennis infuses every scene with the grit and intensity of a WWII film and keeps the dialogue and action uber-tight.  Gary Erskine takes the art reins and turns in some of his best work pretty much showing off how he and Chris Weston are some of the best British artists out there (Weston doesn’t contribute to this book, but Erskine’s style is eerily similar to his).  While there are nods to what I’m assuming are the classic characters and relationships that were present in previous versions, I was able to follow the arcs with ease and didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything that was integral.  Effectively, this is the Battlestar: Galactica equivalent in updates for the Dan Dare property.  It’s the complete story, so enjoy.

Twilight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on  Maple Street:  I’m a huge Twilight Zone fan.  Let’s just get that out there right now.  I own the complete series on DVD and one of my favorite episodes is “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.”  As it turns out, this is also the case for Mark Kneece and Rich Ellis who have adapted the classic episode from the original script treatment by Rod Sterling.  The art is simple and the layouts are very well done and style never dominates over the substance of Sterling’s original designs.  This is also not a shot-for-shot remake of the episode (which could have easily been a pitfall of such a project).  Kneece and Ellis create their own set-up and designs make every panel unique to their story, not the episode’s.  A solid adaptation of a truly great story.

Never As Bad As You Think:  Stuart Immonen is one of my all-time favorite artists.  The man is a master of multiple styles and disciplines of sequential art.  When he worked on Adventures of Superman in the 90′s, it was all soft lines and curves.  When he tackled ShockRockets for Dark Horse, it was thicker inks and detailed action scenes.  NextWave: Agents of H.A.T.E. for Marvel allowed him to create wacky and cartoonish action scenes.  Even Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Spider-Man allowed for more straight-forward superhero fare, but with a lot of attention to detail and character expression.  ”Jack-of-all-trades” does not even come close to describing.  Immonen and his wife, Kathryn, have worked on one or two projects together, but this webstrip was something special just because of the fun series of characters and quick transitions to small situational comedy moments.  A great strip-size hardcover.

Noble Causes Archives Vol. 2:  I became a Noble Causes fan super late in the game.  I was never really a Jay Faeber fan since usually his work-for-hire jobs produced lackluster results.  His work on Marvel’s Generation X and DC’s Titans were both devoid of any real originality or passion.  When Noble Causes premeired at Image, I just plain wasn’t interested.  The thing is, I was an idiot.  All of Faeber’s independant work has been just plain awesome.  Dynamo 5, Venture, Gemini and, of course, Noble Causes.  The series follows the family of superheroes with more problems than the Kennedy’s and more drama than the X-Men.  This second “phonebook-size” volume collects the second half of the entire run of the series (the first came out last year).  It’s well worth the money and make sure you buy both volumes to get the complete story.

Strongman:  Strongman is by far the single best grab I made while at Emerald City.  Created by newcomers Charles Soule and Allan Gladfelter, Strongman follows the tale of fallen Luchador warrior, Tigre, as he must overcome his doubts and failures that have left him a shell of his former self to take down the corruption sweeping his neighborhood.  The writing is tight and the characters are well-developed.  Soule manages to evoke emotion and create very well done pacing with his writing.  Gladfelter meets him with solid panel layouts and very well done action scenes and expressions for the characters.  The layouts are tight and the panels show an almost cinematic quality especially in the flashbacks to Tigre and his cohorts “better days.”  We’re treated to rich and fun characters, an intriguing story, and some really great art from new talent.  All in all, my favorite book of the show.

Tiki Joe Mysteries:  This book from cartoonist Mark Murphy is just plain fun.  Classic 1959 Las Vegas pulp crime setting with the adventures of Joe Halliday and his former WWII soldier friends as they solve cases that cross their pathes at Tiki Joe’s Restaurant.  It’s solid story-telling that reads like an old Rat Pack movie (in fact, it’s obviously cast as such when you look at the characters) and Murphy’s art has developed nicely from his House of Java days.  Well wroth picking up.