November 9, 2011
This Isn’t A Library: Notable Releases To The Comics Direct Market
Here are the books that make an impression on me staring at this week's no-doubt largely accurate list of books shipping from Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. to comic book and hobby shops across North America.
I might not buy all of the works listed here. I might not buy any. You never know. I'd sure look at the following, though.
*****
AUG111170 DE PROFUNDIS HC $19.95
This week is dominated by a pre-holiday season flood of big names and archival projects, so it's nice to see a stand-alone new work from an innovative publisher like PictureBox.
SEP110019 BALTIMORE CURSE BELLS #4 $3.50
You gotta love comics titles post-2000 or so. That sounds like the results of hitting "enter" on a random word generator.
JUL110276 SPY VS SPY BY PROHIAS OMNIBUS HC $49.99
This is classy work, and very familiar, and I'm not sure it's found its most amendable reprint format yet. Maybe this deluxe treatment will do the job. I think there could be something to how well these comics worked in the mix of the other
MAD offerings -- how funny and direct and quick to read they were as opposed to some of the more verbally complex comics they did.
SEP110683 ESSENTIAL SGT FURY TP VOL 01 $19.99
I'm not sure if this is the first time this material has been offered this way, but there aren't many other well-known 1960s Marvel Comics that haven't been pored over and re-used to death. I'd like at some point to examine the piece of conventional wisdom that had this book being the proof that the Marvel approach worked for non-superhero books. I suspect that it's a lot more different than the other Marvel books than that statement suggests.
JUN110717 FANTASTIC FOUR BY JOHN BYRNE OMNIBUS HC VOL 01 $125.00
JUN110718 FANTASTIC FOUR BY JOHN BYRNE OMNIBUS HC VOL 01 DM VAR ED $125.00
This was the bee's knees for a lot of readers of a certain age, although looking at it now it seems to have functioned the same way a popular TV show starring a popular actor whose first show has the sturdier historical legacy might. I mention it here because there were so few mainstream comic books that jumped out at me from this week's list, and I'm generally very kind to such books. There was a time when books like the John Byrne
Fantastic Four were the comics that drove that market, and now I'm not so sure.
SEP111158 LILY RENEE ESCAPE ARTIST GN $7.95
JUL111128 MANGAMAN HC VOL 01 $19.99
Two books I think mostly aimed at younger readers, although entirely different subsets. The Lily Renee book feature Anne Timmons's art, which is nice. The latter features writing by Barry Lyga, who's done a lot of work for that publisher. Both books are very different commentaries on comics history, if you think about it.
JUL111233 SIMON & KIRBY HC LIBRARY CRIME $49.95
Simon and Kirby are always worth a look, and these comics should have a place in any library that is devoted in some manner to major mainstream comics efforts.
AUG111232 TEZUKAS PRINCESS KNIGHT GN VOL 01 $13.95
Seminal Osamu Tezuka comics work, drawing from the 1950s as opposed to that fertile 1970s period from which recent Vertical albums have sprung. A book of the week, for sure.
SEP111162 TINTIN HARDCOVER BOXED SET (O/A) $150.00
Yeah, that makes sense. I wonder how much the approach taken in the film might baffle young people as they explore the comics, but these are foundational 20th Century comics for sure.
JUL110279 RETURN TO PERDITION HC (RES) (MR) $19.99
Having a book called "Return To Perdition" in a series where there's a volume two that isn't I think this book just makes my head hurt, but the Collins/Beatty team will make this worth a pick-up for a lot of you.
JUN110356 SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING HC BOOK 06 (MR) $24.99
This is one of those series reprints that makes a certain amount of sense to me from a price and value standpoint; plus the Alan Moore-written project is important to the history and flow of modern mainstream comics in a lot of ways that are kind of under-appreciated at this point.
JUL111294 R CRUMB COMP RECORD COVER COLLECTION HC $27.95
I only heard about this WW Norton book a few days ago, and it's not exactly comics, but it's not exactly all record covers, either. Like many of the big books this week -- Kirby, Tezuka, Hergé, etc. -- anything from Crumb is worth a pick up and flip through.
AUG111234 TWIN SPICA GN VOL 10 $10.95
I've lost track of this series about young people in an accelerated program for future space travel candidates, but I'm happy to see it continue to come out -- I think there was some doubt there that it might end well short of the 16 volumes published in Japan (and it still might, come to think of it). It's a little bit odd in a good way, and also executed with a great deal of confident, recognizable craft in a good way.
*****
The full list of this week's releases, including some titles with multiple cover variations and a long, impressive list of toys and other stuff that isn't comics,
can be found here. Despite this official list there's no guarantee a comic will show up in the stores as promised, or in all of the stores as opposed to just a few. Also, stores choose what they carry and don't carry so your shop may not carry a specific publication. There are a lot of comics out there.
To find your local comic book store,
check this list; and for one I can personally recommend because I've shopped there, albeit a while back,
try this.
The above titles are listed with their Diamond order code in the first field, which may assist you in finding comics at your shop or having them order something for you they don't have in-stock. Ordering through a direct market shop can be a frustrating experience, so if you have a direct line to something -- you know another shop has it, you know a bookstore has it -- I'd urge you to consider all of your options.
If I failed to list your comic, that's on me. I apologize.
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posted 7:00 am PST |
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