I suppose a 2013 preview list should not be written 14 days into year, but I did a lot of traveling over the holidays, and acquired several video games of worth. If anything, SEGA should be held responsible for pushing “Anarchy Reigns” back to this week.
Anywho, 2012 was a shockingly awesome year for collectibles, so hopefully 2013 will continue the trend. We’re a month away from Toy Fair, and 2 months away from c2e2, so some comics and toys new is light. “Some” being the key world here. There’s some things announced in 2012 that still haven’t seen the light yet, so I’ll talk about those!
COMICS:
I’ve poked a ton of fun at DC this past year (for good reasons), but there is some hope for them to acquire some of my cash-money in 2013. First off, Jeff Lemire (Animal Man, Justice League Dark) is taking over “Green Arrow”, which may have cool results. Given the success of “Arrow” on the CW, DC should have a book that’s readable for potential new readers. That and Lemire has put out some great stuff for DC. Lemire’s Rotworld-buddy Scott Snyder has 2 new books coming out from DC as well: a Vertigo maxi-series called “The Wake” with my boy Sean Murphy (Punk Rock Jesus) and a new Superman title with Jim Lee, which I’m fairly certain will be called “Man of Steel” (SYNERGY). Nice to see DC trying to step up as Marvel NOW is in full effect.
Speaking of the House of Ideas, A NEW UNCANNY X-MEN STARTS IN 2013! YES I KNOW THIS IS THE SECOND TIME WE’VE GOTTEN A NEW UNCANNY X-MEN #1 IN 2 YEARS. BUT CHRIS BACHALO IS DRAWING IT! AND FRAZER IRVING TOO! HOPEFULLY CAPSLOCK AND CONVEY HOW EXCITED I AM! (Bendis is on writing duties, which hey cool, but man, those artists). Marvel actually has like hojillion new books announced so far: a new Uncanny X-force, Young Avengers, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy, and like 3 other books there’s teasing at. And “Age of Ultron” starting this March. And Superior Spider-Man started this past week, so there’s that too.
2013 looks great for the non Big 2 companies too! Dark Horse has Hellboy in Hell rolling on, a Brian Woods’ penned “Star Wars” series, and something I stupid excited for- Gerald Way (My Chemical Romance) and Becky Cloonan’s long awaited “Fabulous Livse of the Killjoys”, launching this Free Comic Day. Image has new series/mini-series being launched like Matt Fraction, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Kieron Giellen, and Paul Pope. I’m fairly certain that’s only the tip of the iceberg though. Not to mention Robert Kirkman’s “Invincible” hits #100 this month.
And not to leave it off the list KaBOOM’s “Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake” mini-series has started this month and it is pretty damn great. You go buy now.
TOYS:
Like I said earlier, details for 2013 toys are still kind of scarce, and we’ll have more info next month. HOWEVER, we should have another wave of both Marvel Universe and Legends dropping this month, featuring the likes of Nova, Hercules, Red She-Hulk, Iron Fist and several more characters more familiar to the public at large. We’ll also see the return of the Marvel Universe 3-packs, consisting of the likes of the West Coast Avengers, the Inhumans, 80s era Uncanny X-men, and the now disbanded Uncanny X-Men Extinction team. Also I imagine we’ll see some toylines based on Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World.
Non-Marvel toys of interest coming out in 2013 consist of a whole slew of Superman (and probably Batman) toys from Mattel and DC, a Kid Icarus figma from Max Factory (I AM EXCITE), a butt-ton of various -Arts figures from Bandai (Gundam, Dragon Ball, Pokemon,) and like seven trillion new Square Enix Playarts Kai figures from the millions of licenses they have. I’m not kidding, Square dropped like 2 new PA Kai figures this past month alone. More on those next week.
2013 is shaping up to be a pretty dope year for collectibles and comics. As for me, I got some cool stuff lined up that I can’t talk about, but will shamelessly plug when I can. Convention-wise, you can stalk me at PAX East, c2e2, Heroescon and New York Comic Con this year, and on twitter @theanarCHris if you want to troll me and disagree with me over everything. FUN FOR ALL!