Comic Books of the New Year

By Devin T. Quin

Last week’s reprieve from the comics publishing schedule meant we could save up our ducats for this week’s bumper crop! Of course, we spent that money on New Years beer and Karaoke. Sigh, time to break the piggie bank!

THE BIG GUNS

You name a hero and DC is printing them this week! I’m looking forward to Sam Keith on Batman Confidential #40, as well as weirdo books Doom Patrol #6 and The Great Ten #3! DC Executive Editor Dan Didio is brushing off his writing skills on this week’s Weird Western Tales #71, which is really good and bad news.

The good news is: some of your favorite Silver Age cowboy stars such as Bat Lash and Scalp Hunter are BACK. The bad news is they’re back as Black Lanterns via a tie-in to DC’s ongoing Space-Zombie mash-up “Darkest Night.” Most interestingly is this comic will also has Jonah Hex as a Black Lantern… I could easily see them restoring him to life and throwing Jonah into the current DC Universe. Here’s for hoping!

MARVELOUS

Marvel has a slew of comic goodness stew, though stand-outs (For me) include Deadpool Team-Up #897 and event starter The Siege #1, though only one of these comics has Deadpool teaming up with BOTH Ghost Riders to stop the assassination of a young lad with Lobster Claw deformity. Choose wisely.

House of Ideas is also doing what it does best: Reusing past material by reprinting X-Men Mutant Massacre in trade-paperback this week! Chris Clairmont, John Romita Jr., Alan Davis, Barry-Windsor-Smith and more are on hand to tell you a pivotal tale of THE FIRST TIME Mavel declared war on all Mutants. That race gets wiped clean more often than a dry erase board, I tells ya’!

ALSO RANS

Dark Horse has a great jumping on point for Hellboy Fans, both in this week’s B.P.R.D. King of Fear #1 of 5 and the Hellboy Bride of Hell one shot from Mignola and Richard Corbin from a few weeks back, still available here at The Forbidden Planet.

Image has Image Unlimited #2, as well as indie hits King City #4 and an exciting new book about grizzly Orc combat called Orc Stains #1. Say what you will about Image, they’re back to being one of the most diverse and versatile publishers again, that’s for sure!

BUT the book I’M plugging for this week is the amazing new Muppet Trade-Paper back from Boom! Studios:

Muppet Show: Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson, (W/A) Roger Langridge, Boom!

If you’ve ever liked the Muppets, or funny jokes, or neat stories, or comics in general then you NEED to get this book. Langridge is a comics genius working amongst us at this very minute, and here with the Muppets he’s found his place in the sun. We can’t go back in time and buy Lee and Kirby’s run on the Fantastic Four, or Neal Adams on Batman, but we can pick up Lagridge on Muppets!

-See ya’ next week!