SETH’S PICK :: THE SPIRE #1: Start July on a good note this week with the latest collaboration between Si Spurrier and Jeff Stokely. You may remember their post apocalyptic sci-fi western Six Gun Gorilla from a few years ago. That book won a lot of deserved critical acclaim, and I enjoyed it immensely. The Spire features a similar apocalyptic scenario, but trades the western motifs for fantasy this time around. It also adds a murder mystery into the mix, and a protagonist who must solve the crimes as she navigates a racist and xenophobic society. Spurrier telling a fantasy story with plenty of modern societal parallels, plus an array of monsters, strange machines and characters rendered as only Stokely can? That’s enough to sell me (and you) on this new series. 

Bonus Pick: Autumnlands vol. 1 TP: Tooth and Claw: This affordable debut collection (just $9.99) by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey features some of my favorite anthropomorphic fantasy storytelling in years. Dewey’s depictions of endless humanoid animal creatures is remarkable, and Busiek does a fine job of building an accessible narrative for a new world in this excellent first volume.

HEATHER’S PICK :: A-FORCE #1: So Secret Wars, things blow up, worlds collide, Heroes had a really cool variant cover.  You now have the sum total of my knowledge of the wars of secrets.  That’s my comics confession, I rarely do the big events.

In spite of that, I can’t wait to pick up A-Force #1. Marvel’s got my number on this one.  A comic loaded with female superheroes written by one of my personal favorites, G. Willow Wilson. (Side note: Are you reading Ms. Marvel?  If no, then why the *$@! not?!? Pick up a trade or two when you’re in this week for singles.)

Written by Wilson and Marguerite Bennett with gorgeous art by Jorge Molina and Craig Yeung as well as colors by Laura Martin and Matt Milla, out of Secret Wars (I think) comes Battleworld, part of which is protected by a team of lady Avengers.  Based on the cover and previews of interior pages, the team includes some of my favorite Marvel characters: She-Hulk,  Medusa,  Hellcat, Jubilee,  and SpiderGwen.   There are a ton of other great characters in case our favorites don’t coincide.  This looks like a good one to pick up, especially while so many titles hit pause for the summer.

ANDY’S PICKS :: ROBIN THE BOY WONDER A CELEBRATION OF 75 YEARS HC

(W) Bill Finger & Various (A) Bob Kane & Various (CA) Jim Lee, Scott Williams
Happy Birthday Dick/Jason/Damien and according to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there are some who call him…..Tim? Regardless he still looks great…nice gams! And you have to tip your hat to the enduring concept of the Super-hero kid side-kicks. Again, I know nothing about the contents, but these DC Diamond Jubilee editions have been consistently good. And I’d be willing to bet $.15 (Sterling!) that a whole lot of Teen Titans can be found somewhere between these hard covers.

Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The Pixilated Parrot (The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 9)

(W/A) Carl Barks
Two hundred pages of comics by the greatest of the great Carl Barks. You get Donald Duck, his Uncle Scrooge and his nephews Huey, Dewey & Louie, great gags, break-neck pacing, exhilarating adventure that ads up to comic storytelling at its best. What more do you need? How about brief, insightful essays on every story from a number of knowledgable critics, authors and academics. Buy this volume or any volume. Buy some Barks NOW!

Check out this article by Scoop Editor Jeff Vaughn about the history of our current location and sign up for their weekly newsletter while you’re there! See you this Saturday for Free Comic Book Day!

JUSTIN’S PICK :: MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS ACTIVITY BOOK FACSIMILE COLLECTION: (phew) Like most fans of my generation, I am a victim of nostalgia. No industry exploits that propensity quite like comic books. Alongside a cache of Silver Age treasures and unreliable TV reruns, Marvel/Mattel’s Secret Wars toy line was one of my earliest touchstones for the characters I grew to love. In anticipation of its Big Summer Event incarnation, Marvel is releasing this activity book facsimile collection. I don’t think I even had this as a kid, which makes owning it now even more imperative. ‘The specifics weren’t important,’ reads a particularly illuminating appendix in the trade paperback collection of the original Secret Wars series, ‘as long as it featured unique designs that could be made into toys, and as long as it was called “Secret Wars” – two words Mattel had found tested well with adolescent boys.’ Creepy as grown men dispassionately analyzing children may be, the marketing works: thirty years on, and I’m still buying this stuff. Score one for target demographics.

Hey y’all! Rico, your Heroes Creative Director here (I sound like Julie from the Love Boat), to tell you about our HeroesCon exclusive Secret Wars #1 variant cover. Let’s get the business out of the way first. This thing is beautiful and it’s available for pre-order now. Get it HERE.

When Marvel decided to bring back Secret Wars for 2015′s mega crossover event we knew we had to get our friends Mike Zeck and John Beatty involved and tie it all together with their appearance at HeroesCon 2015 (June 19-21). We asked these comics legends to revisit their classic Black Suit Spider-Man cover from Secret Wars #8. Once they agreed Shelton (the boss!), Justin (Store Manager), Seth (Warehouse Manager), and I got to work brainstorming which characters we’d like to appear on the cover. We placed Miles in the center and then worked out from there. This was a LOT of fun for us as you can probably imagine.

The next step was gathering character reference for Mike to work from while getting Marvel approvals along the way. We sent these over to Mike and he quickly finished his “rough” sketch. That’s the one over there that pretty much looks like a finished cover illustration. Whoa! Mike then completes his pencils, approvals again and then it’s over to John Beatty for some silky inks. Beautiful!

Now the cover heads back to us for colors and trade dress. Since we already changed so much from the original, we thought keeping a similar color scheme, the original logo and corner box would finish this off nicely. Thankfully we didn’t have to work from old scans or build all of that from scratch. Mike had already created a vector file of the entire Secret Wars #8 cover which he very graciously allowed us to use for this! A few tweaks here and there and it was finally complete! We think it’s a great looking cover that honors the past while featuring some great current characters along with favorites from all eras.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Mike Zeck and John Beatty for doing this wonderful cover for us!

Secret Wars #1 comes out on May 6th but you can pre-order a copy now by going HERE. Of course if we have any left, we will have them at HeroesCon, June 19-21 where you can get both Mike Zeck and John Beatty to sign yours.

RICO’S PICK :: RUNLOVEKILL: Anytime Eric Canete takes time from his busy schedule of animation work to draw comic books, I’m checking it out. The 1st issue of this 8 issue series comes out today and if you’re into science fiction, explosions and great art you should check it out. You can tell Eric how much you love this when you meet him at HeroesCon in June.

BONUS PICK :: SENSATION COMICS #9: Don’t miss today’s Sensation Comics featuring 2 great looking Wonder Woman stories. The first features art by HeroesCon family member Mike Maihack and the second is a Lois Lane and Wonder Woman story with art by Chris Sprouse, Karl Story and Jordie Bellaire all wrapped in a great cover by Ben Caldwell.