JUSTIN’S PICK :: SAVAGE DRAGON #186: Savage Dragon is my favorite long-running super hero comic. Perpetrator Erik Larsen just gets the mechanics of the ongoing format (which is fast becoming a lost art nowadays, with reboots, re-numberings, ret cons and so on), and every year or so the book cycles back to a point of accessibility. The current arc, Savage Dragon on Trial, is one of those, addressing a deadly identity crisis the titular hero endured a while back. It’s an easy way for readers to get caught up on current continuity. It can be intimidating to pick up a book with such a long and rich history, but that’s legion for comics. Part of the fun is filling in the blanks as you go. And the driving concept of the book – its real time storytelling – keeps the cast fresh and vital.

ANDY’S PICK :: COMPLETE PEANUTS HC VOL 19 1987-1988: When I was a kid–years before the proliferation of VCRs but sometime after the advent of indoor plumbing– my comic reading holy grail was any Peanuts Paperback reprint book like He’s Your Dog Charlie Brown and Slide, Charlie Brown, Slide! I’d read them and trace the drawings until they fell apart. They were never enough to satiate my Peanuts fanaticism. I wanted more!. If only Fantagraphics Complete reprint series was around during the the Nixon Administration. But lucky us!!– Volume 19 (of a projected 25) of this landmark series is out this week and contains every daily and Sunday strip from 1987-1988.

Of course the later years of the strip were not quite in the same league as the Prime Peanuts era from 1960-1976..but then again, what is??? By 1987, with world wide fame, fortune and renown, Schulz could have just hired assistants and began coasting– but instead, he kept pushing himself as an artist. When it first appeared in papers, the main selling point for Peanuts was that it was available every single day in a four panel grid that a subscribing paper could publish vertically, horizontally or even stacked. It was the all-purpose comic–built for any comic page! Here in the 38th(!) year of the strip, the Master cartoonist threw caution to the wind and altered that familiar grid by using one-two-three or even five panels to tell his daily story. The results invigorated the strip. Rerun Van Pelt continues to step into the spotlight more. The enigmatic “Lydia” makes Linus’ life a veritable hell. Snoopy injures his knee playing hockey and later writes a “kiss-and-tell” memoir. Even the much maligned Spike gets a really enjoyable storyline as he joins brother Snoopy in the trenches of WWI France.
Buy this volume– or any other volume of The Complete Peanuts that Ms. Shelley keeps in stock on the Heroes shelves. Enjoy one of the great works of comic art and be a kid again!

SETH’S PICK :: ABE SAPIEN: DARK AND TERRIBLE #1: If you’re at all familiar with the Mignola-verse of characters, you know Abe Sapien’s story is as intriguing as Hellboy’s.  And while you could say that Abe has been largely about a creature trying to hold onto his humanity, in recent years Mignola and company have further mutated the fish-man.  Now he looks less like a man with gills, and more like a relative of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  Fitting, since the Earth has literally gone to hell over in B.P.R.D.  Now, courtesy of Dark Horse, Mignola, Scott Allie, Sebastian Fiumara and colorist extraordinaire Dave Stewart, we get an all new ongoing series featuring Abe.  It’s a fish-man fighting monsters, travelling the ruined Earth, and trying to make sense of what he was and is.  They had me at fish-man.

RICO’S PICK :: EAST OF WEST #1: Years ago I was sitting in a movie theater watching some coming attractions/previews/trailers/long commercials/whatever you want to call them. A preview for the Italian Job remake came on and a couple of quick shots into it I was sold. Tiny cars racing through Italy with the drivers pulling off some sort of heist? Sounds good to me! The trailer continued for 2 or 3 minutes after that though during which I was un-sold. I never saw the Italian Job remake because I saw too much of it in that trailer. Jonathan Hickman, Nick Dragotta, Frank Martin and Rus Wooton’s new book East of West, all of Hickman’s non-Marvel books for that matter, don’t suffer from this over-selling of content. Hickman reveals very little about projects before they come out and in an comics community of endless spoilers and asking creators what they are working on next before their current projects even hit stands, I respect that. I trust these creators to make a good comic or better. If not, I only bought one issue. More often than not though, Hickman delivers.

ALL HAIL (a FILM without) DOROTHY

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion,  and those opinions are valid, but let me be crystal clear here… in the case of OZ, the Great and Powerful, those great and powerful movie critics are (for the most part) wrong, wrong, wrong.  This is a film that delivers pure movie magic and provides some much needed myth-remaking for the next generation of film aficionados.

Now there is not a snowballs chance in the Impassable Desert that anyone over a certain age can watch the film without comparing it to the 1939 classic musical, The Wizard of Oz.  Instead of creating a pastiche or homage to that Technicolor treasure, director Sam Raimi and his writers take Victor Fleming’s vision of L. Frank Baum’s magical world and infuse it with a new vitality.  Apparently, there are many viewers out there who believe strongly that there are some things that should never be tampered with.

And here is where I disagree.  I grew up watching the WoO and loving it, but the older I got, the weirder the experience became.  The Munchkins made me extremely uncomfortable. The poppies/snow business was always more than a bit strange.  Dorothy was not a little girl no matter how hard MGM tried to corset the great Judy Garland down to size.  What gave Dorothy the right to the ruby slippers?  Did the Wicked witch of the East die intestate?  And Glinda—what was her deal—and the helium she used to float her bubble really affected her speaking voice.  A classic is a classic, but times change.  To younger eyes the MGM Oz looks old fashioned and really fake.  My daughter feigned any interest in the original and today, whenever I catch the film,  I see the tragic fate of Judy Garland unfold in front of our eyes.

I can’t help thinking that most critics did not give the new movie a fair shake for the following reasons… (more…)

ANDY’S PICK :: HAND DRYING IN AMERICA: Ben Katchor is one of the greatest cartooning talents working today.  I would highly recommend any of his books– Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer, The Cardboard Valise, The Jew in New York or his new book Hand-drying In America and Other Stories which is a collection of weekly strips from Metropolitan Magazine.  The main focus of each strip is supposed to be New York architecture, but with Katchor at the helm, the strips quickly veer off into a world all their own.  Katchor’s world is a nostalgic love-letter to a NYC that never quite existed.   The disposable, the mundane– old catalogs, stand-alone coat racks, used door bells– become intrinsically important because some grown-up makes his living by selling them or managing a plant that manufactures them.  It is the adult world from our collective childhood based on old movies and Black & White sitcoms– a downtown business district so alien to a child’s view-point that it may as well reside in another dimension. Take the world of Saul Bellow and Phillip Roth’s fiction and siphon it through the minds-eye of an absurdest comedian like Steven Wright. That is Katchor’s universe, but as hard as I try, I am still not doing Katchor justice. And the artwork– Katchor has named Bill Griffith, R. Crumb, Poussin and Rembrandt as four of his biggest influences. Quite an odd mix and what exquisite execution. Treat yourself and pick up any of his books.  You will be amazed, tickled and just a bit sad throughout. And then you will be back for more.

SETH’S PICK :: SLEDGEHAMMER 44 #1: I had a long, detailed paragraph prepared as to why I think you should spend your hard earned money on this comic. . .and then it disappeared from my computer.  Instead, I’ll just keep it short and simple.  1) There aren’t many war stories set in the Mignola-verse.  2) This one features an Iron Man archetype fighting Nazis, but is just as much about the normal soldiers on the ground as it is the armor.  3)  Though it was written (by Mike Mignola and John Arcudi) for genius John Severin to draw, when he passed away it was given to Jason Latour, who excels at the kind of detail-oriented research this story requires, and understands the importance of balancing that research with a focus on the characters themselves.  4)  In a week where I could easily write about the Hawkeye vol. 1 TPB, Rocketeer: Hollywood Horror #2, or Ben Katchor’s Hand Drying in America, this is the book I’m most excited about seeing and reading.