Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics or graphic novels coming out for the week.

5 ACHEWOOD: THE GREAT OUTDOOR FIGHT
By Chris Onstad
Dark Horse
$14.95 | 104 pgs

The cream of the webcomics pile continues to rise to the top where it’s offered book deals and, who knows, maybe movies some day. It’s an interesting experiment in figuring out whether people will pay for what they can get for free and Dark Horse Comics has had some success with that recently thanks to Nicholas Gurewitch’s Perry Bible Fellowship. Will Achewood, a webcomic with almost as big a following, do as well in this market? If you haven’t read it, Achewood is an absurdist strip about a group of anthropomorphic stuffed animals that live together with their owner in a house in the fictional suburb of Achewood. This book collects the popular story arc, The Great Outdoor Fight. The humor of this strip isn’t really for me I think but it has a huge cult following and I’m all for webcomic peeps making money so hopefully people will check this out.

4. TALL TALES
By Al Jaffee
Abrams
$14.95 | 128 pgs

Al Jaffee is known to everyone who’s ever read Mad Magazine as the guy who did those brilliant fold-out cartoons. From 1957-1963 he did an innovative vertical, wordless comic strip for the New York Herald Tribune that is collected here in one volume.

Comedy Central‘s Stephen Colbert provides an introduction for the book which should be worth the price of admission alone.

3. NEW AVENGERS #44
Written by Brian Michael Bendis; art by Billy Tan
Marvel
$2.99

I don’t normally point out the odd issue of an ongoing series unless it’s a good jumping on point or a special stand-alone story. In this case, if you’re reading Marvel’s Secret Invasion series but you’re not picking up all the various crossovers and tie-ins (and seriously how could you – there’s just too many) you might want to check this one out because it looks like it’s going to fill in a big part of the Secret Invasion storyline by showing us how the whole Skrull takeover of Earth came about. Brian Michael Bendis, writer of Secret Invasion, has been setting up threads for this storyline in his books for years and one of the books that this draws heavily on is his Illuminati mini-series which revealed that various events in Marvel history had been secretly orchestrated by a committee of well-meaning but foolhardy heroes.

2. TYPHON
By Various
Dirty Danny Press
$24.95 | 192 pgs

This is yet another anthology book (we’ve had a lot of these this summer) but I happened to browse through this one at Heroes Con and man is it a crazy book. Forty two full color stories from various cartoonists, many of which are relatively unknown but include some names like David Chelsea, Tim Lane (who we saw last week with Abandoned Cars), Victor Cayro , Matthew Thurber, Hans Rickheit and Eric Theriault.

In the tradition of the great underground comic anthologies like Weirdo and Raw, this book allows the artists to do whatever the hell they want and let their ids spill out all over the page. It’s full of graphic sex, gross out humor, weird ideas and cool, modern cartooning from some fresh up and coming talent.

There’s some relatively NSFW previews here at the editor’s blog.

1. FINAL CRISIS: SUPERMAN BEYOND #1 (of 2)
Written by Grant Morrison; art by Dough Mahnke and Christian Alamy
DC Comics
$4.50 | 40 pgs

I know this is the second week in a row that I’ve picked a Final Crisis tie-in as the top book but this one has got alternate-Earth Supermen and a special 3-D section with glasses included! Plus it’s written by Final Crisis writer Grant Morrison and has art by Doug Mahnke who previously collaborated with Morrison on Seven Soldiers: Frankenstein. This two issue mini deals with Superman trying to save Lois’ life after the events of Final Crisis and getting caught up in the even bigger problem of preventing the end of all reality.

By the way, speaking of Grant Morrison, if you’ve never read the greatest Superman book EVER then it’s your duty to disregard everything else on this list and pick up the new trade paperback collection of his All-Star Superman book which also comes out today.

Plus, there’s even more classic Morrison on the shelves with a $30 hardcover collecting the first 9 issues of his run on the relaunched JLA comic from somewhere around 1996. From a historical standpoint, this is a highly influential book that many would say kick started the whole “widescreen” action method of telling superhero comics. Personally, I have trouble getting past the artwork in this one but it’s pretty wild superhero fun, nonetheless.

Oh, the hate! I’ve been informed by The Light Factory that the George Romero film retrospective, along with the Heroes signing scheduled for September 19, will be cancelled. Apparently a late-breaking movie greenlight means that Romero is beginning production on a new movie at around the same time. How do you like all that Hollywood-speak? Snazzy, I know.

It looks like there’s a chance that the retrospective will move to early 09, and if so, we will likely still be hosting a signing here, and will of course drive it into your heads with constant reminders for months in advance. But for the nonce… no Romero.

But dry those eyes! Still coming up on October 17 is the big Harvey Pekar/Alison Bechdel signing! This is going to be super-huge, and we expect as many or more people as we had last week for the Mark Millar/Tony Harris signing, so don’t miss it! Don’t worry, we’ll continue to remind you constantly!

Now up on our ginormous Flickr site (over 1,000 photos now!) is a massive photo report of last Sunday’s big “Tour of Duty” shindig! The short version was that there were a ton of people, and they all had an AWEsome time, which was great. Mark and Tony were super sweet, as were special guest stars Tommy Lee Edwards and Nathan Edmondson. I’d say more, but I just spent like three hours screwing with all these photos and writing little descriptions. You can see the Flickr set by clicking the photo above or right here. Enjoy!

Shocking insider video! Reputations ruined! A legion of teenaged fans disillusioned forever!

‘i am 8-bit’ art show opening 2008
by pennyman

Our buddies Jim Mahfood and Scott Campbell profiled in a video at the recent I Am 8 Bit gallery show in (I think) California somewhere. Probably Los Angeles? I think Los Angeles takes up most of California anyway, so that’s a safe bet. Anyway, there’s a bunch of cool pieces, some of which you can see on Scott and Jim’s blogs. Check it out!

Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics or graphic novels coming out for the week.

5. AIR #1
Written by G. Willow Wilson; Art and Cover by M.K. Perker
DC Vertigo
$2.99 | 40 pgs

The creative team behind the recent Vertigo graphic novel, Cairo, begin a new series about air travel, terrorism and anti-terrorist vigilantes. Blythe, an acrophobic flight attendant (hey it’s a tough economy out there and some people have to take whatever jobs they can find) gets caught up with an organization called the Etesian Front that are taking on some radical means to stop planes from being hijacked by… hijacking planes. Writer G. Willow Wilson has written articles about religion and the Middle East for publications like the New York Times and is now plunging head first in the comics world. She even has a spot at Jason Aaron’s new Vertigo themed blog Standard Attrition. M.K. Perker has a quirky way of drawing people that I think could grow on me pretty easily. There’s a preview here if you’d like to look.

4. MYSPACE DARKHORSE PRESENTS VOL.1
By Various
Dark Horse
$19.95

Either you’re a Marvel person or a DC person. A Mac person or a PC person. A Facebook person or a MySpace person. Since I’m a Facebook guy I never step foot in MySpace so I’ve never seen the free web comics that Dark Horse has been putting out over there. Why get something for free when you can pay for it though? For less than $20 you can get this new collection of the various strips that were put on the Myspace website over the past year. There’s some good stuff here like a new Umbrella Acadamy story by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba. A Joss Whedon story called “Sugarshock” with art by Fabio Moon. A new full color Empowered story by Adam Warren. Plus Mike Mignola, Guy Davis, Eric Powell and more. Can’t beat a lineup like that.

3. ABANDONED CARS #1
By Tim Lane
Fantagraphics
$22.99 | 168 pgs

Tim Lane is a fairly new face to the comics world, having appeared in some various anthologies here and there but his first book is a collection of short stories that together aim to examine the theme of “the American mythological drama” by way of cars, carnivals, rockabilly, train yards and of course, Elvis. As the previews will show you, Lane works in a wordy, caption-ific style with black and white artwork that brings to mind Charles Burns pretty readily. If you don’t mind some words mixed with your pictures this looks like it will be an interesting and moody look at Americana in all it’s sordid and noirish glory.

2. SCORCHY SMITH AND THE ART OF NOEL SICKLES
By Noel Sickles
IDW Publishing
$49.99 | 394 pgs

Don’t be ashamed if you’ve never heard of Noel Sickles (I’m sure there are plenty of other things you easily can be ashamed of, GarfieldFan78!) or if you’ve never heard of the aviation-based newspaper strip that this book collects. Sickles only drew the strip for three years and then left comics altogether for the more lucrative and glamorous career of editorial and advertising illustration. However, in those three short years (1933-1936) Sickles revolutionized the world of comic strip art with his cinematic panel compositions and chiaroscuro inking. His work here influenced such greats as Milton Caniff, John Romita, Sr. and even recently Dave Sim. This hefty volume contains Sickles’ complete run as well as some extras like illustrations from Sickles’ non-Scorchy work.

1. FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #1 (of 5)
Written by Geoff Johns; Art by George Pérez and Scott Koblish
DC Comics
$3.99 | 40 pgs

Of the many Final Crisis spin-offs coming out now, this is by far the most highly anticipated. Written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by George Perez, two men who are both closely associated with Crises of the past, this 5 issue mini-series picks up on threads that have been left hanging from such books as Infinite Crisis, JLA: Lightning Saga, The Sinestro Corps War, JSA, Action Comics and others. It involves the Time Trapper utilizing Superboy Prime to erase Superman’s impact on the universe and three versions of the Legion of Superheroes trying to stop him. Usually just mentioning the Legion is enough to confuse most readers, nonetheless putting all three versions from different continuities into one story. But God put Geoff Johns on this earth to help us understand the DC Universe and it’s convoluted continuity and his mission continues here. If anyone can make sense of the Legion it’s him. If nothing else though at least the artistic presence of George Perez will help lend this book the Crisis Event gravitas it needs.

I’m going out of town for the next couple of days (to see the MELVINS, baby!), so I wanted to get a few pictures up for those of you who were unable to come today. As I type they’re still signing away, but things will be wrapping up pretty soon. I’ll put a couple of photos up here, but expect by the end of the week a longer report on our Flickr site.

The line early on–things started a hair late, but everyone was SUPER cool, as usual. Of course, we have great customers.

Here’s “Locutus”, whose name I just forgot (sorry, Loc). He won the Hero Initiative auction for the first spot in line and a free copy of the tour incentive cover. My man Loc!

You don’t write all those famous comics without a big brain–here Mark Millar poses while Tony Harris does ALL the work, sketching away.

Also on hand were our buddies Tommy Lee Edwards and Nathan Edmundson, who are both pretty fun to talk to.

A quick shot of how fun everything was. Oops! I gotta go to a party with all these guys. Finally, a perk! I’ll give you a full report later in the week. Keep it real, guys!

Two things, quickly:

1) As I write, the store is steadily filling up with people showing up for our BIG SALE and the huge MARK MILLAR/TONY HARRIS signing going on from 2-5 this afternoon. Scroll down to earlier posts for all the skinny on that.

2) Though we earlier said that the exclusive WAR HEROES #1 tour exclusive editions would be $5 apiece, after some reflection and a closer examination of how much this big shindig is going to cost us, we’ve decided that we’d better charge TEN bucks for those. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes anybody. Remember that everything ELSE in the store is on sale, so there’s a silver lining! They’re also limit one per person.

Okay, come on in!

We’re getting our ducks in a row for this Sunday! Just as a reminder: we’ll be having a SALE all day long, and be opened for extended Sunday hours, from 11am to 7pm. More details at this post.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! As part of the Tour of Duty in support of the new War Heroes book from Image, we’ll be hosting Mark Millar and Tony Harris in a store signing from 2-5pm!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! We’ll also have a SUPER limited edition tour exclusive version of War Heroes #1, available while supplies last for $5 a pop.

OH BUT CHECK THIS OUT! You can still bid on the first spot in line, as well as a FREE copy of the tour exclusive, the proceeds of which go to the Hero Initiative! Good Lord!

Every Wednesday we run down the 5 most interesting comics or graphic novels coming out for the week.

5. WELCOME TO HOXFORD #1
By Ben Templesmith
IDW Publishing
$3.99 | 32 pgs

Writer/artist Ben Templesmith brings his blurry and disturbing style to a new horror comic about the inmates of a mental institution/correctional facility. The story follows a new, and quite loony, inmate to the facility and one lone doctor who thinks there’s something up with the facility’s corporate overlords. Templesmith, most recently known for Warren Ellis’ Fell, draws like a children’s book gone horribly wrong so this subject matter should allow him to creep you out pretty sufficiently.

Read a preview here.

4. SPDIER-MAN: KRAVEN’S LAST HUNT
Written by J.M. DeMatteis; art by Mike Zeck
Marvel
$14.99

Marvel has so many Secret Invasion books coming out this week that I don’t even know where to start so I’m just going to ignore them. Hey, remember this series from the 1980s when Kraven the Hunter shoots and buries Spider-man and then runs around with his costume on, impersonating him? This was a dark and kind of scary book for it’s time. It featured stunning artwork by Mike Zeck and a new take on a goofy old Spider-man villain that actually made him seem pretty off his rocker. It’s a story that hasn’t been long forgotten by fans and its success probably spawned a lot of other dark and grisly Spidey stories since then. It gets a new printing this week with a new Zeck cover.

3. DISAPPEARANCE DIARY
By Hideo Azuma
Fanfare/Ponent Mon
$22.99 | 200 pgs

Here’s one that might be a little hard to track down but it really sounds like it might be worth doing so. Acclaimed Japanese magaka, Hideo Azuma, tells a very strange kind of memoir that juxtaposes cute, comical artwork with his own story of dropping out of society after suffering a severe nervous breakdown. The book actually starts with the author waking up in the woods with a noose around his neck after a failed suicide attempt and proceeds to play everything that comes after for laughs. Any memoir you read is basically a fictionalized version of someone’s life but this book goes out of its way to take a disturbing and tragic time in the author’s life and remove as much of the reality from the story as possible so that you’re actually reading the comically unfortunate times of a downtrodden cartoon character who takes to eating garbage on the streets.

The black and white artwork looks great, as you can see in this preview at the publisher’s website.

2. A TRESURY OF 20TH CENTURY MURDER VOL. 1: THE LINDBERGH CHILD
By Rick Geary
NBM
$15.95 | 80 pgs

Somehow I never knew about Rick Geary and his awesome idea of chronicling all the great murder cases of the Victorian era in comic form. He did numerous volumes of his A Treasury of Victorian Murder books but apparently ran out of cases because now he’s started with a new Volume 1 that begins tackling 20th century cases. The first case on his list is the mysterious abduction of Charles Lindbergh’s baby in the 1920s. This was a case that got the Jazz Age equivalent of wall-to-wall breaking news coverage and captured the hearts of Americans. Geary gets into every little detail and outlines all the crazy events that came about as authorities and the Lindbergh family tried in vain to find their missing child.

You can preview the first couple of pages here.

1. MIDDLEMAN COLLECTED SERIES INDISPENSABILITY COMPENDIUM
Written by Javier Grillo-Marxuach; art by Les McClaine
Viper Comics
$19.95 | 336 pgs

Again, I’m going to have to plead guilty on having never heard of this series until today. Nor did I know there was a TV show based on it that runs on ABC Family. Although if you put a gun to my head I doubt I’d be able to even find ABC Family in a timely fashion on my DirectTV channel guide. Anyway, I’ve heard a lot of great things about this series. There have been three volumes published so far and they are now collected in this comprehensive package. Written by one of the Lost writers, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Middleman is a superspy comedy about an organization of “Middlemen” that for centuries have been “fighting evil so that you don’t have to”. Wendy Watson, a young struggling artist, gets recruited into the organization as a sidekick to the latest Middleman and finds herself fighting mad scientists, genetically engineered monkeys, and Mexican wrestlers while also having boyfriend, roommate and mom troubles. The art is cute and very much in the Viper Comics style and the story is so full of pop-culture references you’ll need to read some Joss Whedon or Brian K. Vaughan to unwind a little afterwards.

Read some previews of the various volumes this book collects here.

Yes! As mentioned in last Friday’s Heroes Hotline, our buddies at the Hero Initiative are auctioning off the first-in-line slot at this Sunday’s Mark Millar and Tony Harris appearance! Not only that, but the winner will also get a FREE copy of the exclusive “Tour of Duty” cover to War Heroes #1, available only at one of the 7 U.S. tour stops! Cuh-razy!

You can get to the Ebay auction here: note that the gremlins got into the link I sent out in the Hotline, so this link should work. Remember that ALL of the moneys resulting from this auction go to the Hero Initiative, which is a super-awesome charity that you should give a lot of money to. I’d go on and on about how great they are, but they’re better at talking about it than I am.

Okay! Get charitizing! See you this Sunday–don’t forget the already mentioned sale stuff, as well!