STAFF PICKS :: SAVAGE DRAGON #186 :: APRIL 03, 2013
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.
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.
The time has come once again to rally the troops for the most action packed weekend of our entire year. HeroesCon 2013 is coming up fast and we can’t do it without the invaluable contributions of our volunteers.
