Comics I’m Picking Up the Week of November 20, 2019

Here are the books I’m looking forward to seeing at my local comic store the week of November 20, 2019.

Olympia

Publisher: Image Comics
Words/Story: Curt Pires, Tony Pires
Art/Colors: Alex Diotto, Dee Cunniffe

“Elon is a latchkey kid who spends his days alone reading comic books—until his favorite superhero, Olympian, comes crashing off the page and into reality! But as he nurses his wounded and delirious hero back to health, he discovers Olympian isn’t the only thing that came through . . . something evil followed him.”

Category: Support Emerging Creators

Why I’m Excited: A few years ago a series about a father-son relationship launched Donny Cates into a stint as Marvel’s latest “wunderkind.” I see this covering many of the same territories, with an emotional core this middle-aged guy can get behind.

Image Comics

Hazel & Cha Cha Save Christmas

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Words/Story: Gerard Way, Scott Allie
Art/Colors: Tommy Lee Edwards

“Hazel and Cha Cha—the bizarre assassins who first appear in Umbrella Academy: Dallas and blew audiences away in the Netflix series—track down a rogue time agent and cross paths with a plot to discredit Christmas!”

Category: Tried and True Creators

Why I’m Excited: Never let a breakout performance go to waste. My first exposure to Umbrella Academy was the aforementioned TV episodes where Mary J. Blige and Cameron Britton (also on Mindhunter) made me keep hitting the “Continue watching” button long after I should have gone to bed. I gather that in the original comic they were not nearly as well developed, but head canon is almighty so I’ll be checking out one of their (presumably) earlier adventures.

Dark Horse Comics

The Question: The Deaths of Vic Savage

Publisher:  DC Black Label
Words/Story: Jeff Lemire
Art/Colors: Bill Sienkiewicz

“For years, Vic Sage has worn the faceless mask of the Question to clean up the streets of Hub City by sheer force of will. He knows right from wrong. He knows black from white. But what happens when he is drawn into a conspiracy that reaches from the heights of Hub City power to the depths of its underground tunnels? What happens when things stop being black and white and start getting a little gray? And what happens when, in a secret chamber deep beneath the city, Vic Sage meets his own end . . . and his new beginning?”

Category: Tried and True Creators

Why I’m Excited: The saying “Once a man makes a tool, the tool remakes the man” comes to mind when thinking of Bill Sienkiewicz’s career. As printing technologies improved and became more readily available in the mid ’80s, the type of art that he was creating (already) became reproducible on (updated) paper stock that was able to retain the color gradation and line continuity that made his work so distinctive. Along with John J. Muth’s Moonshadow, the works produced by Marvel for more mature audiences began to use the techniques to build more complex stories where the art could produce different moods than earlier CMYK techniques—at a price point that allow their use in 75-cent comics. I’m always excited by a Sienkiewicz comics even if I don’t know the character well, but putting him with Jeff Lemire seems a recipe for success.

DC Comics

Batman: White Knight Presents Von Freeze

Publisher: DC Comics
Words/Story: Sean Murphy
Art/Colors: Klaus Janson

“The world of Batman: White Knight expands with this standalone tale! On the night of Bruce Wayne’s traumatic birth, Victor Fries must intervene to save the lives of Martha Wayne and the future Batman. As the evening unfolds, Victor distracts Thomas with the incredible tale of his own father figures—one a Nazi, the other a Jew—and their complex connection to Wayne Laboratories. As the Third Reich roars into power, the deep friendship and working relationship between the Baron von Fries and his research partner, Jacob Smithstein, is in crisis. Ordered by Himmler to speed development of their cryotechnology in service of world domination, Smithstein is forced to go into hiding and compromise his moral code in order to save his wife and infant daughter, Nora, from persecution and certain death. When the S.S. ramps up surveillance over the project, young Victor begins to question his father’s true allegiance. Both families are driven toward an impossible choice and a sinister standoff, and Victor makes a pact with Smithstein that will ripple through generations.”

Category: Tried and True Creators

Why I’m Excited: I am perhaps alone in appreciating Sean Murphy’s Batman (Elseworlds—not sure that’s still a DC-approved label) more than either Snyder or King’s runs. The White Knight universe is both more disturbing but also more hopeful, and the format (miniseries vs. ongoing serials) make each story tighter and somehow more consequential because there is possibly an end. I wonder if there are additional plans for more one-shots or if this will get collected into one of the later editions of White Knight hard covers. Anybody have any news items I missed about this?

DC Comics

The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese

Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Words/Story: Setona Mizushiro
Art/Colors: Setona Mizushiro

“Ootomo Kyoichi, a salaryman in a troubled marriage, is cheating on his wife. To his surprise, his wife hires a private eye to expose his affair—and the private eye is none other than Imagase, an underclassman Kyoichi knew in college. Imagase explains that he’s always had a crush on Kyoichi, so he offers to hide the infidelity in exchange for the make-out session he’d always fantasized about back in college. Kyoichi reluctantly agrees, thinking it will save his marriage, but things with Imagase soon spiral out of control.”

Category: Exploring Manga

Why I’m Excited: Last year I discovered My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame. It was a multi–award winning manga that highlighted some of the complex ways that homosexuality is treated in Japan. It sent me down a rabbit hole of discovering that “boy-love” (Bōizu Rabu) was a whole genre of comics publishing hundreds of titles a year. I learned that most of these are marketed toward women and girls (what? hm?); josei and shōjo respectively.

On my recent stop over in Japan I hit up both the International Museum of Manga, which functions somewhat as a large library, with most visitors grabbing a volume from the extensive collection and having a seat in the exhibit space to enjoy a story. I also stopped by a few bookstores and got some untranslated new releases that I’m trying to use Google Translate to understand. This title is very evocative and I’m looking forward to seeing what other books I can get into now that the breadth of manga is coming into focus.

Seven Seas Entertainment

Also out this week is a new run on Deadpool with Kelly Thompson and Chris Bachalo; a collection of Cullen Bunn’s The Empty Man (with Jesus Hervas); and a pair of new titles about the difficulties of adolescence multiplied by powers and conspiracies, Heart Attack by Shawn Kittelsen and Michael Garland in a head-to-head bout with Heartbeat by Maria Llovet—who can help me tell the difference?

See you at the racks!