Cool-Looking Comics Due in August

The Eltingville Club #2

Hey, it’s Previews time again! Orders are due to your local comic shop by June 18 if you’re interested in committing to buy anything from the current catalog. Here are some items I found interesting-looking.

Zodiac Starforce #1 (JUN15 0045, $3.99) — a four-issue miniseries from Kevin Panetta, Paulina Ganucheau, and Dark Horse. Previously a webcomic, this series should appeal to fans of Sailor Moon and Steven Universe, since it features teen girls with magic powers.

Zodiac Starforce

The Eltingville Club #2 (JUN15 0051, $3.99) — the final issue of the long-running series by Evan Dorkin finally appears (it was originally expected last year). It’s a horrible place to start, but if you remember anything about this savage parodies of the worst of fandom, you’ll likely want to find out how these guys react when they reunite ten years later at the San Diego Comic-Con. I’m curious to see if the time jump allows Dorkin to illustrate how much fandom has changed or contrast modern fans with these idiots.

The Eltingville Club #2

This Damned Band #1 (JUN15 0081, $3.99) — Dark Horse sold me with the tag line “Spinal Tap meets Ghostbusters”. Paul Cornell writes and Tony Parker illustrates the six-issue story of a rock group who played with Satanic allusions in 1972 only to find out that it was all real. It’s a good comedy premise, and I hope it’s as funny as I expect. It’s so hard to tell with humor.

Green River Killer: A True Detective Story (JUN15 0088, $19.99) is now out in paperback. I didn’t like it as much as I hoped so I’m mentioning it just to link to my review.

DC Book and DVD/Blu-ray Sets — You know, this isn’t a bad idea. Six of the best-known of the original DCU animated moviesSuperman: Doomsday, Batman: Gotham Knight, Batman: Year One, Justice League: War, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and Wonder Woman — are each available in a combo package where you can watch the movie and read the source material. Best of all, they’re listed at $26.99 each, which makes them about the price of the movies when they originally came out. Or you can get all six in a slipcase for $146 as the DC Comics Book & DVD Slipcase Set.

The Fuse #13

The Fuse #13 (JUN15 0501, $3.99) — The science fiction mystery series I like from Antony Johnston, Justin Greenwood, and Image Comics starts a new arc. Now, given my lack of memory for comics month to month, I save them up and read them in bunches, so I can follow the twists more easily, but if you haven’t tried this unconventional procedural, this is a good place to start. In this arc, the police are coping with the day the space station is closest to the sun, which is apparently a recipe for chaos.

Girl Genius: The Second Journey of Agatha Heterodyne Volume 1: The Beast of the Rails (JUN15 0881, $25, Airship Entertainment) — It’s true what they say, every starting point is also a jumping-off point. I have the first 13 volumes of this webcomic series, and the last two have sat on my “to read” shelf for a year. I like the concepts, but the story is so sprawling and never-ending that I can’t keep up. I think it’s a great idea that Phil and Kaja Foglio are restarting the numbering, for new readers, and I hope it means that volume 13 actually wrapped up in satisfactory fashion.

Ink for Beginners by Kate Leth

Sanctuary (JUN15 0907, $14.95, Amaze Ink/SLG) — The Disney-styled animal murder mystery by Stephen Coughlin has been collected, so you can find out who killed the panda. The scientists at the sanctuary are crazy and the animals, beautifully cartooned, are tormented by guilt and other human-like emotions. It’s a weird, only-in-comics story that starts stronger than it ends but is still an interesting read.

Ink for Beginners: A Comic Guide to Getting Tattooed (JUN15 1061, $4, Big Planet/Retrofit) — I wrote about this minicomic by Kate Leth here. Lots of good basic info on a subject many comic readers are interested in (since you know, it’s art). Rare to see these kinds of small-scale, one-off publications in the catalog, but it fits, since it’s a well-done, color book, and it deserves a bigger audience.

Sleepy Hollow: Providence #1

Sleepy Hollow: Providence #1 (JUN15 1074, $3.99) — Boom! tries again with another four-issue miniseries, this time written by Eric Carrasco, who’s described as a “Sleepy Hollow team member”. (He was a writers’ PA, or assistant. This interview says he mostly did research, but it makes the comic, particularly the Amish wizards, sound neat.) The story involves a mystical artifact sought by a demonic bike gang, but what matters to me is whether they get the interplay and voices of the characters correct. I’d like to have a good story with this cast, since I found the second season very disappointing.

Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer (JUN15 1278, $22.95, Drawn & Quarterly) — Sylvie Rancourt created what’s billed as the first Canadian autobiographical comic book, reprinted here from seven issues originally released in the mid-1980s. It’s about her days stripping and living with a loser of a boyfriend, a thief and drug dealer. There are two disturbing elements of the book — that there isn’t much of an ending or resolution, since (according to the comprehensive text pieces) she just stopped publishing once the newsstand returns began piling up, and that her style is very primitive, which contrasts oddly with all the naked girls and sex scenes portrayed, as you can see in the lengthy preview at the publisher’s website. It’s a nice package of historical interest, but I found the content repetitive and ultimately unsatisfying.

Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer

Prison Island

Sunny Side Up (JUN15 1375, $12.99, Graphix) — Jennifer and Mathew Holm, well-known for their Babymouse series, are putting out a semi-autobiographical graphic novel of which little information has yet been revealed. It seems to involve a love of comics, though, as a girl is sent to stay with her grandfather for the summer, and I’m curious to find out more.

Prison Island: A Graphic Memoir (JUN15 1686, $16.99, Zest Books) — Colleen Frakes grew up on McNeil Island, the last prison island in the US, and she’s telling her story in this graphic memoir (at least part of which previously appeared in minicomics). It’s fascinating, all the weirdness of a small company town made more so by the literal isolation. Great idea for a comic.



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *