Chris vs. Previews: April 2007, Part Two

With this post, it'll be three months that I've been doing these Previews Round-Ups, and while I've stuck to the tried-and-true format of doing the major publishers one day and the small press companies the next up to this point, I've been seriously considering an adjustment to that little formula.

I mean really--and I say this as someone who owns more shirts from Graphitti Designs than any sane person ought to--I could go on about the apparel section alone for days. Why?

Because this is the third month in a row that they have offered this:



The mind boggles.

But there'll be time enough for that later! For now, there's still half a catalog to get through, and we're burning daylight here!

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P.222: Amaze Ink/Slave Labor Graphics: I've mentioned it once or twice, but it really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone familiar with my sense of humor that I rank Evan Dorkin right up there with Michael Kupperman and Kyle Baker as one of--if not the--funniest creators in comics today. So needless to say, I'm looking forward to Biff! Bam! Pow!, the first new comic that he's put out since October.

Because really, a comic about a crime-fighting Interstellar Boxing Champ named "One-Punch Goldberg" is pretty much exactly what I want to read.


P.265: Dynamite Entertainment: In addition to their first issue of The Boys now that they've acquired it from DC under mysterious (to me, at least) circumstances, this month's output from DE--or as I like to call them, The Last Thing We Need Comics, Inc--includes nine titles with a grand total of thirty covers between them. Admittedly, this is lagging behind Avatar's 7:32 ratio, but considering that they've managed to find something even more tasteless than the Lady Death vs. Pandora bondage cover with their Dead Baby homage to Nevermind, I'm going to have to award this round to Dynamite.

Well-played, DE. Well-played.

P.289: Digital Manga Publishing: Given my previous comments about Manga in last night's post and the fact that you're not reading this on a LiveJournal account, you've probably already deduced that my interest in yaoi is pretty much nil. Even so, if DMP keeps making ads like this...



...then they can make whatever the hell they want, because that is the funniest thing I have ever seen.

P.300: First Second: Long-time ISB readers are probably familiar with the fact that I've developed a pretty cordial relationship with the good people over at First Second based on the fact that they send me their books, I flip out about how awesome they are, and everybody goes home happy. Even if it wasn't for that, though, I'd still be telling you to order Eddie Campbell's The Black Diamond Detective Agency, purely on the basis that his last book from :01, Fate of the Artist, stands alongside American Born Chinese as one of the best graphic novels I've read in the past year, and I can pretty much guarantee that you won't want to miss it.

P.384: Zenescope Entertainment: When the solicitations for Return to Wonderland went up online, I recieved an email from Matt Algren, who claimed that it was my duty as an American to once again lay my own sanity on the line and review a series that includes a splash page that he described this way:

That's a grown up Alice of Alice in Wonderland, who has just attempted suicide in a bubble bath (hawt!!!) and has been found by her daughter, who has apparently dragged her out of the tub and put the bubbles in just the right position so she could be drawn nekked as she lay dying all splayed out on the floor. (2x hawt!!! . . . I guess.)

Well, Matt, as much as I hate to disappoint, I've leafed through an issue of Grimm Fairy Tales, and those things are damn near incomprehensible. Sure, I read Tarot and Anita Blake, and while the things that happen in those books are really, really stupid, there are at least things happening. But with this stuff, aside from poorly presented fetishism for latent pedophiles, there's just not a whole lot there.

Books

P.400: 52: The Novel: ... Seriously?

Calendars

P.415: Okay, before we go any further, I feel like I should warn you that things are about to get really, really geeky, even by the standards of a comic book blog. Heck, they're about to get geeky even by the standards of a comic book blog that devoted the better part of a week to discussing the majesty that is Volstagg, so for those of you who are already perilously close to nerd overload, I'll meet you down at the T-Shirt section.




Okay, anybody still here? All right, this is just between us here, and it's a question in two parts that I want you to think very carefully before you answer:




1. Who would win in a fight between Number Six and the Daleks?

2. How freakin' awesome would that be?

Apparel

Ah, the apparel section! There's really no better way to cleanse the palate of one's own forays into the abyss than by mocking products directed at those even worse off than me! Whatcha got for me, T-Shirt Section?!

P.441 Jimmy Olsen T-Shirt:



Ah, crap. Yeah... I'm gonna need that.

Come on, there's got to be something in here I can poke fun at to deflect my own misgivings about hypothetical mid-60s British Sci-Fi matchups!

P.445: Dragon Catcher Double-Sided T-Shirt:



Ah, that's better. Thanks, Previews! I knew you wouldn't let me down!

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And that's the catalog. If anything caught your eye this time--or if you have any responses to my estion-quay about Atrick-pay Goohan-McAy--feel free to leave a comment!