Recommended Picks for April 28, 2010

Hot Pick!
Invincible Iron Man #25
Marvel Comics
(W) Matt Fraction
(A/Cover) Salvador Larroca

Double-sized issue!
Co-released alongside this summer’s surefire blockbuster hit Iron Man 2, this issue is the perfect jumping-on point for fans of the films and readers new and old alike! New year. New decade. New trade dress. New threats. New loves. New armor. New Tony Stark. New storyline: Resilient. Get onboard the Eisner-award winning Invincible Iron Man here!

FC $3.99

Recommended Pick!
Wilson
Drawn and Quarterly
Daniel Clowes

Meet Wilson, an opinionated middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. In an ongoing quest to find human connection, he badgers friend and stranger alike into a series of one-sided conversations, punctuating his own lofty discursions with a brutally honest, self-negating sense of humor. After his father dies, Wilson, now irrevocably alone, sets out to find his ex-wife with the hope of rekindling their long-dead relationship, and discovers he has a teenage daughter, born after the marriage ended and given up for adoption. Wilson eventually forces all three to reconnect as a family – a doomed mission that will surely, inevitably backfire.

Full Color, 80 pages, $21.95 US

Comics shipping April 28, 2010

PREVIEWSworld.com New Releases

Shipping This Week: 4/28/2010

Every Monday, PREVIEWSworld.com provides a list of comics, graphic novels and other pop-culture merchandise arriving this week to your local comic shop.

Please check with your retailer for availability, as not all new releases may be on sale in all areas at the same time.

PREVIEWS PUBLICATIONS

MAR101692 GAME TRADE MAGAZINE #123 PI
MAR100005 PREVIEWS #260 MAY 2010 PI

DARK HORSE COMICS

JAN100191 BPRD TP VOL 12 WAR ON FROGS $17.99
OCT090123 BTVS SUPERNATURAL DEFENSE KIT NEW PTG (NOTE PRICE) $24.95
JAN100125 CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #20 KOZAKI PT 2 (OF 3) $2.99
APR090025 GIGANTIC TP VOL 01 $17.99
JAN100133 LITTLE LULU GIANT SIZE TP VOL 01 $24.99

New store opens on April 28– 2 days away!

Excitement is definitely in the air. ComicReaders Downtown on 12th Avenue had its final day on Saturday, April 24. I was working that day, working the till and helping Dana pack boxes. The doors closed at 5pm, but the work was not finished. Dana, Greg and some very helpful friends and family helped load two U-Haul’s worth of stock and shipped it to the new location. All shelves, furniture, and inventory was moved before the end of day Sunday. Today (Monday) was a day for organizing the new store. Dana and I snapped some photos. 

The board game section was one of the first areas completed. HUGE selection of board games.

This photo was taken near the front door early in the day. Whew. Lots of work to do.

Boxes pretty much filled the whole centre of the store for the first half of the day.

Looking toward the front of the store. In the background, Chad and Shane organize manga into alphabetical order. It took them more than two hours, which had to do with the amount of manga in stock, not the slowness of the guys.

The DC Comics wall, board games in the background, one of four racks of t-shirts, and behind the t-shirts a column covered in video game related action figures.

 You can see the end result on Wednesday, April 28. See you there! 

Dana oversaw the day's work, which means he bought lunch, fetched coffee and Timbits, stood around a lot, and told the rest of us what to do.

Iron Man: Noir #1

Iron Man: Noir #1
Marvel Comics
(w) Scott Snyder
(a) Manuel Garcia & Lorenzo Ruggiero
FC 32 pgs w/ ads $3.99 US / Higher in Canada

I’ve been picking up all of Marvel’s Noir line since it’s inception. For the most part I’ve enjoyed the various takes different creative teams have had on popular Marvel characters. But there has been something fundamentally wrong with this line. It’s the moniker noir. The term film noir describes a large group of films, primarily crime films from the 1940′s and 50′s. The comics have tried to embrace this, X-Men: Noir, Wolverine: Noir, Luke Cage: Noir have come the closest. But being super-hero comics, their pulp origins tend to come through. Spider-Man: Noir and this comic are quite clearly more pulp influenced. There’s nothing wrong with this. I enjoy the stories all the same but at the same time, I can’t help but think that Marvel might think about a better name for the line.

As I said this comic is clearly more pulp than noir. Tony Stark is a world traveling adventurer. Complete with his own biographer for his pulp magazine stories that chronicle his various adventures, Stark and his team search the globe for artifacts that might cure his damaged heart. His current assistant, Dr. Gia Nefaria betrays him on his latest quest. (With a name like Nefaria, how could she not?) His next quest is taking him in search of Atlantis. So far Stark has had to wear any special armour but it’s only the first issue.

This is a pretty entertaining read – but it’s not noir. (Shane Hnetka)

Black Widow #1

Black Widow #1
Marvel Comics
(w) Marjorie Liu
(a) Daniel Acuna
FC 32 pgs w/ ads $3.99 US / Higher in Canada

The Black Widow finally has an ongoing series. This is more likely do in part with her appearance in Iron Man 2 movie rather than her being popular enough to support an ongoing title. The Black Widow has had several mini-series over the years. And for the most part they’ve been pretty good – except for the more recent Deadly Origin. The Richard K. Morgan mini’s were the best.

Now Marjorie Liu – the better part of the writing team for Dark Wolverine has taken on the task of telling Natalia Romanova’s adventures. The first issue starts with one heck of a kick. The Widow is ambushed on the street – sedated, then cut open as her attackers look for something inside her. The rest of the issue deals with a team of surgeon’s trying to put her back together while making sure that nothing important is missing. Unfortunately for the Widow, she’s been merely paralyzed by the drug and is fully aware of what is happening and how painful it all is. This is a really good opening issue. I’m intrigued, there’s terror and mystery afoot. And somebody’s going to pay. I enjoy Daniel Acuna’s art style – I’m aware that some people dislike it but it’s their loss. Marjorie Liu has taken Wolverine’s son Daken to some dark and terrible places so it should be interesting to see where she takes Black Widow. (Shane Hnetka)

Recommended Picks for April 21, 2010

Hot Pick!
GREEN LANTERN #53
DC Comics
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and cover by DOUG MAHNKE and CHRISTIAN ALAMY

A BRIGHTEST DAY tie-in! Exploding out of BLACKEST NIGHT comes the next exciting chapter in the Green Lantern mythos: “New Guardians”! Forced together during the rise of the Black Lanterns, Hal Jordan, Sinestro, Carol Ferris, Saint Walker, Atrocitus, Indigo-1 and Larfleeze must agree to disagree if their next mission is to succeed. But when one of the strangest beings from Green Lantern’s past returns, the future of the Lanterns and the universe at large once again falls into question.

FC 32pg. $2.99 US

Recommended Pick!
Spirit #1
DC Comics
(W) Mark Schultz & Dennis O’Neil
(A) Moritat & Bill Sienkiewicz

The Spirit returns in an all-new ongoing series! Central City destroys everyone who lives within its borders… so it’s a good thing The Spirit already died once! International crime syndicate The Golden Tree wants to help Central City’s Octopus consolidate control over the underworld and the Spirit is the kind of mess the Golden Tree was created to clean up. They’ve offered the Octopus the services of one of their finest assassins to take his breath away for good — and the sight of this killer would get anyone’s heart pounding!

FC $3.99

Comics shipping April 21, 2010

PREVIEWSworld.com New Releases

Shipping This Week: 4/21/2010

Every Monday, PREVIEWSworld.com provides a list of comics, graphic novels and other pop-culture merchandise arriving this week to your local comic shop.

Please check with your retailer for availability, as not all new releases may be on sale in all areas at the same time.

DARK HORSE COMICS

FEB100017 DEVIL #3 (OF 4) $3.50
JAN100220 GELASKINS 13 INCH LAPTOP 300 MOON $29.95
JAN100223 GELASKINS 13 INCH LAPTOP 300 SPARTANS $29.95
FEB100093 GELASKINS 13 INCH LAPTOP BTVS WILLOW $29.95
DEC090098 GELASKINS 13 INCH LAPTOP BURTON PIN CUSHION QUEEN $29.95
FEB100096 GELASKINS 13 INCH LAPTOP GOON VS MR WICKER $29.95
JAN100214 GELASKINS 13 INCH LAPTOP SIN CITY HAVING A BALL $29.95
JAN100217 GELASKINS 13 INCH LAPTOP SIN CITY LIST $29.95
JAN100221 GELASKINS 15 INCH LAPTOP 300 MOON $29.95
JAN100224 GELASKINS 15 INCH LAPTOP 300 SPARTANS $29.95
FEB100094 GELASKINS 15 INCH LAPTOP BTVS WILLOW $29.95

New Downtown store opens April 28, 2010

getting there…slowly.

prairie dog Ad April 8, 2010

See more…

Scalped #36

Scalped #36
DC Comics / Vertigo Comics
(w) Jason Aaron
(a) Davide Furno
FC, 32 pgs w/ ads $2.99 US / More in Canada

Page 4 of issue #36 of Scalped contains one of the most shocking images to appear in this title to date, which is saying a lot for a book as brutally surprising as this one. The image is shocking not because of the act it depicts but because I didn’t see this one coming. In a book of unexpected acts and revelations this one caught me unawares, and with this one image writer Jason Aaron and guest artist Davide Furno tell us a lot about the character Shunka, more than we’ve learned about him in 36 issues.

Shunka is Chief Red Crow’s right-hand man, the tough, enigmatic Lakota most recently seen scouring the badlands of South Dakota for a fugitive that could reveal the mole inside Red Crow’s criminal organization. Shunka has been a reoccurring character in Scalped, but always in the background, an enforcer to be used, not a character to be explored. That changes with issue #36, which kicks off a new story arc in which Shunka is the main character.

Scalped is a consistently solid read, filling the void left by the completion of 100 Bullets. Both are gritty crime sagas featuring a roster of hard-as-nails and morally flawed characters, none of which are heroes and very few of which are outright villains. (Chad Boudreau)