April 2012 Previews: A Light Month

Books I Recommend You Consider

Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors		Jack Hammer: Political Science
by Various		by Brandon Barrows and Ionic
DC Comics, $14.99		Action Lab Entertainment, $14.95
APR12 0259, due July 4		APR12 0744, due June
I've already talked about anticipating this book, so I don't want to repeat myself, but yay!		I'm the wrong audience for a book (collecting a four-issue miniseries) that boils down to a fairly standard detective yarn, only the PI used to be a superhero, but if it sounds like something you're interested in, you can see a preview at that link. I do find it interesting that Previews was willing to list something limited to 500 copies. I guess the price point makes up for the small customer base.
The Summit of the Gods Book 3		Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms
by Yumemakuro Baku and Jiro Taniguchi		by Fumiyo Kouno
Fanfare/Ponent Mon, $25		Last Gasp, $9.99
APR12 1085, due June		APR12 1148, due May 16
I've already read this, so I know it's good. This volume combines an adventure story, complete with villains, with gorgeous mountain scenery.		Touching and disturbing, this story tells how some survived and lived after the atomic bomb hit Japan. It's quieter and not as well-known as Barefoot Gen, but I found it a better read.
Lovers' Lane: The Hall-Mills Mystery		Ôoku: The Inner Chambers Book 7
by Rick Geary		by Fumi Yoshinaga
NBM, $15.99		Viz, $12.99
APR12 1161, due June 27		APR12 1303, due July 18
I always enjoy books in Geary's 'Treasury of Murder' series, especially stories that I'm not already familiar with. This looks like another juicy puzzle.		More yay! One of my favorite manga series continues after a too-long delay.

Issues I Recommend You Consider

Resident Alien #2 (Dark Horse, APR12 0044, $3.50, June 27). I just read issue #0 and liked it a lot. It's a clever sci-fi twist on a small-town murder by introducing an alien in hiding.

Courtney Crumrin #3 (Oni Press, APR12 1177, $3.99, June 27). The first issue was a great re-introduction to the grumpy little witch.

Back Issue #57 (TwoMorrows, APR12 1375, $8.95, June 13). I've been looking forward to this for a while. Buddy Bob Greenberger interviews former DC President Jenette Kahn. I've never read much from her, especially in a retrospective fashion, so this should be insightful.

Snarky Comments

Congratulations to Dark Horse on getting a new Gilbert Hernandez series with Fatima: The Blood Spinners, but there's something kind of sad to one of the guys who established indy comics with Love and Rockets doing a zombie book. Maybe he's got something new to say about the genre, but to me, it just seems to signal that both of them need a break. (Also, if I type 'Fatima' into the search box on the Dark Horse homepage, it gives me 'the search yielded no results', which is just broken. I shouldn't have to go to Google to find book pages on their website I know exist.)

I didn't talk about the 'Before Watchmen' project when the news broke, because I'm not that interested. It does, however, symbolize to me how much the company has changed from what it used to be. Under Paul Levitz and his generation, DC Comics (to a degree) cared about what the fan press thought of them and maintaining creator relationships based on history. Now that leadership has changed, of course a company is going to look at its maximizing its assets and attempt to spin off work based on one of their few big-budget movies. It's a change from being led by someone who thinks of himself as 'one of them' to being led by someone making decisions purely on a corporate basis, without any emotional factor.