Longbox Review

Here are some recommendations from this month’s Previews catalog for product shipping mostly in October.

Dark Horse

• I almost ordered the Dead Vengeance mini-series, which is about a dead PI who somehow comes back to life to take down the mob gang that killed him.
• The Steam Man, a mini-series about a steam-powered robot battling monsters in the Old West looked interesting.
• I did order the first trade of Harrow County.
• Nexus: Into the Past and Other Stories collects work from Dark Horse Presents.

DC Comics

• There’s a new weekly Batman book, Batman and Robin Eternal, but it appears to be focusing on Dick Grayson about a case he and Bats worked on five years earlier. I’m really looking forward to this, even if I don’t understand the significance of the word Eternal for these series (other than we will eternally buy Batman books?).
• One of the Convergence minis that I looked forward to reading the most was the featuring Superman and Lois Lane still married and expecting their child. For some reason, DC decided that they should continue this story in Superman: Lois and Clark. It’s an ongoing, so it’ll be interesting to see where this book will go and how it will tie in to the main DCU.
• Telos continues that character’s story from Convergence, but I passed on it despite Jeff King’s and Dan DiDio’s assertions that the events out of Convergence mattered and had some weight. We’ll see. I see this similar to the Trinity of Sin: Pandora book, which is to say it ties to an event and should be important in some way but will likely mean next to nothing to the overall universe.
• Yet another Convergence tie-in, but something that I am excited about: Titans Hunt. This is a 12-issue limited series, so that itself is interesting, but more so is that there seems to be some sort of secret history involving the teen heroes of the DCU, including Robin, Donna Troy, and Arsenal, among others. When the New 52 debuted, Red Robin, in Teen Titans, made a comment about a previous Titans team, but then the official line from DC was that there was no previous Teen Titans group, and that line was scrubbed in the trade release. Are we now back to a first Titans team involving the classic heroes?
• There’s a bunch of one-shot tie-ins to the Darkseid War events in Justice League under the Gods and Men banner. I’m a sucker, I guess, because I ordered them all. I don’t have high hopes for them, but it doesn’t hurt that two of them are written by Peter Tomasi and Tom King.
• Speaking of Peter Tomasi, I am reuniting with Detective Comics because he’s now writing that title and will feature the new Batman teaming with the Justice League.
• There are some new Vertigo series that I’ll be trying out: The Twilight Children, Clean Room, Survivor’s Club, and Art Ops, but the last two only because of a DCBS 75% off bundle. It’s really the first two that I wanted to read, though Survivor’s Club has an interesting premise, and one that I thought of doing a story about many years ago.

IDW

• Back to the Future fans get a mini-series involving the characters from the movie series. Having three writers involved on the surface makes me cringe in advance a little bit, though.
• I find it interesting that Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is being adapted in comic book form. Someone let me know how it is, please?
• Star Trek reaches 50 issues! I started getting this because when the title started, it was telling original series episodes but with the new cast/alternate universe. It’s become more than that, and I have been enjoying it consistently all these years. The new story goes to territory that was well-trodden in the Deep Space 9 series: the Mirror Universe! It should be fun.
• Mark Waid’s and Barry Kitson’s Empire sequel, Uprising, gets its first trade collection. I passed on it for now because I want a trade that collects more than 4 issues at $17.99.
• Finally! Walt Simonson’s Ragnarok series gets its first trade. I hope it’s good.

Image

• Mr. I will buy anything he writes Brian K. Vaughan teams up with Cliff Chiang with Paper Girls. I don’t even care what it is about.
• You are ordering the CBLDF Liberty Annual, right? If not, shame on you. Don’t forget the companion Comics Are for Everybody t-shirt.
• Secret Identities was a series that I wished I had ordered in singles, but now there’s the first trade, and I can find out if my instinct that this was a good read is correct or not.
• I almost jumped on to the monthly Invincible with this Reboot storyline. Almost.
• I did order Greg Rucka’s and Nicola Scott’s Black Magick because it’s that creative team. The preview pages look amazing.
• I ordered the first Injection trade, but not the Jupiter’s Circle one because I got that series monthly.

Marvel

• Secret Wars is ending, and the All-New, All-Different Marvel is debuting. I opted to try Avengers #0 and Jason Aaron’s and Chris Bacchalo’s Doctor Strange.
• Other new series launching with #1 (though I didn’t order any of them) include Amazing Spider-Man, Blade, Astonishing Ant-Man, Howling Commandos of SHIELD (hmm, maybe I should have on this one–it looks somewhat interesting), and Karnak by Warren Ellis (???).
• There’s a new series called Contest of Champions, but you can also order the original series from 1982 in trade format.
• And there’s a bunch of Secret Wars trades for those who were waiting.

Other publishers

• The wonderful Terry Moore gives us more SiP Kids goodness with #4, the Halloween themed issue.
• Don’t forget to order Action Labs’ Venture #3. Issue 1 and 2 were fun.
• Has it really been 30 years since Calvin and Hobbes started? Wow. Well, a bunch of the seminal comic strip collections are available to help celebrate that milestone.
• Dark Circle adds to its collection of old Archie superhero properties with The Hangman, which was one of my favorites.
• Rowans Ruin from Boom is a series that I’ll be waiting for a trade.
• As I was reviewing Previews for this post, I realized that I forgot to order the Giant Days trade, so I stopped typing and revised my order!
• New to me publisher 451 Media Group has an interesting series, Sunflower, that I will also be trade waiting for.
• Word of advice: don’t order the Scarlet Couture trade. It was rubbish.
• Oh man, I forgot to order Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art!
• Did you know that you can get The Official DC Super Hero Cookbook?! It comes with cookie cutters, logo stencils, and character cutouts! I’m going to keep an eye out for this at CostCo.
• I will be ordering (from Amazon though) the Star Trek: Ships of the Line Posters Book. I love the Star Trek universe ships!
• Finally, it was a big order this month, in part because of the second t-shirt that I ordered (remember the CBLDF t-shirt I mentioned above?): the new Superman “Truth” version, which is similar to the Fleischer cartoon S symbol.

What are you ordering this month?