Welcome to The Forecast. Every Monday, Ninth Art's core team of comment writers, the Ninth Eight, will be your guides to the best, worst, weirdest and most noteworthy books on the shelves of your local comic shop.

BOOK OF THE WEEK: HELLBOY

When we last saw Hellboy, he'd quit the BPRD, journeyed to Africa, and was left on the bottom of the ocean. Two years later, he wanders up from the sea bed, covered in barnacles and starfish, his red skin the only speck of colour on a bleached, monochromatic beach, his only company a horde of shipwrecks. He looks around and utters his catchphrase. The first thing he does? Finds a bar and has a pint with a couple of dead men.

That's all in the first four pages of HELLBOY: THE ISLAND (Dark Horse), and even with those few pages (previewed here) you know that Hellboy really is back. Even better, the thick inky shadows and beautifully stark layouts tell us that Mike Mignola is back too.

THE ISLAND is Mignola's first Hellboy story in over two years, and even though the HELLBOY movie gave us plenty of merchandise (new look trade collections, the ART OF HELLBOY and ART OF HELLBOY THE MOVIE books, t-shirts, toys and such), there were no brand spanking new Hellboy adventures to coincide with the film's release.

But, like they say, you can't hurry genius, and with the events in the last HELLBOY collection (CONQUEROR WORM) opening up a whole new world for Hellboy (his solo adventures allowing Mignola to explore the more folkloric/mythical side of Hellboy, but with less talking monkeys), I'm sure fans new and old are looking forward to this. And to bait his hook even more, Mignola has promised that HB "learns a whole lot of stuff he never wanted to know ... about himself." Stuff Mignola thought he would never tell. [Ben Wooller]

NEVER MORE

Once upon a time in the early 1990s, a chap called Neil Gaiman wrote a clever little comic called THE SANDMAN. Such was his success that he went on to pen a TV series called NEVERWHERE, a fantasy drama about a lost civilisation beneath the streets of London. The BBC made this series using the kind of budget that would have been small if used to furnish a flat share for rare Patagonian pygmies, and unfortunately for all concerned, NEVERWHERE was a prize turkey.

Gaiman was understandably upset by this and produced a novelisation of his script that was marginally better, but still nothing exceptional. The characters were irritatingly whimsical, with names like 'Door' and 'Angel Islington', and there was a clunking metaphor about how life in modern London had lost its 'magic'. The book and TV show sank without trace, an interesting footnote in an otherwise exceptional career, and nobody except for a handful of melancholy Goths mourned its passing.

Except that the bloody thing has only gone and been resurrected as a nine-part limited series. Scripted by Gaiman-impersonator Mike Carey, with artwork provided by Glenn Fabry (who is perhaps the only saving grace of this project), I will bet my left kidney that this latest incarnation will be just as bad as all the other versions put together. You can tinker with a concept only so many times before any trace of creativity or excitement is utterly extinguished. The moral of our tale is thus; sometimes, things just weren't meant to be [Bulent Yusuf]

MISTER BLUE SKY

It's always nice to cheer for the underdog, isn't it? The little guy. The no-hoper. The guy who deserves great things, but usually ends up with egg on his face. So it is with great pride that I direct your attention to this week's SPIDER-MAN: HOUSE OF M #1.

Well, sort of.

Spinning out of the understated, character-driven story that is Brian Bendis' House of M (the 'M' stands for 'My Arse'), SPIDER-MAN: HOUSE OF M posits an altered reality in which everyone's favourite nerd-do-well gets the wealth and fame he deserves, along with a wife and family, and sundry other things to turn the wallcrawler's world inside out and upside down.

Basically, Gwen Stacy's alive. And she's had his kid.

While it is entirely possible that this is going to be yet another story that examines the Majesty of Gwen, Virgin Princess of People's Hearts, and why she's so much better for Peter than That Dimpled Dimwit, I'm more inclined to believe that the story is going to look at Peter Parker's inability to demand, or even accept, a decent level of happiness from life.

After all, Peter's a bit of an old whiner. But is he sort of person to perhaps stop kicking himself whenever he's got a quiet moment? What if all his myriad problems were solved? What if he could be rich, powerful and popular, without losing 'the essential Peter'? What if everyone who had died because of Spider-Man had never died at all? In short: what if Peter Parker had nothing to whinge about? [Matthew Craig]

THE SHIPPING LIST FOR JUNE 22nd 2005:

Shipping details come courtesy of Diamond. Visit the Diamond website for the latest information, as the list is subject to change.

DARK HORSE

APR050017D HELLBOY THE ISLAND #1 $2.99

DC COMICS

APR050389D ASTRO CITY THE DARK AGE #1 (RES) $2.99
APR050310D BATMAN JEKYLL AND HYDE #3 $2.99
APR050402D BOOKS OF MAGICK LIFE DURING WARTIME #12 (MR) $2.75
APR050314D CATWOMAN #44 $2.50
APR050331D DOOM PATROL #13 $2.50
APR050345D HUMAN RACE #4 $2.99
APR050385D INCAL VOL 2 THE EPIC JOURNEY TP (MR) $19.99
APR050406D JOHN CONSTANTINE HELLBLAZER SPECIAL PAPA MIDNITE #5 $2.99
APR050410D NEIL GAIMANS NEVERWHERE #1 (MR) $2.99
APR050412D OTHERWORLD #4 (MR) $2.99
APR050367D POWERPUFF GIRLS #63 $2.25
APR050317D ROBIN #139 $2.50
APR050361D TEEN TITANS GO #20 $2.25
APR050300D YEAR ONE BATMAN SCARECROW #2 $5.99

IMAGE

APR051673D FLAMING CARROT COMICS #3 (NOTE PRICE) $3.50
FEB051578D GRAY AREA VOL 1 ALL OF THIS CAN BE YOURS HC SGN $39.95
MAR051703 SEA OF RED #3 (MR) $2.95
MAR051729 WITCHBLADE #86 $2.99

MARVEL

FEB058414J AVENGERS ASSEMBLE DOLLAR DIGEST PI
APR051892D BLACK PANTHER #5 $2.99
MAR051904 CAPTAIN AMERICA #7 $2.99
MAR051895 DAREDEVIL REDEMPTION #5 $2.99
APR051945D DREAM POLICE #1 $3.99
FEB058519D FANTASTIC FOUR DIRECTORS CUT #527 $3.99
FEB058413J FANTASTIC FOUR FIRST FAMILY DOLLAR DIGEST PI
APR051902D FANTASTIC FOUR FOES #6 $2.99
APR051899D FANTASTIC FOUR THE MOVIE #1 $4.99
APR051868D HOUSE OF M #2 $2.99 JAN058161D HOUSE OF M DODSON VARIANT COVER #2 $2.99
FEB058416J HULK HULK SMASH DOLLAR DIGEST PI
APR051880D LAST HERO STANDING #4 $2.99
APR051908D LIVEWIRES #5 $2.99
APR051923D MARVEL ADVENTURES FLIP MAGAZINE #1 $3.99
APR051970D MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS WOLVERINE CLASSIC VOL 1 TP $12.99
APR051959D MARVEL MASTERWORKS GOLDEN AGE SUB-MARINER VOL 1 HC VAR ED $54.99
APR051958D MARVEL MASTERWORKS GOLDEN AGE SUB-MARINER VOL 1 NEW ED HC $49.99
FEB051909D NEW AVENGERS #6 $2.25
SEP048065D NEW AVENGERS #6 HITCH VARIANT $2.25
APR051927D NEW X-MEN #15 $2.99
APR051966D NEW X-MEN ACADEMY X VOL 2 HAUNTED TP $12.99
APR051931D NIGHTCRAWLER #7 $2.99
APR051935D ROGUE #12 $2.99
APR051912D SPELLBINDERS #4 $2.99
FEB058412J SPIDER-MAN AMAZING FANTASY DOLLAR DIGEST PI
FEB058415J SPIDER-MAN DOCTOR OCTOPUS DOLLAR DIGEST PI
APR051869D SPIDER-MAN HOUSE OF M #1 $2.99
APR051942D SUPREME POWER #17 (MR) $2.99
APR051873D ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR #20 $2.50
APR051874D ULTIMATE X-MEN #60 $2.50
APR051938D WOLVERINE SOULTAKER #5 $2.99
FEB058417J X-MEN CHILDREN OF THE ATOM DOLLAR DIGEST PI

OTHER PUBLISHERS

APR053221E ALL NEW TENCHI MUYO VOL 6 TP $8.95
APR052635E ARCHIE #558 $2.25
APR053227E BASTARD VOL 8 TP (MR) $9.99
APR052731F BEAUTIFUL THINGS GN $13.99
MAR053055F BONEYARD #18 $2.95
APR053264E FUSHIGI YUGI VOL 7 2ND ED TP $9.95
APR053019F PHANTOM #7 $3.50
APR053274E PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH VOL 11 TP $9.99
APR053251E PROJECT ARMS VOL 9 TP $9.99
MAR053076E QUEEN & COUNTRY DECLASSIFIED VOL 3 #1 (MR) $2.99
APR053275E RED RIVER VOL 7 GN $9.95
FEB058432J SPIDER-MAN HOUSE OF M DCD SKETCH VARIANT #1 PI
APR052650E TALES FROM RIVERDALE DIGEST #3 $2.39
APR053255E TOUGH VOL 3 GN (MR) $9.99
APR052915E UNCLE SCROOGE #343 $6.95
APR053252E VIDEO GIRL AI VOL 12 TP $9.99
APR052916E WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #658 $6.95

The Ninth Eight are Matthew Craig, John Fellows, Kieron Gillen, Alistair Kennedy, Zack Smith, Andrew Wheeler, Ben Wooller and Bulent Yusuf.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.