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.

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

It's hard to believe that Brian Bendis began this way back in January 2001, but as hard to believe as that is, it's even harder to believe it's finally coming to an end. But with DAREDEVIL #76 - the first part of 'The Murdock Papers' - Bendis is beginning to wrap up the multiple plot-threads he's unpicked during his tenure.

Admittedly, he doesn't have to be CSI-levels of thorough, as his recently announced successors, Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark, will be picking up some of the slack. It's a testament to the work he and Alex Maleev have done over the last four years that he's managed to maintain the excitement even if the title has been coasting on its success for a year or two.

The last year of the title has seen Bendis trading on past glory to gloss over the inadequacies in these more loosely plotted arcs. Indeed, it could well be suggested that he's over-stretched - he's currently writing NEW AVENGERS, THE PULSE, POWERS, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, HOUSE OF M and MURDER, SHE WROTE, and the ambitious sentiments expressed by the last arc, 'Decalogue', were not entirely fulfilled by the '70s prog-film dialogue and the decision to push the protagonist into the shadows.

The hope is that Bendis' fascinating long-form exploration of themes such as dual identity, the role of celebrity in today's culture, the limits of the legal system, and the very personal breakdown of a man who lost a loved one, will play out in a wonderfully evoked finale, but these hopes are unlikely to be borne out fully. Bendis has shown an almost worrying inability to plan ahead, or to draw his work to an interesting and fulfilling ending.

But of all the titles he works on, this has been the one that felt most committed to an over-arching uber-plot. While this final arc may not completely answer all the questions you wanted, or be as satisfying as you'd hoped, it's bound to be an interesting time on an interesting title. It's rare that there are character-defining runs on titles as brave and bold as this, and here's hoping the success can carry over onto Bendis and Maleev's next ongoing, SPIDER-WOMAN. [John Fellows]

ABSENT FRIENDS

You can miss a friend. You can miss a meal. You can even miss a target. But can you miss a comic book character?

The obvious answer is, 'well, sort of'. After all, you can always read your old comics over and over again, ad crumblum. But there are some readers for whom reading back issues will never be enough. There are literally dozens of old comics where Hal 'Green Lantern' Jordan is portrayed as a true blue (green) hero - my favourite is that Dave Gibbons one with the Shark - but that didn't stop the Captain Yesterday Brigade from campaigning to revive the character.

There are certain characters for whom the race is well and truly run. As much as I loved PREACHER, I was more than satisfied with the ending, and felt that the characters had been taken as far as they could go. Another group of characters for whom I have a great deal of affection - as well as a sense that their time has long since passed - is THE AUTHORITY.

Cor! THE AUTHORITY! Carried along in the peristaltic wake of a mighty Star-Bolus on the shiftship Carrier, they really were the Justice League for the Matrix generation. A combination of perpetually-rising stakes, delicious violence and a working set of Ultra-Genitals ensured that THE AUTHORITY was a refreshing jolt of fin de decade frippery. But as the millennium came and went, and as other superhero comics moved into the void left by the Authority's many editorial hiatuses - most notably THE ULTIMATES - it became clear that the series was only really supposed to have a finite shelf life.

So why it's still around is beyond me.

The latest iteration of THE AUTHORITY, REVOLUTION, has been ticking along for a year now under the stewardship of Ed Brubaker and Dustin Ngyuen. I haven't been reading it, I haven't been keeping up with the reviews, and I haven't even been downloading the covers on New Comics Solicitation Day and making a little screensaver, to the tune of 'Ludwig'. Honest. But now that the first trade paperback from the series is about to go on sale, I find myself digging out my old copies of STORMWATCH and JENNY SPARKS (hell, I liked it) and waxing nostalgic for a while.

All I know about AUTHORITY: REVOLUTION is that the team are running America. As a story premise, it's been done before - notably by AUTHORITY co-creator Warren Ellis (in DOOM 2099) - but I find myself wondering how an arch-dope fiend like The Doctor might cope with being the Surgeon General. And I won't find the answer to that question in the pages of any old back issues, will I? [Matthew Craig]

MANGA FOR BEGINNERS

This summer is proving to be a very cheap one for me, comics-wise. There's simply not much out there that I want to buy. I'm following the KLARION mini from Grant Morrison's SEVEN SOLDIERS, but that's more for the art and the sense of wonder it captures than anything else. So I thought, maybe there are others like me, bored and wondering what to read. People who may not have tried this scary manga thing. So I'm going to recommend three short manga series that I've picked up recently and enjoyed. And no big eyes.

For me, PLANETES by Makoto Yukimura (Tokyopop) is the best medium-hard sci-fi series published in any comic form by anyone over the past few years. Nominally, PLANETES is about three (later, four) people who work in a spaceship collecting orbital garbage around the Earth. Actually, it's about loneliness, ambition, politics, family, the difficulty of finding a smoking area, and (of course) love. The science is spot-on and really interestingly used; and the characterisation is so well done you really grow to love Hachimaki and Fee and Yuri and Tanabe. The series is five books long. Bear with it; book one is brilliant; book two is a bit weak but it improves hugely in book three, and the final two volumes (the Fee subplot) are drop-dead fantastic. The art and visual storytelling is amazingly solid; Yukimura is adept at beautiful, detailed space panoramas as well as delivering some of the most compelling and momentum-filled action scenes I've seen in or out of manga.

DOLL (Mitsukazu Mihara, Tokyopop) is the series to get if you're longing for the sort of gothic, gender- and identity-bending stories Neil Gaiman excelled at in SANDMAN and Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane delivered in HOW LOATHSOME. DOLL is six books long; the first five are out already. Each book is a more or less stand alone collection of short stories involving 'Dolls' - beautiful humanoid robot servants - and their masters. As the series continues, however, the short stories coalesce into threads of an overall plot, and chapters that seem totally unconnected are revealed to be different facets of a particular encounter. I was surprised to see that DOLL was adapted by Simon Furman, better known for writing the TRANSFORMERS franchise. He does a brilliant job, showing great sensitivity to Mihara's delicate characterisation.

Horror fan? You don't know from horror, until you've read Junji Ito's masterful three-volume UZUMAKI (Viz). Ito's obsessively-detailed line work is some of the best in manga, and it reaches a pinnacle in Uzumaki (which means 'Spiral'). A small town in rural Japan starts experiencing strange and evil tragedies, all based around spirals. A sort of mass paranoia takes hold as events grow more twisted. The sheer inventiveness of Ito's choices for the manifestation of the spirals blows away the "Looky, intestines!" school of gore-horror that has taken such hold in America. Just thinking about parts of book two of UZUMAKI is enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. There's a film version of the series, but it's awful. Skip it and read the books. [Alex de Campi]

THE SHIPPING LIST FOR AUGUST 24th 2005:

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

DARK HORSE

MAY05004 SUPER MANGA BLAST #54 (MR) $5.99

DC COMICS

JUN050419 ALBION #3 (OF 6) $2.99
JUN050422 AUTHORITY REVOLUTION BOOK 1 TP (MR) $14.99
JUN050329 BATMAN #644 $2.50
JUN050337 BATMAN JEKYLL AND HYDE #5 (OF 6) $2.99
JUN050395 CARTOON NETWORK BLOCK PARTY #12 $2.25
JUN050339 CATWOMAN WILD RIDE TP $14.99
JUN050423 CITY OF TOMORROW #5 (OF 6) $2.99
JUN050358 DAY OF VENGEANCE #5 (OF 6) $2.50
JUN050441 HELLBLAZER #211 (MR) $2.75
JUL050303 HISTORY OF VIOLENCE NEW TP NEW EDITION $9.99
JUN050369 JACK CROSS #1 $2.50
JUN050378 JSA CLASSIFIED #2 $2.50
JUN050377 LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #9 $2.99
JUN050403 MAD ABOUT THE FIFTIES TP NEW EDITION $12.99
APR050316D NIGHTWING #109 $2.50
JUN050446 OTHERWORLD #6 (OF 12) (MR) $2.99
JUN050336 ROBIN #141 $2.50
JUN050349 SUPERMAN THE MAN OF STEEL VOL 4 TP $19.99
JUN050435 TOM STRONG #34 $2.99

IMAGE

FEB051587 EXPATRIATE #3 $2.95

MARVEL

JUN052058 ARANA VOL 2 IN THE BEGINNING DIGEST TP $7.99
JUN051977 BLACK PANTHER #7 $2.99
JUN052003 DAREDEVIL #76 $2.99
JUN052004 DAREDEVIL VS PUNISHER #3 (OF 6) (MR) $2.99
JUN052013 FANTASTIC FOUR #530 $2.99
JUN052021 HULK DESTRUCTION #2 (OF 4) (MR) $2.99
JUN052011 MACHINE TEEN #4 (OF 5) $2.99
JUN052047 MARVEL HEROES FLIP MAGAZINE #3 $3.99
JUN052000 MARVEL KNIGHTS SPIDER-MAN #17 $2.99
JUN052048 MARVEL SELECT FLIP MAGAZINE #3 $3.99
JUN052016 MEGA MORPHS #2 (OF 4) $2.99
JUN051985 NEW X-MEN #17 $2.99
JUN052037 NIGHTCRAWLER #9 $2.99
JUN052017 SPELLBINDERS #6 (OF 6) $2.99
JUN051988 ULTIMATE X-MEN ANNUAL #1 $3.99
JUN052007 WOLVERINE #31 (MR) $2.50

OTHER PUBLISHERS

MAY05280 A G SUPER EROTIC ANTHOLOGY #18 (A) $4.99
JUN052771 ARCHIE & FRIENDS #94 $2.25
JUN052772 ARCHIE DIGEST #219 $2.39
JUN053097 BANANA SUNDAYS #2 (OF 4) $2.99
JUN053310 FIREFIGHTER DAIGO OF FIRE COMPANY M VOL 12 TP $9.95
JUN053328 FROM FAR AWAY VOL 6 GN $9.99
OCT043079E FUSHIGI YUGI VOL 13 TP $9.95
JUN052918 GI JOE AMERICAS ELITE #2 $2.95
APR052566E GLOOMCOOKIE #24 (MR) $2.95
JUN053318 INU YASHA VOL 23 TP $8.95
JAN042816 INU YASHA VOL 9 2ND ED TP $8.95
MAY05270 LETHARGIC LAD JUMBO SIZED ANNUAL #3 $3.99
JUN053100 LITTLE STAR #4 (OF 6) $2.99
JUN053320 MAR VOL 3 GN $7.99
JUN053332 PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH VOL 12 TP $9.99
DEC042752E QUEEN & COUNTRY DECLASSIFIED VOL 2 #2 (MR) $2.99
MAY05289 QUEEN & COUNTRY DECLASSIFIED VOL 3 #3 (OF 3) (MR) $2.99
JUN053333 RED RIVER VOL 8 GN $9.99
JUN052848 SIMPSONS COMICS #109 $2.99
NOV042277E STRANGERS IN PARADISE VOL 4 POCKET TP $17.95
MAY05310 TUXEDO GIN VOL 13 TP $9.99
JUN052991 UNCLE SCROOGE #345 $6.95
JUN053334 W JULIET VOL 6 GN $9.99
JUN052992 WALT DISNEYS COMICS & STORIES #660 $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.