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: GRENUORD

Born in Italy's Bologna - famous for the creation of the well-known Italian meal, 'Heinz Stir 'N' Sauce' - in the mid-'60s, Francesca Ghermandi has only recently seen publication in the States. Her work, spanning back to the initial strips for newspaper The Reporter, has been published in such illustrious tomes as Frigidaire, Comic Art, Linus, il Manifesto, l'Unita', Internazionale, Einaud, Garzanti and Seul Editions. Notice how none of them have the word 'Spectacular' or 'Infinite' in front of them? Her most well-known works include Fantagraphics' THE WIPEOUT and the glorious silent comic, PASTIL. Now comes a six-issue mini-series written and drawn in her own inimitable surrealist strip fashion, GRENUORD.

GRENUORD tells the tale of George Henderson arriving in the titular city, wracked by many of the problems of modern life; work, women and existential worry. But Grenuord is a city living under the thumb of a fascist police state thanks to terrorist attacks, and all this just plays into George's problems. Then there's the weirdo who finds strange radioactive goo in George's basement, and a mysterious femme fatale hiker with a 'mysterious past'. Elaborating on contemporary paranoid responses to the notion of 'others', GRENUORD looks to be a strange sideways glance at the velvet fascism our fears of terrorism has allowed to occur.

It's solicited as being in "stunningly subtle pencil tones", and, indeed, that's an accurate description of Ghermandi's work. The Westernised view of what a comic strip is has become so set in stone that these kinds of creators often find it hard to expand to a wider canvas - but of course, our European colleagues always work on a wide canvas, whatever the medium, genre, et cetera. Ghermandi's move from strip to six issues should prove interesting, as will her surrealist take on a serious subject matter. [John Fellows]

MY BEAUTIFUL NEIGHBOURHOOD

Let's get this out of the way, right off the bat - FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN is a terrible name for a comic. It's unwieldy, corny, and more than faintly ridiculous. It smacks of a pre-school version of everyone's favourite wall-crawler, and whichever marketing or editorial bod came up with it should be roundly lambasted (particularly when the name WEB OF SPIDER-MAN is just sitting there doing nothing).

But aside from that, Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the comic? Well, a look at the credits box tells us that we're in for some good Spidey, as Peter David makes his return to regular writer status on a webslinger book just over 20 years after he took on his first ongoing spider-gig with SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #103. David has exactly the kind of writing skill that a Spider-Man book needs - an ability to marry stories that put our hero through the emotional and physical wringer with an ear for snappy dialogue that most comics creators would sell their grandmothers for.

Joining David is Mike Wieringo, another veteran of Spider-Man comics. 'Ringo's online diary has shown us that he's going for a more classical design than the one he employed when he was the penciler on SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN, but as his recent stint on FANTASTIC FOUR has shown, he's more than capable of handling traditional superheroics.

Of course, there has to be a drawback, that being that the David-'Ringo team will only be in place for one issue before being disrupted by the 12-part 'Other' crossover. Still, once that's out the way, we'll be treated to what's doubtless going to prove to be the strongest of the mainstream Spider-books. If only they had called it something less goofy. [Alistair Kennedy]

LIVE AND UNLEASHED

Despite my best efforts, I can't read every interesting-sounding comic that crosses my path. I had Bryan Lee O'Malley's LOST AT SEA for three months before I got around to reading it. It's taken me four years to get around to buying James Sturm's GOLEM'S MIGHTY SWING (and even that was sidelined in favour of the Silver Age lunacy of SHOWCASE: SUPERMAN). And only a bout of unshakeable insomnia finally persuaded me to crack open the first volume of Dave Sim's CEREBUS.

It didn't help.

So there are a great many talented comicos out there with whom I only have a passing acquaintance. Adam Warren is one of them. Formerly the creator of the comicbook version of the Japanese sci-fi phenomenon DIRTY PAIR, Warren's run on the teen supercomic GEN-13 was something of a cult hit, before the writer was replaced by a between-X-MEN Chris Claremont.

Fetching up on the shores of Marvel Comics, Warren turned his manga/anime-inspired eyes upon an obscure piece of X-Men miscellania, The Mannites. Reinventing the nanotechnological lifeforms as a group of rogue "combat mecha", Warren, along with artist Rick Mays, created THE LIVEWIRES. This week sees the release of CLOCKWORK THUGS, YO, the digest-size Livewires paperback. As the title suggests, the tone of the novel is likely to be light.

The character names don't help: The Livewires include such characters as Stem Cell, Gothic Lolita, Hollowpoint Ninja and Social Butterfly. Whether this is a lighthearted swipe at the Gen-13 characters, who bore '90's-centric names such as Grunge, or a broader satire on the self-consuming nature of pop culture is unclear. What is certain, from interviews here and here, is that Livewires promises to marry all of Warren's peccadilloes into one glorious whole. Artist Rick Mays also carries a strong manga influence, which should be a perfect fit for Warren's script.

One side effect of Marvel's occasionally misguided attempts to insinuate itself into the manga-sized paperback market is that the books are damn inexpensive. Livewires will be a cheap and cheerful way to find out what makes Adam Warren such a cult favourite creator, without having to search for expensive back issues and out of print trade paperbacks. [Matthew Craig]

THE SHIPPING LIST FOR OCTOBER 12th 2005:

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

DARK HORSE

FEB050061D APOCALYPSE NERD #2 $2.99
AUG050047D BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #106 (MR) (NOTE PRICE) $3.99
JUL050055D SUPER MANGA BLAST #56 (MR) $5.99

DC COMICS

AUG050280D 100 BULLETS #65 (MR) $2.75
AUG050196D ACTION COMICS #832 $2.50
AUG050259D ASTRO CITY LOCAL HEROES TP $17.99
AUG050184D BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #196 $2.50
AUG050239D BATMAN STRIKES #14 $2.25
AUG050209D BREACH #10 $2.50
AUG050282D DOOM PATROL VOL 3 DOWN PARADISE WAY TP (MR) $19.99
AUG050284D FABLES #42 (MR) $2.75
AUG050211D FIRESTORM #18 $2.50
AUG050215D GREEN ARROW #55 $2.50
JUL050228D GREEN LANTERN REBIRTH HC $24.99
AUG050217D JLA #120 $2.50
AUG050267D MAJESTIC #10 $2.99
AUG050193D NIGHTWING #113 $2.50
AUG050248D SCOOBY DOO #101 $2.25
AUG050236D VILLAINS UNITED #6 (OF 6) $2.50
AUG050272D WILDCATS NEMESIS #2 (OF 9) $2.99

IMAGE

AUG051733D CITY OF HEROES #6 $2.99
JUL051635D RING OF ROSES TP (RES) $13.99
MAY051571 SEA OF RED #5 (MR) $2.99

MARVEL

AUG051950D CABLE DEADPOOL #21 $2.99
JUL051936D ESSENTIAL SPIDER-MAN VOL 7 TP $16.99
AUG051986D ESSENTIAL WEREWOLF BY NIGHT VOL 1 TP $16.99
AUG051944D EXILES #71 $2.99
AUG051884D FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD SPIDER-MAN #1 $2.99
AUG051900D GHOST RIDER #2 (OF 6) $2.99
AUG051901D GHOST RIDER DIRECTORS CUT #1 $3.99
AUG051927D GRAVITY #5 (OF 5) $2.99
JUL051844D HOUSE OF M #7 (OF 8) $2.99
JAN058166D HOUSE OF M LARROCA VARIANT COVER #7 (OF 8) (PP #684) $2.99
AUG051973D LIVEWIRES CLOCKWORK THUGS YO DIGEST TP $7.99
AUG051940D MARVEL ADVENTURES FANTASTIC FOUR #5 $2.50
AUG051906D MARVEL KNIGHTS 4 #23 $2.99
JUL051922D MARVEL MASTERWORKS GOLDEN AGE HUMAN TORCH VOL 1 HC VAR ED $54.99
JUL051921D MARVEL MASTERWORKS GOLDEN AGE HUMAN TORCH VOL 1 NEW ED HC #1 $49.99
AUG051930D MARVEL MILESTONES BLADE MAN-THING & SATANA $3.99
AUG051934D MARVEL MONSTERS WHERE MONSTERS DWELL $3.99
AUG051936D MARVEL NEMESIS IMPERFECTS #6 (OF 6) $2.99
AUG051937D MEGA MORPHS #4 (OF 4) $2.99
AUG051945D MUTOPIA X #4 (OF 5) $2.99
SEP041814D SHE HULK VOL 1 SINGLE GREEN FEMALE TP $14.99
AUG051974D SPELLBINDERS SIGNS AND WONDERS DIGEST TP $7.99
SEP041807D ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN VOL 11 CARNAGE TP $12.99
AUG051892D ULTIMATE X-MEN #64 $2.50
AUG051898D WOLVERINE #34 $2.50
AUG051977D X-MEN BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE TP $9.99

OTHER PUBLISHERS

AUG053270E ALL NEW TENCHI MUYO VOL 7 TP $8.95
JUL053036F AMELIA RULES #15 (RES) $2.95
JUL052636E ARCHIE & FRIENDS #95 $2.25
AUG053271E BATTLE ANGEL ALITA LAST ORDER VOL 6 TP $9.95
JUL052641E BETTY & VERONICA DOUBLE DIGEST #137 $3.59
AUG053304E CERES CELESTIAL LEGEND VOL 13 TP $9.95
AUG052642E DEAD EYES OPEN #2 $2.95
APR052825F DORK TOWER #32 $3.49
JUL052750F ELVIRA #149 $2.50
JUL052787E EVIL ERNIE IN SANTA FE #1 (OF 4) $2.95
JUL052718E FUTURAMA COMICS #21 $2.99
JUL052980F GERONIMO LAST APACHE WARRIOR GN (MR) $7.95
JUL052789E GI JOE AMERICAS ELITE #3 $2.95
AUG052645E GLOOMCOOKIE VOL 4 CARNIVAL WARS TP (MR) $16.95
MAY052743F GRENUORD #1 (OF 6) (MR) $4.95
AUG053285E KEKKAISHI VOL 3 GN $9.99
JUL052583E LITTLE SCROWLIE #11 $2.95
JUN052929F NODWICK #30 $2.99
JUN053332E PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH VOL 12 TP $9.99
JUL052716F SHYGIRL VOL 1 GN $13.99
AUG053245E STREET FIGHTER ETERNAL CHALLENGE TP UDON ED $34.99
JUL053176F SURROGATES #2 (OF 5) $2.95
JUN053160F THE NORM #10 $4.95

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.