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, and most noteworthy books on the shelves of your local comic shop.

BOOK OF THE WEEK: TRANSMETROPOLITAN

So the keystone of Warren Ellis' great long-form work is finally lowered into place with the publication of TRANSMETROPOLITAN VOL 10: ONE MORE TIME (DC Vertigo). This trade marks the end of the collected form of TRANSMET, which deserves its place in the hallowed company of multi-volume epics such as PREACHER and SANDMAN.

Ellis' most personal character, Spider Jerusalem, the misanthropic journalist with a conscience only slightly smaller than his drug habit, finally reaches his denouement, so have tissues on standby for tearful farewells. Will Spider be able to hold off his own terminal internal corruption for long enough to redress the civic diseases and injustices plaguing the City?

Darick Robertson and Rodney Ramos manage one last push on the art front to cap the series on a high note, although with a work of the size of TRANSMET, one senses an inevitable amount of frustration and enthusiasm to move on, so the final package is not perhaps as crisp as the rest of the series merited. However, this is one of the most important Occidental comics of recent years, so if you've been following it in trade form, this volume has to be a must-buy. [Lindsay Duff]

EVERYDAY SUPERHUMANS

I love short stories. Small self-contained glimpses into lives. So a series of 12 individual stories, each in the form of a monthly comic, is an appealing idea for me. Yet when DEMO first appeared, it copped a lot of flack, not least for the fact that it was a monthly comic coming from a publisher that had dealt solely in graphic novels.

But, "It's about kids with powers," I hear you say. "In a world that doesn't understand them."

Well, yeah. But only if you look on the surface.

The whole 'superpower' thing is just one tiny detail, often used to propel the story forward. This lets the actual characters take over and do the rest of the storytelling, which has, six stories in, made for compelling reading. Becky Cloonan, shifting her style slightly from issue to issue, to match Brian Wood's stories, adds a great deal to the pleasure of reading this book.

Paul Pope perfected the art of fitting as much as he could into what was essentially a single issue comic. His recent THB issues sometimes weighed in at around 90 odd pages, bigger than some collections and graphic novels. All part of a larger story too. Wood, Cloonan and the good folk at AiT/PlanetLar do the same, but with self-contained stories.

DEMO #6, 'What You Wish For', marks the halfway mark. I'm in for the next six. [Ben Wooller]

A KICK IN THE HEAD

It's 1:00 in the morning, and it's hopeless. You can't sleep, and yet you're too tired to focus on anything, even TV. You feel unpleasantly weightless and anxious about everything and nothing. You dread facing the next morning with no rest, and so you start straining to relax, until you realize how little sense that makes. So you resign yourself to a night without sleep, or worse, with only the kind of shallow, hag ridden sleep that leaves you more fatigued, not less.

This is one of the moods that Richard Hahn's self-published, Xeric-winning LUMAKICK delicately and skilfully captures. It consists mostly of vignettes starring a hollow-eyed, bowler-hatted figure named Professor Lee, as he deals with such things as unemployment, writer's block and unrequited love. To keep the ennui from becoming oppressive, Hahn throws in a few one-page humour strips that expertly nail your typical barroom bachelor chat. As a cartoonist, he's got a line and an approach to visual language that's most apparently inspired by the great Saul Steinberg, and a sense of texture that reminds me of Edward Gorey. He uses the simplicity of his art and the unnerving emptiness of his settings to make each moment to register a little more keenly.

This is comics as poetry, a prospect that may cause some of you to quail. When comics-as-poetry is done poorly, as it usually is, there's nothing deadlier. Hahn does it very well indeed, all the more remarkably for his being such a newcomer to the comics field.

There's a reason why LUMAKICK #1 was awarded a Xeric grant, and won Hahn a nomination in both the Harveys and the Eisners. He is - forgive the reviewer's cliché - a real talent to watch. [Chris Ekman]

NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE EXCESS

The final Grant Morrison NEW X-MEN trade already looks a little out of place in this month's Marvel shipping lists, especially when it's due out in the same week as the new NEW X-MEN #1, which bears little resemblance to the old one, being simply a new title for the book that used to be NEW MUTANTS.

No, not the original version of NEW MUTANTS. That's the book that became X-FORCE under Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza (not to be confused with the forthcoming X-FORCE from Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza) and later metamorphosed into X-STATIX by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred, though it's spiritual legacy belonged to GENERATION X, which passed the torch back to the new NEW MUTANTS, which is now the new NEW X-MEN.

As you can see, we've been here before. There is nothing new in the x-books, even if it has 'new' in the title. The whole line tends to get a revamp every three years or so, sometimes with a brand like Mutant Genesis or X-Men Revolution, and sometimes without. Sometimes the intention is to attempt a few experiments with the line. Sometimes the intention is to set things back to normal after the last experiment. Usually it's a bit of both.

That certainly seems to be the case with this month's Reload event, which sees Chris Claremont returning as the principle architect of the line, on EXCALIBUR with Aaron Lopresti and UNCANNY X-MEN with Alan Davis, and which will doubtless see much of Morrison's work undone. Claremont, though well past his prime, still seems to regard the x-books as his rightful domain. Morrison probably doesn't care, but any readers who came to the line through him could be in for a bumpy ride if they've stuck around.

The real star name on Reload is BUFFY creator Joss Whedon, who launches NEW X-MEN's true successor, ASTONISHING X-MEN, with John Cassaday. It'll be interesting to see how Whedon fares, and how his usual tics and tricks measure up against Claremont's. Yet in spite of the confusion, it's actually the new NEW X-MEN that I'm most looking forward to. When SKINWALKER's Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir first launched the title as NEW MUTANTS, the flow of the book seemed obviously hampered by editorial diktat. With decompression demagogue Bill Jemas out of the way, hopefully they'll get to do it their own way this time. [Andrew Wheeler]

DEAD CENTRED

Didn't you always admire those kids at school who were wacky for one thing? And I don't just mean the Atari geeks or the Dungeons & Dragons nerds, I mean those kids that had this one abiding desire that overruled all else. The kid who liked spaceships and had his entire room kitted out like Mission Control. The kid who liked birds and had built his own aviary in his backyard. Those kids who would grow up and this one thing would fill their life and give them drive.

Steve Niles loves horror. He loves mutilated corpses and sleazy vampires and terrifying werewolves and ghosts that go bump. He is a little bit weird, but in that great way that all people with obsessions are. Luckily, the world is allowed a little glimpse into his obsession on an irregular basis. There was the renowned 30 DAYS OF NIGHT and only last year the first Cal McDonald mini, CRIMINAL MACABRE.

Now, there's the follow-up, LAST TRAIN TO DEADSVILLE (Dark Horse), but without the gorgeous artwork from Ben Templesmith (HELLSPAWN). Kelley Jones (DEADMAN) is a different kettle of fish, but an equally gifted artist. His work on BATMAN and THE CRUSADES proved that he's able to do dark and gore. He's a guy who polarises opinion, but whichever side of the road you drive on, he's perfect for this series. One part hard-boiled private eye to one-part modern-day supernatural horror. It's BLADE meets CHINATOWN, as directed by David Fincher. An obsessively good read. [John Fellows]

NAIL POLISH

The idea of THE NAIL is hinged on the notion that a single nail left in the middle of the road punctured the tire of Ma and Pa Kent's truck, as they were just about to set off into Smallville. And, as you know, on the way they were supposed to find a baby Kal-El inside a rocket ship. So, because of a nail, the Kents decided to stay at home; thus leaving the world open to a scattershot JLA, megalomaniac supervillains and a Kal-El raised in an Amish community.

The charm of Alan Davis and Mark Farmer's THE NAIL was that they utilized conventions from the Silver Age of comics -- such as, subplots that are introduced and wrapped up within two pages and single panels that leave plot cookies to be eaten later on - to reinforce sharp and accessible action and dialogue. And, there are loads of splash pages. The original series featured everyone in the DC universe from The Outsiders to The Doom Patrol. This week's follow-up, ANOTHER NAIL, promises a cataclysmic battle between The New Gods and The Green Lantern Corps. This is pure 80 page giant summer reading material.

While the structure is nostalgic, the storyline is decidedly not, as old friends become enemies and old enemies force heroes to make choices that they never would have faced inside the confines of the regular DC continuity. ANOTHER NAIL picks up directly where THE NAIL left off, to wrap up various hanging plot threads, but the book is really more of an excuse to explore the most important and underused character from THE NAIL - Superman. [Frank Smith]

VERTIGO AT SEA

Grant Morrison is back with DC, and the world seems right again. Even if he and Cameron Stewart are doing a book called SEAGUY.

SEAGUY is set ten years after the good guys won the cataclysmic final battle that seems to sprout up in every superhero universe - when there's no more evil left to fight, and superpowered individuals like Seaguy are left with nothing to do but settle down into a simple life and experience the usual existential dread.

While Morrison is justifiably praised for his near-schizophrenic inventiveness and experimental nature, the novelty of his 'mad ideas' has overshadowed an aspect of his talent that most people seem to forget: at the core, all of his books are about simple people and their simple emotions. THE FILTH was not about fictional realities and global conspiracies. It was about Greg Feely, his identity crisis and his cat. Without its exploration of millennial anxieties and self-doubt, reading THE INVISIBLES would be about as exciting as cracking open your high school science book.

While SEAGUY will probably be just as wet with 'mad ideas' as all his books have been (after all, it has a talking tuna fish), and while Stewart seems more than capable of getting those ideas across, I'm too old and mean-spirited to be impressed by that anymore. I just want a good story about a man and his emotions, but I'm sure that Morrison and Stewart won't disappoint. [John Parker]

THE SHIPPING LIST FOR MAY 19th 2004:

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

DARK HORSE

MAR040053D EL ZOMBO #2 (Of 3) $2.99
MAR040039D GRENDEL DEVILS REIGN #1 (MR) $3.50
MAR040023D LAST TRAIN TO DEADSVILLE A CAL MCDONALD MYSTERY #1 $2.99
FEB040055 RING VOL 2 TP (MR) $12.95

DC COMICS

MAR040348D AUTHORITY VOL 2 #12 (MR) $2.95
MAR040280D BATMAN ADVENTURES #14 $2.25
MAR040276D BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #53 $2.95
MAR040298D BATMAN SUPERMAN WONDER WOMAN TRINITY HC $24.95
MAR040309D FRACTION #2 $2.50
MAR040315D HAWKMAN #28 $2.50
MAR040364D HUMAN TARGET #10 (MR) $2.95
MAR040319D JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA ANOTHER NAIL #1 (Of 3) $5.95
MAR040367D LUCIFER #50 (MR) (Note Price) $3.50
MAR040329D OUTSIDERS #12 $2.50
MAR040344D POWERPUFF GIRLS #50 $2.25
MAR040290D ROBIN #126 $2.25
MAR040332D ROSE AND THORN #6 (Of 6) $2.95
MAR040373D SEAGUY #1 (Of 3) (MR) $2.95
FEB040243 SUPERMAN BATMAN PUBLIC ENEMIES HC $19.95
MAR040352D THUNDERCATS DOGS OF WAR TP $14.95
MAR040375D TRANSMETROPOLITAN VOL 10 ONE MORE TIME TP (MR) $14.95
MAR040337D WONDER WOMAN #204 $2.25
JAN040305 Y THE LAST MAN VOL 3 ONE SMALL STEP TP (MR) $12.95

IMAGE

JAN041291 DAVID & GOLIATH #3 $2.95
DEC031335D SAVAGE DRAGON VOL 10 ENDGAME TP $15.95
MAR041416D SPAWN SIMONY ONE SHOT $7.95

MARVEL

FEB041598 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #507 $2.25
MAR045015D AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #509 POSTER (PU #620) $5.95
MAR045013D ASTONISHING X-MEN #1 VAR CVR POSTER (PU #620) $5.95
MAY041709D AVENGERS #500 POSTER $5.95
MAR041663D CABLE DEADPOOL #3 $2.99
MAR041681D CAPTAIN AMERICA #26 $2.99
MAR041696D CAPTAIN MARVEL #23 $2.99
MAR041678D DAREDEVIL #60 $2.99
MAR045014D DAREDEVIL FATHER #1 POSTER (PU #620) $5.95
MAR041651D EXCALIBUR #1 $2.99
MAR041656D EXILES #47 $2.99
MAR041685D FANTASTIC FOUR #513 $2.25
MAR041701D IRON FIST #3 $2.99
MAR041698D IRON MAN #82 $2.99
MAR041705D MARVEL AGE SPIDER-MAN #4 $2.25
MAR041650D NEW X-MEN ACADEMY X #1 $2.99
MAR041731D NEW X-MEN VOL 7 HERE COMES TOMORROW TP $10.99
MAR041707D RUNAWAYS #15 $2.99
MAR041709D SPIDER-GIRL #74 $2.99
MAR041754D THANOS VOL 4 EPIPHANY TP $14.99
MAR041668D ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #59 $2.25
MAR041676D WOLVERINE #15 $2.25
MAR041649D X-MEN #157 $2.25

OTHER PUBLISHERS

MAR042841F ALL FLEE $3.95
MAR042866E ANGEL SANCTUARY VOL 2 $9.95
MAR042713F BONEYARD #14 $2.95
FEB042219 COMIC PARTY BOOK 1 GN PARTY TIME $9.99
FEB042559 COURTNEY CRUMRIN IN THE TWILIGHT KINGDOM #4 (Of 4) $2.99
MAR042843F DANG $3.50
FEB042047F DEMO #6 (Of 12) (MR) $2.95
MAR042604E DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #316 $2.95
FEB042301F DORK TOWER #27 (RES) $2.99
MAR042367F ELVIRA #133 $2.50
DEC032037 FULL METAL PANIC MANGA VOL 3 TP $9.99
MAR042467E GI JOE MASTER & APPRENTICE #1 (Of 3) $2.95
MAR042620F JANES WORLD #13 $5.95
MAR042257E LAUGH DIGEST #193 $2.39
MAR042880E MAISON IKKOKU VOL 5 TP 2ND ED $9.95
MAR042607E MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #265 $2.95
MAR042148F MONKEY & SPOON GN (MR) $9.95
MAR042881E NAUSICAA OF VALLEY OF WIND VOL 4 TP 2ND ED $9.95
MAR042194E OUTLOOK GRIM #5 (MR) $2.95
FEB043229I POWERS LTD ED HC (RES) $69.95
FEB042758 RANMA 1/2 VOL 26 TP $9.95
MAR042197F SEAMONSTERS & SUPERHEROES #4 $2.95
MAR042327E SIMPSONS COMICS #94 $2.99
MAR042572F STUFF OF DREAMS #2 (MR) $4.95
MAR042337F TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #26 (MR) $2.95
MAR042338F TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE DLX ED #26 (MR) $19.99
FEB042556 TOO MUCH HOPELESS SAVAGES #4 (Of 4) (RES) (MR) $2.99
MAR042506E TRANSFORMERS ENERGON #23 $2.95
MAR042886E TUXEDO GIN VOL 6 TP $9.95
MAR042408E WORLD OF NARUE BOOK 1 GN $9.99

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.