It's June! That means that students everywhere are getting out of school and enjoying their summer, right? Well, everywhere except the comics industry, which just released its solicitations for September 2004, when school gets back in session. It's like summer vacation never came, and it's more than a little depressing to think about. (No, wait, I can think of something worse. It's called having a full-time job where "summer vacation" is what other people get and not you. Ah reality, rearing its ugly head again.)

Anyway, here's a rundown of some books you might have missed as your mind drifts off into dreams of the beach. Meanwhile, your local reviewer is stuck in a basement somewhere with a copy of Previews and wondering what he did to deserve this.

VIZ

WHISTLE! VOL 1 GN by Daisuke Higuichi
JUL04 3326, p354, $7.95

I love Japanese sports comics, because they're so dramatic. Take WHISTLE, one of the new SHONEN JUMP line of graphic novels (which means they're two bucks less than most other manga volumes, hurrah!), where a young boy is told that he's too short to play at his school, so he switches schools. That alone would be enough plot for most domestically produced comics, but not here.

Here he's accidentally introduced as a super soccer player and becomes so mortified about the situation that he drops out of school entirely and has to find other ways to play soccer. And yes, this is aimed at kids. I love it. I suppose it's too much to hope that the solicitation talking about protagonist Sho having to "hustle day and night in order to make [playing soccer] happen" involves prostitution, but you never know. I've seen crazier things in comics. We probably shouldn't hold our breath for that particular plot twist, though.

TOP SHELF PRODUCTIONS

OWLY TP by Andy Runton
JUL04 3246, p342, $10.00

How do Chris Staros and Brett Warnock do it? Top Shelf continually surprises me with their new discoveries and books, and OWLY looks to be nothing short of absolutely adorable; a series of silent stories about a little owl looking to find friends. Andy Runton's art is so cute you may wonder if Runton is in fact from the planet of Sucrose, here to secretly rot our teeth with the sheer cuteness of it all. But here's the kicker: even a grouch like me finds this really, really cute in a good way. I should be going into sugar shock, and instead I just want more. It's like I'm hooked on smack, only in this case it's slightly more acceptable to talk about in public. (Then again, these are comics. Perhaps it would be more acceptable for me to talk about getting hooked on smack. What was I thinking?)

DEAD HERRING COMICS by the Actus Group
JUL04 3248, p342, $24.95

Every year a friend of mine goes to France for the Angouleme festival and comes back with the new Actus Group graphic novel, and every year it knocks my socks off. This Israeli collective of creators do something different each time out of the gate, but the one thing you can be assured of is that the art will be beautifully stylised, the stories will punch you in the gut when you least expect it, and the production of the book itself will be slick. It's no small surprise that Top Shelf distributes their books into the English-speaking world, because it's a great match for Staros and Warnock's sensibilities. Best of all, since I've got my copy already, I can hereby assure you that this is a fantastic book. Buy it, and HAPPY END, and JETLAG, and the ACTUS BOX, and anything else you can get your hands on from the Actus Group. It's all good.

TOKYOPOP

LEGAL DRUG VOL 1 GN, by Clamp
JUL04 3139, p321, $9.99

There's just something so odd about the idea of Mick Nekoi, the artist in the creator-collective known as CLAMP, working on LEGAL DRUG. Nekoi's art is soft and delicate, heading up projects in the past like WISH (where an angel falls in love with a human) and SUKI (an emotionally fragile girl falls in love with her new teacher and next-door-neighbour). The idea of it connected to a book about people who run mysterious errands for a pharmacy to help people needing "special prescriptions" is just odd, and at the same time it's intriguing. This is either going to be a runaway success or crash and burn horribly, but either way I simply have to see it for myself.

PANTHEON BOOKS

IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS GN by Art Spiegelman
JUL04 3088, p312, $19.95

I've only seen a handful of the post-9/11 comics that Art Spiegelman drew for The New Yorker, but what I did see were sarcastic, bitter, and opinionated to the extreme. I don't think this is at all what people are going to be expecting from Spiegelman's first big solo book since MAUS, and I think this book might very well get a lot of people pretty upset with Spiegelman. And to that I say, good. There might be better commentary elsewhere, but the fact that it's by a Pulitzer Prize winning author might mean that it'll get into the hands of people who otherwise wouldn't have encountered it.

ONI PRESS

CHOCOLATE THUNDER GN by Jeremy Love, Jeff Wasson, Robert Love, and Jamar Nichols
JUL04 3070, p308, $11.95

All right, I think Jeremy Love and Jeff Wasson's art is pretty snazzy, and I'm sure this book is actually going to be pretty nifty. But let's be honest, here... doesn't the title make you think of someone farting? Is it just me? (It is just me, isn't it?)

COURTNEY CRUMRIN IN THE TWILIGHT KINGDOM TP by Ted Naifeh
JUL04 3071, p308, $11.95

Ted Naifeh's COURTNEY CRUMRIN series is the sort of comic I wish I'd read when I was growing up; the protagonist is sarcastic, bitter, and way too smart for her own good. In other words, she's fun. This collection of Naifeh's third mini-series is in some ways a little more serious than the others, a slow maturing of Courtney, no matter how much she may resist it. When I want to read about a kid learning magic, I'll go for COURTNEY CRUMRIN every time.

NBM

SILK TAPESTRY AND OTHER CHINESE FOLKTALES HC by Patrick Atangan
JUL04 3052, p306, $12.95

I'll be the first to admit that I absolutely adored Patrick Atangan's THE YELLOW JAR a year and a half ago. Telling Japanese folk tales in a beautifully appropriate art style, it was one of the sharpest looking books on the market at the end of 2002, and the idea of a second book of stories tackling Chinese stories just makes me want to jump up and down and squeal with delight. Come, squeal with me.

MOONSTONE BOOKS KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER TP VOL 1
JUL04 3022, p304, $17.95

All right, I'll bite. Are there really KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER fans out there who are buying this? Is there some huge fan base for this character that I've never known about? Don't get me wrong, I know there's an award given out for "Best Barney Miller Slash Fiction" every year, so stranger things certainly exist, but I don't know, I just can't see how Moonstone is making back the money on the license here, to say nothing of the printing bill. Who's buying this? Is there an audience? What's going on? Anyone?

(I am not making up the Barney Miller slash fiction award, incidentally. I'm not sure which part surprised me more, that there was an award or that there's enough Barney Miller slash fiction still being written every year that it can be a viable category in fan-fiction awards.)

MARVEL COMICS

Does anyone else out there remember the time some years ago when Marvel tried to squeeze out all the competition by flooding the market with as many comics as possible? Well, history will teach us nothing, because by my count Marvel is releasing 80 different single issues in the month of September.

Now I'm not saying they're the only company to release a lot of books (DC, once you add in Vertigo, WildStorm, and Humanoids, has almost as many) but looking at the number of, "why? why? why?" books, it's a bit ludicrous. Five all new Marvel 2099 one-shots when the writer himself has said he'd only pitched the idea of doing one? (And with no connection to anything previously published under that header, which makes it all the stranger.) Ongoing series for Jubilee, Gambit, Nightcrawler, the Starjammers, and Rogue? More random mini-series than you can shake a stick at? What the heck is going on here?

The worst thing about this? There really will be some quality books amidst all of this that are going to get squeezed out. With so many titles debuting in such a short period of time, they're all going to blend together in both a retailer and consumer viewpoint. So when something comes along that does deserve attention, it'll get ignored until the last second (RUNAWAYS) or well beyond the point of no return (INHUMANS).

So what is worth reading that's new and notable? Quite frankly, I have no idea. It all looks the same to me, and when it comes to the Marvel section, I'm throwing in the towel, with two exceptions.

STRANGE #1 by J Michael Straczynski, Samm Barnes, and Brandon Peterson
JUL04 1956, pM1, $3.50

J Michael Straczynski has been desperately trying to get a Doctor Strange comic out there for a while now. One could even call his AMAZING SPIDER-MAN run, in parts, DOCTOR STRANGE AND HIS SIDEKICK SPIDER-MAN. Of course, just about any and every series starring Doctor Strange has failed miserably (and apparently he's the #1 character to get writing-pitches for at Marvel, go figure), but maybe Straczynski and Barnes can break the curse.

They'll get some help from Brandon Peterson, whose work on MYSTIC and ARCANUM showed that he can draw magic. But will it be good? I've got no idea. But two months after the storyline ends, we'll get a collection from Marvel anyway, so wait six months and you'll probably see that show up in Previews, too.

THE ULTIMATES by Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch, and Paul Neary
JUL04 2043, pM67, $29.99

THE ULTIMATES is a great example of all flash with little substance, but with that said, it sure is pretty flash. For fans of Bryan Hitch who love to see his art in as big a format as possible but can't afford THE ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY, this is a nice substitute.

LAST GASP

100 ARTISTS SEE SATAN TP
JUL04 3007, p303, $24.95

What, only 100? Are you sure that's it?

IMAGE COMICS

THE RETURN OF SHADOWHAWK ONE SHOT #1, by Jim Valentino
JUL04 1771, p149, $2.99

For those of you fortunate enough to not be reading comics in 1992, you may not understand why I'm cringing mightily at this solicitation. You see, SHADOWHAWK was a comic where the lead character, disgusted at criminals eventually getting free again, ran around and snapped the spines of bad guys. (The early '90s were all about the spine-snapping action, between this and the issue of BATMAN where Bane does the same to poor ol' Bats.)

Now, Jim Valentino is a prince of a guy. I think he's fantastic, and he did a lot to lift the "Image Central" line up and find new and interesting creators to be under the Image logo. But I can't help but fear THE RETURN OF SHADOWHAWK, because the original series was truly dreadful. The idea of it being back for more is just too terrifying for words.

DC COMICS

DOOM PATROL: THE PAINTING THAT ATE PARIS TP by Grant Morrison, Richard Case, and John Nyberg
JUL04 0690, p112, $19.95

For anyone who's ever wondered what the big deal about Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL was, this will answer the question for you. This collection is, quite frankly, near perfect. It's got the brilliant "Painting that Ate Paris" storyline as the Brotherhood of Dada suck an entire city into a world of art, but it also has the story with Cliff journeying into Crazy Jane's mind where her 64 personalities shuffle around in a landscape of subway cars, to say nothing of the adventure where Cliff's disembodied brain has to fight Monsieur Mallah, the Brain, and his own robotic bodies in one of the funniest stories Morrison's ever written. This will be the best collection of material that Vertigo prints all year, and everyone simply must have this in their reading library.

FRACTION #6 and TOUCH #6
JUL04 0620 & JUL04 0651, p87 & 92, $2.50

Cancelled in six issues. Ouch. It's been a while since DC killed something so fast you got whiplash. With half of the DC Focus line now dead in the water, can the others be far behind?

SWAMP THING: REGENESIS TP by Rick Veitch and Alfredo Alcala
JUL04 0703, p119, $17.95

Holy crap. (Am I allowed to say crap? This is only my third "Things to Come" column and I'm still learning the ropes. If Andrew Wheeler has changed the word "crap" to something like, say, "Rob Liefeld" then I guess we'll know the answer was no. Er, anyway...) I must admit I never thought I'd see this, a collection of first of Rick Veitch's SWAMP THING issues.

Veitch's run famously ended three issues earlier than planned when the originally approved SWAMP THING #88 got yanked from production at the last second, but there's been talk for some time that Veitch and DC Comics were having "discussions" about the possibility of reprinting Veitch's work, and maybe even having a final collection that printed the originally planned #88 as well as what Veitch had planned for #89-90. Will the latter happen? I honestly have no idea. I'd love to see it, though, and hopefully if this first Veitch collection sells well, we'll get one. Keep your fingers crossed...

SUPERMAN: TRUE BRIT HC by Kim "Howard" Johnson, John Cleese, John Byrne, and Mark Farmer
JUL04 0606, p71, $24.95

So when this project was first announced, did I completely miss the fact that John Cleese was in fact only co-writing the book, or is this a new development? Add in a less-than-attractive art sample from John Byrne and any interest I had in this project has just been flushed. Oh well, that's $24.95 I can spend on just about anything else instead.

WONDER WOMAN: CHALLENGE OF THE GODS by George Perez, Len Wein, and Bruce Patterson
JUL04 0653, p92, $19.95

Yes, these collections are about ten years late, but I don't care. I'm absolutely loving reading these old Perez WONDER WOMAN issues. They're beautifully drawn, the stories keep my interest up, and Perez did a great job of making Wonder Woman an interesting character in her own right. (Something that no one else up until current writer Greg Rucka seems to have done on her monthly title.) So long as you keep publishing these, DC, I'll keep buying them.

DARK HORSE

ART OF USAGI YOJIMBO HC by Stan Sakai
JUL04 0019, p25, $39.95

In a comic book encyclopaedia, under "dependably good" you'd find Stan Sakai. It's hard to believe Sakai's been writing and drawing USAGI YOJIMBO for 20 years now, and somehow his stories of a rabbit samurai are still some of the most entrancing adventures in comics. As great as the stories are, though, I don't think Sakai properly gets credit for his skill as an artist, but that might change with THE ART OF STAN SAKAI hardcover.

Every line is perfectly placed in a Sakai illustration, and he's able to bring across such expression in his characters it's a real joy to look at. Add in 48 pages showcasing his painted artwork, to say nothing of never-before-seen sketches and illustrations, and I think everyone will agree that this book is a worthy successor to the ART OF SIN CITY and ART OF HELLBOY books that Dark Horse has already published. Those two volumes were both so beautiful and had such high production values that I can't imagine this new volume being anything less than gorgeous.

MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER HC by Russ Manning, Kermit Shaefer, and Don Friewald
JUL04 0030, p28, $49.95

No, not the revival published by Valiant Comics back in the day. This is the real deal, the original Russ Manning stories of Magnus, Robot Fighter, as he smashes his way through the year 4000 AD to keep the world safe from robots. Manning's art has such a beautiful, almost classical look to it that I can see why Dark Horse is publishing this as a hardcover; this is a book for comic art lovers, without a doubt. It's a little expensive for a casual purchase, but hopefully we'll see a soft cover in 2005. Until then, though, it's nice to know that people will finally have access to Manning's amazing art.

ATOMEKA

A1 PRESENTS: THE BOJEFFRIES TERROR TOMES #1 & 2
JUL04 2652 and JUL04 2653, p225, $4.99 each

Ok, I still am a little confused about what exactly Atomeka's publishing strategy is. For instance, take these two little volumes they've got heading into print for September and October. You'd think that they were reprinting Alan Moore's and Steve Parkhouse's THE BOJEFFRIES SAGA, right? Well, each volume does have a single BOJEFFRIES story in it, but otherwise it's a ton of other reprints as well. Now don't get me wrong, these are stories by Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, Charles Vess, John Bolton, David Lloyd, and more. I think it's great that someone's helping dust off some of their perhaps forgotten work.

But once again, there's a real lack of specifics in the solicitations and advertisements. What exactly is going to be in these books? I'd like to know, and I think I'm not the only one who feels that way. Hopefully before long we'll find out, because these have the potential to be great, but the vacuum of information from Atomeka is getting a little frustrating.

ALTERNATIVE COMICS

A FEW PERFECT HOURS & OTHER STORIES FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA AND CENTRAL EUROPE GN by Josh Neufeld
JUL04 2534, p207, $12.95

I love... no, I adore travel books. Describe a country I've never been to, mentally take me on a journey, and I'm in heaven. That's certainly part of why I've been following Josh Neufeld's career for some time now, as he tells stories of he and his then-girlfriend (now wife) as they journey through parts of the world that I only dreamed of visiting.

Neufeld's art's been compared to Herge's work on TINTIN, and I can certainly see the similarities. More importantly, though, Neufeld's stories have real heart to them, never afraid to make he and Sari look a little silly as they stumble their way through foreign lands. If you've read Neufeld's recent one-shot THE VAGABONDS and wanted to see more, you're in for a real treat.

AIT/PLANETLAR

JAX EPOCH AND THE QUICKEN FORBIDDEN VOL 2: SEPARATION ANXIETY TP by Dave Roman and John Green
JUL04 2530, p206, $14.95

Dave Roman and John Green have been quietly plugging away on their comic QUICKEN FORBIDDEN for years now, with almost no one noticing what a fun little adventure it is. Think of it as if Alice went to Wonderland, was a kleptomaniac, and stole a whole bunch of stuff and took it back home, at which point other nasty things decided to follow her through the door she left open.

This second collection involves Jax being placed on trial in a world where time is out of order, and knights crashing out from under the surface of frozen lakes into our world. I'd say that this is a good book to hook younger readers on, but let's face it, us older readers will get hooked just as easily.

AIRSHIP ENTERTAINMENT

GIRL GENIUS VOL 2 TP by Phil and Kaja Foglio
JUL04 2526, p206, $19.95

This is one of the best books you're not reading. I'll admit that the first collection started off a little slow, and Phil Foglio pencils being inked by Brian Snoddy and published in black and white wasn't necessarily the best fit for GIRL GENIUS, a larger-than-life world where steampunk inventions and mad science reign supreme. But this volume is the turning of the tide for GIRL GENIUS, and like THE WIZARD OF OZ it has our lead character Agatha waking up in a world of gorgeous Technicolor.

All right, Dorothy may not have been held captive on a massive dirigible, had to fight a swarm of giant killer wasps, and dealt with the scientist holding the world in his grasp, so I should warn people who just saw the mention of THE WIZARD OF OZ and are zooming in on GIRL GENIUS that this comic is, in fact, much more exciting, to say nothing of being really inventive and interesting and clever. Oh, and there's also a hardcover edition available for $32.95 which, if it's anything like the first hardcover, should be pretty darn snazzy.

ADV MANGA

APOCALYPSE MEOW MANGA VOL 2 TP by Motofumi Kobayashi
JUL04 2512, p203, $9.99

I owe it to Heidi MacDonald for being so excited about APOCALYPSE MEOW. Originally titled CAT SHIT ONE in Japan (gee, can't imagine why ADV wanted to change the name for publication in English), it's a Vietnam War story using cats and rabbits in place of people. Sound silly? I thought the same, until I got a glimpse of the art and understood that APOCALYPSE MEOW is going to knock everyone's socks off as soon as they see it. If you're one of those people that have avoided everything out of Asia being translated into English, you're simply going to have to make an exception here.

ADHOUSE BOOKS

COLLECTED SEQUENTIAL HC by Paul Hornschemeier
JUL04 2511, p203, $25.00

I've been a convert to Paul Hornschemeier's work on FORLORN FUNNIES (and the collection MOTHER, COME HOME) for some time now. His art is drawn with a beautiful soft line and the colour palette used is just outstanding. There's such a quiet grace to everything I've seen of his that I can't help but be really excited about AdHouse Books collecting his previous series, SEQUENTIAL, into a hardback book. What's in it? I have no idea, but if it's even half as good as his recent output it's going to be worth every single dollar. This is a must-buy book, and the perfect way to round out your September purchases.

Greg McElhatton writes reviews for iComics.com, and has also written for anthologies, magazines, web sites, and technical manuals.

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.