On The Shelves: 11/22/06

Reading is fundamental. Don’t waste your time reading bad comics out of habit!

My weekly sporadic, ill-informed look at select comic books being released Wednesday, 11/22/06 follows. The full shipping is list available at ComicList.

[NOTE: Not all of these titles will actually arrive in all stores. If your LCBS offers a pre-ordering service, be sure to take advantage of it. If not, find another one; or try Khepri.com or MidtownComics.com]

Haven’t had a chance to read my copy yet, but I did check out Debbie Huey’s adorable effort and flipped through the rest and it looks like another winning Project from AdHouse.

ARCANA STUDIO
100 Girls Vol 2 TPB (resolicited), $9.95

Volume 2?!?! Either I’m really out of the loop or this is a typo and it’s actually the excellent volume one. Arcana’s web site makes no mention of it at all.

DARK HORSE COMICS
Conan #34, $2.99
Perhapanauts Second Chances #2 (Of 4), $2.99
Star Wars Legacy #1 (New Ptg), $2.99

The first volume of Perhapanauts was a bit of a let-down, so I’ll wait for the trade on this second effort before checking it out.

DC COMICS
Blue Beetle #9, $2.99
Jack Of Fables #5, $2.99
Uncle Sam And The Freedom Fighters #5 (Of 8), $2.99

After reading this, I was seriously tempted to drop everything DC publishes, but that’s the baby with the bathwater approach and I’d have to drop comics completely since we all know DC isn’t the only place in the industry this kind of stuff happens. I have dropped almost all of their high-profile titles, though, as the direction the overall DCU has moved over the past couple of years doesn’t interest me in the least. Blue Beetle, though, has been a most pleasant surprise, existing far enough on the periphery that it feels almost completely unconnected to everything else, much the same way the grossly underrated Son of Vulcan mini-series was a while back.

HOT MEXICAN LOVE COMICS
Hot Mexican Love Comics 2006, $5.00

Um…what!?!? Oh, ok, that sounds interesting, actually. Suspect I might have to go to Hanley’s to get this one.

IMAGE COMICS
Casanova #6, $1.99

Casanova #5 was a great read, and Fraction’s text pieces at the end of each issue will make a great standalone book some day. Be interesting to see if he and Ba surpass Ellis and Templesmith’s Slimline output by the middle of next year. What was the last issue of Fell, anyway?

MARVEL COMICS
All New Off Handbook Marvel Universe A To Z #11, $3.99
Daredevil #91, $2.99
Heroes For Hire #4, $2.99
X-Factor #13, $2.99

With Palmiotti and Gray signing an exclusive with DC, Zeb Wells will be taking over Heroes for Hire and I suspect I’ll be dropping it at that point. No offense to Wells, whose work I’ve never read, but I’m barely hanging on through P&G’s strained Civil War tie-in, and as much as I like the characters, I can no longer justify keeping titles on my pull list “just because”.

VIPER COMICS
Dead At 17 Vol 2 #2, $3.25

I wasn’t a big fan of this series in the past, but the first issue of this latest volume, now an ongoing series, piqued my interest.

W.W. NORTON
Will Eisners Dropsie Avenue SC, $16.95

The first Eisner graphic novel I ever read and it remains one of my overall favorites.

About Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez works in publishing by day, world domination by night. Over the years he’s lived in Staten Island and South Beach Miami; served in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, US Army, and Dennis Kucinich’s ‘04 Presidential Campaign; won poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and self-published another; prefers Pumpkin and India Pale Ales, Buffalo Trace and Four Roses Bourbons, and Dona Paula Shiraz Malbec. He’s a devout Mets fan from the Bronx now living in New Jersey, and has a beautiful wife and two amazing kids.

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