As we come to celebrate Thanksgiving this week, it’s also the week we look at and give thanks for all the new comics coming out from our favorite publishers this coming February. That’s right, it’s another installment of Soliciting Multiversity! Due to a scheduling error on my part, Matt kicked us off yesterday with a look at another great month from Image Comics. They’ve done a great job over there, diversifying their content, bringing in a lot of new and old talent, mixing them together, throwing new books at the market and seeing what sticks. Dark Horse did that last month, with six new titles, but they are playing a little more conservatively this month. There’s only one new Star Wars miniseries to announce, and of course, more installments of their best books from most of their best talent, supplemented by beautiful new hardcover and trade collections of some of our favorites. Let’s take a look at the highlights:
Baltimore’s Hunt Continues In A Double-Feature
The second of three “Baltimore” one-shots to round out the trade containing “Dr. Leskovar’s Remedy,” “Baltimore: the Widow and the Tank” arrives this month as a double feature, giving us two glimpses in to a post-WWI world overrun with good, old-fashioned vampires, ghouls, and all manner of evils. “Baltimore” has quickly become my favorite Mignolaverse title, and I’m looking forward to seeing who he’s up against next in his quest to hunt down the vampire who murdered his family. As you can see from the cover, Ben Stenbeck is an extremely talented artist, and with Dave Stewart on colors, Christopher Golden scripting, and Mike Mignola doing whatever shadowy master of horror things he does in the background, plotting and scheming and what-not, you know it’s going to be good. Make sure you get it, we won’t be getting any more Baltimore until June!
Neil Gaiman Comes To DHP!
Not content with having merely most of the best talent in creator-owned comics in the award-winning re-launches’ credits, “Dark Horse Presents” has snagged world-renowned author and “Sandman” creator Neil Gaiman, paired him with “DHP” mainstay and “Concrete” creator Paul Chadwick for what seems to be a short called “The Day the Saucers Came.” As if that isn’t enough to get your attention, they are also launching three new series by Simon Roy (“Prophet”), Shannon Wheeler (“Too Much Coffee Man”) and up-and-coming Italian artist Denis Medri. We’ll get new installments of “Alabaster,” “The Victories,” and more! To top it all off, Greg Ruth provides us with another hauntingly beautiful cover featuring “Alabaster” heroine Dancy Flammarion in a desperate struggle with a mermaid. With this level of talent involved, “DHP” won’t be passing on the title of “Best Anthology” for a long time.
Love And Creeps
Hiding in the shadows of “DHP”‘s fame is Dark Horse’s main horror anthology, looking to live up to its name with the Valentine’s-Day-themed “Creepy #11.” However, love and creeps don’t mix and things go horribly wrong, as we’ll find out in stories by a list of contributors whose talent rivals even “DHP:” Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime S. Rich and Joelle Jones, J. Torres and Amy Reeder, and Dan Braun and Peter Bagge, with Chrissie Zulo providing the…lovely cover.
Brian Wood Week Is About To Get Even Better
Speaking of covers, the master himself, Alex Ross, has been blowing my mind with these covers for Brian Wood’s new run on “Star Wars.” I haven’t been this excited about Star Wars since I first discovered the Expanded Universe! If anyone can get me reading a Star Wars story again, it’s these two. We’ll just have to hope they get a good, long run out of it before Disney moves the license over to their own in-house publisher…
Determined not to let that possibility slow them down, Dark Horse is also coming out with a new “Dark Times” miniseries, called “Fire Carrier:”
It’s the story of Jedi Master K’Kruhk and his attempt to save the Jedi Order by escaping from Vader and the Empire with a handful of young padawan. It sounds like it could be interesting, but I doubt it’s going to pull the casual fan in to the galaxy of “Star Wars” like Brian Wood is sure to.
Continued belowA Swashbuckling Story Of Swords And Spirits Spins Out Of DHP
The closest thing we get to a new original series this week is “Amala’s Blade” #0, a collection of the first three installments of the new series created by Steve Horton and Michael Dalynas. It’s a fun adventure tale of ghosts, pirates, revenge and a young female assassin trying to run away from her intended path. It’s described by Horton as “the steam punk-with-swords epic that I’ve been dying to tell,” and I don’t think I can say it better than that. This is something you should check out.
Artificial Slaves, Corporations And Xenomorphs, Oh My!
In the universe of “Aliens,” the Weyland-Yutani Corporation has built a facility on a remote, frozen world where they can “grow” artificial persons in seclusion to serve humanity’s needs–as a man-made slave class designed to serve humanity’s needs and defend them from the aliens. Jean DuPaul is the facility’s Socialization Specialist, responsible for teaching the synthetics the social skills they’ll need to perform their duties. After watching one of her students die in an impossible one-on-one duel with a xenomorph just for a demonstration, she begins to question which species is worse: the xenomorphs, or the humans themselves.
I loved this story from John Layman and Sam Keith, published in “Dark Horse Presents” as a six-part novella. If you missed it, Dark Horse is now publishing a hardcover collection of “Aliens: Inhuman Condition.” I highly recommend picking it up. At 56 pages for $10.99, it may seem a little steep, but it’s being published in a deluxe 7″ by 10″ format, and with this creative team behind it, you don’t want to miss this one!
Conan Gets A New Artist
By now, you all know that Brian Wood is slaying it on “Conan the Barbarian,” with a rotating series of highly talented artists. This month, the sword is passed on to Mirko Colak, an up-and-coming artist you may not have heard of. Aside from a couple fill-ins each on “Punisher” and “Secret Warriors,” his major work so far has been the miniseries “The Red Skull: Incarnate,” which is basically a pre-origin story of Captain America’s arch-nemesis, and one that I’ve praised before. Between reading that and seeing the preview pictures he’s shown on his blog, I can already tell he’s more than worthy to stand beside the other Conan artists.
The First Mind MGMT Hardcover!
Matt Kindt’s “Mind MGMT” is is a book that we here at Multiversity Comics can’t stop raving about. If you’ve missed it, now is the perfect time to start catching up. You can get the first six issues in hardcover format for the price of five floppies! While you won’t get all of the little extras Kindt has slipped in to the monthlies, you will get one of the most creative and unique stories to come out this year, full of espionage, mind control, violence, conspiracy, and mind-melting mystery. A definite buy!
Dark Horse Manga
As always, I’m not a big manga guy, so I provide to you a list of new manga without commentary, other than that the OGN by J. P. Kalonji pictured above just might find itself in my collection; the solicit looks very interesting!
- Bride of the Water God Vol. 13 TP
- Gantz Vol. 27 TP
- Oh My Goddess! Vol. 44 TP
- Ningen’s Nightmares TP
That’s Not All, Folks!
Oh well, here I am, out of space and out of time. Of course, that’s not all from Dark Horse this month. In addition to the “Inhuman Condition” and “Mind MGMT” hardcovers, there’s a hardcover collection of John Arcudi’s “The Creep” with a great cover by Tonci Zonjic, the near-omnibus size “Criminal Macabre: The Cal MacDonald Casebook Vol. 1” and “Fear Agent Library Edition Vol. 2.” They’ve given us three trades: “Angel & Faith Vol. 3,” “The Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 13,” “Star Wars: Knight Errant Vol. 3: Escape.”
And of course, all of our favorite floppies: “Hellboy in Hell,” “Ghost,” “Colder,” “The Massive,” “Mind MGMT,” “Number 13,” “The Black Beetle,” two “B.P.R.D.’s,” three issues in the Buffyverse, the “Criminal Macabre”/”30 Days of Night” crossover, “R.I.P.D.,” two more “Star Wars” comics, “To Hell You Ride,” the final issue of Guillermo del Toro’s “The Strain,” and more! Be sure to check out the full solicits to make sure you don’t miss a thing.
Coming up next: DC!
