New DC, new Image

The latest pre-orders for DC and Image Comics have gone onto the graphic novels site and the main FPI site. There are some very interesting titles to look forward to: DC are continuing their Showcase range (very similar to Marvel’s Essentials, reprinting classic material in an affordable black and white anthology) with some Silver Age Superman adventures. Bringing us bang up to date on the superhero front, two of the most talked about super-characters from the DC universe in 2005 get the graphic novel treatment with a Power Girl collection (possibly the most cleavage based of all superheroines) and Supergirl: Powers, collecting Jeph Loeb’s hugely popular, sell-out series re-introducing Supergirl to the DCU.

On the mature readers front the first collection of Brian Wood’s DMZ will be coming out. I’ve been checking this out in the monthly comic issues and it is very interesting, dealing with an America so distracted by overseas problems that the government turns a blind eye to home ones – until some Midwest militias rise and we have another civil war. Brian brought us the kick-ass Channel Zero graphic novel, so I am expecting this to get better and better as we follow the reporter in the DMZ that was once Manhattan.

Manhattan is also the setting for the original graphic novel Can’t Get No by Rick (Swamp Thing) Veitch and again focuses on a troubled America, although in quite a different sounding way. Veitch presents us with Chad Roe, a mercenary businessman who goes over the edge when the Twin Towers are destroyed in 9-11. His business is broken by the event and Chad awakes to find he is literally a marked man, covered in a super-indelible ink, bearing the external marks of the terrible bruises inflicted on the nation that dreadful day. This is one of those works which may well be controversial to some and I suspect it will attract the attention of the mainstream media. I’m certainly keen to see how Veitch uses the comics medium to explore this event.

Image are producing a rather handsome hardback collection The Art of Brian Bolland, which I think will appeal greatly to people like – well, like me! Being about ten when 2000 AD came out in the UK I grew up with Brian’s luscious comic art; I still think his Judge Dredd is fantastic and his take on the Joker for the Killing Joke still haunts and fascinates me in equal measure, years and years after I first read the book, a testament to the power of his art.

There are new entries in the Spawn Collection, more Mage (at last, hurrah!) and other nice goodies, but my eyes were drawn right away to the fifth volume of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. I’ve recently sat down and worked through the first four volumes of this; it has been one of our most popular graphic novels with our customers and sold so well that it propelled Image into the top twenty graphic novels bestsellers in the US for last year (nice to see them going toe to toe with the big guns of Marvel and DC) and I thought I should check it out.

Well, I am hooked. There are an awful lot of zombie-themed comics out there just now, but this stands a decaying head and shoulders above them; like George Romero’s movies (my yardstick for zombie quality as a long-time horror fiend) it has horror and gore but also some intelligence behind it. Add that to the fact a series gives the creators time to build the characters and the emotional investment readers build into that in response and you have one of the finest horror series around.