Dark Horse Previews Picks: October 2018

I thought that “Mob Psycho 100” was going to be the only “How the hell did this happen?” manga license from Dark Horse this year.  I was wrong. At this year’s Anime Expo the company announced that they’ll be publishing the “Elfen Lied” manga in a series of four three-in-one omnibi.  It’s a series about a genetically-engineered girl with psychic powers who escapes from the government organization that created her only to fall in with some high school kids who are vacationing in the area.  The anime was infamous among my circle of friends for how the first episode came with a content warning from the group who fansubbed it. That’s because “Elfen Lied” mixes “Akira”-level ultraviolence with cute slice-of-life antics, creating a hybrid series that should be utterly alienating but ultimately wound up being just a mixed bag in my opinion.  It had a good story about how forgiveness is necessary in order to move past trauma, but was bogged down by its “cute” moments and contrivances.

The fact that we’re getting the “Elfen Lied” manga over a decade after the anime’s release does seem a bit baffling to me.  At least Dark Horse appears to be cognizant of the manga’s potentially limited commercial prospects with their release plan for it.  It’s good to hear that they’ve committed to releasing the series in its entirety in their licensing announcement for it. They’re learning, so let’s see if they can apply these lessons to titles like “Eden” and “The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service” that are still on hiatus.

The Umbrella Academy:  Hotel Oblivion #1:  The existence of this new series doesn’t inspire a “FINALLY!” in me so much as a “It’s good to see it back.”  While I very much liked the first two volumes of Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s cracked tale of a group of child superheroes growing up to be very unhappy adults, they were pretty self-contained affairs.  Vol. 3 was teased a while back — like, back when Way was still fronting “My Chemical Romance” — and it’s hard not to think that the impending Netflix series may have had some impetus in getting Way to sit down and write this new volume.  Anyhow, the plot for this issue has the team scattered all over the globe, and while that doesn’t sound too exciting in and of itself the first two volumes have led me to expect that it’s just a hanger upon which the weirdness of the series will be hung.

The Whispering Dark #1:  New miniseries (I think) about an army pilot who confronts a supernatural menace.  According to the solicitation text you can expect this to be a cross between Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” and Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”  It’s written by Christofer Emgard who had a hand in writing the videogames “Battlefront 1” and “Star Wars Battlefront II” and artist Tomas Aira, who illustrated the bulk of Garth Ennis’ “War Stories” series over at Avatar.  What I’m taking away from all this is that Aira’s presence means “War Stories” is actually cancelled instead of being on a hiatus.

Dragon Age:  Deception #1:  A new miniseries from the creative team of the previous one, writers Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir, and artist Fernando Furukawa.  This one’s about a former actress who now makes her living as a con woman and has come to the Tevinter Imperium with her sights set on the heir to a wealthy house.  Unfortunately, when she finally closes in on him, she find out that he’s not who he says he is and that trying to con him may have been the biggest mistake of her life.  We’ve yet to see Tevinter in the games, but it’s unique in the fact that it’s the one place in the “Dragon Age” world where mages aren’t oppressed. In Tevinter, they do the oppressing.  I haven’t checked out the creative team’s previous miniseries, “Knight Errant,” but I’ll have to put it on my to do list. If only to see if they can one-up the first miniseries that was phoned in by the usually reliable Greg Rucka.

Conan Reader:  Collecting several more volumes of “Conan” comics before the license reverts to Marvel — right down to the wire too, with this volume solicited to arrive in December.  This collects the surprisingly good collection of fill-in stories “The Blood-Stained Crown and Other Stories” the collection of one-offs and other errata “The Daughters of Midora and Other Stories,” and the miniseries “Book of Thoth,” “The Jewels of Gwahlur,” “The Songs of the Dead,” and “The People of the Black Circle.”  Though this collection will arrive at the end of the year you can also head over to ComiXology right now and pick up all these volumes and issues digitally for dirt cheap if you were so inclined.