Dark Horse Penguin Picks: May 2024
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Omnibus vol. 6
Thanks for making the choice for this spot easy this month, Dark Horse.
Carl Horn said this volume was coming this year at last Fanime, so it’s good to finally see it in these solicitations. Among the things we have to look forward to in this volume:
- A fujoshi acupuncturist finding herself at the mercy of a politician who’s out to ban certain manga!
- A Chinese zombie movie… with real zombies!
- Finding out about Kereellis’s puppet sister!
- Another 10/10 no notes localization with notes from Mr. Horn!
- Three all-new volumes of “Kurosagi” goodness!
It was mentioned that this volume would be more expensive than the previous ones as it contains all-new material. Given that Dark Horse is currently publishing “Innocent” as a series of three-in-one omnibi at a $30 price point, that seems like a safe bet as to what to expect for this volume as well. There’s only one thing to be concerned about: whether this omnibus will actually ship in July (remember, all collections in Dark Horse solicitations are advance-advance-solicited by two months). I say this because there are a couple of familiar faces in this latest round of solicitations…
Empowered vol. 12 & The Legend of Luther Arkwright: Both are making their third appearance in these solicitations. Which is starting to have me concerned. It’s not that Dark Horse hasn’t had to re-solicit stuff before, but it’s usually a one-time thing depending on the product. Either something has gone awfully wrong in their publishing department or *gulp* the money troubles of Dark Horse’s parent company, the Embracer Group, are finally starting to affect the publisher. Let’s hope it’s the former (or something else entirely) than the latter.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken vol. 7, Census, Murdervale, Skinner, Vampire Hunter D vol. 30 & Beyond Mortal: Other collections listed as being re-solicited for this round of solicitations. Of these, “Eizouken” is the one I’m most disappointed to see is being delayed, but still glad to know it’s coming out. I’ll also admit to being a little curious about the “Regression” team of writer Cullen Bunn and artist Danny Luckert’s reunion for superheroes vs. not-Great Old Ones in “Beyond Mortal.”
The Writer #1: It’s not unusual for a famous person to show up at this publisher to co-write or just “create” a miniseries. What is unusual is when they offer their likeness as well, which is what actor/singer/comedian Josh Gad has done for this series about a comic book writer who runs afoul of Neo-Nazi Occultism. Which sounds more annoying than threatening compared to regular Nazi Occultism. It’s going to lead Gad’s character to, wait for it, become the kind of hero he’s just written about right now. Sounds cute, and it’s got Ariel Olivetti drawing it, so it’ll probably look pretty decent. No idea who Ben and Max Berkowitz, the “Berkowitz Boys” who are co-writing this with Gad, are though.
Resident Alien: The Book of Life #1: The previous volume, “The Book of Love,” left off on a game-changing cliffhanger for alien posing as a small-town doctor Harry Vanderspiegel. I won’t spoil it here (wait for the review of the collected edition), but you can probably guess what it is when you consider this volume and the previous volume’s subtitles. This series has always been a low-key charmer, and I like how writer Peter Hogan and artist Steve Parkhouse have found a way to keep the story going without feeling like they’re retreading old ground after the main story wrapped up in vol. 6. Oh, and Harry cosplays as Jason Voorhees in this volume, because why not!
Anansi Boys #1: You know, it’s really impressive how Dark Horse has managed to build its own Neil Gaiman Library without ever having the man write any of it. Everything that they’ve published of his has been based off of his prose stories and this is no exception. It’s about average Londoner Charlie Nancy whose father has just died, and who happens to have been the spider trickster god of African folklore. Shenanigans, and the discovery of the brother Charlie didn’t know he had, ensue. While you’d think that something would be lost in the translation from the prose to the page without Gaiman doing it himself, the short stories that Dark Horse has published have generally been quite good. I can’t say the same for “Norse Mythology” or “American Gods,” but P. Craig Russell and Scott Hampton were able to adapt the entirety of the latter, so they clearly were doing something right there. Let’s hope that the solid team of writer Marc Bernardin and artist Shawn Martinbrough can do the same here.
Joy Operations 2 #1: Writer Bendis and artist Stephen Byrne’s series about a female supersoldier fighting on behalf of a futuristic city-state gets a follow-up miniseries. The series had a really clever narrative trick in its first issue – the captioned dialogue that we thought was Joy’s thoughts turned out to be another personality that had been beamed into her head – which added a little spark to what turned out to be a bog-standard tale about a villain who needed to be stopped. It wasn’t terrible, but that’s something which has defined a lot of Bendis’ latter-day output. So if I do decide to check this out, it’ll likely be when it comes on sale on the publisher’s digital app because I did not feel like I got my $25 ($18, actually) worth out of the first volume.