Dark Horse Previews Picks: October 2022
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Jenny Zero vol. 2: Homeland Insecurities
The first “Jenny Zero” miniseries was a pleasant surprise based on what it was originally solicited as. We were sold the story of the screw-up daughter of the world’s greatest kaiju-fighting hero getting another chance to follow in her father’s footsteps. What we got was something substantially different after we found out exactly how she was going to fill those footsteps. Co-writers Dave Dwonch and Brockton McKinney delivered a refreshingly irreverent protagonist who had enough of people judging her and was now going to do things her own way. Paired with Magenta King’s stylishly loose art, we got a story that was filled with heart, action, and humor that was begging to be followed up on (because it also ended with a cliffhanger that only set up a bigger threat to be stopped).
What does vol. 2 have in store? Jenny, forced to work again with the Action Science Police, is now being railroaded into following in her father’s footsteps. This time it involves fighting reanimated burger mascots, death cult hit squads, and a REALLY BIG threat from her past. Sounds like a bad time for Jenny, but a good time for everyone who enjoyed the previous volume.
Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures – Quest of the Jedi: Just to remind everyone, Dark Horse got the license to produce All-Ages “Star Wars” comics from IDW a year ago. What makes this comic an All-Ages one compared to the “High Republic” ones Marvel has been producing for a while? I couldn’t tell you that. What I can tell you is that this one-shot is about a pair of Jedi who come to the planet Angcord looking for Force artifacts and wind up finding one called the Echo Stone. I’m not familiar with the writer of this story, Claudia Gray, but the artist is someone I like a great deal: Fico Ossio of “No One Left to Fight” fame. He’s also credited with the cover of this issue which is extremely subdued compared to his regular style but also carries a “Not Final Art” tag to it. Let’s hope that this story has an art style that’s more in line with Ossio’s best-known work because I think that would serve it a whole lot better than what’s on the cover solicited here.
Night of the Ghoul #1 (of 3): Dark Horse’s publishing deal with ComiXology continues to pay dividends with this latest miniseries from writer Scott Snyder and artist Francesco Francavilla. This is about an old film called “Night of the Ghoul” that has faded into horror film apocrypha at the start of the story. Originally set to come out in 1936, the film’s cast and crew were immolated by a freak fire at the wrap party with the film itself thought to have been destroyed along with them. Now, a horror film obsessive by the name of Forest Inman thinks he has found the last surviving canister of film relating to “Night of the Ghoul.” The problem for him is that the title character may not have been fiction and has been out to kill anyone associated with the movie. It’s a decent-sounding premise, but also one that sounds like it’ll live-or-die based on how interesting Snyder and Francavilla make the encounters between Inman and the Ghoul play out. I’m at least optimistic that they can succeed and deliver a story that’s entertaining in a style-over-substance kind of way.
Hellboy in Love #1 (of 5): The title character is assigned to patrol a train route where goblins have been stealing from passengers and meets up with an archaeologist who has had some valuable artifacts go missing. They team up to track them down and… well, you can guess what happens next. I mean, it’s in the title of the miniseries. Given that we’ve never heard of this researcher before, or heard any talk of Hellboy’s great lost love up to this point, I’m kind of skeptical as to how meaningful co-writers Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden are going to make this romance over the course of its five issues. Unless it’s not a romance between the two characters and the actual “In Love” bit is going to be about Hellboy’s love of punching monsters in the face. Now that’s a romance story I could get behind. Matt Smith (the artist not the actor) provides the art.
Leonide the Vampire: Miracle at the Crow’s Head: This one-shot comes to us from writer Mike Mignola and artist Rachele Aragno, and it’s not part of the writer’s other fictional universes. Rather, this comic came about after Mignola saw Aragno’s art and reached out to her about doing a comic based on one of her characters. Which is how we’re getting this one-shot about a small coastal village that has a shipwreck bring a coffin into their lives one day. Their coffin contains a small vampire girl and while her presence initially brightens their lives, things take a turn not long after. I’m willing to bite into whatever Mignola has to offer and Aragno’s cover has a nice creepy/cute vibe to it. The solicitation text also lets us know that there are more stories planned involving the title character, so let’s hope that this one makes a good enough impression for those words to feel like a promise as opposed to a threat.
Criminal Macabre/Count Crowley Halloween One-Shot: From the Pit Whence They Came: Monster hunters Jerri Bartman and Cal MacDonald team up to stop a rampaging monster from beneath the Earth, and… yeah, that’s it. Your interest in this team-up story is likely going to hinge on how invested you are in the characters teaming up here or the creators behind them. Regarding that latter bit, this is being written by Jerri and Cal’s respective creators, David Dastmalchian and Steve Niles, with art from Jerri’s other co-creator Lukas Ketner. As for where I land on the interest scale: Not so much these days with respect to Cal, but Jerri’s adventures are still on my “To buy, at some point” list.
Powers vol. 2: Collecting issues #12-24 and Annual #1. I see how Dark Horse is rolling out these collections and I’m starting to get a little worried. Mainly because I picked up their reprint of “The Best Ever” in the hope that they’d also reprint the volume that came before it “All-New Powers” in softcover to complete my collection. Now I’m starting to think that they’re not going to do it and that the only way I’ll get that missing volume on my shelf is by re-buying it along with “The Best Ever” when Dark Horse finally gets around to reprinting them. Which is doubly frustrating because, despite its title, “The Best Ever” was not a good enough story for me to want to buy twice.
Art of Skull & Bones HC: Solicited for December… at which point we can only hope that the game will have actually shipped and not been delayed into next year, or just outright canceled. Yes, I know it’s a cheap shot, but “Skull & Bones’” development history has been so fraught with turmoil that I’m still a little shocked that it’s actually set to come out later this year.
Mob Psycho 100 vol. 10: So now we have not one, but two volumes of this series advance-solicited. Good to know that its future isn’t in any immediate danger. As for Mob’s immediate future: He runs his first marathon in this volume! If you’re thinking that things aren’t going to go well for him based on his ongoing efforts at maintaining physical fitness, well… you may be right. At least Mob has something horrible waiting for him when he gets home to distract him from that. All-out war with the organization of psychics known as Claw may be a bit overkill in that regard, but you take what you can get. Right?
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project Omnibus vol. 6: This is billed as Dark Horse’s most popular “Evangelion” comic and, according to the publication dates on Amazon, it’ll have arrived FIVE YEARS after the publication of vol. 5 when it comes out in January. I’d say that I feel bad for anyone who has been reading this series in this format, but… there are better things you could be doing with your life. Whatever charm this series had at the start had been ground out by repetition and formulaic gags by its end. Trust me when I say that there is nothing in this final volume that hasn’t been done better earlier in the series. Normally I’d commend Dark Horse for finishing up the publication of the series in this format, but surely the money they spent on this could’ve been better served elsewhere in their manga publishing efforts.