Image Advance Arrivals: January 2024
Image takes a cue from Dark Horse and stops indicating cover prices for everything solicited this month. How much longer until Marvel and DC follow suit?
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
The Weather Man vol. 3 #1 (of 7)
This has been a long time coming. Vol. 2 of the series ended on a cliffhanger as Nathan Bright, the TV weatherman who was thought to have been a part of the biggest terrorist action in Earth history, was sent undercover within his old outfit. Only for it to be revealed that this may have been the plan of the outfit’s leader all this time. It was a heck of a cliffhanger to leave off on, especially when it wasn’t clear that writer Jody Lehup and artist Nathan Fox would be following up on it anytime soon. Later is better than never, however, and I’m glad that we’re finally getting (the start of) the concluding volume of the series here. Now let’s hope there are no delays in getting all seven issues out so the collected edition can get to us sooner rather than later.
Ghost Machine One-Shot: Geoff Johns and Gary Frank published “Geiger” and “Junkyard Joe” under the Mad Ghost imprint at Image. That’s apparently no more as they’re adopting the name Ghost Machine for what’s going to be a collective of creators telling stories about the Unnamed and the Unknown War. They’ve roped in an impressive array of artists for this, at least: Jason Fabok, Bryan Hitch, and Ivan Reis in addition to Frank. Brad Meltzer and Peter Tomasi are also contributing as writers. There’s also Lamont Magee and Maytal Zchut who I’m not familiar with at all, but can take comfort in the fact that they’re part of this star-studded collective (or that they know where Johns buried the bodies).
Cobra Commander #1 (of 5): The other miniseries that Josha Williammson, with artist Andrea Milana, is writing as part of the “G.I. Joe” side of things in the Energon Universe. Williamson’s involvement means that this is a non-starter for me, but I’ll at least give him credit for a different take on Cobra than we’ve seen before. In that it’s not going to be about the organization at first because it hasn’t been formed. It looks like we’re going to see the man (or individual) that will become Cobra Commander utilizing Energon to form the terrorist organization in order to… TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
Love Everlasting #11: Tom King and Elsa Charretier’s series about a woman stuck living through experiences based on old romance comics starts a new arc, “Just West of Love.” The solicitation text lets us know that we’re finally going to get some answers regarding the cowboy that shows up at the end of each story to kill its protagonist, Joan. This is still listed as being an ongoing series in these solicitations, so it’s entirely possible that this new arc won’t be the title’s final one. I’m happy about this for the creators, but we’ll have to wait until I read vol. 2 to see if I should be happy about this for myself.
Deadly Class Compendium: Collects all 56 issues of the ongoing series plus the full-sized “Free Comic Book Day” issue. Marcus Lopez is a homeless kid on the streets of San Francisco in 1987. Until he’s recruited to be a student at King’s Dominion School for the Deadly Arts – a training ground for teenage assassins. Even if you can’t quite say it’s a better life for him, it’s a different one and it may even help him achieve his life’s goal of killing Ronald Reagan. Writer Rick Remender and artist Wes Craig’s series was very lightly an autobiography of the writer’s experiences growing up – and then more directly towards the end. The series had its ups and downs, but it still managed to be the most entertaining of Remender’s creator-owned works, and Craig’s art was pretty great throughout as well.
In Hell We Fight vol. 1: That’s the literal Hell we’re talking about here as three condemned teens and their annoying tagalong demon friend hijack a demon lord’s delivery truck. Things go badly for everyone from there. Which is good for us as this is coming from the demented mind of writer John Layman who showed that he has a knack for finding clever takes on bizarre setups through sixty whole issues (and change) of “Chew.” Joining him here is Jok (no, not Jock) who has to have some idea of what he’s in for if he signed up to illustrate this series.
Klik, Klik, Boom: Doug Wagner, writer of the “Materials Trilogy” (“Plastic,” “Vinyl,” and “Plush”) as well as “Beware the Eye of Odin” gives us this new miniseries with artist Douglas Dabbs. It’s not about a serial killer this time. Just a mute assassin named Sprout who communicates through polaroid pictures. She was raised by her doomsday-prepper grandfather and when he’s killed, she heads to the big city for the first time to get some revenge. Wagner’s work has been pretty solid so far and the solicitation text does a good job of selling the idea that we’re getting a straight-up “John Wick”-style revenge story rather than something with a comedic bent.