Image Previews Picks: August 2013

Do I have anything to say about Image right now?  Not a damn thing at the moment.  Of course, I am coming down from the high of attending Fanime in San Jose since Thursday.  Even though I went with John for an extra day this year, the con didn’t seem to last any longer because of it.  We both had a great time in spite of the godawful mess (and that’s putting it lightly) that was registration and issues with certain panels and movies being cancelled.  There were, however, lots of great panels this year and I now have a new con staple with their comedy panels thanks to John’s recommendation.  Good deals were had at the swap meet, I finally saw the live-action “Ruroni Kenshin” movie (which was quite good thanks to the fact that the people who made it actually put some thought into how to make the stories they adapted work as a two-hour story), and some anime music videos as well.  Bizarrely, the four late-night hentai AMVs I saw were actually better than most of the ones in the formal competition during the day.  It’s not how things should work, but that’s how they did here.

Oh, John and I also recorded a podcast at the con as well.  Given that we did it while at an anime/manga/Japanese culture convention, you’ll see that the content will be appropriate in that regard when it goes up on Wednesday.

The Sidekick #1: Another new title from J. Michael Straczynski and artist Tom Mandrake following the former’s “Ten Grand.”  After the superhero known as The Cowl is assassinated, his sidekick Flyboy slowly starts to come unhinged as his station in life disintegrates.  This sounds like it could be perversely entertaining if Straczynski can get the tone of the comic right.  Too dark and it’ll be a one-note journey into miserablism.  Too light and the audience will be bored to tears.  Done just right, the reader will be drawn in to Flyboy’s descent, captivated by every new misery that awaits him.  I could be expecting too much from this title based on the solicitation text, but it gets credit for capturing my attention.

Chew vol. 7:  Bad Apples: We’re told that Tony Chu has woken up from the coma he was put into back in vol. 5 just in time to face off against a cult of egg-worshipping terrorists who have declared war on the chicken-eaters of the world.  That sounds great and all, but I’m sure the real drama is going to come when Tony finds out what happened to his sister Toni in the previous volume.  That… was a really nasty surprise from writer John Layman, and I’m still not sure whether or not it was a good thing for the series.  We’ll see here.  Hopefully we’ll also see Tony become less of a shit magnet here because that’s starting to get old.

East of West vol. 1:  The Promise: While all I need to know about this title is that it’s written by Jonathan Hickman, I don’t know much more than that.  Yes, it’s about the four horsemen of the apocalypse descending on Earth, with the focus possibly being on Death, but I know nothing else.  Which is how I like it.  Hell, I don’t even know what genre it’s supposed to be in.  You’d think that such religious subject matter would lead it towards adventure or even horror, but this is coming from a writer who wrote a story about Catholics inventing a time machine so sci-fi can’t be ruled out.  I wish I could go into every comic I want to read as blind as I’ll be with this one.

The Legend of Luther Strode vol. 2: I liked the first one, so I’ll be picking this up too.  …No, there isn’t any more to say than that.

Morning Glories vol. 5:  Tests: Assuming all the issues collected here ship on time, it looks like we’ll be getting this volume three months after the last one arrived.  That’s a good thing in my opinion.  Interestingly, even though this is billed as the start of “season two,” the solicitation text indicates that we’ll be picking up right where things left off with the main cast scattered and lots of things happening all around the campus.  It doesn’t exactly sound very “new reader friendly,” but the story Nick Spencer is telling is outright hostile to anyone who doesn’t start from the beginning.  If the series gets some extra readers for the single issues because of this, then good for them.

Invincible #106: The cover asks “Who’s stronger?” while picturing Mark arm-wrestling with his dad while Eve and… wait, that’s his mom!  Huh, so I guess my prediction that she was going to die in issue #100 was off the mark.  If that’s the case, then who did die in that issue?  Or did anyone?  I’m looking forward to the next volume even more now…