Image Previews Picks: October 2013

Last year, issue #100 of “The Walking Dead” was the best selling single issue thanks to its major milestone and the twelve or so covers that accompanied it. It was gratifying to see that it beat out Marvel’s much-hyped “Uncanny Avengers” with its over twenty covers and assorted retailer incentives. Since then, there have been more variants on “The Walking Dead” and they’ve helped spike sales for the issues that feature them — vaulting the title into Diamond’s list of the top ten comics sold each month in most cases. Now they’re back with another stunt for issue #115 to mark the title’s tenth anniversary: ten interlinking covers to showcase the title’s history, plus regular and blank covers. I’ll admit that the idea of “ten interlinking covers to showcase the title’s history” sounds like a really cool thing, though it’d be something I’d rather have as a poster as opposed to buying each issue like Image wants me to. However, all of this cover madness on their best-selling title has me worried that these stunts are going to continue and soon we’ll see variants on nearly every issue like we get with Marvel and DC’s top titles each month. Still, I’d totally go for a poster made out of all of those covers. The idea is just that compelling.

Pretty Deadly #1: A western from writer Kelly Sue DeConnick and artist Emma Rios. I want to be intrigued by this new title about “death’s daughter,” but the solicitation text does it no favors. That’s because it’s billed as a cross between “the magical realism of ‘Sandman’” and the “western brutality of ‘Preacher.’” Much as I like those two titles, they both had VERY different styles and putting them together sounds about as appealing as mixing peanut butter and mayonnaise. At this point, we can only hope that the final product will prove me wrong.

Velvet #1: New from Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting. It’s a spy series about a former field agent, who has spent the last twenty years working behind a desk, getting back into the field after the Agency’s best agent is killed in action. This sounds like both creators are playing to their strengths and the fact that they’re working with characters and a setting that they’ve created means that the expectations that (in my opinion) dogged their work at Marvel won’t be an issue here. Only… between this and “Fatale,” it doesn’t look like Brubaker will be getting back to “Incognito,” let alone “Criminal” (which is less of an issue because its arcs are self-contained),in the near future.

The Walking Dead Tyrese Special: The art is credited to original series artist Tony Moore which has to be a mistake. Tyrese didn’t show up until issue #7, Charlie Adlard’s first issue, and the cover is also by Adlard as well. Given the volatile nature of Kirkman and Moore’s relationship these days, I can only imagine that an error in this solicitation is going to make things even more awkward between them. Expect an announcement correcting this oversight in the next week or so.

Three #1: It’s the inverse of “300” where the Spartans are the bad guys chasing after three slaves who survived a massacre of their village. That it comes from Kieron Gillen with art from Ryan Kelley and Jordi Bellaire means that the collected edition is going to be a must-read when it comes out.

God Hates Astronauts vol. 1: The title alone gets my attention, except that it doesn’t seem to describe this collection at all. Though it mentions superheroes hired by NASA to stop farmers from launching themselves into space, further inspection indicates that it’s really about their messy and sordid private lives which prevent them from doing this. Plus lots of references to “Robocop” and “Die Hard” too. It has an endorsement from Jonathan Hickman and the description itself is entertainingly bizarre enough to make me interested. I’m in.

Lazarus vol. 1 & Mara: Collections of the first volume of the new series from Greg Rucka and Michael Lark and the miniseries from Brian Wood and Ming Doyle. Everything I’ve heard about these titles indicates that they’re evidence of their creators getting behind the Image resurgence to launch quality work that would’ve fallen through the cracks elsewhere. I can’t think of a good reason not to pick either of these up.