The Gosh! Authority 28/04/10

The volcano has not beaten us. Not only do we have last week’s comics safe and sound and on the shelves, we’ve also got this week’s comics here on time making for a great big bumper edition of How Late?! So unless something else strange and catastrophic happens, everything should be relatively back to normal from here on.

There were quite a few things worth waiting for in those waylaid boxes like Dan Clowes’ new graphic novel Wilson for starters. I’ve not read it yet but everything I’ve heard says it’s most definitely a good’un which is just as well because we’ve got the bloke responsible for it signing here next month. Over at the signing post you can see some preview panels, reviews, etc.

Dan Nadel follows up his groundbreaking Art Out of Time with Art In Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures 1940 – 1980 HC. The Comics Journal compares the two in typical Comic Journal detail so head that way and I’ll spare you the hurriedly abridged version.

Then there’s Jeffrey Brown’s latest Undeleted Scenes which is a huge compendium of his shorter works. You will have seen most of it before (there are bits from Minisulk, Every Girl is the End of the World for Me, Feeble Attempts, various anthologies, etc) but there are also dozens of pages of brand new stuff so it’s kind of a best-of and it kind of isn’t. Brown talks about the book and the nature of autobiography in this interview here. Preview pages there too.

In comics we’ve got Captain America: Who Won’t Wield the Shield (preview) a special comedic one-shot by Matt Fraction, Brian Miguel Bendis, Jason Aaron, Stuart Moore, and Brendan McCarthy that actually made a Comic Book Resources reviewer laugh. “It’s been a while, good sir, but I’m happy to say that Who Won’t Wield the Shield is an irreverent and gloriously inane book that is actually funny,” they said. IGN were equally impressed.

Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows’ Crossed gets collected in trade paperback this week as the gruesome reigns are handed over to David Lapham (Stray Bullets) for a brand new series. Crossed: Family Values is a six-parter illustrated by Javier Barreno which Comics Bulletin reckons has everything the original had and a considerable lot more. Here’s their review and here’s a preview too.

The latest character to join DC’s First Wave pulp universe is The Spirit and you can catch the first glimpse of it this week in The Spirit #1. As with previous Spirit comics the joy of the book lies in the art so it’s little wonder they got Bill Siekiewicz on board along with Moritart. Written by Mark Schultz and Denny O’Neil, this review reckons the series has more to do with Frank Miller’s cinematic Spirit than Will Eisner’s original blue-suited character. CbR have a review of it too.

Fan-favourite Warren Ellis series DV8 is back with an eight-parter written by the Eisner-nominated Brian Wood (DMZ) and illustrated by up-and-comer Rebekah Isaacs (Drafted, Ms Marvel). “My DV8 is a lot like my Demo and like Local and probably a little like Supermarket - hitting themes of identity and friendships, family and loss. It's a very character-driven book, eight characters each getting the spotlight in this eight-issue series. On top of that, I bring a lot of the stuff I've been researching for Northlanders into the mix, the clash of old vs. new and history and paganism and myth,” says Wood in an interview with CbR. Followers of the original Warren Ellis series will no doubt want to see what Woods does with the morally bankrupt teens; Geeks of Doom already have.

Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic #3 has landed and if I attempted to sum up what’s in the thing myself you’d all be missing out on this chunk of amusing text:

While the popular primates that we promised you last issue have receded back into the mist, we’ve tried hard to alleviate your sense of cheated rage and disappointment by enlisting laugh-along Luddites-for-Literature supremo Robin Ince to smooth the gentle gradient of your furrowed brow. We also tracked down Josie Long through credit-card transactions in her brave but ultimately doomed Shawshank Redemption bid for freedom, so she’s back with us and doing what she likes best, if that’s being handcuffed to a radiator.
As for the thick wedge of extra pages that you’re paying through the nose for in this bumper issue, they contain a rare compendium of delights. We’ve got confessions of calamitous careers in the constabulary, step-by-step instructions for do-it-yourself diabolism and the rigorous recriminatory ruminations of a rogue town planner. We’ve got divine decadence and sultry San Francisco nights along with the exploits of troubled everyman Johnny Viable, some glamorous graffiti, and a tantalising T-shirt transfer from the crayon box of Dodgem Logic’s vendor of voluptuousness Melinda Gebbie.

You can see the Gebbie t-shirt transfer over at Bleeding Cool. There’s also a weird wraparound fairground cover by the Bearded One himself. It’s on the Gosh! counter right now. You can’t miss it.

Only a couple of bits to go and then you’re dismissed. The latest Lucky Luke has arrived. X-Factor #204 (a Second Coming Revelations tie-in) and X-Men Legacy #235 (Second Coming: Chapter Four) also arrived in the batch of delayed comics. We’ve still got copies but Marvel has sold out of them completely and is doing a second printing. Probably best to grab them now if you fancy it – we won’t be able to get any more of the first print.

And finally, this week’s a Previews week but there was a cock-up at the warehouse which means that we didn’t receive any Marvel Previews. So what we’re gonna do is sell the regular Previews minus the cost of the Marvel Previews. We should have the Marvel one next week so you can pick up the missing bit then.

And that’s your lot. Volcano or no volcano, they’ll be on the shelf tomorrow.

-- Hayley