The Gosh! Authority 11/01/11

You may notice this dispatch is coming to you a day earlier than usual. That’s because in this Brave New Year, New Comics Day will be every Wednesday as opposed to the usual Thursday from now on. That said, I expect many of you to keep popping in on Thursdays accidentally, because it’s hard enough trying to remember to date everything with an 11 rather than a 10. But do try, otherwise you’ll miss your comics. You could always set up a standing order just in case. Consider it pre-emptive damage control.

The Last Week in Blogs: Andrew gave the FPI Blog his Best of 2010 list, which is well worth a read because he talks about films, TV shows and regular books as well as the many excellent comics we’ve seen over the last twelve months. “It’s been quite the year, with new work from the top creators in the field. We’re absolutely spoiled to get new material from Ware, Clowes, Woodring, Burns, Sturm & Seth, not to mention one of the best stories we’ve seen from Jaime Hernandez since The Death of Speedy.” Todd Klein blogged about lettering Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book, Century 1969. It won’t actually be released until July, so Klein’s sneaky preview panels will have to keep you going until then. As for the Gosh! Blog, we came Runner Up in the Most Wanted Book Blogger Awards. Which is nice.

Comics-wise, there’s a bunch of stuff that was supposed to ship this week but didn’t, thanks to weather-related freighting congestion. They might arrive next week but that’s yet to be confirmed. They may well be out in the States already so avoid Americans if you don’t want spoilers. They are:

Amazing Spider-Man #651
Avengers Citizen Kang TP
Black Panther Man Without Fear #514
BPRD Hell On Earth Gods #1 (Of 3)
Casanova TP Luxuria Vol 1
Daredevil Reborn #1 (Of 4)
Dark Tower Gunslinger Little Sisters Eluria #2 (Of 5)
Darkchylde TP Vol 1 Legacy & Redemption
Deadpool #31
Deathlok TP Demolisher
Halcyon #3
Incredible Hulks #620
Infinite Vacation #1
Savage Dragon #168
Siege Dark Avengers TP
Sixth Gun TP Vol 1
Spawn #200
Spawn Endgame Collection TP
Stan Lee Starborn #2
Star Wars Knight Errant #4
Thor Mighty Avenger #8
Walking Dead Weekly #2
X-Factor TP Vol 10 Second Coming
X-Men Forever 2 TP Vol 1 Back In Action

As for stuff that did arrive, you can expect this handsome lot:

Casanova: Gula #1 (of 4) is the second chunk of long-out-of-print Casanova to be re-released in full colour (originally published by Image, the title moved over to Marvel’s creator-owned Icon imprint). Once this arc’s done, Matt Fraction and the brothers Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá plan to continue with the rest of the seven deadly sins: Avaritia, Acedia, Ira, Invidia and Superbia. “We’ll begin that right after Gula concludes,” said Fraction. “There might be a short break between arcs, but it won’t be long.” Interview with all of them at Newsarama and a preview at Comicbook Resources. Don’t forget we’ve got the Daytripper TP Gosh! Exclusive Bookplate Edition to look forward to in February, and you’re very welcome to pre-order it.

Capacity is a book by Theo Ellsworth, a Portland-based artist whose strange semi-autobiographical self-published comics are collected in this volume. The Village Voice describes it as an “intricately rendered imaginary world, a place in which Maurice Sendak or Dr. Seuss would feel right at home.” There’s a review here, and an interview there. If you head over to his website, which is similarly odd, you’ll get some sort of idea of what you’re getting yourself into.

Ray Fenwick gives you more typographical mania in Mascots HC, his follow-up to 2008’s Hall of Best Knowledge. It’s a series of full colour paintings on found book covers. In the preview he seems to be going on and on about Cthulhu and the pronunciation of “Cthulhu,” but more importantly, he engages in superfluous and plentiful footnotes and thus gets top marks from me. Here’s the aforementioned PDF preview and also one of those excellent Fantagraphics instructional videos on how to correctly flip through a book. You can pretend they’re actually your hands and blow your freakin’ mind.

Pin-up artist Jim Silke gives you a 52 original pieces of artwork in Jungle Girls, a collection of H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs characters and the like. You’ll get jungle goddesses, queens, slaves, tropic tramps (!), dragon ladies, harem damsels, and semi-clad barbarians. There doesn’t seem to be a list of what exact pieces you can expect but if you head over to his gallery you’ll get the idea.

University of Mississippi Press, the people who brought you Daniel Clowes: Conversations and Chris Ware: Drawing is a Way of Thinking, now bring you more essays in The Rise of the American Comics Artist: Creators and Contexts SC. It’s about the change in perception and the rise of comics as an adult thing rather than an adolescent thing. They’ve got bits on all the usual suspects – Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware – plus interviews with Jeff Smith (Bone), Jim Woodring (Frank), and Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics). Loads more information over at the publisher’s website.

Acclaimed illustrator Scott Chantler (Northwest Passage, Two Generals) starts a new all-ages graphic novel series with Three Thieves Volume 1: Tower of Treasure, a good old fashioned fantasy story with a heist. “The whole idea of Three Thieves was to forego the seriousness and tedious world-building that makes a lot of contemporary fantasy so dreary. I consider the series something of a throwback to the days when “fantasy” meant a certain amount of whimsy, and rollicking high adventure. It’s not the kind of fantasy book with maps to pore over and invented politics and history for fans to argue about. It’s about characters, action, jokes, fun, and more action.” More of that interview here and loads of preview images at Chantler’s blog.

On the manga shelf you can find a new edition of the bestselling fan-favourite Death Note. It’s the first two volumes of the series repackaged as one oversized book, along with new colour pages to boot.

New comics include Fallen Angel: Return of the Son #1 (of 4) by Peter David and J.K. Woodward, the first we’ve seen of the series in about a year. It picks up right where they left off in Fallen Angel: Reborn. Interview and preview pages over at iFanboy.

I Am an Avenger #5 is worth picking up this week not only because it’s the grand finale of the series but also because it features a Thor/Young Avengers story by the legendary Alan Davis of Captain Britain, Excalibur and ClanDestine fame.

Now that The Walking Dead is a big TV show they’ve decided to re-release the comics as a weekly series called The Walking Dead Weekly. It starts tomorrow and you can see a preview here, but if you’ve been following it from the get-go it’s nothing you ain’t seen before.

Ultimate Comics Captain America #1 pits the Ultimate Universe Cap against his Vietnam War counterpart and is written by (Andrew’s favourite) Jason Aaron (Scalped) and illustrated by Ron Garney. Preview at Newsarama.

Wonder-Girl is a one-shot by JT Krul, regular writer of Teen Titans. It ties into the story he’s telling in that ongoing series. “We're using the one-shot to highlight what makes Wonder Girl amazing as a hero and compelling as a character, as well as shed more light on Solstice in terms of her background. I am really excited about bringing some officially ‘new’ blood onto the team.” More at CbR and a preview at the DCU Blog.

And finally, Who is Jake Ellis? #1 is the inaugural issue of a five-part miniseries by Nathan Edmondson of Olympus and The Light, with Tonci Zonjic on art duties. It’s about Jon Moore, a highly sought-after espionage expert who’s assisted by an all-knowing entity called Jake Ellis, a man entirely invisible to everyone by Jon himself. Edmondson is interviewed here and there’s a preview with a commentary track by both creators at CbR. Also, Zonjic’s put loads of preview bits and pieces on his blog but the other unrelated art is well worth a look when you get a minute.

That’s about it! It’s a small-ish week but we’re due a big one soon. Probably all the delayed shipments arrive at once and we’ll be crushed beneath them, like in this terrifying vision of my future.

-- Hayley