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Saturday, January 01, 2011

11 Highly Anticipated 2011 Comics

A bunch of books that hopefully will be out within the next year, some new some reprint.




SUGAR AND SPIKE ARCHIVES VOL. 1
You'll be hearing a lot more about this from me in the next few weeks. This is a collection of the first ten issues of the classic Sheldon Mayer series from 1956-1957.  It's one of my favourite comics of all-time, and I've been waiting about 20 years for them to finally do a book like this. [Sugar & Spike Awareness Month launches later today]

FRACTURE OF THE UNIVERSAL BOY
A new book from Michael Zulli, writing and drawing. I'm still not sure what it's actually going to be about, but I know the artwork will be grotesque, horrific and beautiful.

POGO: THE COMPLETE DAILY & SUNDAY COMIC STRIPS VOL. 1
Hope springs eternal... This has been promised for a long while.  There are a lot of great comic strip reprint projects going on (2011 should see continuing reprints of Peanuts, King Aroo, Gasoline Alley, Popeye, Little Orphan Annie, Captain Easy, Secret Agent Corrigan, Krazy Kat, On Stage, Prince Valiant and others, and first volumes of Buz Sawyer, Mickey Mouse, Brenda Starr and more), but for whatever reason Walt Kelly's classic work remains the biggest gap in that library.

EMPIRE STATE: A LOVE STORY (OR NOT)
A new book by Jason Shiga.  I've loved both BOOKHUNTER and MEANWHILE from Shiga, so that puts his next book right up there on my list.This looks to be Shiga's take on the romantic comedy formula, although with his track record I'd expect some twists.

THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS VOL. 1
A collection from DC, following up on their CREEPER collection of 2010, this will reprint his work on SHADE and STALKER from the 1970s, as well as his short story work for various DC anthologies from the 1960s to the 1980s. Some great stuff in there.

TALES OF THE UNCANNY
Steve Bissette's revival of his share of the 1963 characters.  I enjoyed the preview published last year, and it'll be welcome to see some major Bissette comics again, after a decade of mostly just a few short bits and non-comics illustration.

BOOK OF HUMAN INSECTS (Ningen Konchuki (人間昆虫記))
The next single-volume work from Osamu Tezuka to be published by Vertical, this relatively short book (under 400 pages, for Tezuka that's like a pamphlet) from the early 1970s sounds very strange. Which is just the flavour I love my Tezuka.  Here's its page on the official Tezuka site, under the title HUMAN METAMORPHOSIS

A TREASURY OF XXᵗʰ CENTURY MURDER: THE LIVES OF SACCO & VANZETTI
The latest of Rick Geary's long running series of true crime books, the 13th overall (9 Victorian and 4 20th century), I'm really looking forward to this one as it's an especially fascinating case. I love the Woody Guthrie album, if you're curious what side of the issue my sympathies lie.


You souls of Boston, bow your heads
Our two most noble sons are dead;
Sacco and Vanzetti both have died,
And drifted out with the Boston tide.

PS MAGAZINE: THE BEST OF THE PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE MONTHLY
Will Eisner's work for the army from 1951 to 1971, using comics to teach maintenance procedures, is often fascinating and amusing.  While scans of the issues are readily available online, a well selected and produced collection of the best of that work will certainly be worth having.  And the contribution by Eddie Campbell, based on some of the last postings on his now-defunct blog, I'm sure will be worth having.

FEYNMAN
A big new book Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick about Richard Feynman. I loved the Feynman bits of Ottaviani's first book, TWO-FISTED SCIENCE, and it led me to read several books by and about Feynman when it first came out.  Saw a few pages of this at Ottaviani's table at TCAF last year, and it looks great.  See some of the full colour pages scattered on a table over here.

THE JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS VOL. 1
This is a collection of Jack Kirby's work for DC in the 1950s, with the exception of CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN (already reprinted in various formats).  That means about 67 pages of Green Arrow and over 200 pages of other material, mostly science fiction from the various anthology titles running back then. Over half of this material has never been reprinted before, and what I've seen is definitely prime Kirby.




Well, all that would make for a good year, so let's hope they all manage to make it out.  There's a lot more I could have included (and no doubt many more not announced yet), but my sense of balance insisted on 11.  Either that or 2011.  Wonder if i can find 2000 more books worth listing...

In any case, I'll definitely try to do a better job of writing about the stuff that comes out before the last day of the year.

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