Stuff of Interest - May 2006 - The Stardust Kid #4

STARDUST KID #4
by J.M. DeMatteis & Mike Ploog
The Stardust Kid moves from Image Comics over to Boom! Studios! With K.M. and Nathaniel kidnapped by The Woman, Cody and Alana continue their search for the mysterious Stardust Kid: Before they're done, they'll encounter murderous insects, inscrutable plant spirits and a Living Fire that will burn away everything Cody knows -— finally revealing the astonishing truth about the Stardust Kid. But will the Kid's magical emergence come too late to save the world Cody knows... and the family he loves?
32pgs, Full Colour (4 of 5) $3.50
MAR063075 Boom! Studios

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As I mentioned before, I enjoyed Ploog&DeMatteis over on ABADAZAD, and am curious to read the prose/comics hybrid continuation of that. I was interested in this series as well, but don't ever recall seeing the issues that Image published last year. Still good to see it continuing, and when they come out with a collection of the series I'll take a look. Ploog's art looks nicely bizarre on that cover.

Stuff of Interest - May 2006 - Vampire Loves

VAMPIRE LOVES Graphic Novel
by Joann Sfar
Meet Ferdinand. He's a vampire who bites his victims with only one tooth in order to pass as a mosquito. He loves the music of dead singers, and has no end of trouble trying to make sense of his relationships - some with the living, some with the undead. Vampire Loves follows the strange and comically romantic adventures of Ferdinand and his friends as they flirt with, seduce, cheat on, break up and make up with all manner of strange creatures.
Softcover, 6x9, 192pgs, Full Colour $16.95
MAR063222 First Second Books

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I recently read another of Sfar's books, THE RABBI'S CAT (I think his other stuff translated to English has been some children's books), which I'll write a bit about in a few days. It was pretty interesting, especially the artwork.

The publisher has about a dozen preview pages on their website, and it looks pretty funny. I'm glad my library system has been doing a good job of getting stuff like this.

Akiko #40 [2000] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre
Akiko #40 [2000]

AKIKO is a great long-running kids comic by Mark Crilley, featuring a young school girl who winds up in a series of ridiculous adventures with friends from the faraway planet Smoo. Published by Sirius since 1996 (following a one-shot in 1995) it's been a while since the last issue (#52), as Crilley has been writing and illustrating novels about Akiko (nine to date, plus two more on another series, Billy Clikk). I mostly read the series in the tradepaperbacks (six of them reprinting the main stories in the first 38 issues, plus one reprinting the back-up stories and all of #39), but after a while I got sick of waiting for the next one (they've been re-releasing them in a smaller "pocket size" format before doing any new ones) and picked up the uncollected issues.

This issue starts off "The Battle of Boach's Keep", a story that shows off the sci-fi aspects of the series, going so far as to open with an (acknowledged) tribute to the opening of STAR WARS (starting on the wraparound cover), a motif that continues through the storyline (I especially liked the use of Lucas style wipes across panels for the major scene transitions).

Anyway, this issue has one of Akiko's friends Spukler Boach, getting a message that his home planet has been sold to a corporation, so he makes plans to return there to gather his effects and get payment.



Wipe across to Akiko on Earth, building a snowman when she's picked up by Bip and Bop for a short visit to Smoo, leaving the usual Akiko robot behind to cover for her.

Crilley also does a back-up story, as he does in most issues, taking advantage of the chance for an occasional change of pace or artistic experiment. This time it's a story of Akiko visiting an uncle and learning about Japanese fans.

One of the good things about getting the regular issues of AKIKO is the stuff that won't show up in the collections, in this case the cover and the letter page, where he always gets a lot of funny letters from younger readers, and the fan art, in this issue including pros Scott Roberts (PATTY-CAKE) and Paul Sizer (LITTLE WHITE MOUSE).

Stuff of Interest - May 2006 - Alan Moore: The Complete Future Shocks

ALAN MOORE: THE COMPLETE FUTURE SHOCKS TP
by Alan Moore & Various
Alan Moore is perhaps today'’s most widely respected comic book writer, having produced such modern classics as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, and Swamp Thing. Not many people will realize, though, that much of Moore'’s early work was done for Britain'’s award winning comic 2000AD. Now from the Galaxy'’s Greatest Comic comes a treasury of early stories from one of the very best writers in the business.
Softcover, 8x11, 160pgs, B&W $21.99
MAR063353 Rebellion

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Good to see this, though in the decade since I would have been really interested I've read all but a half-dozen of Moore's 2000AD stories in either the old collections (SHOCKING FUTURES and TWISTED TIMES), the original printings or the Quality/Fleetway crappy colour comics anthologies. It's an odd mix of stuff, to be sure, a few bits of brilliance, some clever stuff that just doesn't work, some complete failures. I hope they're serious about "Complete" and include every Moore story that doesn't appear in the HALO JONES, SKIZZ and DR&QUINCH collections, but I doubt it. The page count seems a bit light for that (there are about 60 stories that don't fit in the other books by my count, although some of those are two-pagers), unless this is literally just the Future Shock stuff, and they're going to do a second volume for Time Twisters.

Stuff of Interest - May 2006 - Sgt. Rock: The Prophecy #5

SGT. ROCK: THE PROPHECY #5
by Joe Kubert
Once more into the breach! Easy Company's deadline to deliver their "“package"” to Allied forces in Riga is getting closer by the hour, and Riga seems further away than ever. Circumstances force Rock and Easy to spend the night in a farmer's barn... and what happens next is no joke!
5 of 6 32 pg, Full Colour, $2.99 US

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I'm really enjoying these "Faces of Easy" covers for the book, and this is an interesting one, with a bit of a different style for Kubert. I wonder what medium he used for it. There seems to be some modeling to bring an almost 3-D look to it. Anyway, for this series as a whole, I had a chance to read the first issue, and of course the art was good, and the story seemed promising, so hopefully there won't be too long a gap before it's all collected, and I'll try to avoid spoilers about what happens to the puppy until then.

Stuff of Interest - May 2006 - Marvel Legacy

MARVEL LEGACY: THE 1970s HANDBOOK

Cover by Sal Buscema

From the Venerable Vaults of Marveldom, it's the Mighty Marvel Handbook -- 1970s style! Just what is the 1970s Handbook, you ask? Imagine a Handbook written at 11:59 p.m. Dec. 31, 1979. The profiles within cover everything published by the hallowed House of Ideas up until that point. So if it's from a comic that has a December 1979 cover date or earlier, you'll find it in this magnificent mag!

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Don't really care about this too much, I just wanted to post the Sal Buscema cover, which I liked a lot, as well as the cover for the 1960s version of this from a few months back, which I somehow managed to miss. Buscema's a bit of an under-rated artist, and I'm among those who took a while to warm to his work, partly because my first exposure to it was poorly inked stuff that didn't show off his strengths. He does a good job of capturing the respective eras on these two covers.

Departing gracefully....

It's pretty funny looking at the issues of PEP as it made the transition from featuring the Shield to featuring Archie. Sometimes he seems quite happy to be sharing (and slowly losing) his book with this upstart kid, but other times he seems a little bitter...