Truthfully, this is a tough month. There’s a lot of books on the unread pile. Part of that is because a lot of the books are part of series I’m a little behind on, but this is still a lot of books. I’ve been sidetracked because I’m reading the full Captain America Masterworks series, and they’re three dense volumes. But I still never thought I’d have this high of a number of unread books at the end of the month.

On the other hand, I’m going to end up with a double-digit amount of full reviews, with The Great Catsby, Lost Girls, Absolute Kingdom Come, Jokes and the Unconscious, and the two Masterworks books to go. I’ll take that for a first month of blogging. I hope you will too.

So here we go:

Concrete Vol 6 Stranger Armor TP
This is a small digest reprint of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete origin story. I prefer the oversized format for Chadwick’s art, like we saw in the short stories collections in the 90s, but the digests do have a nice bonus. The “big” stories such as Strange Armor are presented along with short stories printed around the same time, so you get to see the big picture. This is a fantastic series, and it’s highly recommended.

Daredevil Vol 1 HC (New Printing)
“New Printing” stands for “the first edition has a significant production error and missed an issue”. The first edition had a page that was missing word balloons and didn’t print issue 12 (a fill-in with art by Rob Haynes). The book fixes the error and reprints Daredevil v2 1-14. This book established the Marvel Knights imprint, featured a nice story by movie guy Kevin Smith, and had some fantastic art by Joe Quesada. It would have been a nicer book if Marvel had offered an exchange program for those of us stuck with the first volume, but I still appreciate the new edition.

Deadbeats #78 and Soulsearchers #78
Both books are from Claypool, which will stop publishing comics in 2007. Sales are so low that Diamond is refusing to distribute them anymore, despite Claypool’s claim that they’re happy with sales. It’s a shame; we’re going to lose Peter David’s Soulsearchers because of the shutdown, although there’s been talk of moving the comics to the web. Claypool’s been mocked on the blogosphere for their lackluster marketing efforts; the names of the authors didn’t appear on the covers until this year. In fact, I ordered Deadbeats by accident; I only wanted Soulsearchers, and made an error on my online order form (my bad!).

I’d love to see Claypool consider reinvigorating the line on the web through the sort of promotion Slave Labor’s doing with online comics (89 cent downloads in PDF or CBR format); right now, there are only trades reprinting the first twelve issues, which can be discouraging for new readers. Here’s a thought; with David’s exclusive agreement at Marvel, why not see if Essential black-and-white budget trades could be put out through Icon?

Essential Luke Cage, Power Man Vol 2 TP
From the splash page of Power Man 28 (this is a scan from the comic, not the black-and-white Essential):

“Sir Nose has stolen the Bop Gun from Starchild! How will Starchild lead us all to Funkentelechny? Bring on the Mothership Connection! Ain’t nothin’ but a party, y’all! Flashlight!”

There’s a heck of a lot of talent in this book, actually: Chris Claremont, John Byrne, George Tuska, Sal Buscema (always a friend here at Why I Love Comics), Steve Englehart, Mike Zeck, Marv Wolfman, Don McGregor, and more. I’m looking forward to sitting down with this volume and doing a deeper read.

Finder TP Vol 8 Five Crazy Women
Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder saga continues. And I’m so far behind in reading this great, dense series that I’m stealing a quote from McNeil herself:

“Everybody’s asking about the other ‘lost issue’ now that BEWARE OF DOG has found a home in the FIVE CRAZY WOMEN tpb. Would anyone believe that FIVE CRAZY WOMEN grew out of a need to have a place to collect BEWARE OF DOG? I did those two single issues to Give New Readers Great Jumping-On Points. I hope it worked, because I can’t do short stories to save my ass, and for years those two issues have been loose ends defying all attempts at tidy tying-up. I could do a few more single-issue stories, I’d think. Then I could just collect all of the ‘Jaeger B-Sides.’ Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. Har. Me trying to write a short story is like a twelve-stepper saying he’s only going to have one Cosmopolitan.”

If you really need a jump-on place, why not hop over to lightspeedpress.com and read the webcomic? You can get the first 69 pages (as of this writing) for free.

Halo & Sprocket Vol 1: Welcome To Humanity TP
I bought this book solely because of Johanna Draper Carlson’s review. It’s one of her ten favorite comics. That’s good enough for me.

Hellblazer: Stations Of The Cross TP
I’m a Hellblazer fan going back to the days of Garth Ennis. I find that I like each author’s run after they’re all done. Mike Carey’s run still has another trade or two to go.

I’ll pick up on the pile tomorrow. Tonight, my wife CL and I are going out for fondue!

Fondue: gooey cheese.
Throw in some great dippers and
That’s a darn good time!

(See? Haiku. I sneak it in.)