After last week's dearth of titles, this week is a big 'un. Here we go.
The Hospital Suite by John Porcellino
John Porcellino is one of the grand figures of comics who I've heard about but never actually had the pleasure of encountering. I've been tempted to start reading King Cat, but I've never pulled the trigger; I couldn't tell you why, since its readily available from his website and, presumably, a few of the better shops around the country. I feel like I've been missing out. Hopefully The Hospital Suite, a story about a period of ill health and its aftermath, is a good place to start.
Loverboys by Gilbert Hernandez
Two weeks, two new things from Gilbert Hernandez? What a world it is that we live in! From the solicitation, Loverboys sounds like a tale of Palomar, but without the boundaries of years of Heartbreak Soup stories limiting it to an already well trod path. Preview here, extensive interview with Hernandez here, including this excellent tidbit:
When I did "Marble Season," I said, this is a Drawn & Quarterly book. I want this for all ages. Some of my stuff at Fantagraphics is pretty rough, visually, whether it's sex or violence, so I just didn't want to go to another publisher and do that. With Dark Horse, I think of the kinds of books they publish, so I went ahead and did this heavy, violent zombie story because they're more into that dark genre stories. Fantagraphics is more indie -- closer to the way of indie music -- than the other publishers. With each publisher, I try to focus and express myself in a different way. Sort of having a split personality with each publisher.
In a Glass Grotesquely by Richard Sala
The main attraction in this new book of stories from Richard Sala is the tale of Super-Enigmatix, the world's greatest super criminal, and his army of henchwomen. Sala initially published (and is continuing to publish) the strip on a tumblr, which is a relatively common method of low stress online self publishing. The art is bright and the story is by turns charming and violent, sometimes at the same moment; I liked that latter combination so much that I'm a little worried about myself.
Southern Bastards Vol. 1: Here Was a Man, written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Jason Latour
A Jason Aaron writer's credit is more or less a guarantee of quality. Southern Bastards is his follow up to Scalped, one of three or four best crime comics of the past little while. This new book fills a hole left by the end of the old one in 2012 and distinguishes itself with Latour's art, which gives it a design forward quality that might even launch it past its predecessor. I read Scalped in trade, it's the kind of book that rewards the rereadings facilitated by the collected editions, and, after purchasing the first issue, I'm doing the same with this one. Volume 1 collects the first four issues; I've been looking forward to this book for a while.
The Fade Out, written by Ed Brubaker, drawn by Sean Phillips, colored by Elizabeth Breitweiser
Speaking of guarantees, anything from Brubaker and Phillips is sure to be worth a look. The first issue was great, this one is sure to be too.
Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #1, written by Ales Kot, drawn by Marco Rudy
This book's a weird one, and I'm ambivalent about it. The Winter Soldier iteration of the Bucky Barnes character was created by Ed Brubaker for his run of Captain America stories, now approaching their tenth anniversary. Those were the comics that got me into comics again after a three or four year break, and they're still some of my favorites. Although the whole of Brubaker's Captain America run is worthwhile, the later issues were often of slightly lesser quality, eroded by the needs of line wide crossovers, a transition from a superhero espionage comic hybrid into straight superhero comics and, I think, by a little bit of writer's malaise. At the end, Bucky Barnes's consolation prize for no longer getting to be Captain America was that he got his own comic book, and Brubaker's year plus on the Winter Soldier title stands up against that early stuff, in part because it phased out the superheroics entirely, and what we got were straight spy stories with the trappings of the Marvel universe. Brubaker left and the series languished; they final issues are supposed to be ok (I've never read them), but interest waned anyway.
All of that means that I'm trepidatious about this book. Part of what's got me worried is that it's a weird combination of things; Barnes is now a sort of intergalactic clean up crew, a set up which emphasizes the espionage while restoring some of the fantastical elements. It's also drawn by Marco Rudy, who gives the book a painterly feel, a quality I often find ugly and difficult to read. Because Rudy's goal is to emphasize the weirdo quality of the sci-fi, though, it looks like it works. We'll have to see what happens when that art is subjected to the utilitarianism of comics text; I suspect there will be a certain amount of dissonance.
Still, I think that the espionage story may be the most important mainstream comics genre of the last decade or so, and writer Ales Kot has recently set himself up as the most adept inheritor of that tradition; if anyone can pull off a book like this. Kot might be the man to do it.
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