Wednesday's New Things: Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger

... and we're back. Wednesday's New Things features stuff I'm planning on buying in a given week, plus some other stuff of interest, with links to previews and occasional commentary. 



Tove Jansson's Moomin comics, like so many others, are a thing I know only by reputation. This new complete collection, beautifully put together by D+Q to celebrate the centennial of her birth, seems like a good place to start. For the Jansson completist, the NYRB press is also putting out a collection of her prose stories this fall.



Another import, this one is the the first book translated into English from prominent Montreal cartoonist Simon Bosse. Not a whole lot to go on, here, but the few panels of preview suggest that he's got some skill with grey tones, which is a hard thing to achieve, and imagination worth exploring, which is a thing few people have. 



Releases like this are fascinating to me-- an oversized and expanded reprint of a story that's already been released in comic form and in trade, for a relatively prominent Archie comic that's barely a year old. Who goes for this? Someone who passed on it the first time, in tow other formats? A kind of completist? Maybe a Francavilla superfan (and, if you're that, it's hard to blame you). It does have "new special features," whatever that means, but do you shell out $4.99 for a comic you already have for new special features? That doesn't make sense to me, although I guess certain consumers of DVDs and Blu-Rays behave that way; maybe comics consumers behave in similar ways. I put the over/under at the continued release of these magazines at 6.