Busy week for comics news.
If you haven't caught up yet: The second part of the Batman/Deadpool crossover was officially announced. This will be written by Grant Morrison (and they promised this will be the most Morrison ever to Morrison, meaning some crazy shit) but it will also feature a lot of backup stories with other artists and meet ups. If you know me, you know that I'm obsessed with the fact that G. Willow Wilson is BACK writing Kamala Khan, crossing over with Static Shock. This could not be more tailor-made for me.
Another slew of variant covers was also announced for Ultimate Endgame. The minisseries has been promised as the big-event crossover of the line since, well, the beginning of the Ultimate Universe. (More interesting than that, it seems Marvel is going the way of the poly-bagged surprise item that Image did earlier this year with Battle Beast. And that worked very well for them, I'm sure it will be a big deal here too. We complain about gimmicks but what can we say? We also love them a lot.)
The series is by Deniz Camp, Terry Dodson and the one-and-only Jonas Scharf - who will be in Berlin with us for the celebration of Walt's Comic Shop 5-year anniversary!! That's not a blind bag that's simply a fact. Can't wait to meet him and beg for spoilers (that he won't give, so in reality I'll just blab about how I love Bone Parish)
Anyway, more to talk about this later. Let's see what's immediately up for FOC this week!
The Amazing Spider-Man: Torn #1
J. Michael Straczynski is back at Spidey in this minisseries that takes Peter back to his college days. If you haven't read his original run, I think it is fair to say: it was a rollercoaster. It was full of big swings (ha!) and contained a feel of the most controversial and talked about arcs ever like One More Day - the infamous Peter deal with Mephisto that had fans throwing their comics up in the air up until this day and Sins Past, that rewrites Gwen Stacy death adding a very fucked-up twin twist we're bound to never let go.
Following the pattern of maybe every single Spidey run since the 90s, this run has also been hit with a lot of revisionism recently, as a lot of people favour modern stories of Spidey. Straczynski introduced a lot of cool concepts to the Spider mythos like… well, the whole weird, religious aspect to Peter's origin, including Ezekiel (was he in the Amazon researching spiders with her mom when she died?). It truly was the first properly modern accessible Spidey run for a lot of us and you can think whatever you want of the objective quality, but it was swinging indeed. Kevin Feige even said on record that he was an avid reader of this comic at the time. It’s no surprise then that we can spot clear similarities with what they later did in Tom Holland’s run, especially the Doctor Strange pact and spell parallels. Peter was no longer just the friendly neighborhood hero; he was part of a larger universe, one that kept expanding.
That's why I'm kinda excited for this new mini. I love when these writers come back to these characters in something that feels a little to the side of the mainline. What sort of requiem has this guy planned for this classic set-up? Or will he have a more back to basics nostalgic approach? I have no idea (although I doubt), but I'm excited to find out.
The original run I talked about is collected in omnibus and epic collections. Maybe you will find yourself defending this against the haters as well!!! (Maybe not Sins Past tho).
Good as Dead #1
Here's something that blew me away a bit. I wasn't very familiar with David Lapham's work, even though Stray Bullets has been in my reading list forever. I had the privilege of reading the first THREE issues of this new series and the time passed like no one else's business.
Good As Dead is about this small town that gets hit with a tragedy. Out of nowhere, a man sets himself on fire on the town's bridge. A bridge that has been the symbol of control of a criminal family. And this is only the first omen of the reckoning to come. We follow the story through the town's sheriff and the world around him while he races against time to uncover, punish and settle a few old grudges against people. The clock's is ticking for him though, as he gets immediately hit with a seemingly irreversible mysterious disease.
It's half cop-thriller, half-soap opera goodness in a way that would have left you glued to your screens in a good Netflix sunday-night affair. More so, I think some good comparisons are those mid-budget tv series American television used to do but… kinda stopped for whatever reason.
It's a bit Ozark with the small-town full of crime vibe but with a more hands-on, all-out commando approach for their characters. What I liked about it is how they waste no time in building the layers of this city and get you invested in the people and the secrets they hide. Very much a tale of the American middle-class consumed by the opioids crisis, in a slim tightrope separating conspiracy theories from the ugly truths that we wish were conspiracies. Nothing like a death-mark to make every good-neighborhood amenity go to shit fast.
Starship Godzilla #1
The third title in IDW's new Godzilla shared universe hits FOC. The Kai-Sei era kicked off last month with the first main series issue (full of Kaiju Neon Genesis Evangelion inspiration) and this month with its mutant island spinoff Escape the Deadzone. Now we're taking the franchise to space. This is nothing but a cool-ass idea to me. It's about a group of ragtag heroes that travel in a Mechagodzilla (yes!) and take jobs wherever they are needed. It looks like a mashup between Guardians of the Galaxy and Godzilla with a sprinkle of Tillie Walden's On A Sunbeam.
If you are launching a new universe, this is the approach you should take. Aim bold and even if you don't hit all the time, you can never claim to be just doing the same-ol’ approach to licensed comics. This should be the norm and it made me go all-in on the initiative.
The writer is Chris Gooch who wrote the amazing indie comic In Utero. Speaking of bold genre-mixups and Evangelion, this guy got it. And if the incredible coming-of-age is a tease for the approach for the main characters in this book, count me even more in. If you read that book, it becomes quite clear why he was on IDWs radar for this title. A very bold and personal and emotional approach to an overdone concept. Can't wait to see what he does with a big I.P.
Before you leave!
You can always check what we're doing over on Beyond the Panels like my latest overview on the DC Absolute line.
Also on FOC this monday is the first batch of reprints for Absolute Batman (the first 7 issues) and Wonder Woman (the whole 10 issues), with new one coming for all other titles the coming weeks. Absolutely insaaane that we're approaching a 7th printing for some of them.
Also there is - very helpful to me - Petar's overview on the X-Men Messiah Trilogy years up until Bendis brings the OG 5 back (a period I love and will defend with my heart forever). This is Part 3 of an ever-expanding deep-look he is doing on the mutants. You can also meet us and nerd out with the whole BTP team on the upcoming Walt's 5 Years Anniversary in September. With a slew of cool guests including our endgamer Scharf, Christian Ward, Filipe Andrade and Omar from Near Mint Condition.
You can check out everything for FOC here. All of our pre-orders run until Saturday at 4pm. If you have any doubts you can message Heiko, our single-issue master, and he will gladly help you out.
See you,
Math.
