Tpb Reviewer's December Picks

Jingle bells, jingle bells...if you still have any money left after buying Christmas presents, why not spend them on comic books! That way you have fewer spending decisions to make and something to do with all the extra time you get from not having to decide on how to spend your money. Okok, on to the picks...

The first I want to point out is the two books by David Lapham coming out: Silverfish and Young Liars Vol. 1. David who? you say. Well, if you haven't read anything by mr. Lapham yet, you should stop reading this right now and hurry out and find the collected editions of his stellar Stray Bullets series published by his own label El Capitan. I cannot think of a better comic book (published in the US that I have read) since Watchmen. Unfortunately, since most comic book readers (yes, you and you) are ignorant drooling swine that will not recognize genius when it is served right in front of their eyes on a silver platter, mr. Lapham has had to stall the series due to low sales and resort to hired work for the Big Two. Silverfish and Young Liars are the latest outcomes of this, so while waiting for Stray Bullets to come out again, I will certainly accept this as something to kill time with. Btw, I should mention that Young Liars is an ongoing from Vertigo and Silverfish is an original graphic novel also published by DC. You can read an interview with Lapham right here: http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=110197

Marvel has a couple of interesting things this month, although it seems that they're gearing down a bit before unleashing the tpb version of Secret Invasion on the world in January.

First up is Captain America: The Chosen written David Morrell who you might know as the guy who wrote First Blood aka. Rambo I. Captain America done Rambo-style you say? Well, I'm intrigued and since the art is handled by Mitch Breitweiser, who also did the Drax the Destroyer story in Annihilatin Book 1, I will probably check this out. You can find a lengthy interview with Morrell here about the book: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=11191

Then, of course, there's Spider-Man: Brand New Day Vol. 2. I just love the fact that there's a new Spider-Man book coming out every second month now. They should just publish the series as tpb's straight away if you ask me, but I guess it'll be a while before that happens.

Just barely interesting enough to mention we find Cable Vol. 1: Messiah War. The thing is I never really found Cable to be a very interesting character, with all the big guns and crazy 90's style cyborg thingies. He just reeks of Liefeld. What this book may have going for it is that is seems to be a direct continuation of Messiah Complex and the art looks pretty sweet as evidenced by this interview with the writer, Duane Swierczynski.

Finally, there's Runaways: Dead End Kids. Now, this is the Marvel series that was awarded with one industry award after another, and this particular book is written by Joss Whedon, you know, the guy who wrote Astonishing X-Men. But, the parts of the series that were awarded were written by Brian K Vaughan and also, the issues of this book experienced several delays and after Whedon finished the book a new creative team took over. So I have a distinct feeling that it might not be as good as it sounds. In any case, the new creative team consists of Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos, so I might get those anyway, so why not try it out. As you may sense, I still haven't completely decided on this one...

Ok, that's it for this month. As usual, the solicitations were provided by Collected Comics Library (sorry for forgetting to mention that last month!). January is Secret Invasion month, so do stay tuned!