Mike Lindal’s December Picks

TpbReviewer asked me to write a supplement to his December picks, which sounded like a cool idea, so here it is. Christmas can be a pain to get through, but luckily there are a few goodies coming out this month to get you through the shopping, the consumerism, the nagging uncles and aunts and the coldness of winter.

Yes, I AM the Grinch. Deal with it.

This is why I’m going to start my December picks by warning you about a comic that you should NOT buy. Then again, it’s one of Marvel’s dreaded Premiere Hardcovers (why, oh why, is it not oversized!) so the tradepaperback audience will probably stay away anyway. But Jeph Loeb’s Ultimates 3 is just so plain evil that I have to warn people about it as early as possible. After Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s legendary run on the series everything came crashing down with this third volume. Gone is everything that was good about the Ultimates and all that’s left is… well, I’m not sure how to describe it, but it’s BAD. Avoid at all costs!

But enough negativity from me. Let’s get on with the good stuff. First up is Transhuman from Image. It is written by the amazing Jonathan Hickman with art by JM Rinquet. I loved Hickman’s The Nightly News, which I found to be one of the most amazing reads in a long time. Hickman brought something fresh and original to the comic book medium, so I look forward to reading this. I guess the fact that Hickman is not the artist on this means that we might get something very different from The Nightly News, but that just makes me more curious. Apparently it’s a mockumentary about genetic engineering. It sounds very cool.

Oni Press hit pay dirt with Bryan Lee O’Malley’s soon-to-be-classic series about Scott Pilgrim, which might be my favourite book from the last five years. It’s like crack. Only you only get to do it once a year. But before creating the martial arts fighter/gamer/musician/slacker character that is Scott Pilgrim, O’Malley did a little, melancholic book called Lost at Sea. Oni Press is putting out a new edition. It’s a strange little tale about a girl who is convinced that she has no soul and thus cannot make friends. She goes on a road trip with a group of people she hardly knows and has a lot of time to think about things. So it’s a real action packed story. Move over Secret Invasion. Okay, not really. But this is a beautiful, little graphic novel that has a certain poetry about it. It is nothing like the fast, fun and wonderful Scott Pilgrim, but that just makes Lost at Sea even better. So if you like your comics to be about actual things (other than Skrulls) then you should try this little gem out.

Now, TpbReviewer mentions Runaways: Dead End Kids in his December picks, but I seem to feel a bit of negativity coming from him. Being the ray of sunshine that I am, I feel like I have to defend this book a little. It’s… quite good. I admit to being a bit of Whedonite (Buffy is my religion), but even I have to admit that Vaughan’s run on Runaways (oh dear… bad pun) was miles ahead of Whedon’s. But that actually says more about Vaughan’s brilliant run than Whedon’s. Dead End Kids is a fun, fast and action-packed story about time travel. Whedon’s dialogue is as crispy as ever and he seems a perfect fit for this book, which has a lot more in common with Buffy than Astonishing X-Men. A shame he only wrote a single story arc. But then again, I really don’t mind him focusing most of his attention on doing the best damn Buffy monthly he possibly can. All hail the Mighty Slayer of the Vampires!

So merry Christmas. I hope you all survive it.