Tuesday 27 March 2012

Weekly Treats! Avengers vs X-Men! DMZ! Tatsumi!

It's started... The first big event of 2012 gets going.  For the next six months John Romita Jr., Olivier Coipel, Adam Kubert, Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction and Jonathan Hickman take us on a journey of...well big fights really, answering all those schoolyard debates such as who would win in a fight between (insert hero name) with (insert another hero name).  There'll be the main Avengers vs X-men title spanning twelve issues, twice a month, plus the six-issue series AvX: VS, the fight issues focusing on rumbles that deserve savouring and then of course there are the tie-in issues as the story inevitably affects characters within the continuity of their own regular story lines.  It all starts this week with Avengers vs. X-Men #0 illustrated by Frank Cho and written by Bendis and Aaron. Featuring? Only Hope, also known as the Mutant Messiah, also known as the New Phoenix Force and the return of Scarlet Witch!  Got a feeling this could be important... 





Be here before the media catches on and your friends casually ask you for more information.  And see here for our checklist post.

Also out is New Deadwardians #1 (Vertigo), the start of an eight-issue series by Dan Abnett & Ian Culbard who illustrated At The Mountains of Madness and the Sherlock Holmes adaptations from Self Made Hero.  In post-Victorian England, nearly everyone of the upper classes has voluntarily become a vampire to escape the lower classes who are all zombies.  The series focuses on Chief Inspector George Suttle, a lonely detective who finds that his investigation into a murder case opens up a trail of corruption. 

Now for the sweetener: BOTH THESE COMICS ARE ONLY £1.50 EACH!!!  For one week only (i.e. until next Wednesday) we're offering these titles at a knock-down, profit-slicing £1.50. Get them while you can...

So that's what all the hipsters will be looking at; what's going on in book format?  In DMZ vol. 11 (Vertigo) Matty continues to struggle for air as the US civil war begins a slow march to a resolution.  As usual, Brian Wood writes and Riccardo Burchielli illustrates.


And finally, re-issues of some of the most creepy, most affecting and brave short stories ever produced in sequential art.  Written and illustrated by Yoshihiro Tatsumi - possibly the most important creator in Manga history if only for being responsible for the more "grown up" gekiga style - during the late 60's and 70's Abandon The Old In Tokyo, Good-Bye and Push Man & Other Stories (all from Drawn & Quarterly) are so far ahead of their time that the works could have produced yesterday and still been as stirring to read.  Essential.







As usual, check the tab at the top of the page for a full list of this weeks releases.

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