New Comics Day

Just to get the ball rolling here, here's the first installment of what will be a semi-regular feature here on the site. I'll be posting something a little more "introductory" later on, to give this blog a bit more direction and purpose. So just for now, here's some quick comments about what I picked up for New Comics Day this week. Fuller reviews will come later....

Y: the Last Man #35 (DC Comics, $2.99)
I like this series, but the formula is starting to show through in each storyline. There's enough interesting stuff going on here, and writer Brian Vaughn really takes advantage of the serial format to keep you coming back month after month, but I think the book is in need of some freshening up at this point. It could just be a mild slump before things get interesting again, but it could be the beginning of creative stagnation. Hopefully the former.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #192 & 193 (DC Comics, $2.50 each)
I can't remember the last time I bought a Batman comic (probably when you could count my age on 2 hands, with leftover fingers), with the exceptions of Dark Knight Returns and Year One. But I noticed that artist Seth Fisher was working on this arc, and I loved his work on Vertigo Pop: Tokyo. I haven't seen any of his work since, so I figured this was a good opportunity to see more of his work.

Dumped (Oni Press, $5.95)
I'm on a bit of an Andi Watson kick lately, having just finished his excellent mini-serieses (is that a word?) Breakfast After Noon and Slow News Day, and waiting for the Geisha mini-series to arrive from Mile High Comics. I like the simplicity of his art style, which is expressive in a very minmalist way, especially his character's faces. His writing is great also, with strong characterization and a knack for slowly unfolding melodrama. His current work, on last years Love Fights and the current Little Star shows him steadily refining his already excellent style.

American Elf (Top Shelf, $29.95)
This one I've been meaning to pick up for a while, but the price tag was a little daunting. It looked worth it, just for the sheer scale of the book, but it's hard to plunk down that much for a single book sometimes. Anyways, after this week's announcement that there won't be another volume of the Sketchbook Diaries, and the revelation that this book had sold so poorly, I felt like I should do my part to pick it up, even if it was sort of like locking the barn after the horse was gone. Hopefully, at some point it will become feasible to publish more of this series in the near future.