Initial Ordering Plans

Discount Comic Book Service has the new listings for comics shipping in February 2005. So I'm peeking through to see what strikes my interest on an initial glance.

CONAN VOLUME 1: THE FROST GIANT'S DAUGHTER AND OTHER STORIES TP - The hot new series written by Kurt Busiek gets its first tradepaper back collection. I don't really know a lot about the character, but this book has certainly gotten a fair amount of buzz around it. With a discount price of $10.37, it will definitely be something to consider.

DRAGON PRINCE #1 - Writer Ron Marz's second creator owned project, this time with artist Jeff Johnson, follows a teenage boy who never fit in with other kids. Who learns the reason behind it is that his father was a dragon, and he must seek out what happened to him.

I'm hoping the series isn't completely about how important the father is to people. Not that he isn't, but comics have a tendency to put all the importance on the father role. Neglecting the mothers nearly entirely.

Still I'm willing to give it a shot, as Marz's other CO series Samurai: Heaven & Earth looks fantastic from all of the preview pages. Issue #3 of which is listed this month, this time with the samurai battling the Muskeeteers in the streets of Paris.

Huh looking through the DC section only four things are of interest to me at all:

Adam Strange #6 - Writer Andy Diggle has really surprised me, in how he's made these sort of goofy offbeat characters relevant and cool so far.

JLA: CLASSIFIED #4 - Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire return with this followup to last year's FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE miniseries. I hope this fun and spirited story doesn't get lost by being sort of "hidden" in this offshoot series.

THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #3 - Waid and Kitson have me very curious to see how they do on this retake on the concept. Doing a spotlight issues already, this time on Triplicate Girl (one of my old favorites) has me thrilled though!

SEVEN SOLDIERS #0 - I'm not a huge Grant Morrison fan, but at 75 cents I'm willing to give it a shot. Especially since I love his message of wanting to truly do new and different things with the characters, not just rehash the past.

Everything else by DC is either a nostalgia driven, T&A driven, or violence for violence sake.

From Marvel...

Huh they really couldn't have a better fit for a well endowed chick in a small leopard skin bikini, than Frank Cho. Talking about knowing the core audience, its the "date book" just as Jemas once talked about.

There are the old favorites to get like She-Hulk. Yet I think I'm most excited about trying Young Avengers #1 because I like Jim Cheung art. Plus along with the relaunch of Runaways marks two very interesting sounding series following teen superheroes.

A concept that unlike their "Distinguished Competition" Marvel has never really given a huge focus on in my experience. Outside of the mutant franchise I suppose, though those rarely seem to be a true teen team in the vein of the Teen Titans or Legion of Super-Heroes.

Del Rey has the second volume of the fantastic Othello manga series due.

The Comic Journal 2005 edition promises extensive interviews and pieces on various manga creators. As someone who only truly got into manga this year, I'm really looking forward to learning more about the field as I should with this.

Teenagers From Mars gets collected in a trade finally. I loved the first few issues of this mad teens, having to battle for their own personal freedom against adults series. Then it sort of went off into an oddball direction that seemed too extreme for me to accept as natural story progression. So I passed on the ending, but perhaps it'll read better in one volume here.

I have never read Jeff Smith's Bone series. I wonder if I should try the new color version trades? Especially since the discount puts the price under $6.

NBM has the collection of the first three issues of their Hardy Boys series out, while also putting out a Nancy Drew GN. As a fan of both of these series as a kid, I can't wait to see what their comics will be like. Now if only someone would get the rights to the Bobsy Twins...

If it was nearly anyone else but Andi Watson, I'd give the LITTLE STAR series about "the pee, the poo, and the puke in a sleep-deprived haze" life of a dad a pass as being gross. Yet I'm sure Andi will make it so entertaining, that I won't mind the subject matter at all.

I've only recently found the Doctor Who series, and still know very little about it overall. I thought when I first saw it that the concept would make a great comic and now PANINI PUBLISHING LTD is doing that with the DOCTOR WHO: IRON LEGION GN. Which has restored Dave (The Watchmen) Gibbons art, though thank goodness for the DCBS discount which cuts the price from $25 to $18.71.

Whew I'm sleepy but that's a lot of possibilities, and I haven't even gotten to the Tokyopop and Viz sections!