Spring Brings A Multitude Of Tie-Ins

The May solicitations went up late last week, so let's take a look. Assuming we can find anything underneath the pile of War of the Realms tie-ins. Last month I mentioned I was surprised at Marvel's relative restraint on that count. Well, nevermind. Counting the main mini-series itself, 23 comics are coming out in May connected to War of the Realms. Mini-series, one-shots, ongoing series, the whole magilla. There's going to be an Agents of Atlas mini-series in there, but other than Jimmy Woo, it's an entirely different roster assembled by Amadeus Cho, sooooooo, I don't really care.

Marvel's also starting a Savage Avengers book, with the Punisher and Conan among others. Hard pass. Stop putting the Punisher on team books, Marvel! Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is going to introduce a kid in a Spider-Man costume. I wonder if this is going to be about a kid that imagines being Spider-Man's sidekick. I would prefer that to an actually kid sidekick. The only other thing I noted was Unstoppable Wasp, which was a 6-issue mini-series, is turning into an ongoing. That's surprising, I didn't expect it would sell well. They're swapping out a new art team in place of the Guruhiru duo.

DC's kicking off the "Year of the Villain". I thought that was everyday in the DC Universe these days. Doomsday Clock still isn't over. The version of Thomas Wayne from the Flashpoint universe is teaming up with super-villains against his son. Bruce must have forgotten to send a Christmas card. Batman and the Outsiders' first issue was resolicited. It was supposed to come out in January, but I guess something came up.

OK, enough of those two depressing companies. Two of the three series I mentioned from Dark Horse two months ago, Astro Hustle and Bad Luck Chuck, are both 4-issue mini-series. I don't remember that from the March solicits, but it might make it more likely I'll buy them, since I'd be on the hook for only four issues, tops.

Brandon Thomas and Khary Randolph have a new book called Excellence published by Image, about a young man trained to use magic only to help others, who decides "to hell with that." That does seem like a hard sell.

Coda wraps up in May, while Giant Days has Esther, Susan, and Daisy are going to try to help McGraw's cricket team. Perhaps I will finally understand cricket! To be fair, I have never tried to understand cricket, so it may actually be very easy. Smooth Criminals finds out thieving duo stuck trying to get their prize away from that Hatch guy. Stealing from a thief is always super-easy so I'm sure nothing will go wrong!

Outside the larger publishers, there were a few things I might look into. Vertical is releasing the second volume of Kino's Journey. I haven't bought the first volume yet, because I'm waiting for the price to drop some more, but that'll be a definite buy.

It'll be on its fourth issue, but there's a series called The Offbeats by John Ward and Giles Crawford. I'm not sure what it's about exactly, the solicit for issue 4 says someone's getting busted out of jail, and there's a mob and corrupt cops involved. It would come down to the style, so I guess I should keep an eye out for the first issue. There's a graphic novel called Ring of Seven Worlds, by Gionvanni Gualdoni, Gabrielle Clima, and Matteo Piana that just sounds like it has a cool concept. Different worlds linked through gates at one giant ring, and after a long time, the one world that has been sealed off is suddenly open. Sometimes that's all it takes for me to give something a chance.