A Downpour to Start Spring

The March solicitations were surprisingly bountiful. Must be a spring thing.

What's new I might buy? Quite a lot of things I'll at least consider. DC has Unstoppable Doom Patrol by Dennis Culver and Chris Burnham. I don't know anything about either of their work, and the book spins out of the events of Lazarus Planet, which is hardly promising, but maybe.

Marvel has three books. One is It's Jeff, a bunch of stories by Kelly Thompson and the Guruhiru art team about Gwenpool and Deadpool's little land shark that were originally published online. I expect to see much adorable biting of jerks in this book. There's also Clobberin' Time, the Steve Skroce mini-series that was originally solicited for last summer. Hopefully it's actually ready to publish this time!

Finally, there's a Hellcat mini-series. On the one hand, it describes a supernatural murder mystery revolving around Pasty's dead mother's home. On the other hand, it's written by Christopher Cantwell, the Iron Man writer who had the bright idea to get Patsy engaged to Tony Stark, which is hardly encouraging.

Moving outside those publishers, Image has the first issue of Phantom Road, a mini-series by Jeff Lemire, Gabriel Walta, and Jordie Bellaire about a couple of people finding an artifact in a car wreck and things getting weird. Sounds like a good concept, but my track record with Lemire has not been good. Lev Gleason - New Friday has Black Sheep, which is going to be 3 oversized comics that, 'captures the traditional ideologies of a classic comic with a story that focuses on family and honor while designed to look like pages of old.' Sounds a bit like Black Jack Demon in that regard, trying to resemble '50 horror comics, except this is a samurai story by the look of it. At $10 an issue, without knowing how oversized it is, I don't know. Dark Horse is releasing a trade of Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins' Apache Delivery Service, about two men hunting for stolen gold in the jungles of Vietnam.

I don't know if I'll buy any of those, but I want to at least keep them in mind. Maybe pick them up down the line somewhere.

What am I buying that's ending? A couple of things. March is the final issue of Tiger Division, and the solicit kind of spoils the surprise by stating outright the team has to fight Dr. Doom. Viz Media also has the third and final volume of Crazy Food Truck. I wouldn't have expected it to wrap up so quickly.

What's that leave? Quite a bit at Marvel. Fantastic Four, Mary Jane and Black Cat (still going a month after Dark Web ends), Moon Knight, and maybe Deadpool. I hoped after lat month's solicit, the symbiote plot would be concluded already, but I guess not. Swell.

Immortal Sergeant will be up to issue 3, but it's also now a 9-issue mini-series, instead of 8. Darkwing Duck would also be on issue 3, but I'm having doubts. The solicit describes his girlfriend Morgana as "conniving", and that does not track with how I remember her. Eager to help? Sure. Not the most adept magically? Yes. Conniving? Not so much. She didn't have to be, considering Darkwing turned to a puddle of goo around her.

Grit N Gears would be up to issue 4, but considering issue 1 no-showed this month, and Ice Canyon Monster never did pop back up, I will believe it when I see it. Also, apparently Aftershock's going into bankruptcy, which might explain A Calculated Man never finishing up. Or maybe it's unrelated. Hardly encouraging either way! Fallen and Liquid Kill are supposed to ship their second issues. Fallen suggests the lead detective has to be careful that the other gods don't notice him investigating. Liquid Kill. . .basically repeats the solicit text from issue 1. Helpful.

To wrap up on the manga front, the ninth volume of Precarious Woman Executive is listed from Seven Seas, and the second volume of The Boxer from Ize Press. I haven't actually read the first volume yet, since it only came out a couple of weeks ago, but hopefully I will by the time this comes out.