Author: Greg McElhatton

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Marvelous Land of Oz #1-4

Written by Eric Shanower
Art by Scottie Young
Based on the novel by L. Frank Baum
32 pages, color
Published by Marvel

Growing up, I think I read L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Ozma of Oz about 50 times each. The first and third of Baum’s Oz books, both have formed the basis for a lot of different Oz-related projects over the years. But until now, I’d never actually read the second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz. I knew the basics of what happened in it (thanks to Ozma of Oz, which is incidentally a top-notch book that everyone should read) but I hadn’t gotten around to reading my free copy courtesy Project Gutenberg. Fortunately for me, Marvel was happy enough with Eric Shanower and Scottie Young’s adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that they’re now publishing Shanower and Young’s The Marvelous Land of Oz, and it’s definitely the strangest of the three Oz books that I’ve come across so far. And when I say strange, I mean that I love it.

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First Wave #1

Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Rags Morales
40 pages, color
Published by DC Comics

I’ll admit that even after reading First Wave #1, I’m still not entirely sure why DC is publishing this comic. I’m not saying that because of quality, but rather the general idea behind it all. I normally applaud publishing initiatives that have generated lines like Vertigo, Minx, Helix, and Vertigo Crime, and a pulp-adventure line of comics from DC sounds like a lot of fun. But to do so by mashing up characters like Doc Savage, the Spirit, and Batman is such a strange hook for a book that I’m so far not convinced that this is a hook that will work beyond its initial curiosity factor.

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One Piece: East Blue 1-2-3

By Eiichiro Oda
600 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

I remember reading One Piece when it was first published by Viz back at the launch of SHONEN JUMP and enjoying it. But in what was a modern golden age of manga translations, there were so many books being published at the same time that I quickly fell behind, and before long it dropped to the wayside. Now that Viz is putting a lot of publishing muscle behind the book (unleashing a wave of One Piece books to catch the series up to where it is in Japan, like they did before with Naruto, and releasing a series of 3-in-1 omnibuses), it seemed like a perfect chance to catch up with the series and see just what I’ve been missing.

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Girl Comics #1

Written by Colleen Coover, G. Willow Wilson, Trina Robbins, Valerie D’Orazio, Lucy Knisley, Robin Furth, Devin Grayson
Art by Colleen Coover, Ming Doyle, Stephanie Buscema, Nikki Cook, Lucy Knisley, Agnes Garbowska, Emma Rios
48 pages, color
Published by Marvel Comics

An anthology full of creators fitting a certain demographic is hardly a new idea. We’ve had books specializing in indy comic creators, gay comics creators, and racial minority comic creators. So the idea of Girl Comics from Marvel is hardly shocking or surprising to me; while the name may be one of the less inspired (although you know exactly what you’re going to get, something that was also true with Gay Comix) I’ve generally found that anthologies of this nature for whatever reason almost always end up being slightly better than the average compilation. So for that reason alone, Girl Comics #1 was automatically going to get eyeballed by me.

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Years of the Elephant

By Willy Linthout
168 pages, black and white
Published by Fanfare/Ponent Mon

I have to admit that I’ve been sitting on a copy of Years of the Elephant for almost five months now, having read it but not diving into writing a review. As strange as it sounds, it had to do with a sense of respect that I had for the book. Based on Willy Linthout’s own experiences after the sudden death of his son, Years of the Elephant felt like a book that couldn’t be rushed into, couldn’t be taken lightly. After a while, I began to also recognize that some of my delay in writing a review of Years of the Elephant was a small bit of avoidance. And that, more than anything else, felt extremely apt when talking about this book.

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Smile

By Raina Telgemeier
224 pages, color
Published by Graphix/Scholastic Books

If you ask someone for a story about going to the dentist, chances are they’re going to have a nightmare experience to tell you all about. I think having no bad dental stories either means you have an incredible amount of luck, you aren’t that old just yet, or you don’t go to the dentist. So on that note alone, there’s an instant hook for people to read Smile, Raina Telgemeier’s autobiographical story centered around a particularly nasty dental drama when she was a teenager. But in the case of Smile, it’s actually more of a window dressing for what I think is the real story at the center of the book, and that’s what makes it so compelling.

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Choker #1

Written by Ben McCool
Art by Ben Templesmith
32 pages, color
Published by Image Comics

I know I’m not the only person who misses Fell, Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s series for Image that quietly stopped publishing (for now) after nine issues. So while it probably isn’t fair to instantly start throwing out comparisons between Fell and Choker, I will admit that it was my missing of Fell that made me decide to check out Choker. While the two share an artist and a certain sensibility, though, it’s in the writing that the two series definitely part ways.

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MySpace Dark Horse Presents #31

Written by Mark Crilley, Jackie Kessler, Graham Annable, and Ananth Panagariya
Art by Mark Crilley, Paul Lee, Graham Annable, and Yuko Ota
26 pages, color
Published by Dark Horse Comics and MySpace

I’ve come to the grim conclusion over the past year that if your website doesn’t have an RSS feed, I am more than likely going to forget it exists. It’s nothing personal, I just have so many things going on in my life that sooner or later I’ll start forgetting to check for updates. That’s been the case as of late with MySpace Dark Horse Presents, the return of Dark Horse’s original anthology title now running monthly issues on MySpace. When a pair of cartoonists mentioned on their website that their new story had just gone live on MySpace DHP (something I heard through their RSS feed, of course), though, I decided it was time to sit down and catch up.

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Yotsuba&! Vol. 7

By Kiyohiko Azuma
208 pages, black and white
Published by Yen Press

There are some series where the publication schedule can try its fans’ patience. One of them is, easily, Yotsuba&! if you’re reading it in English. Its original publisher released the first three collections in fast succession, then there was a 20-month gap before volumes 4 and 5 showed up. Then, the company decided to get out of the book publishing game, and it was another two years before Yotsuba&! wriggled its way free to Yen Press. With volumes 6 and 7 now out, and an eighth one scheduled for later this spring, it looks like for now the drought is over. The reason why I mention all of this is that there are few series that I think would hold my attention so much over the course of this many delays, but Yotsuba&! manages quite nicely.

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Copper

By Kazu Kibuishi
96 pages, color
Published by Graphix/Scholastic Books

One of my favorite webcomics is Kazu Kibuishi’s Copper, so a collection of all the stories to date was going to be an automatic winner in my house. For fans who devoured all the strips online, there’s still an attraction for the print version; not only are they all collected in one place, but Kibuishi’s stories from the Flight anthologies are included as well, plus a step-by-step examining of how Kibuishi creates the comic. But more importantly, if you haven’t read Copper before? Think of a strange mixture of introspection, observations on the world, the comics of Jean "Moebius" Giraud, and Calvin & Hobbes.

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