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Vimanarama #1

Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Philip Bond
40 pages, color
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

There are many different types and styles of storytelling; some can shift from one form of media to another with the greatest of ease, while others seem bound to a specific form. It’s important, though, to not get caught up in your assumptions of what can and cannot work. If so you’ll blind yourself that the impossible can be done… like, for instance, combining science-fiction comics with elements of Bollywood musicals.

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Concrete: The Human Dilemma #1-2

By Paul Chadwick
32 pages, black and white
Published by Dark Horse

In the early ’90s, anyone who really knew anything about comics knew about Concrete. Paul Chadwick’s signature comic about a speech writer whose mind was transplanted into a stone behemoth, Concrete tackled social issues that didn’t have easy answers, using a mixture of drama and humor to get Chadwick’s points across. Six and a half years ago, Concrete quietly slipped off the radar. And now, finally, he’s back.

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Paradise Kiss Vol. 1

By Ai Yazawa
192 pages, black and white
Published by TokyoPop

All right, I’ll admit it. The first time around, I completely missed out on Paradise Kiss. A book about fashion designers just didn’t sound interesting enough to grab my attention in the sea of new series being unleased on the market, and then several of the books in the series briefly went out of print. Now that TokyoPop is bringing new printings of the series to out, I decided to give it another try and it turns out everyone else was right: I should have been reading this ages ago.

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Runaways Vol. 1-3

Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Penciled by Adrian Alphona, with Takeshi Miyazawa
Inked by Craig Yeung and David Newbold
144 pages, color
Published by Marvel Comics

In 2003, a group of new titles debuted from Marvel under the promotional heading of “Tsunami”. It was an apt name, with the titles being unleashed on retailers and consumers alike as a massive wave, making it hard for many of the books to grab people’s attention in the sudden flood of new creations. Probably the most critically-successful book was Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona’s Runaways. With the entire 18-issue run now collected in three low-priced digest books, and a new Runaways series beginning next week, there’s no better time to take a look at these three collections.

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Legend of GrimJack Vol. 1

Written by John Ostrander
Art by Timothy Truman
128 pages, color
Published by IDW Publishing

Everyone has them: those long-forgotten books that you’ve never read, even though all of your friends love it and swear by it. “How can you have not read (insert name of title)?” they’ll cry. “It’s the best thing since sliced bread! Wait, even better than that!” And so you smile and politely nod and promise that you’ll read it, even though you never do. For years, that was me and GrimJack. I had a great excuse, mind you: the series has been out of print for quite a long time. Then IDW Publishing had to go and bring it back into print, and suddenly all my excuses have vanished.

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Kingdom of the Wicked

Written by Ian Edginton
Art by D’Israeli
120 pages, color
Published by Dark Horse

About a year and a half ago, Dark Horse published Ian Edginton and D’Israeli’s Scarlet Traces, a visually stunning collaboration about the invasion of England by aliens. Now one of their earlier collaborations is back in print, Kingdom of the Wicked. Here, the invasion is more sinister, as not England being invaded… but a writer’s childhood dream world.

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Asterix and the Banquet

Written by Rene Goscinny
Art by Albert Uderzo
48 pages, color
Published by Orion Books

Way back in 1980, a friend from school invited me over to his house, one who promised to show me what he called the funniest books ever. His relatives from England sent them to him for his birthday ever year, a series of graphic albums starring the Gaulish warriors Asterix and Obelix. Over the next couple of weeks I read all of the Asterix books he had, and I’ve been a fan ever since then.

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Small Gods Vol. 1: Killing Grin

Written by Jason Rand
Art by Juan E. Ferreyra
128 pages, black and white
Published by Image Comics

One of my favorite series of books from about fifteen years ago was Wild Cards, where super-powers had become part of every day life and everything was both the same and different at the same time. Small Gods gave me that same comfortable sort of feeling; not because the two series are the same, but because both of them are able to effortlessly take the world we live in and add in that one difference that changes everything.

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Ray Vol. 1

By Akihito Yoshitomi
208 pages, black and white
Published by ADV Manga

Some comics show their hand in the first couple of pages; everything’s spelled out for you and you know exactly what you’re getting. Then there are comics that sneak up on you, slowly pulling you into their clutches with each new piece of information and plot twist revealed. It’s the latter that Akihito Yoshitomi’s Ray falls into; at the end of the first chapter, I wasn’t entirely sure about the book, but by the end of the book, I was most definitely hooked.

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Shaolin Cowboy #1

By Geofrey Darrow
32 pages, color
Published by Burlyman Entertainment

Geofrey Darrow doesn’t draw comics very often, but when he does, he’s got my attention. The two main two projects of his I’m familiar with, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot and Hard Boiled, were both written by Frank Miller, while his new book Shaolin Cowboy is a book he’s not only drawing but writing as well. I knew the book would look gorgeous… but how would it read?

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