So what is the lipstick incident, anyway?
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Aimee LoSecco, JHU Comic Books, Manhattan
All the #2s this month! Power Up! Princeless! Here’s my top three 2’s! Which makes what… Sixes? On to the funny books!
Archie #2, Archie Comics. What is the lipstick incident?! Personally, I think Betty smooched a girl. Please God let Betty have smooched a girl….
Invader Zim #2, Oni Press. The fate of the human race hangs in the balance while Dib hunts for Zim. Will Earth be saved from a fate worse than being turned into a Space-Arby’s? God, let’s hope so…
Book of Death #2, Valiant. Have you read issue #1? Did you read The Valiant, for that matter? If you haven’t, go do your homework, catch up, and meet me back here. Done? OK. Well, the Eternal Warrior is fighting his ass off from Page 1 to keep the new Dark Age from steamrolling over the Earth. Will he get help this time around? Guess what? He’s too busy fighting dirty, tooth and nail to care! Bonus variant cover by Cary Nord! Have you seen his covers? They are SICK!
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Scott Tipton, Co-Owner, Blastoff Comics, North Hollywood, Calif.
Wonder Woman by George Perez Omnibus, DC Comics. I’m not always a fan of the big oversized omnibus format; I find them unwieldy and not a comfortable reading experience. But this is a great opportunity to get the first two years of Perez’s WW run, some of the best work ever done with the character, all in one package.
TMNT Mutanimals TPB, IDW Publishing. This spinoff book from IDW’s Turtle franchise was kind of overlooked as a monthly. It’s funny, it’s action-packed, and a little sad in places. Great comics with mostly new characters told by people who know what they’re doing. What else do you need? Highly recommended.
The Don Rosa Library Vol. 3: Treasure Under Glass, Fantagraphics. More of Don Rosa’s fantastic Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck stories, finally collected in a handsome hardcover format. A must-have.
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Ted Alexander, manager, Midtown Comics’ Downtown location, Manhattan
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1: Squirrel Power TPB, Marvel. In a world of serious times in the Marvel world with the Secret Wars, Squirrel Girl is the perfect book to cheer you up! It doesn’t take itself too seriously and you don’t need to know a longbox-worth of back issues to know what’s going on. Perfect for all ages, this should be a pick-up for someone in your family on the fence about whether or not they should get into the comic book world!
Ms. Marvel Vol. 1 HC, Marvel. Another great book to give out to those fence-sitters. t’s been described as the modern-day Spider-Man and I couldn’t agree more. This contains the first 11 issues of the popular series, plus some extra material. Trust me. It’s worth it!
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Dimitrios Fragiskatos, manager, Midtown Comics’ Grand Central location, Manhattan
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Vol. 1 Alpha TPB, Marvel. I really want to give an award to whoever was the collection editor of this. There is a position in comics that decides what trades come out and what’s featured in them. This person needs special acknowledgment because they finally collected the Age of Apocalypse correctly.
The problem with the previous collection called The Complete Age of Apocalypse was that it collected all the prequel material first. This is stuff that came out years after the fact. The reality is, that material does not seize the zeitgeist that is the X-Men in the 90’s, and really came out like bad fan fiction. There were a few gems there, like Brian K. Vaughan’s story and the X-Men Chronicles mini, but any customer who walked away with Volume 1 would have expected that the rest of the trade paperbacks to be just as bad.
This collection right here is how it should have been collected from the beginning. You start with Legion Quest, the saga where Professor X‘s son decides he will save Xavier‘s dream of peaceful coexistence for humans and mutants by time traveling and killing a young Magneto. From there the reader continues immediately to X-Men Alpha.
At the time, so many readers didn’t know the far-reaching the effects of the Age of Apocalypse. Fans who were comfortable with the Fox cartoon series tried the comics only to find heroes like Cyclops were villains, and Rogue was the leader of the X-Men and the mother of Magneto‘s child! That discomfort and uncertainty we had can never be replicated for the modern audience, but experiencing the story in this way may help them understand why it’s a storyline that gets revisited. One of the best X-Men stories of all time, pick this version up if you don’t own it!
