Incoming... 07/04/2010

New comics are released tomorrow (in the States at least; we have to wait until Thursday...no, wait, Friday this week *sob* in the UK!). Here's a brief look at our expectations for the books we're picking up this week.

Stewart R: Well, after a weekend of gorging upon chocolate eggs - OK, I say chocolate eggs but really I mean pints of beer - I'm looking to work off any excess weight I've put on with a serious comic reading workout! Yep, just the thing I need to welcome in the warmer weather and that impending sense of Summer.

Thankfully most of the comic publishers are sending me some suitable 'equipment' to help me get into geeky shape this week. DC decide to throw Batman and Robin #11 at my feet and tell me to try to touch my toes and to be honest I'll happily do that to find out just what the heck Robin's mother has done to that poor lad's brain. Last time out he was going all Steve Martin in All of Me, losing control of his body and developing a murderous edge while trying to stop himself from bringing Dick's reign as Batman to a premature end. Morrison has easily won me over with his first year on this title and while I didn't enjoy the recent hop across the Atlantic that Bats took this new arc is shaping up to be a tasty prospect in deed.

Of course where would a good post-chocolate-overload, Easter-egg comedown be without a little pun-infused comic title and Sweet Tooth #8 obviously fits the bill for that this week. Sitting in a superb position amongst Vertigo's current 'Trio of Triumph' - Daytripper and The Unwritten being the other worthy titles in that illustrious group that I just concocted - Sweet Tooth seems to be on the verge of taking things up a notch. The hugely talented Jeff Lemire has been filling in and fleshing out the backstory to the mysterious Jeppard and the world in which he and Gus find themselves trying to survive in over the past couple of issues and I get the impression that the tension will start bubbling over pretty soon.

Now there are some tasty new first issues hitting the shelves of the local comic shops and stores this week and I shall be nosing between the pages of Turf #1 to find out just what sort of comic one Mr Jonathan Ross can write. I'm intrigued by the prohibition era setting and the focus a gangster-led city with slight elements of fantasy and science fiction worked in for good measure. So, I'm happy with the premise and on top of that Tommy Lee Edwards' artwork is certainly looking gosh darn tasty in the preview releases. I get the feeling that some people are expecting this to fall a little flat like so many other celebrity attempts to put their names to comics but Ross is a bona fide comic fan and I think that he is more than capable of producing a decent read.

Of course, where would our week be without Marvel throwing another debut issue into our faces like some sort of delicious penciled and inked custard pie? Admittedly S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 probably has other people salivating in sheer pleasure at the thought of learning about this mysterious organisation's beginnings while my interest is slightly more reserved at the moment. Hickman has been doing a terrific job with Nick Fury's current exploits over on Secret Warriors for the past year or so but I am wary of a new series that looks at the history of S.H.I.E.L.D. considering the revelations that have come out in SW and just hope that he doesn't end up detracting from a comic I already love.

That said, I don't seem to mind Duane Swierczynski inserting Deadpool into the Messiah Complex event which I enjoyed a heck of a lot at the time. Maybe that has to do with the fact that Paco Medina is handling the art on Deadpool and Cable #25 and I trust him to put an aesthetically pleasing book in my hands. To be honest the Deadpool and Cable partnership is not something I've had much experience of and retro-fitting the history of the event to include them working together to keep Hope safe after her birth seems like a good point to see what I might have been missing out on.

Phew, I can feel all that extra fat sweating away already after these heavy-duty reads ahead but I think to be safe there will have to be one more comic to push me into the 'buff' zone! Thankfully BOOM! push their own debut into the arena this week with Codebreakers #1 which I previewed a few months back. TV has been full of political and police thrillers in recent years and I'm interested to see how this type of modern, technology-led story of FBI analysts trying to uncover what has happened to one of their own team works on the printed page. BOOM! seem to be mentioning Potter's Field and the superb Unthinkable when writing about this comic so I just hope that that doesn't set my expectations too high...