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Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. Vol. 2 ­— I Kick Your Face TPB (Marvel)

Explosions! Robots! Fights! More Explosions! Broccoli! Nextwave has it all! A group of obscure Marvel characters, the Nextwave team was created by Warren Ellis (Thunderbolts, The Authority) to showcase the superficiality of the super hero genre. A former Captain Marvel, a mutant, a monster hunter, a robot, and Captain #### (a name so bad Captain America washed the Captain’s mouth out with soap) go up against parodies of Marvel characters, like the giant dragon Fin Fang Foom and Dirk Anger, a Nick Fury character in charge of the Highest Anti-Terrorist Effort (H.A.T.E.). While Marvel contends that Nextwave does not fall into the mainstream Marvel continuity, fan praise has canonized the series into the regular universe. While Ellis intended the series only to be 12 issues (this trade paperback collected the last six issues), low comic sales have halted the series for now, but a limited series is on the horizon.

Amazing Spider-man #546 (Marvel)

As I discussed online, Spider-man made a deal with a devil to save Aunt May’s life after a sniper’s bullet put her into a coma. Peter Parker and his wife Mary Jane had to trade their marriage in exchange for Aunt May’s health. This devil

took the reality of their marriage and restructured the timeline so that Mary Jane and Spider-man never had a relationship. This issue is the first exploring this “Brand New Day” and Spidey’s new life will unfold with three issues every month!

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier HC (DC/Wildstorm)

After a dozen of problems that stalled its release, the third installment of the revolutionary series was released recently. Alan Moore (Watchmen, V For Vendetta) takes the comic book philosophy of characters existing in a shared universe and applied it to literature and fiction. Characters that were made by different authors in different time periods, like Prospero from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Mina Harker from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, interact in this universe — the human collective consciousness. Filled with allusions to hundreds of books, comics and movies, League reminds readers what forms of fantasy have existed before them and how everything, popular or not, has affected us as a culture. This book shows Allan Quatermain (King Solomon’s Mines) and Mina in futuristic ’50s Britain trying to uncover the various histories of the League, found in the Black Dossier which details the Leagues throughout time and their interactions with literary characters, like those created by Jack Kerouac, Jonathan Swift, and H.P. Lovecraft. Pursued by a certain Mr. Bond, Allan and Mina discover the underbelly of British government and seek out the Blazing World, an otherworldly realm where legends and stories converge. The League will return in 2009 with a series of graphic novels published by Top Shelf Productions and lead the League into the new millennium.

Cape & Cowl

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t shamelessly plug my new comic strip, which can be read every weekday in the Daily Illini. Join Cape and Cowl in their comic misadventures against the backdrop of Champaign-Urbana!