ERIC'S "IT'S DEJA-VU ALL OVER AGAIN" NEWSLETTER VOL. 8 #7 - July 2006

INTRODUCTION
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What a month! Wow, there's just tons of stuff coming out this month and, once again, as usual, some of it is actually good. Unfortunately, a lot of the new titles kinda remind me of elementary school cafeteria food --- it all looks a little too familiar to be called fresh and original. Ah, oh well, the best thing to do now is to weed through it and see what we can look forward to for the rokkin' (read on to understand the reference... it's sad) month of July.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE
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I have to say the comic I'm most excited about is Justice League of America #0 (or #1, depending where you look). As much as I'm going to totally make fun of DC for releasing yet ANOTHER #0 comic (it HAS been eight years since the last run of zero comics during the Zero Hour series, but I'm not letting this slide), I have to admit that I'm excited about seeing what's going to happen to the JLA after the absolutely horrendous events that happened during the Infinite Crisis.

MAY060172 Justice League of America #0 $2.99 retail.
*** 50%-OFF AT WWW.COMICSNOW.COM ***

HUGE DISCOUNTS AT WWW.COMICSNOW.COM
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Aside from always offering 35% off the cover price of monthly comics with no minimum to buy, each month Comics NOW offers incredible deals on some of the newest titles out there. Just point your browser to http://www.comicsnow.com to order any of these titles below at huge discounts or any other comic at least 35% off the cover price.

Here are this month's deals:

MAY060227 JACK OF FABLES #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY060172 JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY060178 OMAC #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY060188 UNCLE SAM & FREEDOM FIGHTERS #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY060233 EXTERMINATORS TP #1 40%-OFF $9.99
MAY060164 GREEN ARROW HEADING INTO LIGHT 40%-OFF $12.99
MAY060176 JUSTICE SOCIETY VOL 1 TP 40%-OFF $14.99
MAY061954 BEYOND #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY061962 CIVIL WAR X-MEN #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY061963 CIVIL WAR YOUNG AVENGERS & RUNAWAYS #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY061973 GHOST RIDER #1 50%-OFF $2.99
MAY062037 ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP VOL 2 TP 40%-OFF $16.99
MAY062026 NEW AVENGERS VOL 2 SENTRY TP 40%-OFF $14.99
MAY062035 SUPREME POWER HYPERION TP 40%-OFF $14.99

THE BIZ
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IT'S A MONTH OF THREES IN THE MOVIE INDUSTRY

Of course, there's only two 3's, but that's what makes life interesting, right? At any rate, in May, we'll see the release of both Mission Impossible 3 and X-Men 3. Of course, MI3 has already been released to a somewhat dismal earning of "only" $40 million in its opening weekend. This is such a low number that the movie industry is terrified about the rest of the summer blockbusters not doing well, either. I'm sure X-Men 3 will turn it around.

J. SCOTT CAMPBELL AND JEPH LOEB DO SPIDER-MAN

Really, can you resist this combination? When Campbell actually meets deadlines, his art is some of the most dead-gorgeous stuff I've ever seen. But, it's serious, in 2007, Loeb and Campbell will be releasing an all-new Spidey title and I'm so excited, I've almost peed myself several times just writing this paragraph.

TOP-10 and TOP-100
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Check out Comics NOW! Inc.'s Top-100 on IRX Productions. Download the June 2006 Top-100 PDF file (it's 8KB!).

It's Comics NOW!'s very own Top-10 and Top-100 lists. This list is based on the internal sales quantities of the titles with Premiere being the big guns who pay the extra bucks to be listed first in the ordering system: Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, Image Comics, and Marvel Comics. The Independent list is everyone else, all those pea-shooters who no one really pays attention to... or do they?

Here's an example of how to read the format:

1. (3) The Amazing Eric Comic

"1." - the place of the title in the list this month

"(3)" - where the title was LAST month ("-" if it wasn't)

the title - this one should be pretty obvious

TOP 10 PREMIERE COMICS

1. (2) New Avengers
2. (4) Amazing Spider-Man
3. (3) Batman
4. (-) Astonishing X-Men
5. (-) All Star Batman & Robin
6. (1) Superman Batman
7. (8) Civil War
8. (-) Flash Fastest Man Alive
9. (-) Justice
10. (6) Detective Comics

TOP 10 INDEPENDENT COMICS

1. (1) Transformers Infiltration
2. (-) Transformers Evolutions
3. (-) Fallen Angel
4. (5) Red Sonja
5. (6) Transformers Generations
6. (-) GI Joe vs. Transformers
7. (8) GI Joe America's Elite
8. (-) Soulfire Chaos Reign
9. (-) GI Joe Declassified Manapul
10. (-) Spike vs. Dracula

THE GOOD STUFF
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DARK HORSE COMICS

THE ESCAPISTS #1 of 6

Errrm.... this is a weird one. Okay, so there's this guy named Max who finds a stash of his Dad's "Escapist" comics and falls in love with the character, wanting to recreate him in the present day. He lives in Cleveland. He's trying to find an artist to help him create the comic. And... we're off to the races...
By Brian Vaughan, Philip Bond and Eduardo Barreto.
32 pages. 6-issue mini-series. $1.00 retail.

DC COMICS

THE ALL-NEW ATOM #1

The Atom returns... not that we cared at all. Not that anyone cared at all. I guess that's why DC's trying to bring him back to life, eh? Anyway, Ryan Choi is a professor filling the empty slot that Ray Palmer left after he disappeared and ends up replacing Palmer for superhero duty, too. Neato!
By Gail Simone, John Byrne and Trevor Scott.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #0

Seriously? Are we doing this again?! Really? 8 years and 7 issues ago I started writing this newsletter with issue #0, to make fun of what had gone on in the summer of 1998 with DC Comics releasing a whole bunch of #0 comics, but, here we are, repeating history. It's deja vu all over again... except now we're Post-Infinite-Crisis; the big variable of difference.
By Various.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

THE NEXT #1 of 6

The Next is another group of superheroes. I believe this is a remake of a comic from years ago with the same name, but I'm not totally sure. Anyway, it's a group of superheroes from another dimension who come to ours and inadvertently bring a new supervillain (and a whole bunch of wacky chaos) with them.
By Tad Williams, Dietrich Smith, and Walden Wong.
32 pages. 6-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

OMAC #1 of 8

Okay, so at the end of Infinite Crisis, all of the OMAC army gets destroyed. Except now, there's one left over. No one knows who it is or who's controlling it. [Dramatic chord here]
By Bruce Jones and Renato Guedes.
32 pages. 8-issue maxi-series. $2.99 retail.

UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS #1 of 8

It's a remake of the original Freedom Fighters with all-new, well, at least all-remade characters from the original. The Freedom Fighters are the country's first line of defense against super-powered threats and terrorists. Woo-hoo!
By Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti with Daniel Acuna.
32 pages. 8-issue maxi-series. $2.99 retail.

BATTLER BRITTON #1 of 5

I find this kind of series so incredibly boring that I have a hard time even writing about it, but, anyway, it's a WW2 comic about this pilot named "Battler" Britton and his experiences with the RAF.
By Garth Ennis, Colin Wilson, and Garry Leach.
32 pages. 5-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

A MAN CALLED KEV #1 of 5

Kev is a wetworks assassin kinda guy and he just killed his boss in a very gruesome way so his home country of the United Kingdom punted his ass and told him if he ever came back, he'd be killed. The problem is Kev doesn't know how to do anything else but kill people.... guess it's a good thing his past isn't giving him any time to figure out what to do with his life.
By Garth Ennis, Carlos Ezquerra, and Glenn Fabry.
32 pages. 5-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

ROKKIN #1

Get the pun? Rokkin? Like rockin'? Sigh. At any rate, it's a timeless (read: boring) story of good versus of evil and of average men and women rising up to... BLAAARGGH. Excuse me, I'll just clean that up in a minute. Anyway, it's all fantasy and stuff you've heard before but this time from the makers of Danger Girl, so it has a slim chance in Hell of being good instead of no chance at all.
By Andy Hartnell, Nick Bradshaw, and Jim Charalampidis.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

JACK OF FABLES #1

Jack from the fabled Fables comic gets his own Fable comic. Neat, huh? I'm pretty excited. Jack steals money from the Fables, again, and is starting his madness yet again.
By Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Tony Akins, and Andrew Pepoy.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

IMAGE COMICS

ELEPHANTMEN #1

No kidding, this is exactly what you think it is. Big men who look like elephants walking around in society.
By Richard Starkings.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

DEATH JR. #1 of 3

Here we go again, comics imitating video games imitating comics. Death, Jr., a fairly mediocre game on the Sony PSP now enters its own realm of comic book goodness... again.
By Gary Whitta, Ted Naifeh, and Dan Brereton.
48 pages. 3-issue mini-series. $4.99 retail.

OCCULT CRIMES TASKFORCE #1 of 4

NYPD detective Sophia Otis discovers a messy crime scene and is quickly disregarded by the Occult Crimes Taskforce (as if they really have these). The OCT is trained in black arts and equipped with mystical weaponry. Really. And now Sophia has to help them stop a killer.
By David Atchison, Rosario Dawson, and Tony Shasteen.
36 pages. 4-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

TASK FORCE ONE #1

In the future, the U.S. Government researched all of this high-tech weaponry and thought that it was worthless, so they disposed of it. Well, nothing stays buried for long.
By Jeffery Stevenson, Jim Valentino, and Carlos Rodriguez.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $3.50 retail.

MARVEL COMICS

BEYOND #1 of 6

Nine power super-beings are collected together and are taken to Battleworld... where, well, deadly things happen involving battles (smartly named, eh?) The nine super-beings are: Spider-Man, Gravity, Venom, Henry Pym, the Wasp, Medusa, Kraven, Firebird, and the Hood. Yeah, I don't recognize some of those names, either.
By Dwayne McDuffie and Scott Kolins.
32 pages. 6-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

CIVIL WAR: X-MEN #1 of 4

Okay, so the X-Men are all confused because of the Civil War madness that's going on all around them and can't figure out what to do. Do they fight? Do they curl up and die? Do they admit defeat? Do they call it a night off and go out dancing?
By David Hine, Yanick Paquette, and Juan Doe.
32 pages. 4-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

CIVIL WAR: YOUNG AVENGERS & RUNAWAYS #1 of 4

What will happen to the young Marvel teams. The Runaways find themselves in a big mess, so bad, in fact, that when the Young Avengers come to their aid, they don't believe it.
By Zeb Wellis, Stefano Caselli, and Jim Cheung.
32 pages. 4-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

GHOST RIDER #1

Of course you heard it from me first. All it would take was a halfway-decent mini-series to bring Ghost Rider back from the dead and make it into its own ongoing series. Who knows if it'll be any good without Garth Ennis helming it, though.
By Daniel Way, Mark Texeira, and Javier Saltares.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

FINAL NOTES
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An absolute butt-ton of new comics are coming out this month and that's great news. It's always good to see that the comic industry's doing better. Now, if we can just get them to be a teeny-tiny bit more original, life will be all good!

As always, if you feel like you've seen or read something before, then ... if you feel like you've seen or read something before, then... if you feel like you've seen or read something before... then just read it again... just like some of the new titles this month hope you will!

And, as always, thank you for your business!

Eric Jacobson