ERIC'S "IT'S TIME TO LAUNCH THE ONES" COMICS NOW! NEWSLETTER VOL. 10 #6 – June 2008

INTRODUCTION
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We're heading into June and all the comic publishers get a little nervous at this time of year. Some years it's worse than others, and although all of the major premiere comics publishers are launching new titles, the award for most #1 comics has got to go to Image Comics. They're launching a massive salvo of numbers ones that will most likely not make it to #2. Read on to see what I'm screaming…

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE
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This month's pick is Ultimate Origins. I'm sorry, but I'm just a sucker for anything Brian Michael Bendis writes. Yes, that's right; I'm Bendis' bitch. Dammit.

APR082246 Ultimate Origins #1 $2.99 retail

** 50%-OFF AT WWW.COMICSNOW.COM **

DECONSTRUCTING COMICS
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This month, Deconstructing Comics is talking Creative Commons Copyrights, and the pros and cons of publishing comics that way. The April 14th podcast features an interview with Paige Braddock, the creator of "Jane's World" and the artist for the upcoming graphic novel, "The Martian Conspiracy." She also discusses her unique and intruding comic-related day job. Future podcasts included planned interviews include review shows of "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier" and some upcoming manga and R. Crumb.

It's a constant, consistent, mad demolition of different comics (and they feature my newsletter!) at Deconstructing Comics (http://www.globalcomics.net). Deconstructing Comics always has a wide variety of comics news as well as their awesome podcasts - http://www.globalcomics.net/podcast. There are MP3s available of all previous podcasts as well as XML feed links if you'd like to have an ongoing subscription!

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:

50%-OFF COMIC DEALS:
APR080251 Chuck #1 $2.99
APR080266 Madame Xanadu #1 $2.99
APR080167 Reign in Hell #1 $3.50
APR080162 Trinity #1 $2.99
APR082266 Eternals #1 $2.99
APR082333 Haunt of Horror Lovecraft #1 $3.99
APR082299 Secret Invasion Runaways Young Avengers #1 $2.99
APR082270 Skaar Son of Hulk #1 $2.99
APR082246 Ultimate Origins #1 $2.99

40%-OFF TRADE PAPERBACK DEALS:
APR080255 Authority Prime TP $17.99
APR080221 Batman and Son TP $14.99
APR080223 Batman Going Sane TP $14.99
APR080228 Countdown Arena TP $17.99
APR080226 GA/BC Road to the Altar TP $19.99
APR082359 Astonishing X-Men Vol 4 $19.99
APR082360 Captain America Vol 1 Death $14.99
APR082364 Eternals by Neil Gaiman TP $24.99
APR082367 House of M Avengers TP $13.99
APR082346 Marvel Zombies 02 HC $19.99
APR082363 New Avengers Vol 7 TP $19.99
APR082371 Zombie Simon Garth TP $13.99

TOP-10 and TOP-100
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Check out Comics NOW! Inc.'s Top-100 on IRX Productions.

Download the May 2008 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. (1) Justice League of America
2. (2) Batman
3. (4) New Avengers
4. (9) Justice Society of America
5. (3) Amazing Spider-Man
6. (6) Detective Comics
7. (-) Superman Batman
8. (-) Secret Invasion
9. (-) Uncanny X-Men
10. (-) Final Crisis

TOP 10 INDEPENDENT COMICS

1. (3) Transformers Movie
2. (-) Angel After the Fall
3. (-) Boys
4. (-) Project Superpowers
5. (8) Red Sonja
6. (-) Rasl
7. (6) GI Joe America's Elite
8. (-) Star Trek New Frontier
9. (-) Futurama Comics
10. (-) Tarot Witch of the Black Rose

THE GOOD STUFF
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DARK HORSE COMICS

INDIANA JONES AND THE TOMB OF THE GODS #1

New adventures with Indiana Jones?! That's what I'm talking about. After landing the action-hero responsible for the majority of the genre, Dark Horse is doing the right thing and properly capitalizing on it; let's see some new action revolving around Indiana Jones. If this is written and drawn correctly, it could be quite the intellectual property for Dark Horse. Okay. Enough pretentiousness; this simply looks cool.
By Rob Williams, Steve Scott, Michael Atiyeh and Tony Harris.
40 pages. Mini-series. $2.99 retail.

CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #0

Conan turns away from his life as a barbarian and heads north to be a Canadian… errm… I mean a Cimmerian. But, can you ever truly escape your destiny? Much like his on-screen counterpart, Arnie, Conan will always "be back."
By Timothy Truman, Tomas Giorello, and Jose Villarubia.
24 pages. Ongoing. $0.99 retail.

DC COMICS

TRINITY #1-4

It's a bit of a reach, but DC Comics is attempting to release a weekly comic
book investigating the relationship between Batman, Wonder Woman, and
Superman. I always feel like Wonder Woman is a bit of an add-on just to
keep the female readers happy; realistically, she's just a female version of
Superman. I mean, we've got Brains vs. Brawn, Dark vs. Light, and then
we've got a girl in a swimsuit with giant ta-tas. I'm not knocking the
giant boobies. We all know that boobies sell comics, I just don't see her
as the third in a DC Comics trinity.
By Kurt Busiek and Fabian Nicieza with a whole bunch of artists.
#1: 40 pages. #2-4: 32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail each.

REIGN IN HELL #1 of 8

"It's an all-out war for control of hell!" That's one… well… hell of a catchphrase. I'm not totally sure what I think about this. Without being set in the Sandman Universe with Neil Gaiman performing scribing duties, it's hard for me to get excited about this kind of story. I mean, at the end of the day, who really cares about what's going on in Hell?
By Keith Giffen, Matt Clark, and Stephen Segovia.
40 pages. 8-issue maxi-series. $3.50 retail.

ROBIN/SPOILER SPECIAL #1

Robin and Spoiler have always been a bit of a team-up mess of sorts. The original Spoiler was a desperate attempt to create Frank Miller's future female Robin in the modern era. It didn't work so they had to kill her off, and bring her back, and kill her off, and bring her back. It's just the way of the world when you're a comic book superhero, y'know? This is a one-shot special promising that Robin will find out the new Spoiler's secret identity.
By Chuck Dixon, Rafael Albuquerque, and Victor Ibanez.
48 pages. One-shot special. $3.99 retail.

CHUCK #1 of 6

If you've been paying attention to television at all, you've got a preview or two of the NBC show Chuck. It's about some guy who works at a giant electronics retailer and accidentally sucks a whole bunch of important spy information into his head. He gets sucked into the world of super-secret spy agents and always gets himself into trouble in one way or another. Usually, TV-shows-turned-comic-books are never a good combination. Maybe this one will be different?
By Peter Johnson, Joel Gomez, and John Stanisci.
32 pages. 6-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

MADAME XANADU #1

I'm having the hardest time following this one. I can't tell if it's based on the Olivia Newton John movie with the same name or not. Madame Xanadu has the power to see the future but is having self-esteem issues. She's a "sylph" which apparently is just a magical being (with big boobies maybe?) who falls in with a medieval kingdom. Naturally, there's lots of magic tricks and a dramatically large amount of betrayal (hey, it's the middle ages, whatcha gonna do?). She runs into some dude who supposedly knows her past and her future (I think he just wants to get into her pants). Therein lies the story.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

IMAGE COMICS

WAR HEROES #1

There's a whole lot of hot air blown around about this title. In fact, Image is doing such a good job talking it up that there's very little about the plotline out there. Apparently, Mark Millar is going "to chart a new course for superhero action in a series that will definitely be one of the most talked about of the year." I guess any press is good press, right? No one ever said that the "talk" was going to be good.
By Mark Millar with Tony Harris.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

AMORY WARS II #1 of 5

Whew. I still can't get on with the space stories. They fill the universe with so many nutty names for people and technology that you lose the average reader (like myself) in the description alone. Here, take this for example: "Coheed and Cambria use their newfound abilities to face off against the awesome power of Admiral Vielar Crom; the Prise make a terrible sacrifice; and Supreme Tri-Mage Wilhelm Ryan reveals the secret behind his plans to power the ultimate weapon." Yikes.
By Claudio Sanchez with Tony Moore.
32 pages. 5-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

CHARLATAN BALL #1

Woof. Another magic-based storyline except this one is supposed to be funny -- a magician named Chuck Amok is trying to pull sleight-of-hand in the "sleaze 'n' peanut circuit." He has a rabbit named Caesar and they both get transported to a reality where there's real magic. Strange, eh?
By Joe Casey and Andy Suriano.
24 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

KILL ALL PARENTS #1

It's a reality where children born with super-powers are ensured to become super-heroes not villains. This seems like a perfectly reasonable plan to me. Of course, any good idea (especially political ones) always have a flip-side that no one foresees…
By Mark Andrew Smith and Marcelo Dichiara.
36 pages. Ongoing series. $3.99 retail.

A RED MASS FOR MARS #1 of 4

"A RED MASS FOR MARS is a story about the death of utopia, the last days of Earth, and the one man who could save us all - but won't." I could talk about how this plotline sounds like 15 other titles that Image has done in the past, but I've actually said that too much, too, so I figured I'd just give the quick synopsis and move on…
By Jonathan Hickman and Ryan Bodenheim.
32 pages. 4-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

VIX #1 of 3

Vix is the girl we all love to hate: smart, pretty, positive. Blech. She'll inevitably date the smug varsity football playing jerk who will treat her like crap and make her bitter against all men until she turns into a lesbian. Oh, and this one is supposedly the savior of our planet…
By Rantz A. Hosely and Matthew Humphries.
32 pages. 3-issue mini-series. $3.50 retail.

MARVEL COMICS

ULTIMATE ORIGINS #1 of 5

I just love the Origins comics. There are these times when the big comic publishers release stuff that I just love and this is one of those times. Bendis is going to show us everything about the Ultimate Origins that we don't already know, and I'm so excited that I might just pee myself.
By Brian Michael Bendis with Butch Guice.
32 pages. 5-issue mini-series. $2.99 retail.

ETERNALS #1

This is Marvel's repeated-storyline concept, too: a powerful race of super humans who disappear from the planet, and then come back to judge humanity. In this story, "the Celestials, a race of cosmic giants, came to Earth and created a race of powerful immortal beings: The Eternals." Naturally, the Eternals disappeared (apparently, they had some important errands to run), and, now thousands of years later, they return to tell us we're all doing a bad job. We always seem to be doing a bad job.
By Charles Knauf and Daniel Knauf.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

SKAAR: SON OF HULK #1

Whew. I'm so tired of the Hulk, World of Hulk, World War Hulk, Hulky Hulkity Hulk, mini-series that have been bombarding us over the last 6 months to a year, I really can't stand to read about another one. On an alien planet, there's a son of Hulk who, for some reason, is named Skaar. I mean, Hulk makes too much sense… would a name like Boulder be too much to ask? Anyway, he's going to fight some people who are doing some junk.
32 pages. Ongoing series. $2.99 retail.

FINAL NOTES
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By the time these comics come out, it will be June. The weather will be
gorgeous. There will be things to do outside. But, some of these titles
are actually intriguing enough that I'm willing to spend a little time
indoors (or under a tree) to read them.

As always, if you want to sell a comic, just remember to put #1 or #0 on it.
Everyone wants to be #1, and if that space is already taken, we'll settle
for #0.

And, as always, thank you for your business!

Eric Jacobson

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