Kick-Ass 3 #1

1. The epic real-world superhero trilogy starts its bloody descent into finality!

2. After Kick-Ass 2 (which is being adapted into the Kick-Ass 2 film sequel in August), Hit-Girl has been arrested and hero vigilante’s are on the run from the law.  It’s up to Kick-Ass and his assembled team of street level heroes to storm the police station and break Mindy out!

3. Original series creators Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. (Avengers vs. X-Men) are back to put the final nail in this series, promising never to make any more Kick-Ass stories again!

4. To commemorate the debauched violence present in this first issue, issue #1 comes with six different, interlocking covers by the likes of Adam Hughes, Pasqual Ferry, Marc Silvestri, Cully Hamner, Adam Kubert, and John Romita, Jr.

Astro City #1

1. After years of delay and false-starts, Astro City is back!  And this time DC‘s adult Vertigo imprint is the publisher!

2. The entire team from the original, award-winning, legendary series is all back!  That’s Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson, and Alex Ross on covers!

3. Astro City is a landmark series in introducing personal, human, naturalistic stories into comic books.  Without it, you can forget about Hawkeye by Matt Fraction, Animal Man by Jeff Lemire, and Invincible by Robert Kirkman.

4. Tired of the same-old-same-old superhero book from the big two?  Enter into an entirely fresh world of original heroes in this ongoing series!

Doctor Atlantis volume 2

1. Few first comic ventures by young artists and writers show true promise.  Ian Alley-Seals and Carl Mefferd, the writer and artist of this series, do!

2. A pulpy adventure offspring of Treasure Island and Doc Savage, teams up a mad pirate doctor, Julius Fowler, and his native assistant, Chosot, against cannibals, the elements, and prehistoric sea creatures!

3. Alley-Seals and Mefferd work together like two veterans, balancing dialog and visuals for a minimalist tale that gets quite when it needs too.  The two also understand how to construct mysteries out of character, as the first volume kept its readers guessing at the sanity of its two leads.

4. Missed volume one?  Don’t worry, volume two will drop you into the story with all you need to know!

Green Lantern #21

1. Geoff Johns just ended his nearly decade-long run on Green Lanter, which means many people will react by dropping this series.  That would be the wrong choice!

2. Robert Vendetti, the new series writer, may not have the name that Johns does, but he’s proven himself a skilled, journeyman writer by dragging Demon Knights out of the dregs and creating the award-winning graphic novel, The Surrogates.

3. After ten years of continuous story, Green Lantern is at a fresh starting point, making it easier than ever for new readers to break into the rich cosmic corner of the DC Universe.

4. Expect the series to return to its space cop roots, meaning simpler story arcs, broader action, and a stricter focus on Hal Jordan!

 

‘Tis the season for Seasons: Enchanted Kingdom, the first Seasons expansion for…uh, Seasons.

Including sixty new power and enchantment cards as well as twenty-four special tokens to add to the base game.  And, if you were keen eyed, you notice on the game board for the base game comes pre-built to hold these new pieces.

‘Tis the season, indeed!

Like Saw blended with Silent Hill dosed with a pinch of Arkham Asylum, Sanitarium (which just came back in stock) is for the horror fans among you.  Players deal out a number of cards based on the amount of players and then use these cards to construct a mad house.  How they got there and what is lurking within its walls is unknown.  Collect an assigned amount of items to escape, but do so before the deck runs out and you’re trapped in the Sanitarium forever!

Adding to the extensive library of Ultimate collections, Pathfinder released Ultimate Campaign this week along with the Fey Revisited Campaign Setting booklet.  Within the pages of Ultimate Campaign are contain (as stated by Paizo, themselves):

-A detailed guide to generating character backstories, including a new system for random character generation and traits and drawbacks to meld your background with your statistics.
-Story feats that increase in power as you achieve key goals, making quests and crusades more than just flavor!
-A complete downtime rules system to flesh out those parts of a PC’s life that take place between adventures, such as running a business, gaining power and influence in a community, or starting a magical academy.
-New rules for retraining and switching classes; honor, reputation, and fame; young characters; investment; magic item creation; and other key adventuring topics.
-Rules for building up a kingdom, including construction and technological advancements, governing your people, and more.
-Mass combat rules to help you lead clashing armies and conduct epic battles in a fun and efficient manner—without losing sight of the PCs themselves.

As for Fey Revisited, it holds the secrets to:

-Dryads, guardians of the forest who ensnare mortals’ minds for their own goals of preservation.
-Leprechauns, folkloric pranksters rumored to hide great riches available to those who find their stash.
-Norns, the powerful beings said to pull at the threads of fate.
-Nymphs, stunningly beautiful fey who strike blind those who peer upon them.
-Redcaps, blasphemous and sadistic murderers known for dipping their woolly caps into the blood of their victims.
-Satyrs, creatures of whimsy and strength who use their musical pipes to haunt and bewilder.
-Other capricious creatures, such as a handful of types of pesky gremlins, terrifying nuckelavees, elusive rusalkas, and playful and quirky sprites.

Following on the steel, blood-stained heels of Games Workshop‘s other recent faction rereleases is the updated Eldar army.  Going on sale tomorrow, the revised and brand new Eldar Codex along with the Battleforce, Wraithguard, Hemlock Wraithfighter, Wraithknight, Farseer blister, and Eldar psychic power cards.  Featured below is the Hemlock Wraithfighter flyer!

 

Facebook and iTunes have the market cornered on useless updates, so we’re going to try something different here and update the format for a reason.  Tonight we’re going to try out a new, more concise format for Comic List Highlights, one we intend to call 4 x 4.  It’s simple, four facts about four new comics or trade paperbacks coming out the next Wednesday.  Short.  Sweet.  Less of an eyesore.

Adventures of Superman #1

1. Ignore the hubbub about Orson Scott Card writing this book, because he’s been replaced on issue one by some of DC‘s best artists and writers, including Jeff Parker, Jeff Lemire, Riley Rossmo, and Chris Samnee.

2. Samnee’s Golden Age-esque style has been put to great use on Daredevil and The Rocketeer lately, and now does the same for Superman.

3. Contrasting Samnee’s style, Riley Rossmo’s (Bedlam, Debris, Cowboy Ninja Viking) sketchy style is exemplifies the high contrast of visual styles represented in this issue.

4. This anthology brings the baddies with stories about Lex Luthor, Bizzaro, and Zod.  Oh, and maybe some Superman, too.

Thor, God of Thunder v.1 HC

1. Kansas City native Jason Aaron has been weaving a Thor yarn for the ages, destined to become a modern classic.

2. Split across three time periods, God of Thunder stars three incarnations of Thor, past, present, and arm-less, one-eyed, Odin-like future.

3. Esad Ribic’s painterly style lends an epic, tapestry-like quality to the series that enhances its mythic tone.

4. Thor.  Loves.  Ale.

X-Men #1

1. Forget testosterone, it’s all estrogen all the time thanks to the all female cast of X-Men #1.

2. Brian Wood has dabbled with the X-Men in the past on Ultimate Comics X-Men and the previous X-Men series, but now gets the keys to the kingdom in this Marvel NOW! series.

3. Olivier Coipel’s (House of M) slick, appealing style works equally well for dialog and action scenes, which, the last time I checked, are the X-Men’s bread and butter.

4. Milo Manara and Terry Dodson both have contributed variant covers for the first issue!

 

The Wake #1

1. Current writer of Batman and Superman Unchained, Scott Snyder, returns to his horror roots with the Vertigo series, The Wake.

2. In previous horror series Severed and American Vampire Snyder showed his vast talent for pacing scares on the comic page, not an easy task.

3. Sean Murphy of Joe the Barbarian and Punk Rock Jesus joins Snyder to tell this confined thriller which follows a marine biologist as she ventures into the icy waters of the Arctic Circle to explore a sunken oil rig…and what resides there.

4. Fans of isolated suspense movies like The Thing and Alien need to check The Wake #1 out!

 

Multiple centuries in the future, the Sedition Wars rage on.

In the Battle for Alabaster, two players compete in a head-to-head miniature game unlike any other.  Designed to be an extremely fast-paced system for players who wish to avoid hour long miniature battles, Sedition Wars comes with all the essential miniatures for two armies.  An easy to learn rule system involving one-roll, reactive gameplay, Sedition Wars is a horror sci-fi miniature game for all ages.

Roses are red, violets are blue, rhymes are hard…lets talk about Cyrano.

Based on the real life Cyrano de Bergerac, this card based game has players creating sweet poetic serenades to woo the local females.  Each round begins with the placement of a theme card, deciding the tone and focus of the poem, as well as two rhyme cards.  Players then compete to create four line poems, using the communal rhyme cards to complete lines.  A secret voting round then decides the point payout based on how people voted.  So start thinking of those rhyming couplets.  Maybe even in iambic pentameter.

Just when you thought all the zombies had holes blown in their heads and tire treads over their chests, City of Horror rears its head.

Rule one of the zombie apocalypse is not in fact cardio, like Zombieland would have you believe, but watch your back.  The reason this is so important to City of Horrors is that players have incentive to screw over their opponents.  Each player controls various human characters, sending them around the board to complete necessary survival actions.  But beware zombies who are ready to storm the buildings at any time and people who are ready to push you in front of them to save their own hide.  A cutthroat game of survival, City of Horror is the newest zombie adventure on the block.

Every good RPG system requires a GM’s toolkit nowadays, so the Warmachine RPG, Iron Kingdoms, receives one this weekend.  Coming with a game screen, ten initiative cards, ten life spiral cards, an encounter sheet, and a character sheet, this toolkit is essential for any self-respecting game master.

The force is strong with the newest Star Wars LCG Force Pack, A Dark Time introduces sixty new cards into the game, many featuring the evils of the Sith and the Empire.

 

 

Image Comics has the market cornered on genre-based series that stray far away from the capes-and-cowls dynamic.  But, as they’ve proven with Invincible, when Image wants to do a superhero book, they do it well.  Hence, The Bounce, a new ongoing superhero series unlike any other from Joe Casey.  Casey has made his name on creating original properties like Ben 10 and Generator Rex for Cartoon Network, but recently also made a striking return to the world of comics with Sex.  Now, Casey brings his unusual touch to a hero who’s smart, fast, and a rebel, The Bounce, along with a rogues gallery of twisted unique villains, as well.  

Tank Girl is back, baby!

Always a notable occasion when a Tank Girl comic shows up, Titan Comics, in its recent relaunching of classic series, is releasing Solid State Tank Girl this Wednesday.  Written by series creator Alan Martin, Solid State Tank Girl brings back the gang of Tank Girl, Jet Girl, Booga, and Barney.  This time, in the act of trying to save a local record store, the gang unleashes evil alternate reality versions of themselves which they must defeat to live!

Following up Dark Horse‘s Last of Us miniseries, Akaneiro is another video game spinoff series created and written by the mind behind the game, American McGee.  A sci-fi retelling of the classic Red Riding Hood fairy tale, Akaneiro, is a Japanese-infused tale of violent demon fighting in a fantasy world.  Elegantly designed characters and world brim over the pages of this miniseries that is a must for die-hard gamers!

If you’ve got the green, they’ve got the team.

Following hot on the heels of Gail Simone’s wonderful first issue of The Movement, Green Team #1 is the companion series featuring the upper-class wunderkinds of the DC Universe.  A group of billionaire teens set out to spend their money to become super powered jerks, dealing with the limelight of celebrity and the burden of inhuman abilities.  Written by Art Baltazar and Franco (Tiny Titans, Superman Family Adventures), this series marks their first venture into adult side of the DC Universe.  Considering their talent for fun, traditional comic storytelling, this series should be the newest underdog hit for DC.

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