Reviewing the Mail: Week of 5/3

The gods of publicity are turning their back on me, I know it. Only two things arrived this week, so I'll have to stick some things I bought onto the end to bulk this out. But, first, here's what those few wonderful publicists did send to me this week:

From Del Rey Manga, the first volume of a new series called Toto! by Yuko Osada. I have no idea if "Toto" is the name of the dog -- though that's quite possible -- but the boy whose shoulder he's on is named Kakashi. From a very, very cursory poke through the pages, I think I can detect the influence of both Masashi (Naruto) Kishimoto and Hayao (Princess Mononoke) Miyazaki, but I could simply be fixated on airships and the main character's goggles. This will be published on May 13th.

A new series of Dungeon books is starting from NBM, under the umbrella title "Monstres" and featuring stories written by series creators Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim but illustrated by other French comics artists. Volume 1: The Crying Giant has two stories: one illustrated by Jean-Cristophe Menu, head of the comics publisher L'Association; and one illustrated by an artist known as Mazan. (The Crying Giant also has a useful graphic to show how all of the various Dungeon series are connected -- and that's something I've been wondering myself.) The Crying Giant will be published in June.

And then here are some of the things that I picked up on trips to comic shops this week. (It was Free Comic Book day on Saturday, which I see I neglected to mention ahead of time.) I paid my own money for them, so no publicists will get their wings if I review them:

Path of the Assassin Volume 10: Battle for Power Part 2 from Dark Horse sees Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima adding another three hundred-odd pages to their long, engrossing sagas of samurai battles in pre-modern Japan. At least, I think it does: I haven't actually opened the shrink-wrap yet.

Fantagraphics has published the latest book in their Complete Peanuts series, including all of the strips from 1967 and 1968, wrapped up in an elegant design from Seth. We all know that this is one of the very few indispensable comics projects currently being published, right?

I also got the next (for me) collection of the Brian Michael Bendis/Mike Avon Oeming Powers comic -- the one about cops in a world of superheroes. It was volume 9, Psychotic, and I see that, with this, I'm only two books behind. I expect more mayhem and unfinished sentences, and probably creeping superheroism. (And I will say that reading these does not make we want to start picking up Bendis's mainstream superheroes. Of course, I have minimal interest in anybody's mainstream superheroes, so that doesn't mean much.)

The big collection of Matt Wagner's two Batman Grendel stories finally came out, so I got that as well. Though I do wish Wagner would actually move forward with something new -- the third Mage series, stories about a Grendel who isn't that psychotic asshole Hunter Rose, anything but more Batcrap. Though I guess Batcrap generally pays better than creator-owned stuff, and I don't begrudge Wagner making a living. He's just too good to be wasting his time doing Year 1.5 bullshit all the time. (Long-winded complaint about corporate-owned long-underwear characters deleted here.) I will note that this was solicited as Batman/Grendel -- note well that particular bit of punctuation -- and that the cover on BN.com calls it Batman Vs. Grendel, but the book itself refuses all punctuation or explanation to call itself merely Batman Grendel, as if it were a law firm.

The next collection of the Hellboy sidebar series B.P.R.D. follows only a couple of months after the last one, which is weird. Still, I saw Killing Ground (as usual, written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and John Arcudi and illustrated by Guy Davis), and I grabbed it.

On the other side, there's the long-delayed graphic novel The Facts In The Case Of The Departure Of Miss Finch, illustrated by Michael Zulli from Neil Gaiman's original short story. The book doesn't say, exactly, who adapted the story into a comics script, which my cynicism takes as an indication that it was Zulli -- Dark Horse would probably have made it clear if Gaiman had done a new script.

And last for this week is The Education of Hopey Glass, the newest collection of the Jaime Hernandez half of Love & Rockets.