Four Color Comics

It’s a good week for fans of classic comics!

Marvel
The long-delayed Essential Godzilla (originally scheduled to ship two months ago) finally hits the street. This volume reprints the entire run — all twenty-four issues — of this late-seventies Marvel series.

The oft-ridiculous Ant-Man/Giant Man Masterworks vol. 1 is also available. This volume reprints Ant-Man adventures from Tales to Astonish #27, 35-52. Ant-Man is one of those heroes like Aquaman that requires greater suspension of disbelief to appreciate than, say, Superman. Talks to fishes? Right. Talks to insects? Right. Not exactly exciting stuff, but still fun in a goofy way.

DC
This month’s entry into DC’s marvelous black-and-white reprint lineup is Showcase: Superman Family vol. 1, featuring the first twenty-two issues of the long-running Jimmy Olsen series as well as a solo Lois Lane story.

You can get more of the “Superman family” in Superman: The Daily Planet, which collects a variety of stories featuring the newsroom of The Daily Planet, including stalwarts Perry White, Lois Lane, Clark Kent, and Jimmy Olsen.

Other
Dark Horse ships Magnus Robot Fighter vol. 3 this week, reprinting more of Russ Manning’s science fiction adventure stories.

Book of the Week
The Trade Paperback List book-of-the-week is actually a book from last week:

Rocketo is a stunning revelation. Frank Espinosa is the kind of singular talent that usually only comes to comics after a lifetime in other fields (in his case, animation); his style is unique and fully developed. The story, about a cast of interesting characters in a post-apocalyptic world filled with magic and strange creatures, is intriguing, and the world is deeply imagined. Even the format is unique, printed landscape with the binding along the short end.

Based on this high praise, I picked up Rocketo yesterday. (My comic book owner gave me her own copy because she’d already sold out. Yet another reason I love Excalibur.) I’ve only read part of it, and while it’s interesting, I cannot lavish a similar glowing review upon it. The format is not unique (it’s used often in comic strip compilations); the binding cuts off art and text in the gutter; and the writing is poorly edited with baffling subject-verb problems I’ve never seen in a comic before. Look for a full review in the future.