3/12/2008

I Am Worthless

*Now, how the hell did I miss the revelation (back in January!) of VIZ's next Kazuo Umezu project, their follow up The Drifting Classroom? It's a two-volume collection of Umezu's Cat Eyed Boy, a late-'60s suite of stories about a monster child that ruins the wicked. Same Hat also has the cover art; looks like both books will be extra-chunky (around 500 pages each) and cost $24.99 a pop. Starts in June, keeping with VIZ' current 'every two months' Umezu pace...

*Bonus Miniature Non-Review Discussion Paragraph Dept: Oh man, they've turned The Punisher MAX into Cerebus! By which I mean there's a prose story written by an in-comic character providing a running counterpoint to the sequential action, a technique I always mentally associate with Dave Sim, not that the Punisher and Nick Fury are discussing the Torah at length, although they still might. And I see Ennis is going whole-hog with the politics for his grand finale -- note the focus on Vietnam in the past (prose) and Iraq in the present (comics) -- in addition to wheeling out all sorts of odds-and-ends from prior storylines, from that dude Frank left to freeze in Russia to... well, the entire finale of Born. I also like how there's still jokes. Nick Fury being tossed out a background window after calling a group of local men faggots...