io9
He's a giant robot made out of robotic lions! He's the evil crazed clown who stars in this summer's The Dark Knight! And together, Voltron and the Joker are teaming up to fight cri - Wait, wait. I'm sorry. I mean, "Together, Voltron and the Joker are teaming up to bring excitement to your local comic book store this Wednesday!" Yeah, I know it doesn't have the same ring to it, but it doesn't mean you won't want to grab two new books this week at your local Android's Dungeon. Find out more about them, and the week's other picks, under the jump.
Devil's Due is a publisher that doesn't get the most play here on io9, but its 304-page Voltron: Defender of the Universe Hardcover Omnibus may change that. Collecting the complete Voltron series — including the never-published final 12th issue - this fairly-weighty hardcover has work by 52 and Flash's Mark Waid, Ultimate Spider-Man's Mark Brooks, Dan Jolley, Kaare Andrews (the man who gave the world Spider-Man's radioactive spunk, about which more below), and many, many more, and may be the nostalgia purchase of choice for many of you this week.
For those of you who have more of a Batman fetish, this week also sees the re-release of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's "seminal" The Killing Joke, in a newly recolored, hardcover format. If a beautifully-illustrated comic that cripples one of DC's most well-known superheroines in an offhanded manner and then lets you see her breasts later (We'll see if that detail makes it into the remastered version) isn't enough to entice you to spend $17.99 alone, then I may as well mention that the new hardback also includes a short back-up story written and illustrated by Bolland alone. If you'd rather have more kid-friendly DC superhero fare, you might want to try the first issue of Super Friends, a new series aimed at the under-10s, where superdeformed versions of the Justice League show that — hey! — friendship may be the greatest superpower of all. Or, if you don't want to patronize your kids, give them the first collection of cartoon tie-in Legion of Super-Heroes In The 31st Century instead.
Marvel is having a bit of an off-week, by way of comparison. People who want to see uncomfortably realistic older versions of favorite characters have an unexpected choice, however. On the one hand, there's the Earth X Trilogy Companion (a collection of sketches and rarely-seen work relating to Alex Ross's future Marvel universe). On the other, there's the paperback version of Kaare Andrews' Spider-Man: Reign, which rewrites Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns into a Spider-Man story most notable for including the fact that Spider-Man killed off his wife by having sex with her and poisoning her with his radioactive sperm.
No, seriously.
Yes, yes, I know. There's nowhere to go from there. That's why I'm telling you that that stroke of "genius" (or should that be "stroke" of genius?), along with everything else shipping this week, can be found here, and that you can find out where your nearest comic book store may be by clicking here.
Now, go and wash your mind out to stop thinking about radioactive spider sperm. You know you want to.
Comments
I don't think I can ever wash my mind out to stop thinking about it. Between Spidey's "hot" spunk and Superman's faster than a speeding bullet super sperm (see Larry Niven's famous essay on this point), those ideas have left me with a Charles Burns-like paranoia about contact with superbeings' bodily secretions.
I'm not going to jump right out and buy a new copy of The Killing Joke. I have an original and it suits me just fine. It was perhaps one of the best Batman stories of all time, and the crippling of Barbara Gordon was certainly the kind of shock we hadn't seen much from DC at that point -- of course nowadays I think they overdo it, but go figure.
@Mrreader: Ah yes, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex." I traumatized a good half dozen of my friends in junior high school by reading that aloud on the bus.
Killing Joke-- fantastic classic. This was published -how long ago? 15, 17 years back?
I've always loved The Killing Joke, although I know Moore disparages it in retrospect and women hate it for the cavalier abuse of Barbara Gordon. The art is one reason, the real but hostile sympathy between the Bat and the Joker, unfortunately giving rise to dozens of lesser writers' attempts to do the same thing, another.
Want to? Perhaps, but more importantly, I NEED to. 'Scuse me for a moment...
what about the HACK/SLASH omnibus comin' out?
'bout as sci fi as Killing Joke is...
It's about time there was a re-release of The Killing Joke. Finding an original copy is something I've never been able to do.
I just got excited about the news of re-releasing The Killing Joke, but I was immediately brought down when I read that it was getting a color re-do. Why is this necessary? I've been looking at the Doctor Who classics issues that have been coming out, and they have the same treatment. I hope I'm not alone, but it looks horrible! I can't stand the over worked-looking digital color over the old flat toned color.
Plus it's like the people handling the re-issue are picking and choosing what's worthy of salvaging from old comics when putting them out. No one would ever think of re-drawing Bolland's art, but Higgins' work immediately gets obliterated in favor of 'feeling fresh?' Do they think we won't buy something because it looks dated? I remember reading the Killing Joke years ago, and I thought the artwork looked amazing, color and all. I have little to no confidence that they'll do a better job than Higgins, or any color artist before the digital age for that matter.
Radioactive sperm a. wouldn't be viable, and b. wouldn't be viable. Also, at most it may give her cervical cancer, but most likely he wouldn't have any sperm to ejaculate in the first place.
OK, it seems I am once again the outside man. I REALLY enjoyed Spider-Man Reign. Everyone points out the cancer thing, which was a very small part of the story, and they all compare it to Darknight Returns. Yes, it's about an older Peter Parker. That is about the only thing that is similar to Frank Millers work if you actually have read the two stories. The world is a totally different place.
How Parker is living his life is the opposite of Wayne. The government is a whole different beast. I would compare it more to Batman Year 100 (which I hated) if I had to compare the universe to a Batman story.
If you are a fan of great art, and interesting characters (J.J. stole the story for me), Reign is worth checking out. Hell, download the cbr and see. Then go buy the book. There is no reason to judge a book by the loudest commenters on the internet when you can just go check it out in store, or "try before you buy" online. And yes, go buy it if you like it. It's a small industry, so every sale counts.
That Voltron picture just made me squeal like a little girl.
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