For those scared of books without pictures, we'll start with what else is available this week. Boom! Studios launches a new series based on Pixar's The Incredibles and a new series called Kill Audio that really has to be seen to be believed; it's a horror/sci-fi comic about a little indestructible man trying to destroy music? Maybe? You'll know what I mean when you take a look at this:

DC gets into the spirit of the season by putting out the first issue of a bi-weekly horror-centric Batman series, Batman: The Unseen, for Hallowe'en, and World War Z's Max Brooks keeps everything horrific with his new graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.

Marvel, meanwhile, goes entirely in the other direction, with the first issue of X-Babies. Or if you'd rather read more mature mutants, there's also the first collection of the 1990s retro guilty pleasure X-Men Forever and the first issue of the sure-to-be-fun X-Men Vs. Agents Of Atlas.

Non-X-Book launches from the publisher also include the collections of Dark Reign: Fantastic Four (Reed Richards comes to terms with the newly-grim outlook of the Marvel Universe) and Beta Ray Bill: Godhunter (Horse-headed alien version of Thor against planet-eater Galactus), as well as first issues of Doctor Voodoo: Avenger Of The Supernatural and Spider-Man 1602, which really does offer a 17th century version of Peter Parker.

Book of the week, though, is a real, honest-to-goodness book: Peter & Max: A Fables Novel is, as the title suggests, the first prose novel to spin out of the Vertigo series Fables. Written by that series' creator and writer, Bill Willingham, it's everything a fan of the series could want - and everything a non-fan could need to get initiated. We'll have a review later this week, but for now, know that it's something you should be adding to your shopping list.

That list, as usual, can be built by visiting this list of everything being released to comic stores by Diamond Distributors tomorrow, and as ever, you can find your nearest comic store by visiting the Comic Shop Locator Service. As for my recommending a non-comic book in a comic book column...? I promise I'll try to do better next week... but you should take a look at Peter & Max nonetheless.

Marvel have announced that they're bringing back one-time joke characters the X-Babies for a new four issue series later this year. Surprisingly, this won't be the first time that the characters - clones of the one-time de-aged versions of the original X-Men, created to star on an alternate dimension reality show (Confusing, I know) - have had their own comic book; they'd previously headlined 1998's X-Babies: Murderama and 2000's X-Babies: Reborn. So what makes this third try so different? As writer Gregg Schigiel explains, media satire:

The new programmers have a very specific vision for what should air-[they are] more interested in 'safe, pleasant, cute, educational and moral-heavy' programming... This is distinctly different than the rock 'em-sock 'em, fight-heavy stuff more common in classic super hero stories. Obviously, the X-Babies-who've been replaced by kinder, gentler, cuter versions of themselves-think that's dumb.

The new series also offers nostalgia for the longterm fanboy, as the replacements for the X-Babies turns out to be revived characters from Marvel's 1980s kids line, Star Comics. Schigiel:

What's cool about it, to me, was that the story idea came first... And then came the 'holy moley' moment where I realized there was this untapped reservoir of characters in Marvel's publishing history that fit the story perfectly. You know, you kind of search the landscape for unnoticed or unused characters, which can be tough these days. Kind of made me glad to be old enough to remember these guys.

As someone who suffered through the adventures of Planet Terry way back when I was a kid, I can't deny that I'd be interested in seeing him get punched a few times by Kid Colossus. Or maybe more than a few times.

X-Babies will launch later this year.

Heroes Con '09: X-Babies [Marvel.com]

Talking about the new series, Claremont explained the lure of writing a comic outside of usual continuity:

The advantage of a book like GeNext or Exiles is that I can pretty much define the realities we are playing in... my approach is not a solo-title it is a potential foundation for new line and perhaps if we are successful we can bring back GeNext for a second arc or try it out on a one-year basis or even as a potential ongoing—or even create a spin-off. It's almost like having the potential for a second line of "Ultimate-style" books.

Chris Claremont on GeNext [Newsarama]