Early Panels: Three Comics To Look Forward To Tomorrow

Pirates, superheroes murdering each other, and more pulpy fun with rocket packs are on dock for this week.

Deathmatch #3
The amount of fun Paul Jenkins and Carlos Magno are having with this book is best described as “unseemly”. The book centers around a universe full of heroes both reminiscent of superheroes we’ve known before and entirely new heroes that Jenkins gets pretty creative with. They’re all trapped in some sort of prison, overseen by cryptic glowing guards, and something is compelling them to get into gladiatorial fights.

It works as both a hilarious send-up of the “event” book and the crossover, as well as a book that operates on its own level. Jenkins has something to say about the superhero genre, and what it actually means to put people, even fictional people, in a jar and make ‘em fight. And we’ll be curious to see where he takes it with issue #3.

Amala’s Blade #0

This collects the Amala’s Blade stories that ran in Dark Horse Presents as a build up to the new book launching this April. Steve Horton (the writer and letterer) and Michael Dialynas (the artist) actually do a pretty good job of mixing what sounds like a hodgepodge of nerd fads: Steampunk, cyborgs, pirates, ninjas, it’s all put together here but by all accounts not in a winking, knowing way.

We’ll have a review tomorrow as Dark Horse has provided us with some copies, but suffice to say, it looks pretty fun. And if nothing else, we can always encourage more cyborgs in comics.

The Rocketeer: Hollywood Horror #1

Roger Langridge is an underappreciated creator in some quarters, but he’s got real talent and a taste for putting his own twist on other people’s stories, most notably in the superb Alice In Wonderland riff Snarked!. So his take on Dave Stevens’ pulp hero, especially right after Mark Waid’s superb miniseries, is going to be especially interesting.

This picks up right where the previous mini left off: Betty and Cliff are have relationship troubles, and, this being a pulp story, a scientist goes missing at exactly the wrong time. But mostly the appeal here is seeing what Langridge does with a pulp hero; we suspect it’ll be something unique.

What book are you most looking forward to tomorrow? Hit the full list and let us know in the comments.