"Unboxing" aficionados will recall that the HEROES FOR HIRE series was fast-tracked, with volume 1 just released a couple months back. The WOLVERINE book, meanwhile, completes the Larry Hama/Marc Silvestri run that began in 2013's WOLVERINE BY LARRY HAMA & MARC SILVESTRI volume 1 and 2014's volume 2. Why wasn't this collection simply branded as volume 3 in that series? My guess would be that with a full three years elapsed since the prior volume (it came out in February of '14), Marvel opted to go with a new angle for the final installment. In any case it doesn't really matter; the important thing is that the complete Hama/Silvestri run is now collected in three nifty paperbacks.
Then we have RED ONE VOLUME 2: UNDERCOVER, from Image. Some may remember that I wasn't that impressed with the first RED ONE volume, but I like Terry Dodson's artwork and these things are so reasonably priced that I figured I'd give the series a second chance to win me over before dropping it altogether. I'll try to read this one and write a bit about it at some point in the near future.
Lastly, Dark Horse brings the HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE NEWSPAPER STRIP COLLECTION. I've been on a bit of a newspaper strip kick recently -- something I'll speak a bit more about a couple months from now -- and this book is right in my wheelhouse. I had no idea there ever was a He-Man strip -- our local papers didn't carry it (they really didn't carry any adventure strips aside from PRINCE VALIANT). Apparently Mattel commissioned a Filmation employee to continue the TV series' continuity into the papers, continuing to introduce new characters to He-Man's world. This is one I'm quite excited to check out.
Bonus Photo: Check out how massive the HE-MAN book is beside a standard-size (normal comic book dimensions) trade paperback!
Bonus Photo 2: I really like that, as they've released these various HE-MAN books over the past few years, even though they come in all different shapes and sizes, Dark Horse has maintained a standard cover design for all of them. It's a nice touch:
ReplyDelete// Mattel commissioned a Filmation employee to continue the TV series' continuity into the papers //
Huh. I never knew that. While the line came out towards the end of my time playing with action figures, I did have some of them and watched the series. I preferred the minicomics continuity, though, sparse as it was then. Anyway, neat thing to have, and, yeah, really nice unifying cover designs.
When this book was announced, I did a little Googling and found this interview with the strip's writer: LINK. Though it appears I misspoke above; he was a freelancer who wrote some scripts for Filmation and that led to the newspaper strip gig.
DeleteAs a child, I vastly preferred the cartoon continuity over all else, and got a little miffed when various storybooks, etc. got the TV show's details wrong. In later years, I've found a lot to like in those early minicomics, and while I don't know that I like them more than the cartoons, I probably like them just as much for different reasons. The mythology is somewhat Conan-esque, presenting He-Man as kind of a wandering barbarian (which makes sense since the property was initially conceived as a licensed Conan toyline), which is really cool.