Our picks this week. Click the links to order from Amazon.
From out of the Microverse, the Omnibus you thought could never happen! Helmed by writer Bill Mantlo, MICRONAUTS brought together the subatomic heroes of Homeworld and the Marvel Universe! And Mantlo's rich character mythology, combined with groundbreaking artwork by Michael Golden, made the series an instant classic.
The Micronauts - Commander Rann, Princess Mari, Biotron, Acroyear and Bug - traverse their universe aboard the microship Endeavor as they struggle to free Homeworld from the tyrannical Baron Karza!
Their exploits also bring them to Earth, where our micro-sized heroes encounter big-time Marvel heroes and villains - including the Fantastic Four, S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain Universe and Man-Thing!
This Omnibus edition presents a stunning restoration, complete with letters pages and host of bonus material, including house ads, original artwork and more!
COLLECTING: THE MICRONAUTS (1979) #1-29 & ANNUAL (1979) #1-2 and material from MICRONAUTS SPECIAL EDITION (1983) #1-5
Steve Rogers has renounced his role as Captain America! While the Falcon fights on, Rogers wrestles with his place in the world - and becomes Nomad, a man without a country! But in his new identity, can he overcome the power of Madame Hydra and the mystical Serpent Crown? And the Red Skull's return forces our hero to make a choice!
Then, Cap co-creator Jack Kirby is back - pulling triple duty as writer, artist and editor! This is Kirby unleashed! In an intricate storyline that slowly built toward America's Bicentennial, Kirby's classic "Madbomb" saga featured an aristocratic conspiracy seeking to seize control of the country
Plus: Experience Kirby's BICENTENNIAL BATTLES, an eighty page masterpiece that encompasses American history from the Revolution through the Old West to both World Wars!
Collecting CAPTAIN AMERICA (1968) #180-200 and MARVEL TREASURY SPECIAL: CAPTAIN AMERICA'S BICENTENNTIAL BATTLES.
In the late 1940s, the first half of the Venus series from Marvel Comics predecessors Timely and Atlas Comics was published as a lighthearted romance comic about the goddess Venus taking a job on Earth at a beauty magazine. Never a company to miss a trend, Atlas began introducing more science fiction elements in the 1950s, and eventually turned Venus’ dating adventures into a straight-out horror anthology.
Collected here, 70 years later and for the first time ever, is that swift-changing second half of the 19-issue run. Future Marvel stars Bill Everett (seven issues) and Werner Roth (three issues) take Venus to heights of four-color weirdness and pre-Code horror ghastliness.
Everett in particular is given free rein and seizes the opportunity: writing, drawing, and lettering twenty ghoulish and goofy masterpieces, including classics like "Hangman's House," "The Day Venus Vanished," "The House of Terror," "The Sealed Spectors," Tidal Wave of Terror," and the phantasmagorical "Cartoonist's Calamity!"
These stories showcase the brilliant draftsmanship and storytelling of Everett, one of the giants of the 1940s and '50's comic book industry. His slick, fluid line rendered at Timely/Atlas, from his seminal god-child Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, to the atomic age Marvel Boy, is some of the finest pre-Code horror this side of E.C.'s Graham Ingels.
Series editor Dr. Michael J. Vassallo assisted in the compilation of the first volume of Venus for Marvel 13 years ago, and Fantagraphics is delighted to publish the horror half as the second title in The Fantagraphics Atlas Comics Library.
Jack Kamen’s stories for The Vault of Horror, Tales From the Crypt, and The Haunt of Fear favored unnerving creepiness over gruesome shock. With his penchant for deft delineations of scheming women, jealous husbands, murderous love triangles, and not-so-innocent children, Kamen’s pen laid down a precise, sure line that brought each story’s shock ending into sharp relief.
This volume features 27 Kamen favorites, drawn at the peak of powers, including: “Kamen’s Kalamity,” our title story, featuring the “true” origin story of the artist himself! When the pressures of drawing his stories, dealing with his editors, and pleasing his wife and kids become too much, comic book artist Jack Kamen loses it, and that night, when the moon is full … “How Green Was My Alley,” the cautionary tale of a traveling salesman who spends every other week at home with his wife. And every other other week at his other home with his other wife! In a grisly finale, echoing the EC shocker “Foul Play,” Kamen leaves nothing to the imagination! “Beauty Rest” How far would you go to win a beauty pageant for the title of “Miss Corpse”? ― Well, this contestant is willing to go even further than that! She had the looks, the ambition, and the smoldering sex appeal to play the world’s oldest game and snag the man of her dreams ― the rich man of her dreams ― but it was never more than “Only Sin Deep.”
Then, Kamen switches from horror to horror-humor for all 13 of his classic “Grim Fairy Tales,” revealing the gruesome underpinnings of the classics. You’ll never look at Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, or Little Red Riding Hood and their friends quite the same way again!
Plus: seven bonus crime and horror stories by EC short-termers John Alton, Frank Bolle, Leonard Starr, Bill Fraccio, Rudy Palais, and Ed Smalle. Introduction by Thommy Burns.
Like every book in the Fantagraphics EC Artists’ Library, Kamen’s Kalamity And Other Stories also features essays and notes by EC experts on these superbly crafted, classic masterpieces.
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