In your friendly neighborhood comic shop this week, the Fantastic Four rebrand themselves and Alan Moore concludes his psychosexual Lovecraft tale — in short, comicdom's first family and the diametric opposite of good, clean family fun. Read on!
First Issues
First off, Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting transform the Fantastic Four into the Future Foundation (and give them new stain-prone costumes) in the first issue of FF . Kieron GIllen also writes a one-shot about the Johnny Hallyday of supervillains in Captain America And Batroc, and Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning pen Galvatron in the new series Transformers: Heart Of Darkness.
Other Releases
Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows finish Avatar Press' Lovecraftian series Neonomicon — last issue ended with the creepshow revelation that Cthulhu's returning in the squickiest way possible. Marvel is also releasing .1 issues specially designed for new readers with Captain America #615.1 and Thor #620.1.
What else is on the stands? There are new issues of Grant Morrison's Batman Incorporated and David Finch's Batman: The Dark Knight , and Geoff Johns kicks off "The War of the Green Lanterns" arc in Green Lantern.
Jason Aaron and Andy Kubert continue the time-displaced antics of Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine, Bill Willingham puts his Fables in superhero costumes to confront Mr. Dark, Mike Carey continues his alternate universe Age of X story in New Mutants, and Brian Michael Bendis begins "The Death of Spider-Man" arc in Ultimate Spider-Man.
Graphic Novels
Two critically acclaimed series get trade paperbacks on Wednesday — Volume 3 of Mike Carey's Unwritten hits the stands, as does Carla Speed McNeil's Finder Library Volume 1.
Harlan Ellison's IDW miniseries Phoenix Without Ashes is collected in trade paperback, and R.I.P.: Best of 1985-2004 collects Swiss cartoonist Thomas Ott's wordless horror comics. Two other trades that are worth checking out are Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth's Portland crime drama Stumptown and Volume 2 of Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan's young-folks'-slice-of-life series Demo.
As usual, here's the list of everything being released to comic stores tomorrow, and you can find your nearest comic retailer here. Happy reading, gang!
Top artwork by Stan Goldberg.