The Manhattan Projects, Hell Yeah, & the spike of recent, great new series...

Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 7th, sees the arrival of two new Image titles, The Manhattan Projects and Hell Yeah. Having just read both of these, I'm here to tell Ich Liebe Comics! readers that these are going to be titles that you're going to want to check out.

MP The Manhattan Projects, is written by Mr. Think Outside of the Box himself, Jonathan Hickman (Fantastic Four, Nightly News, Red Mass For Mars, Red Wing) and drawn by Nick Pitarra (Red Wing). This comic has as its main characters, Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, but not as you know them from whichever history account you've been exposed to. This was a great first issue that will make you want to pick up the following issues.

Hell Yeah is written by Joe Keatinge (Glory) and drawn by Andre Szymanowicz. The sound bite capsule summation of what Hell Yeah is, is that it shares a tone with Kick Ass and is another one of the recent comics that takes superheroes to the next level, along the lines with what Warren Ellis does when he writes new superhero comics like No Hero and Supergod (which are both excellent). After you read Hell Yeah, I'm sure you'll be back for the next issues.

I know I'm going to be sold out of both of these titles before New Comics Wednesday is over. Do I not know how to order comics!? I wouldn't say that's true (I've been doing this for 18 wonderful years now), but with fast recent sell outs of new series like Prophet, Sacrifice, Scam, Thief of Thieves, Fatale, and some others that I'm sure I'm forgetting here at my store the last few months, I'm beginning to wonder what's in the water that the creators of these books are drinking (something good, that's for sure).

More importantly to me and customers of Alternate Reality Comics, is how can I better order these books than I am presently? I'm not just ordering a handful of these titles, but at the same time, I'm not ordering long boxes of them. What's happening is a week or so (mostly days before) these titles go on sale, the buzz starts hitting about how good these books are and this happens after I've placed orders for the books, so myself and comic stores everywhere get people signing up for the titles absorbing what we'd ordered, leaving us with not much for the shelves. In a perfect world I'd get to read comics like The Manhattan Projects, Hell Yeah, and Thief of Thieves as I place my order and then I'd know that these titles would be VERY easy to sell and order BIG upfront. I realize people want to actually look at a new comic series when it hits the store before committing to any given title, especially with the multitude of choices that there are on display in the newest Previews, but the reality is also that comic stores can't just order lots of every new title in the hopes that they all are as good as the above mentioned new titles are because if several of them turn out to be duds, a lot of unsold books can spell trouble for a comic store. Anyway, I guess this is what second prints and trade paperback collections are for, I just wanted to shed a behind-the scenes perspective on the recent new title sell-outs that has been happening at comic stores everywhere.

Before I sign off this entry, I want to give a shout out to another recent new series by Jonathan Luna and Image called Whispers (of which I'm sold out of the first issue, but should be getting more), it's one of the BEST first issues (this and Thief Of Thieves, which I'm getting more first prints of this week) I've read in a long time and I don't know why I haven't heard as much buzz about this title as some of the others here. Also look out for Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga next Wednesday (March 14th), this is sure to be a money back guarantee title and I'll have LOTS of that title guaranteed (because it's written by the writer creator of Y The Last Man and Ex Machina so you know it'll be great)!