This past Sunday was Independence Day in the U.S., which means UPS had Monday off, which means new comics don’t arrive until Thursday, so Diamond didn’t update their release list until yesterday – hence the ’24 hours later’ status of this post (again). It’d be cliché to insist I spent the extra time reflecting on American comics, so instead here’s Michael Jackson as drawn by Suehiro Maruo, from 1991’s The New Comics Anthology, edited by the late Bob Callahan. This was very possibly the artist’s first comics work to see print in English, predating Blast Books’ 1993 release of Mr. Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show or Maruo’s infamous Planet of the Jap contribution to Blast’s 1996 Comics Underground Japan anthology, and it stands in a unique context. If the 1980 debut of RAW marked the beginning of the ‘alternative comics’ era — and believe me, there’s alternate choices — then ’91 serves as its natural bookend, since that’s when the final, transformed, bookstore-distributed digest RAW appeared. That was also the year of Kitchen Sink’s first latter day Twisted Sisters anthology, a term used for marketing on the cover of The New Comics Anthology, which endeavored to designate ‘new’ comics as loosely categorized trends. Maruo found himself categorized with new ‘punk’ comics of Gary Panter inspiration, as opposed to the historically-informed ‘vaudeville’ of Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Peter Bagge, although I think 20 years of ensuing exposure to the artist’s work have revealed him to be a wry traditionalist of his own, of a more direct lineage with early Garo artist (and Doing Time author) Kazuichi Hanawa, to say nothing of a prior century’s printmaking. Indeed, the comic above draws an amusing analogy between MJ’s Bad-era costuming and your typical Japanese boys’ school uniform as seen in many a Showa fetish Maruo epic; in the end he spins so fast his head explodes, which matches the rather goofy horror comic disposition of several Maruo shorts.

This, of course, is another function of criticism: providing a continuum of revised understanding of foreign works, filling in absent context and discussing historical positioning, often to challenge the received wisdom about an otherwise aloof, potentially language-barred artist, a constant hazard online today in the midst of enthusiasm for foreign language works. Maruo’s work was the only New Comic from Japan, and thereby suggested assumptions about the state of Japanese alternative comics from his idiosyncratic example, one that today stands out more for its unique aesthetic departures, much in the way that mainline manga used to be often sold in its heaviest, most detailed, violent sci-fi form, there perhaps to make it seem more in line with American expectations for popular comics.

For more in expectations and delay, here is your American Thursday:

The Smurfs: Smurfnapper: Being the official return of Peyo’s blue crew to English-language comics, if not quite yet in full force; this is a 24-page preview comic consisting mainly of a short story (the debut of antagonist Gargamel) also to be included in publisher NBM/Papercutz’s release of The Bl… er, The Purple Smurfs, i.e. the original Smurfs solo album from 1963. Preview; $1.00.

X-Women: And moving from the sublime to the also kind of sublime, I think, in its way – here it is, Milo Manara’s X-Men comic, initially announced in 2006 and only released in Italy last year, in b&w album form. Marvel’s English-language edition is in comic book form, and newly colored by Dave Stewart. It’s something about various female mutant superheroes going on vacation and encountering assorted perils, courtesy of veteran writer Chris Claremont, but it mostly strikes me (and possibly everyone else) on first glance as a highly vigorous exercise in superheroine cheesecake, albeit one with the bad luck to debut the same week as the similarly-titled just plain X-Men, a new series tied in to the ongoing vampiric thrust of Marvel continuity, with all accordant promises that the universe will be wracked, which draws an unhappy (if superficial) comparison between the concerns of (X-)Men and (X-)Women in the superhero genre, a matter probably not aided by Manara’s same-y character designs across the feminine X-cast. All that said, I suspect everyone will want to flip through this. Preview; $4.99.

Hellboy: The Storm #1 (of 3): The first issue of the first half of the final segment of artist Duncan Fegredo’s collaboration with writer/creator Mike Mignola on the main Hellboy book, to be continued after a while in a second miniseries titled The Fury, probably a tidier means of signifying a break than the hiatus which bisected the team’s prior miniseries, The Wild Hunt. I tend to think of the Hellboy line as exemplars of ongoing series presented as series-of-miniseries so as to head off the psychological annoyance of serialization delays (or ‘fill-in’ artists), so this is perfectly fitting. I also like how the Mignola megastory is starting to turn on itself and indict its own folklore-fight formula – should be interesting. Preview; $2.99.

Batman: Odyssey #1 (of 6): And following much the same model comes this miniseries of 40-page (with ads) chapters that’s actually the first half of a 12-issue project. It’s writer/artist Neal Adams’ return to Batman, hopefully still wicked cool enough for our own Jeet Heer. Batman goes on a journey of discovery, is the plot. This was initially to be scripted (if not plotted) by Frank Miller, and was actually first rumored to be the second big storyline for the Frank Miller-written All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, which itself is only just preparing to conclude next year as — yep —  a miniseries, titled Dark Knight: Boy Wonder. Pencil-only samples here; $3.99.

Thor: The Mighty Avenger #1: All-ages Marvel stuff, noteworthy for the presence of Roger Langridge as writer. Art by Chris Samnee. Preview; $2.99.

Casanova #1: Creator-owned Marvel stuff, which used to be creator-owned Image stuff. Actually, this is a ‘remastered’ edition of the original 2006-08 super-dense super-spy short form series by writer Matt Fraction and artists Gabriel Bá & Fábio Moon, now filled out to fit eight issues of standard-length comics, with new full colors by Cristiane Peter and revised hand lettering by Dustin Harbin, and bonus extras. It’s an ongoing series, btw; issue #9 will begin all-new content.  Have a look; $3.99.

Nana Vol. 21: The as-of-now final but not necessarily concluding volume of Ai Yazawa’s much-admired dramatic series, which has been on extended pause as the artist recovers from a recent hospitalization; $9.99.

House of Mystery #27: A rather long-lived recent Vertigo series, notable for populating its middle pages with vignettes by assorted artists. Brendan McCarthy is this month’s contributor, so you’ll want a peek for sure; $2.99.

Fall Out Toy Works #5 (of 5): Wrapping up this Fall Out Boy-related Image series, which often seemed like a throwback to the cel-shaded look anime screengrab-type comics the publisher was putting out in the late ’90s. Script by Brett Lewis of The Winter Men. Preview; $3.99.

Starstruck #11 (of 13): Nearing the end of this old-new arrangement of part of Elaine Lee & Michael Wm. Kaluta’s sci-fi opus; $3.99.

King City #10 (of 12): Ditto (minus the ‘part of’) for Brandon Graham’s very nice Image series. Preview; $2.99.

Gødland #32: Actually there’s a lot of neat Image stuff out this week, like a new installment of this Joe Casey/Tom Scioli serial. Splashy preview; $2.99.

The Weird World of Jack Staff #3: Or, you know, Paul Grist in color. Preview; $3.50.

Batman and Robin #13: Even Batman faces an endgame, as the excellently swirly-pulsing Frazier Irving joins writer Grant Morrison for a culminating three-issue storyline, to be punctuated by a one-off issue #16 with artist Cameron Stewart, in which Bruce Wayne returns or something; $2.99.

The Boys #44: Superheroes are Jesus here. Preview; $3.99.

Parade of Pleasure: A Study of Popular Iconography in the U.S.A.: Your book-on-comics of the week, a new Pure Imagination reprinting of British writer Geoffrey Wagner’s 1954 examination of, among other things (movies, television, radio, girlie pin-up art), the ‘marijuana of the nursery’ that is American comic books of the era. With a goodly (maybe exclusively) remembered section of pertinent illustrations; $25.00.

Spider-Man/Fantastic Four #1 (of 4): THREE MORE FROM EUROPE! Or, at least this is the return of Italian artist Mario Alberti to longform Marvel stuff a la X-Men/Spider-Man, in a likely similar era-spanning fan-fest with writer Christos Gage. Preview; $3.99.

The Secret History #11: Igor Kordey draws again; $5.95.

Tintin in the Congo: And finally, ha ha, some very keen timing from Last Gasp, offering once again their facsimile edition of the original 1931 b&w collection of Hergé’s second Tintin adventure, which has recently been in the news. Be aware that later, color revisions of the work exist, having toned down the saturating off-handed acceptance of colonialist attitudes (among other things), but since the franchise’s big ticket North American publisher has been hesitant to risk dealing in even that, it’s this roughest of all editions that’s singularly available in the U.S. Maybe a broadly construed “Basis for the Upcoming Motion Picture” sticker is in order, just to keep spirits high; $24.95.

Labels: Suehiro Maruo, This Week in Comics