Happy Holidays everyone, and just in time for those holidays there are some excellent comics coming out this week.

From DC Comics, we have the constantly-getting-better Detective Comics. I swear to God, this book just gets better and better with every issue. If you’re not buying this book than you are missing out on one the most groundbreaking comics of the year.

From Image, we have the line of Image United comics. With art by the founding fathers of Image and written by Robert Kirkman, this is sure to be a collector’s dream.

I’m most looking forward to the new issue of Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four, I think this book is in my early running for Best Continuing Series, if I was allowed to vote for the Eisners. Dale Eaglesham is off for two issues but I’m sure that it won’t slow down the brilliant writing that Hickman is doing with the characters.

I’ll also be checking out the spoilerific Captain America: Who Will Wield The Shield book. Now that Steve Rogers is officially back, it’ll be intriguing to follow the reaction.

That’s all I’m getting this week. As always, we here at The Flickcast care about what you read so let us know what you liked/didn’t like in the comments. Otherwise, check out the complete list at Midtown Comics.

Have a Happy Holiday!

Another slow week my wallet will appreciates so thanks to the comics publishers. From DC: I’m sorry, SPOILERS, but if you missed the last issue of Green Lantern Corps it’s your own fault because you missed Kyle Rayner’s death.  Yeah, Hal Jordan’s replacement died in a battle against the Black Lanterns, so this new issue is bound to be an emotional firecracker.

A personal favorite of mine is collected by IDW this month with the complete Rocketeer by Dave Stevens.  If you remember, a pretty decent movie came out several years back with Billy Campbell, Jennifer Connolly, and Alan Arkin featuring this character. It was favorite of mine when I was 10 years old and somewhere in my parent’s garage are the single issues Dave Stevens wrote and drew of the series. This week sees the release of the complete series collected, and it a beautiful spectacle to behold.

From Marvel, I’m looking at the Amazing Spider-Man issue where we are left guessing that these “Gauntlet” murders have been committed by the Sandman! Sandman is probably my favorite Spider-Man villain so I’m generally always on board for those issues. Other than that, I’m not getting anything else this week.

As always, we here at The Flickcast care about what you read so let us know what you liked/didn’t like in the comments. Otherwise, check out the complete list at Midtown Comics.

Happy reading!

The Brazilian “Wonder Twins” of comic art, Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba, give us their first Vertigo book in the form of Daytripper #1 this week. These guys have worked with top talents in the industry like Joss Whedon (Dark Horse’s Sugar Shock), Matt Fraction (Casanova), and Gerard Way (Umbrella Academy).

Here we have their first solo work in the tradition of Vertigo focusing on the small psychological things of daily life like “how does a down on his luck obituary writer get out of the shadow of his famous father?” Apparently the ending to the first issue is a twist for the fantastic, and not at all expected. I’d expect nothing less from these extremely creative guys. Anytime these guys come out with something new, I can’t snatch it from the stacks fast enough.

The rest of the week is fairly light.  The other book I’ll be getting is Invincible Iron Man, in which we finally come to figure out how Thor and Captain America “reboot” Tony Stark. I think I’ve exclaimed enough how much I love this book, and to say the least Fraction and Larocca have not slowed down at all.

This is the last episode of ABC’s FlashForward we will see until March. Yeah, until MARCH. Can’t say I’m happy about that. Well, at least this episode went out on a bang.

We open on the mystery woman (Shoreh Aghdashloo), who informed Demetri Noh (John Cho) that he will be assassinated. She’s sitting at her desk, her own Mosaic chart laid out on the glass spread like a spider-web with a picture of  Cho with the number value: A561984. She is watching the classic A Christmas Carol.

A plane lands in Hong Kong, on it Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and Cho get off, discussing their plan to track down Aghdashloo.  They twice ignore calls from Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) only to be met by someone with “Kid N Play” hair, who calls himself Marshall Vogel from the Hong Kong FBI office. Vogel tells the Dynamic Duo to get out.

Fiennes picks up his phone walking away to only get into an argument with Vance about going to Hong Kong. He gets into this argument so that if anyone goes down for disobeying orders it’s him [Fiennes] because Noh needs to keep his gun on him if he’s going to live past March 15.

Vance breaks one of his televisions only to have another one where a press conference is on at National Linear Project [NLAP] as it’s called, where a stooge announces Simcoe (Jack Davenport) who will address the crowd on the experiments he and Monaghan were doing on the day of the black out.  It gets hairy quick when this happens.

In this sequence, Davenport claims responsibility for the blackout and literally raises hell, saying their experiment was to reproduce the energies created by the Big Bang and may have contributed to the cause of the blackout. Total bedlam occurs when he says this: shots are fired, dogs and casts living together, mass hysteria!

For those of you who don’t know who Grant Morrison is you’re likely to be made aware of him soon.  The groundbreaking comic book writer behind such legendary runs on X-Men, Animal Man, and Doom Patrol is getting his own biopic, and the director of that movie, Patrick Meaney, is profiled over at Wired.

In the profile, Meaney says Morrison is about to become one of those creators that will receive mainstream recognition that only creators such as Alan Moore and Frank Miller have enjoyed.

“Most ‘civilians’ that I talk to about the project still don’t know who Grant Morrison is,” Meaney said in the interview, “but Moore is definitely a name they recognize, as is Frank Miller. I feel like we could soon be seeing a bunch of Morrison film projects in the not-too-distant future.”

Currently in-development is Morrison’s work WE3, which is a favorite among many of us Morrison fans. The story involves pets enhanced with cybernetic weaponry to become assassins who rebel against their programming and their creators. The project is currently being handled by Kung Fu Panda director John Stevenson.

Morrison’s sensibilities lends well to the screen, however, his ideas are far left of Richard Kelly-weird so I’m not sure how well they are likely to be received by the bigwigs in Hollywood, or by audience members for that matter.  But I applaud any would-be producer in developing an idea of Morrison’s, it shows a willingness to take chances and I appreciate that. But if WE3 gets a true to form adaptation for the screen, I would suspect many parent’s groups raising holy hell over it.