With Christmas around the corner, and no new titles on the horizon, you’re probably wondering what to get your favorite Valve fan. Since you can’t just hand them a new hat for Team Fortress 2, try this fantastic collection of comics inspired by Valve’s most recent hits instead. Published by Dark Horse, and featuring the work of veteran comic artist and writer, Michael Avon Oeming, Valve Presents: The Sacrifice and other Steam Powered Stories Vol. 1 boasts over 200 pages of fully-illustrated stories with titles like Team Fortress 2, Left-4-Dead, and Portal – the perfect gift for all those Valve-addicts out there. Seeing as the first-edition hardcover just hit shelves in November, you probably won’t have to worry about them already owning a copy. It retails for just $25 via ThinkGeek, so if you need it in time for the holidays, don’t delay. Just promise me you won’t try to stuff it in a stocking.

The special one-night-onlyNorth American screening of the upcoming live-action adaptation of Gantz is happening on January 20th. Given the special circumstances surrounding the limit release, only select theaters will be showing the film. I remember how annoyed I was when I missed out on a screening of Princess Mononoke simply because I couldn’t find a theater in time, but this time Fathom Events will be looking out for us all. They’re providing a list of all the theaters that’ll be participating in the world premiere event. Better yet, you can search by zip code to find the closest theater nearby and even purchase advance tickets — not that I’d worry about it being sold out before you get there, but you never know. To see the list of participating locations, click here.

Tim is a pro-blogger and freelance writer out of San Diego, California. In addition to Fanboy.com, he contributes to the ModernMethod Network of sites as the Features and Reviews Editor for the Japanese culture and entertainment blog, Japanator. He’s also an Assocaite Editor for their popular gaming blog, Destructoid, and the collectible toy culture blog, Tomopop. For more information, follow him on twitter, or check out TimSheehy.com.

Dark Horse is reprinting The Goon Volume 4: Virtue and the Grim Consequences Thereof which would normally be a non-event for yours truly. However they’ve gone the extra stretch and had Eric Powell do a new cover (shown above) which just looks brilliant. What makes Powell so unique is that he’s able to combine pull off a combination of an pulp magazine cover that you might have seen back in the day with just the right touch of cartoonishness.

So many of the post-apocalyptic films from Mad Max to Escape from New York all owe a little something to Mighty Samson which was a comic book series published by Gold Key Comics back in 1964. The team of Otto Binder (writing) and Frank Thorne (illustration) created their vision of N’Yark which was one corner of planet Earth devastated by a nuclear war. The series lasted until 1982 and the faded into obscurity so I’m glad to see that starting in June Dark Horse will be releasing Mighty Samson Archives Volume 1. The first volume features the first seven comics from the series — here are some covers and interior pages from that era to give you a taste the mutants that roam the former streets of the big apple:

Thanks to the goodness of Goon there is no wrong that Eric Powell can do in my mind — which is why I’m looking ahead to Buzzard which is a comic book miniseries that goes on sale on June 9th. Shown above is a cover by Powell and below is an alternative cover by Richard Corben:

Here’s a description of the series from Dark Horse:

“The mysterious man known as Buzzard is lost, wondering what manner of creature he is, following his brutal showdown with the loathsome Zombie Priest in Eric Powell’s celebrated Goon Year. Buzzard leaves home, wandering into the shadowy spirit realm of the forest. A dark path leads to a village living in fear of a bestial race of savages. More animal than man, these creatures hunt the villagers and drag them from their slumber in the depth of night.”

I came across Groo: Hogs of Horder #4 and it then hit me: I’m guilty of having spent my entire life looking at the amazing artwork of Sergio Aragonés and I’ve selfishly have always assumed that I’d be seeing more. It’s high time for us fans to stop taking Sergio for granted (he’s 72 years old!) and starting to treat him like the comic book god that he is. I grew up with Aragonés in the pages of mad magazine, but sadly those issues were so packed with high quality work that Sergio got lost in the crowd. However as of 2002 he’s drawn more than 12,000 gag cartoons for Mad and that deserves some real respect. And then we have his creation Groo the Wanderer which has been running since the 80s — to me this running series ranks up there with Asterix and Tin Tin, and what’s wonderful about is that it has both an American and Spanish point of view.

Groo: Hogs of Horder #4 goes on sale on March 17th.

Jerry Robinson is best known as the comic book artist who helped to put Batman on the map along with Bob Kane — and credit for creating the Joker belongs to him. However sadly his other work is overlooked and that’s why I’m glad that Dark Horse is doing a proper reprint of Jet Scott. This wonderful science fiction themed newspaper strip debuted on September 28, 1953 in The New York Herald-Tribune.

Now by science fiction you shouldn’t get the idea that is space opera — instead the strip takes place in the near future. In fact I’d have to say that Jet Scott was a forerunner for what you’d later see in Jonny Quest or a James Bond film. In addition to the story by Sheldon Stark what’s remarkable about this comic is just how good Robinson’s draftsmanship was on a daily basis:

Here’s a Sunday color reprint I found of the strip (I’m not sure if its in the book) but it should give you a good flavor for Jerry Robinson’s artwork:

Volume 1 of this series comes out this Wednesday, February 10th, 2010.

Thanks to the CB Radio craze of the 70s I have to admit that I had a cultural snottiness when it comes to any form of entertainment featuring truckers: So I have to admit that I was blown away by the sheer charm of the comic book Mesmo Delivery by Rafael Grampá and Marcus Penna. What I like about the look of this book is that the inking style has quite a bit of grit and texture, yet the character designs and poses almost have a charming if not slightly cute feeling to them. The result is that each page has the sort of warmth that you would see in folk art except that the draftsmanship is both exquisite and exhilarating to look at:

Mesmo Delivery comes out today and is published by Dark Horse Comics.

Being a manga fanboy the release of Devil #1 immediately caught my eye: “Manga artist Torajiro Kishi (Maka-Maka) and blockbuster anime studio Madhouse (Trigun, Paprika, Ninja Scroll) love comics. So much so that they’ve decided to publish an original, Western-style comic exclusively with Dark Horse! Enter Devil, a thrilling, sci-fi take on the vampire genre.”

However looking at the book I’ve got mixed feelings: On one hand the illustrations look great, but on the flip side the coloring is cheesy (i.e. bad Photoshop) and the page layouts look quite static because each panel is trapped in a western style layout. My guess is that this is Dark Horse making the comic “specifically for the American audience” but as an American fanboy I’m a bit letdown. But you be the judge and look at the previews below:

Back in the day science fiction book covers always looked realistic while comic book covers looked like — well comic books! However the last few years that has faded away and comic book covers remind me more and more of the good old days of paperbacks: Except unlike paperbacks the format is even larger. So I was blown away with the quality of this cover by art by Sean Cooke for Star Wars Legacy #47.

His composition, dramatic lighting and detail are a joy to look at, and remind me of a film poster. I also love how he pulls off the occasional laser blast without looking too corny — which is hard to do in a painterly format. This issue goes on sale on April 28th, and while I’d hope the insides are just as good the $3 might be worth it just for the cover art.

A while ago that when I read they were gearing up for an Emily the Strange I have to admit that I feared for the worse in terms of quality — as part of a push for the film Dark Horse would be publishing an art book and a comic book. But I have to admit that while I’m still unsure about a film that Dark Horse seems to be off to a good start with our old creepy friend Emily. Shown above is the cover for The Art of Emily the Strange which doesn’t look too bad form the previews — it’s not brilliant, but it’s respectable as you can see:

Dark Horse is now up to issue #3 of Emily the Strange: The 13th Hour and here they’ve done a much more interesting job with the character than the art book. I guess one of my doubts is that in the emily merchandise you never see her talking and there is a minimalism to her style. Here the creative team took some chances and went into the opposite direction — Emily has plenty to say and the pages are packed with detail. The result is an entertaining Alice in Wonderland effect which I like:

Greg Broadmore is a conceptual designer at the Weta Workshop the New Zealand effects studio that did some amazing work on Lord of the Rings. In his book Dr. Grordbort Presents: Victory Broadmore goes steampunk and has an Edwardian military officer giving a lush tour of a world filled with enemy robots and space aliens. The result reminds me of a cross between old pulp fiction covers and old patent medicine adverts:

Dr. Grordbort Presents: Victory is due out on Thursday and is published by Dark Horse.

I just love the power of the draftsmanship of Adam Warren, there’s something so strong and yet silly about his pencil sketching which reminds me of the golden age of Mad magazine. This Thursday his latest effort Empowered Special: The Wench With a Million Sighs will be released by Dark Horse and it looks amazing. The cover isn’t that spectacular but the interior of the book more than makes up for that:

It’s amazing to think that Buck Rogers got started as a fictional character in an issue of Amazing Stories from over 90 years ago (August 1928 to be exact) — however Buck made his first huge mark as a comic strip series illustrated by John Flint Dille. Those old strips have a wonderfully quirky look to them, and the folks at Dark Horse have picked on this by introducing a line of swag which was designed by the folks at Retro-A-Go-Go. The collection goes on sale on February 24th, 2010 and includes a wide range of goodies including picture frames:

Cigarette cases (we assume that by the 25th century this will no longer cause cancer):

Belt buckles since old fashioned characters in retro sci fi still need belts:

A generic small case for carrying “stuff”:

And these swank looking keychains:

365 Samurai and a Few Bowls of Rice looks like a wonderful combination of the storytelling skills of Akira Kurosawa mixed with a Jamie Hewlett look with just a dash of RAW magazine from the 80s. The artist behind this graphic novel is J. P. Kalonji a self taught illustrator who lives in Switzerland. Here’s an amazing 36 page sample from this beautiful book which is nearly 400 pages and will be published by Dark Horse Comics on December 2nd:

Shown above is the beautiful cover for Star Wars: Invasion #5 by illustrator Jo Chen which comes out today. What I really love about the folks who license Star Wars is that they allow their artists a high degree of creative freedom to work within the brand and they always seem to pull of a high level of quality. So if you didn’t know that the cover was a Star Wars anything you’d still be impressed with it; to me that says so much about how much they care about the product. Below are a few of the interior pages by Colin Wilson which also look great — there’s no bait-and-switch which you see all the time with other titles:

Beasts of Burden got started as a collaboration between Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese) and Jill Thompson (Scary Godmother) for the anthologies The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings, Witchcraft, the Dead, and Monsters. The result? They won the Eisner Awards for Best Short Story and Best Painter categories. So I’m pleased to see that Dark Horse is working to publish an mini-series based on this initial appearance which is due to debut on September 16, 2009.

The plot of the series reminds me a great deal of the Secret of NIMH, except our heroes are dogs and cats instead of mice. Like NIMH our heroes can speak although they don’t waer clothing, and they co-exist in a world with humans. The story is set in Burden Hill where supernatural occurrences theaten the locals, so it’s up to our four legged friends to investigate the local forest to see what’s going on. I’ve only seen a few pages from the first book (shown below), but I already love the “frogs falling from the sky” which is a reference to Fortean literature:

Shown below is the cover of issue #2: In this adventure our gang of dogs is joined by a cat as they investigate other missing creatures from the hood:

Here’s the most recently released preview of the cover of issue #3 which features kitty going out on a solo mission, the shadows of the rats on this cover are a nice little creepy touch:

As a magazine publisher Warren Publishing was born out as a result of the infamous comic book code of the 50s which made the genre a bit too family friendly: Along with sister publications like Eerie and Vampirella, Creepy magazine kept alive the tradition of horror comics from 1964 until 1983. Next year on January 27th, 2010 Dark Horse will be publishing a set of trading cards based upon covers of the magazine.

The boxed set will include 42 covers, and 8 cards that feature campy ads from the publication. I’m not sure which artists they picked for the covers, but I can’t wait to see these these as they represent a who’s who of that era. The promotional info for this series indicates we’ll get to see covers from Jack Davis, Frazetta, Richard Corben and Ken Kelly: However I also hope to see the likes of Wally Wood, Alex Toth and Neal Adams represented in the deck:

I don’t have the slightest clue how Citizen Rex escaped my attention, but now I feel that makes it my job to draw attention to this wonderful sci fi themed comic book mini series. But first we need to go back a few decades in time to the 80s: Back then a bit of a revolution was going on in the comic book field, lead by RAW Magazine some very talented artists shook up the field and decided to show that it could be a real art firm. Out were the typical superhero comics that owned newsstands and in came graphic novels and interesting illustrational techniques.

And brother let me tell you that the Hernandez brothers (Mario, Jamie and Gilbert) were a big part of this change: The comic book Love and Rockets by Jamie and Gilbert was a badly needed breath of fresh air. The series came to an end in 1996, but since then the brothers have done some great work and Citizen Rex is the latest chapter. Rex is a collaboration between Mario who did the writing and Gilbert who also contributed to the writing and did all of the illustrations. Shown above is the latest cover from issue #5 which will come out on November 11th — and below is the cover and three interior pages from issue #1 which came out at the end of July:

By the way please take note that these pages below are in vivid BLACK & WHITE! It really adds to the feeling of surrealism in this sci fi punk world that they’re portraying:

Here’s the cover for issue #2 which will come out this week on August 19th (I really love that robots vs. punks motif on the bottom and the reference to Spock is great):

Issue #3 won’t be out until September 16th: Isn’t thiis Jetsons meets mobsters illustration great?

And here’s is the cover of issue #4 which reminds me of a scene from Blade Runner (this issue comes out on October 14th, 2009):

Yes I’d love to pretend that there was an era when Emily the Strange wasn’t just about the merchandising, but that would be a lie. I first ran into Emily at Virgin Mega Store (sad to think that they’ll be gone) and her image adorned t-shirts, notebooks and other knickknacks — yet it was the sort of brand that was always slightly under the radar, which I think to me was the appeal. If you gave an Emily item as a gift she’d stand out as just a bit different in a Hallmark world. Well sadly that’s coming to an end and above is the first step where Emily goes mainstream — that sad bit of artwork above is the cover of a limited comic book series.

That’s right: A comic book! Anyone in their right mind who loved Emily would want to start off with a graphic novel or perhaps a twisted version of a kids book. But as the first leg of a major retail campaign Emily is chucked on the cover. Obliterating the strong black/white/red motif that is so powerful is what seems to be a badly done Photoshop effect. What made Emily so cool is what we didn’t know about her, but now like some second rate Facebook page it’s only a matter of minutes until we know who her favorite bands are and what type of kitty litter she prefers.

But this is just the first step: This summer HarperCollins will introduce a series of young adult novels starring Emily, and then Dark Horse will step in by selling more trinkets, in October a coffee table book will follow — and then it seems there are plans for a “major motion picture”. I’d pray that they wouldn’t use CGI, but looking at the cover of the comic book I’ve ceased to care about Emily and her soon to be famous kitty. Soon Emily will be hanging out in the discount racks at Walmart, and frankly I don’t want to be around to see something that ugly…

I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself with that headline! But the sight of cowboys and indians hanging out with dinosaurs (well minus the cowboys) brought Sarah Palin’s creationism to my mind right away. However that shouldn’t take dissuade you from checking out Turok: Son of Stone whuch will be coming out in February 2009 from Dark Horse.

For those of you who don’t know Turok he was a comic book character first illustrated by Rex Maxon for Dell Comics in 1954. However our hero (who was a Native American) then graduated to his own book Turok, Son of Stone in the Gold Key Comics line in 1962. Sine then Turok has starred in everything from videogames to books:

Turok: Son Of Stone Archives Volume 1

“If you know that “honkers” means “dinosaurs,” this is the archive collection you’ve been waiting for! This deluxe collection contains the first six issues of Turok, Son of Stone: Dell Four Color Comics #596 and #656; issues #3-#6 of the Turok series. Two young American Indians stumble upon a valley where the creatures of Earth’s prehistoric past still thrive. Cut off from their tribe, Turok and Andar must find a way to survive attacks from deadly honkers and encounters with savage bands of cavemen, holding out hope that one day they will discover a way back home…”