New Comic Book Wednesday: August 21

The second-to-last New Comic Book Wednesday before I return to school full time (I'm only coaching in morning's now), and my excellent run of early morning comic pick-ups will be over for another school year.

As is too often the case, I find myself returning to a character for whom I have not collected a title in a lo-o-o-ong time, this time due to her kicking off a miniseries that kind-of-sort-of dips its toes in the Western genre. When Vampirella: Southern Gothic came out last week, I made the mistake of spending a couple bones on two issue of her main title just to get a taste. Though (at least initially) not as satisfying as my last experience with the character in Harris' 1997 title Vampirella Monthly, it was promising enough to convince me to dig through the racks for a couple of back issues and to request a pull of this week's Vampirella #32.

Given the recent addition of Gale Simone's Red Sonja to my pull list, I am rounding out my comic collection with newly reinvigorated pulp heroines to go along with Warlord of Mars, The Lone Ranger and Lady Rawhide (who was not a pulp-era creation but certainly fits the bill creatively). These types of characters offer the classic narrative that is so often missing (in my estimation) from the majority of the Big Two's titles. These smaller presses also just seem intent on being entertaining action and adventure and not so concerned with aligning every past depiction of a character or serving another market like action figures and movies. Even Dynamite's The Lone Ranger, with a new issue out this week, has stayed true to the character, even going so far as to offer superior storytelling to what was offered up this past summer by Disney.

This week also saw the release of two of my very favorite comic books reading experiences: 2-3 times monthly Dark Horse Mignola-Verse titles (this week B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth # 110 and Lobster Johnson: Scent of a Lotus #2) and the wonderful (and occasional) Bela Lugosi's Tales From The Grave from Monsterverse Entertainment.

Happy reading!