By Greg Bennett
Legendary comic book store owner Greg Bennett provides a pair of recommendations for comic book lovers every week. Titles are either currently on specialty store shelves or shipping or in the near future. Fans can also click on the covers to appreciate the fine art.
Batman and Robin, No. 1, DC Comics, $2.99
If you loved All-Star Superman (and who didn’t), grab yourself a copy of Batman and Robin #1 and see what Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely are doing with the caped crusader. If they hold true to form, expect beautiful art, strange and cool characters, and (sadly) blown deadlines. But it won’t matter too much, because each individual issue will stand on its own as a work of art. Highly recommended!
Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, trade paperback, HarperCollins, $18.99
First prose, then comics, and finally the animated film—all three versions of Coraline are great (four if you count the 3-D movie separately), but in some ways the P.Craig Russell comics adaptation may be the best. Going back to his work with Neil Gaiman on Sandman back in the 1990s, Russell has always captured perfectly the “Gaiman-ism” (for lack of a better term) in his art and storytelling. It might be why he’s the only artist who gets to do these adaptations any more. Now in an affordable paperback.
Greg Bennett is the Owner/Manager of Big Planet Comics, a chain of pop art specialty stores in the DC Metro area with locations in Georgetown, Bethesda, Vienna, & College Park.
