The Gosh! Authority 23.02.22

Hello!

We're hiring! Yes, tell your comic-loving, job-seeking, hard-working pals that we are looking to add another staff member, happily returning us to pre-pandemic staffing levels! The position is a general retail assistant role, with a varied range of tasks that will in part be tailored by the interests and experience of the successful applicant. All the details can be found by clicking on this link!

It's been a week of JLA / Avengers requests following the announcement that the Hero Initiative has managed to broker a special fund-raising deal between Marvel and DC in honour of George Perez. The brand new softcover edition of the classic crossover series (by Perez and Kurt Busiek) will have all proceeds generated going to the Hero Inititative, a charity which helps provide financial assistance to comics creators in need. The announcement created a great deal of excitement, but came with a catch: only 7,000 copies of the new edition will be printed. Demand for the book is high, and this will almost certainly lead to heavy allocations to stores, meaning that we're probably only likely to get 1 or 2 copies, if any at all. With that in mind, we're not taking any preorders on the book as we can't guarantee fulfillment of them. We're still deciding what we will do if we receive any copies, including the possibility of auctioning copies off with all proceeds going to the Hero Initiative. We'll let you know!

Public service announcement: along with the below, Saga #56 is out this week.

HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEK

• MARVEL COMICS LIBRARY SPIDER-MAN VOLUME ONE 1962-1964 HC - The mother of all collections for Spider-Man fans: a deluxe, oversized hardcover reproduction of the first 21 Spidey stories from artbook masters Taschen. Rather than using the harshly recoloured files that have been used for most reprints of that early material, Taschen have gone back and photographed the best condition originals they could find, then sympathetically restored and coloured them to make it look, as they put it, "as if hot off of a world-class 1960s printing press." The end result is nothing short of amazing, with what is easily the best-quality reproductions of these stories that has ever been done, all bound into a big, chunky, beautiful hardcover with some enticing extras to boot. Not cheap in price, but certainly not cheap in quality. And still a damn sight cheaper than picking up the originals.

• SNOW ANGELS TP VOL 01 - Jeff Lemire and Jock's Comixology Original comes to print at last! A sci-fi horror-tinged tale of survival featuring two girls who, undertaking a rite-of-passage journey through the frozen trench they call home, unleash an ancient, deadly protector. Lemire and Jock together make a terrific combination, and we're so excited about it we've worked with Jock to create an exclusive, signed bookplate to go with the book. Check it our below, and order on our webstore now!

• STEP BY BLOODY STEP #1 - A four-part, silent fantasy tale by Simon Spurrier and his Coda co-creator Matias Bergara. A young girl is carried by an armoured giant, both mute, across a fantastical landscape, neither knowing why they must keep moving, or where their final destination lies. All they know is that they cannot stop, and they must survive the hostile lands they pass through. Each issue is double-sized, which should offset some people's concerns about the value of a silent comic, and absolutely gorgeous.

• GHOST RIDER #1 - The return of Johnny Blaze, courtesy of Benjamin Percy and Cory Smith. Johnny is living a normal suburban life with his wife and two kids, running an auto-repair shop. But he's having nightmares lately, including the appearance of a certain flaming skull. And why is this idyllic life increasingly feeling like a trap?

• AQUAMEN #1 - Arthur Curry and Jackson Hyde team up in the wake of a terrorist attack on surface soil that is attributed to an Atlantean sleeper agent. The Aquamen are on the trail of the real culprits, but perhaps they're actually closer to home that either would like to admit. Brandon Thomas and Chuck Brown write, with Sami Basri on art. 

• CARNAGE FOREVER #1 - Carnage is 30! THIRTY! Unbelievable. Anyway, the sands of time in the hourglass of my life aside, Marvel are breaking out a birthday special with an anthology of stories from Cletus Cassiday's past and present, as well as a glimpse into his future (with an all-new series starting next month!) Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Ram V., Ty Templeton, Salvador Larroca & Edgar Salazar do the writes and draws..

• KILLER AFFAIRS OF THE STATE #1 - The return of Luc Jacamon & Matz's assassin for hire, now working for the French government. Far from his previous freelance lifestyle, Killer soon finds himself embroiled in dirty local politics. If you've never tried this great crime series before, you should check it out before the upcoming Netflix adaptation directed by David Fincher!

And that's it for this week!

Andrew.