The Gosh Authority 27.01.21

Hello!

We keep forgetting to mention here that Andy Oliver over at Broken Frontier has been an absolute trooper throughout the pandemic, keeping the Gosh! / Broken Frontier Drink & Draw running as an online event nearly every two weeks! The latest installment is this Thursday the 28th from 7.30pm, and you can join in over Twitter or Instagram using the #GoshBFDD hashtag. We have three themed rounds of 30 minutes, each round chosen by one of our special guest artists. Not much more in the way of details to announce yet, but keep an eye on social media through the week.

It's a pretty modest week, especially for a week where Previews is shipping. Some decent books in, but not a lot of new stuff outside of Future State. Let's poke our noses in, shall we?

HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEK

• ROK THE GOD TP - May as well start with the one thing that isn't a Future State book this week! The long awaited continuation of 2000AD legends John Wagner & Alan Grant's alien football comic Rok of the Reds, with art by Dan Cornwell & Abby Bulmer. If you've not seen Rok before (Vol 01 available here), it's a sports comic of the kind you don't see much anymore. An intergalactic fugitive takes refuge in the body of an arrogant footballer, and helps him fulfill his footballing potential while trying to avoid extraterrestrial hit-men. It basically combines Roy of the Rovers footballing drama with some old-school 2000AD sci-fi excitement, with all the skill you might expect of two men who once brought us what will probably always stand as the greatest run of Judge Dredd stories.

• FUTURE STATE SUPERMAN VS IMPERIOUS LEX #1 - This one is particularly notable for the creative team: Mark Russell and Steve Pugh, whose synergy on books like The Flintstones and Billionaire Island made them both critical darlings. Russell's sly, satirical wit fits perfectly with Pugh's slick style that walks delicately between realism and caricature. It's 2050, and Lex Luthor is on the planet Lexor, a propagandized utopia which he rules absolutely. Clark Kent and Lois Lane are on the case, determined to stop his petition to join the United Planets and free the planet's brainwashed populace.
  

• FUTURE STATE BATMAN SUPERMAN #1 - Another creative highlight: Gene Luen Yang (writer of TWO of our best of the year titles for 2020) and Ben Oliver take us back to the earliest days of the Magistrate's rule in Gotham, where Bruce Wayne's plan to enlist Superman's aid goes pretty drastically off the rails.

• FUTURE STATE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES #1 - Then we're jumping way into the future for some Brian Michael Bendis & Riley Rossmo craziness with the Legion. After one of the Legion turns on the United Planets, the team falls apart. No Ultra Boy assembles a new Legion, with Shadow Lass, Triplicate Girl, Brainiac Five, and Bouncing Boy on board to set things to rights.
  

• FUTURE STATE SUICIDE SQUAD #1 - Meanwhile, over on Earth-3, Amanda Waller sets up her own nasty Justice League to help create her ideal new world order. Peacemaker has other ideas, and forms his own team to stop Waller's plans. Robbie Thompson and Javier Fernandez handle that lead story. Then in the back-up story, Jeremy Adams and Fernando Pasarin check in on Black Adam, ruler of the planet Khandaq in the far-flung 853rd Century.
  

• FUTURE STATE AQUAMAN #1 - Jackson Hyde, the new Aquaman, is supposed to be mentoring Andy Curry, daughter of Arthur and Mera. But now he's imprisoned on Neptune and Andy is lost somewhere in space. Basically, he's a terrible babysitter, and Brandon Thomas and Daniel Sempere are here to tell us all about it.

• BATMAN BLACK & WHITE #2 - Might as well highlight the creative team in issue two of this always-top drawer anthology. We've got Tom King and Mitch Gerads, Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Bechko, David Aja, Sophie Campbell, and Dustin Weaver!
  

And that's it! See you next week!

Andrew.