New title: RASL (Jeff Smith)

Jeff Smith, cartoonist extrordinaire of Bone and Shazam:Monster Society of Evil Fame returns with an altogether darket tale. Bizzarely that's not reflected in the art - few of the lush swathes of black used to great effect in Bone. Smith's quirky, delicate inks may be sparse on the page but still deliver a sense of oppresive heat and seediness, and his action sequences are as dynamic as ever. Beautiful pacing as always, wordless panels and scenes that would make pacing-expert Will Eisner proud. The plot revolves around an unnamed cat-burglar (who may be called RASL) and his ability to time-shift at great physical expense to himself to get away with the goods. Through continued use of this ability he appears to accessed a parallel world and he is being hunted down by a reptilian detective. A promising first issue.
Verdict: it's made the pull list!

EC does it....

The EC archives are magnificent, and once again full kudos to Russ Cochran for his unceasing efforts to bring the greatest comics publisher's work to a new generation. I've just finished Tales from the Crypt #1, drooling over the Al Feldstein cover, the publication notes, and most of all the incredible colouring. This has improved over the original colouring and was Cochran's reaction to what he thought were unsuccesful attempts in DC's archive editions (especially The Spirit hardcovers, which have quite dull inks). The effort put in has paid off; even familiar classics such as "Ghost Ship", "The Thing From The Sea", "Rx....Death" and "Curse of the Arnold Clan" leap of the page like never before. So far so good, and I've duly ordered the Shock Suspenstories (probably my favourite EC).

Then the problems start - having bought most of the EC double-issue reprints of the early 90's, then the single issue reprints of the mid-90's, and now the archives, I'm now twitching over what I'm missing. First, there's the infamous HUGE hardcover, slipcased, hand-sewn deluxe editions, reprinting every EC publication. Long out of print (except for Picto-fiction), scarily expensive, and of course I have most of the comics anyway - *but* these are in BLACK & WHITE, so you can see those gorgeous inks of Graham Ingels, Johnny Craig, Jack Kamen, George Evans, Wally Wood, Bernie Krigstein, Al Feldstein AS THEY WERE DRAWN!!! It's like an EC story itself - a man goes crazy with a terrible craving for all variations of his favourite comics! And then, just when he thinks he can cope, he discovers that the EC archives *also* come in a deluxe, leather bound, gilt-edged ltd edition of 300 SIGNED BY AL FELDSTEIN!! Which will cost £1800+ for all the books!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!