3 New Comics for New Readers – June 27, 2012

Wednesday is New Comics Day! Each week, The Comics Observer picks brand new releases worth checking out that should be suitable for someone who has never read comic books, graphic novels or manga before.

These are out today! If you like what you see here, click the links to see previews and learn more about them. Then head to your local comic book store, or check out online retailers like Things From Another World and Amazon. Let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook.

For a full list of this week’s new releases, see comiXology and ComicList.com.

Fatale: Death Chases Me by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Fatale Book One: Death Chases Me
Written by Ed Brubaker
Illustrated by Sean Phillips
Published by Image Comics
Genre: Crime
Ages: 16+
144 pages
$14.99

Secrets, lies, horror, lust, and monsters from the time before time all collide in Fatale: Death Chases Me.

In present day, a man meets a woman who he becomes instantly obsessed with, and in the 1950s, this same woman destroys the lives of all those who cross her path, on a quest for… what?

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ bestselling series will leave you craving more! The first arc of Image’s surprise hit is collected just in time for new readers to jump on board with issue 6!

Collects Fatale #1-5

Birdseye Bristoe by Dan Zettwoch

Birdseye Bristoe
Written and illustrated by Dan Zettwoch
Published by Drawn and Quarterly
Genre: Humor
Ages: 16+
64 pages
$19.95

A not-so-classic yarn about a mysterious stranger in a small Midwestern town.

It’s a story line we know all too well: “A mysterious stranger comes to town.” Only the town is not really a town and the stranger is a gigantic cell-phone tower. The town is Birdseye Bristoe — a portmanteau created from an interstate sign that points to two real towns — and it has only one real permanent resident, an old-timer known only as Uncle. A confirmed bachelor and World War II veteran, he owns most of the real estate in town. His teenaged great-niece and -nephew visit occasionally, though the town doesn’t have much to offer apart from an adult superstore, a gas station, and a tackle shop.

Uncle reluctantly agrees to lease his land to a conglomerate of telecommunications carriers, and sets the somewhat random condition that the tower be built with a huge crossbar set horizontally into the mast, making it also the world’s largest cross. Birdseye Bristoe begins with the destruction of the cell tower and works backward to unravel the story of its fall.

The Lovely Horrible Stuff by Eddie Campbell

The Lovely Horrible Stuff
Written and illustrated by Eddie Campbell
Published by Top Shelf Productions
Genre: Non-Fiction
Ages: 18+
96 pages
$14.95

Money makes the world go round, as they say. And around. And around.

Eddie Campbell is an award-winning graphic novelist (Alec, From Hell) whose work defies categorization. His latest book is a dizzying autobiographical investigation into MONEY. It’s a voyage that takes him all the way from the imaginary wealth of Ponzi schemes to the real hard stuff on an obscure South Sea tropical island where he investigates the history of the stone money. This is no dry and dusty treatise on finance; any complexities are pleasingly reduced to the level of bubblegum trading cards. In here you will hear about the corporation that Campbell keeps under his bed; you will meet colorful historical characters and be taken on dangerous shark-infested sea adventures; and after that, we will all plunge to the depths to retrieve our loose change.

Campbell’s wry eye and vivid full-color artwork imbue the proceedings with real humanity, making The Lovely Horrible Stuff an investment that’s worth every penny.