Ursa Minors! No. 1
Slave Labor Graphics
For years, maybe decades, monkeys have been the go-to animal for laughs. Well, the times are changing: Bears are the new monkeys. Witness Stephen Colbert's ongoing campaign against the "godless killing machines" on The Colbert Report, or Adult Swim's curious obsession with bear vs. shark fights—or new comic-book series Ursa Minors.
In it, three twentysomething, pop-culture-obsessed slackers come into possession of high-tech robotic bear suits that give them all the powers of bears, plus all the powers of robots. But instead of using these powers to fight against evil, like the kids from Voltron did with their robotic lions (and that show was obviously a big influence on cowriters Neil Kleid and Paul Cote), the trio basically just stumble through their lives—hanging out, reading comics and talking about dumb shit. But sometimes they do it while wearing robotic bear suits.
It's an idea for a comic book that's so awesome, it's hard to believe nobody thought of it before.
Embroideries
Pantheon
Iranian born, Paris-based cartoonist Marjane Satrapi is best known for her two-volume autobiographical epic Persepolis, one of the most powerful and moving biographic graphic novels since Art Spiegelman's Maus.
Her follow-up, just released in trade paperback, is a lot less focused than her Persepolis books were, but intentionally so, as it's structured like a Canterbury Tales-style anthology.
The story is a simple one, with grown-up Marjane, her grandmother and her mother (all familiar characters from Satrapi's previous works) gathering with other women out of earshot of the men in their lives to share stories about their lives, loves and sex.
Like Persepolis, the stories they all tell are alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, intense and whimsical. The title has multiple meanings, from a traditional woman's hobby to a metaphor for tale-telling ("embroidering the truth") to a euphemism for a process of restoring lost virginity, which figures prominently in one story.
In some ways it's a lot less political than her previous work, which chronicled her childhood during the Islamic revolution, her escape to Europe and her return to a very different, fundamentalist Iran. Yet, even the intimate stories of the Iranian women's personal lives that make up Embroideries have a political element—the many similarities and the important differences between their culture and ours speaks volumes about modern Iran, even if Satrapi only talks around the subject this time.
Wonder Woman No. 1
DC Comics
Batman reascended to pop-culture primacy last summer with Batman Begins. Later this month, Superman Returns opens, and already you can't take 10 steps without tripping over some Superman marketing miscellanea.
DC's third 60-year-old superhero will get her turn in the spotlight next summer, when Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman film is expected to open, and DC's already getting their girl ready for her close-up, having cancelled her last comic-book series only to restart it with a new No. 1.
At the helm is Allan Heinberg, a TV writer who managed to transition his success there (he was partly responsible for The O.C.) to the comics field with Young Avengers. Now, Wonder Woman has already had more reboots, restarts and reimaginings than just about any other comic-book character you can name, but Heinberg manages to make this umpteenth one pretty painless.
The real Wonder Woman is missing, and her W-shaped brass bra is currently being filled by Donna Troy, her grown-up former sidekick Wonder Girl. Nobody seems to miss the old Wonder Woman as much as her villains, though, and they kidnap poor Steve Trevor (Wondy's Lois Lane, who was constantly being emasculating-ly saved by his girlfriend back in the day) to draw her out.
The art by Terry and Rachel Dodson is among the slickest and glossiest to ever grace a Wonder Woman comic, and they've put in a ton of design work on the character, making her costume look more like a functional piece of clothing, with armor and seams and even a little buckle for her golden lasso, than the painted-on bathing suit she's been wearing for about 20 years now.