Dark Horse Previews Picks: April 2013

According to Rich Johnston, pre-orders for the “Hyrule Historia” currently stand at 250,000.  It’s all the more impressive when you consider that this is a $35 hardcover, but I’m curious as to why he’s reporting on this.  Sure it has a “Skyward Sword” comic inside, but it’s not really comics news, nor the first such book of its kind to be published by the company.  (On that note, they’re re-offering Yoshitaka Amano’s “Final Fantasy” three-volume artbook “The Sky” this month as well.)  That it’s this successful already shouldn’t be much of a surprise here given Zelda’s enormous following stateside.  On that note, it does make it a very Dark Horse kind of product since I imagine they didn’t have to do a whole heck of a lot to promote it -- the book pretty much sold itself by being an official sourcebook for all things Zelda.  Given all this, I’d expect to see a lot more of these kinds of projects from the company in the future.  My money would be on similar books for Mario Bros. and Pokemon (if they exist) though I could also see them pursuing their Amano connection to publishing Final Fantasy sourcebooks like this.  Tell me that wouldn’t be a license to print money right there! Anyway, talk about actual comics begins after the break. ----more---- Abe Sapien:  Dark and Terrible #1 (of 3): A mutated Abe is on the run from the B.P.R.D.  Why is he on the run from the organization that has been his longtime home?  I can’t say yet, but I’m betting it’s because he’s becoming EVIL!  Call it a hunch, or an educated guess after reading years of these comics.  Now I could be very, very wrong about this, but I still think that the climax of the Hellboy/B.P.R.D. saga is going to involve Hellboy and Abe duking it out on opposite sides for the fate of the spirit of mankind.  My money is on it happening within the next decade, wait and see. The Adventures of Dr. McNinja Omnibus: The first three B&W volumes about the exploits of a doctor who is also a ninja (and also of Scottish descent, or maybe Irish) are collected here.  Inside you will find tales of a kid suffering from Paul Bunyan’s disease, a ninja family, Mexicans riding velociraptors, a drug that turns kids into ninjas, Benjamin Franklin, what awaits us all in the afterlife, and Dracula.  My twelve-year-old self would’ve seen this and begged his parents to buy it immediately because it looked AWESOME!  The thing is that my twelve-year-old self is RIGHT! Conan vol. 13:  Queen of the Black Coast: FINALLY!  Better than “Northlanders,” or a pale shadow of Wood’s creator-owned work.  Given the great track record of “Conan” comics at Dark Horse, I’m actually leaning towards the former. Grendel Omnibus vol. 3:  Orion’s Reign: “Grendel:  Devil’s Reign” was the best comic that I read in 2010 that didn’t come out in 2010.  The ultra-dense decades-spanning story of corporate employee Orion Assante’s rise to power as the unifier of the known world was an immensely compelling and well-crafted read.  That power corrupts is a given, but sometimes you get someone like Orion -- a tyrant who’s actually bent on doing the right thing and whose orders you wouldn’t mind following.  The lead-in to this story, the longer and less tightly-constructed “God and the Devil” is also collected here along with three never-before-reprinted issues from creator Matt Wagner’s The Last of Us:  American Dreams #1 (of 4): It’s a tie-in to the upcoming videogame from the creators of “Uncharted” that, based on past examples of such, is destined to die a quick death in the direct market.  However, what makes this of interest to me is that it comes from Faith Erin Hicks.  This means I’ll have to buy the collected edition now. Michael Avon Oeming's The Victories vol. 1: Only $10.  That puts me in a kind of, “Why the hell not,” purchasing mood for it. Star Wars:  Legacy vol. 1 HC: This is essentially an omnibus of the series collecting what looks like the first three volumes of it.  At $35, that’s effectively a buy-two-get-one-free deal.  Now I could question why Dark Horse didn’t go with their usual omnibus format, but I think this title is good enough to warrant this high-end treatment.  Worth picking up if you’ve ever been curious about this.