Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett mines the Emerald City Comicon announcements for good upcoming comics.

A couple of  announcements came out of ECCC (which apparently is what we're now calling the Emerald City Comicon; honestly I can't keep track of all of the conventions any more as it is, asking me to also memorize a series of acronyms won't make it any easier) which actually caught my attention.  And surprisingly they came from Dark Horse Comics (see "'Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot' Hardcover").  I'd be the first to admit my immediate reaction wasn't entirely fair; I'm an old-school fan of the publisher, as in Concrete, Boris the Bear, Roachmill old.  And they even publish some of my favorite current comics (Hellboy, Groo, Dark Horse Presents, Past Always) but leave us face it; for the longest time the publisher has been best known for their licensed titles.

I recently wrote about how I felt the market was being dominated by high concept comics (ones that, as good as they sometimes are, seem more like proposals for movies than comics) and that there's been a shortage of ones featuring larger than life characters.  Well, the titles coming from Dark Horse have given me something to look forward to, and there's almost always a shortage of things for me to look forward to.  Like:

Adam.3 written and drawn by Scott Kolins, who along with writer Matt Kindt was responsible for one of last week’s best comics, Past Always, which managed to live up to my considerable expectations.  Adam.3 is described as mixing "Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four and John Carpenter's The Thing in a primordial Burroughs-ish landscape with a pinch of The Herculoids zeal."  It clearly has a larger than life lead character and you can never hurt my feelings referencing The Herculoids.

Power Cubed from writer/artist Aaron Lopresti has a pretty straightforward wish fulfillment concept: kid receives all-powerful cosmic doodad, mad scrum for possession for it ensues.  I’ve always liked Lopresti's work and it doesn't just sound like a lot of fun; it already was.  I know because I have the comic this one is based on, an unintended one-shot from Image published in 1999 called Atomic Toybox.


Zodiac Starforce by Kevin Panetta and Paulina Ganucheau.  The team behind Bravest Warriors has come up with a "Magical Teen Girl Action Comedy," or in the words of Panetta, "They're magical girls!  They all have Zodiac-based powers and they fight evil together!"  And moreover they do it in sensible shoes (please to note the team wears sneaks).  The most amazing thing about this comic, to me anyway, is just that we haven’t seen something like this before.  But then I suppose that was before we had overwhelming evidence girls read comics.

Finally from Dark Horse there's a pair of robots.  The Steam Man by Joe Lansdale and Piotr Kowalski is being billed as "Pacific Rim meets the Wild West," but they had me with "steam powered robot."  And a new hardcover edition of Geof Darrow and Frank Miller's Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot, the nearly 20-year old comic being recolored by Dave Stewart along with pin-ups by Darrow and the maddeningly vague "something new."  Boy, would I like to see a new Big Guy & Rusty story.

The last comic I want to write about this week isn't in print, not yet anyway.  It's a science fiction webcomic called Justin Zane, written and drawn by Steve Lightle, the artist who followed Keith Giffen on Legion of Super-Heroes back in, woah, 1984.  Boy, that's begun to be a really long-time ago.  As I keep saying, I'm always looking for something I haven't seen before and in every respect (character design, panel composition, coloring, logo, etc.), Justin Zane looks and feels like a comic book from twenty years in the future.  It's currently available online for free (though donations are cheerfully accepted); Google the title and find out for yourself.

I've already established that I'm a fan of the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--The True Meaning of Thanksgiving").  It started out as something fairly simple and sweet with fantastic overtones.  But over the seasons it's developed its own ornate mythology; we've been shown that the characters have rich emotional inner lives and there are sometimes serious consequences to their actions.  Which is why I'm kind of concerned about the impending Steven Universe/Uncle Grandpa crossover episode "Say Uncle" premiering on Thursday, April 2.

For those unaware, Uncle Grandpa is a goofy, surrealistic comedy about "the uncle and grandpa of everyone in the world" who visits children and helps them with their problems.  I don't object to the crossover because of the wildly different visual styles of the shows, or the fact that I love one of them and am mildly allergic to the other (though the latter is certainly true).  And frankly, I have enough faith in the creators of both shows to believe a one-off meeting of the characters could and should be fun.  My problem, as confirmed by Steven Universe writer Matt Burnett, is that this is "canon;" in other words, it counts.

To put him in a comic book context, Uncle Grandpa is an "imp."  Like Mister Mxyzptlk, he's obviously a pan-dimensional being with apparently unlimited powers.  Once you establish such a being exists in your (forgive me) "universe," and has some interest in your welfare, what you've got on your hands is a deus ex machina.  It will be kind of hard to maintain any sense of genuine threat in an adventure when, theoretically, Uncle Grandpa could magically appear and save everyone.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.