3 Story: The Secret Files of the Giant Man
Story & Art by Matt Kindt
Digital Production by Clay Janes
Design by Matt Kindt with David Nestelle
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: April 18, 2012
Cover Price: $3.50

Dark Horse’s graphic novel 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man explores the life of Craig Pressgang, an American born during the Second World War who suffers from gigantism, grows to be three stories tall, and finds a place for himself as a U.S. government spokesperson. The book itself is told from the perspective of the three most important women in his life, his mother, wife and daughter, as he grows from a period of optimism to alienation and isolation for being so unique. It’s often said that the book, written by Matt Kindt, is a sprawling metaphor for the American spirit since the 1940s.

This isn’t that book. This book is a bit …ahem… shorter in stature.

Space Time Condominium: Season One
Written and Art by Dave Dwonch
Action Lab Comics
Release Date: February, 2012
Cover Price: $14.95

Space Time Condominium starts with the premise of a man living with different versions of himself from across the multiverse and the story spins wildly out of control from there. It’s a webcomic written and illustrated by Dave Dwonch, with a new print version published by Action Age Comics. It is SO GOOD in so many ways, but misses the mark a few times.

So, the story goes like this: A crisis is destroying the multiverse as a scientist named The Gate Keeper flees his timeline, that’s about to be destroyed, with a mysterious plan that involves gathering 5 different versions of a man named Griffen Griffens, builds a condo in a tiny pocket universe unaffected by the crisis, and have them all live together. Whew, what a sentence. Oh, and it’s a comedy!

Axe Cop, Vol. 3 TPB
Written by Malachai Nicolle
Drawn by Ethan Nicolle
Colors by Dirk Erik Shulz
Designer Kat Larson
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 28, 2012
Cover Price: $14.99

There will never be a comic quite like Calvin and Hobbes. For ten years Bill Watterson worked on an extraordinary ode to the trials and tribulations and joy that comes with being an imaginative 6 year old. It was arguably the greatest newspaper comic strip this side of the twentieth century. In part that’s because its main character was allowed to be as selfish and destructive as he was sweet and imaginative, in other words, he was allowed to feel like an actual 6 year old.

Then one day the strip was gone and comics have been trying to fill that void ever since. Other artists and storytellers have tackled friendship and growing pains, but one comic, Axe Cop, has emerged that really captures the sense of play that kids have. The make-the-story-up-as-you-go-along sensibility where dinosaurs, robots, and aliens are casually thrown into a plot. And unlike Watterson who would usually pull back to his real world in the last panel, Axe Cop digs deeper and deeper into its world of make-believe.

Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Vol. 12
Story by Eiji Otsuka
Art by Housui Yamazaki
Original Cover Design by Bunpei Yorifuji
Translation by Toshifumi Yoshida
Editor and English Adaptaion by Carl Gustav Horn
Lettering and Touchup by IHL
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 21, 2012
Cover Price: $11.99

I hope you like high-concept because the best story in Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 12 involves haunted houses, struggling comedians, astral projection, dirty real estate deals, and a dude getting shot in the face with a nail gun, all in a brisk 75 pages that I must have read in under a half hour.

Full Disclosure, I wasn’t familiar with the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service series when I picked this volume up. It’s about five recent college grads with their own unique connection to the afterlife and who have formed a company which specializes in granting the dead their last wishes. Although, they seem to just kind of stumble into trouble. Think Ghostbusters by way of Scooby-Doo. But in Japan.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Micro-Series #2: Michelangelo
Global Conquest Edition
Written by Brian Lynch
Art by Andy Kuhn
Colors by Bill Crabtree
Letters by Shawn Lee
IDW Publishing
Release Date: March 7, 2012
Cover Price: $3.99

The weird part about this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles renaissance we’re going through is seeing that word ‘Teenage’ still attached to them. Sad, but true, in just a couple years the franchise will be hitting 30. It’s not like there have always been great reasons to stick around as a TMNT fan, either. Many of us who grew up with them (Is anyone reading these books who didn’t grow up with TMNT in someway?), to various degrees, look back to the cartoons and movies and video games and breakfast cereals and Coming Out of Our Shells tour and wince a little out of embarrassment. What I suspect the folks at IDW understand is that we see the Eastman and Laird books as the high water mark, and while we accept the ADD kid-friendly stuff that came afterwards it’s time to move forward.